The first book was a moderately meandering urban fantasy about supernatural politics through the eyes of a young, wish-fulfillment character (supernatThe first book was a moderately meandering urban fantasy about supernatural politics through the eyes of a young, wish-fulfillment character (supernatural powers, gaining powers from other groups, working with covert agencies, with a beautiful vampire princess desperately in love with him).
This volume cuts out any pretense and goes for urban fantasy as juvenile comic book: more superpowers, more sex, every problem solved with simple violence, and no real story other than "how can this guy piss everyone off and still scare them into giving him anything he wants." By the end, Adam Baldwin wouldn't play him(1).
There isn't really a plot here—it reads as if Freytag's Pyramid had been used for target practice by Napoleon's troops—but the vague direction is the protag getting more powerful, pissing off or scaring everyone, and threatening everyone he scares or pisses until they let him do anything he wants, no matter how dangerous he's suggested that would be.
The interpersonal conflict resolves around a series of sitcom miscommunications between him and his girlfriend, all of which his friends refuse to explain, ostensibly because they're too busy trying to out-flex someone somewhere.
And the denouement (there is no climax, instead we have a rapid falling action as the protag demonstrates that he's able to destroy the United States and is therefore trustworthy) falls off the rails into complete adolescent wish-fulfillment: the protag stages a standoff with the US government where he demonstrates that he can kill the president, so they should stop treating him as a threat.
Really, that isn't a spoiler. It's fair warning.
The first book looked like it could go somewhere. Sadly, it took a left turn into "Immortal WWE Baddass Cagematch" territory (yes, there is a cagematch) and all the not-horrible politicking and character development of the first book was thrown out.
We do get a lot of light "but maybe I'm a monster" angst, in case you missed every book with vampires and werewolves in the last 20 years.
We do get lots of intimations of hot-and-heavy sex with the vampire princess "so beautiful that if she walked in to a Victoria's Secret runway show everyone would stare at her, even the models" (not a quote, but a close paraphrase).
We get what could be a plotline about a violent werewolf pack (unlike, say, the kind that puts him in a cagematch), but that is basically thrown away with "and he killed 200 of them in under a second" and pushed again in the next book, where he apparently hunts them down one by one or something.
And, of course, because this is set in NYC, we get extremist terrorists taking schools hostage and our hero saving the day despite the government clearly not caring if the kids die.
I don't know what happened between books one and two. But read book one if you want; I enjoyed it enough. And stop there.
Footnotes: 1) No offense intended to Adam Baldwin! But let's face it, he's made a career out of playing a certain type, and this caricature of that type would embarrass him....more
I read it. It was the first thing by Harrison I almost didn't finish(1). But since it's a one-crap(2), I went ahead.
Sadly, it's flat, predictable, forI read it. It was the first thing by Harrison I almost didn't finish(1). But since it's a one-crap(2), I went ahead.
Sadly, it's flat, predictable, formulaic, and lacks all of Harrison's great interpersonal conflict and understanding. The setting and subject are stock, the characters are from the Urban Fantasy Rent-A-Character Temp Agency, and the final tableau can be predicted from about page 50, with each new character having an obvious place in the resolution so as to maximize easy sequels.
Terry Pratchett says that writing YA only requires simplifying the sentence structure(3). Whoever advised Harrison on this suggested simplifying the characters, plot, setting, and conflict instead.
Having said that, if you're a completist you'll get it anyway (I did, after all). If you can bear to, wait for the paperback, although I could see this one never making it to pb.
I hate saying all this. Harrison has been my favorite new writer since I picked up DWW right after it appeared. But what I love about her writing is all missing from ODTS(4).
Some people worry that readers who missed the prequel, a short in Prom Nights From Hell will be lost at first. I haven't read the short, but I thought the backstory was explained in loads of detail. Repeatedly. Over and over. Redundantly, even. I had no trouble following the extremely trite setup(5) and I can overlook the cut-and-paste exposition; she could learn to do more recap in the Hollows books, after all.
One thing that might ameliorate my disappointment would be to recategorize ODTS as Independent Reader rather than Young Adult. When they're separated (which not every outlet or library does), IR targets a younger audience (pre-tween) and expectations are significantly lower. Sadly, it's listed and shelved as YA everywhere I've looked.
1) one-crap: a book easily finished in one sitting; this does not imply a sitting short enough to do in the bathroom, it's just a silly phrase
2) I rarely give up on books in the middle (see my "couldn't finish" shelf, for example), but I do put books down indefinitely, intending to return to them. And I usually do return to them. In this case, I almost put it on my "couldn't finish" shelf.
3) And in Pratchett's case, writing for slightly less-young readers and not targeted to the Unchallenging Twilight Ripoffs crowd, increasing the violence.
4) Actually, all the things I love about her writing are also missing from the back third of WWBC. I had assumed she was taking shortcuts and easy outs so she could concentrate on ODTS, but ODTS clearly required little concentration.
5) She went to the prom with a guy she didn't know and he treated her poorly [clearly: Crush Interest Number One]. Hot, dashing guy [obvious villain:] swoops in, plays tonsil-tango, and tries to kill her. I-Hate-Him-So-I'll-Love-Him shows up and watches Hunky Villain try a second time and succeed. Protagonist, now dead, realizes she has limited series potential and wakes up. Proceed to multi-book deal, do not pass cliche check, do collect advance check. There, now you've read the short story, minus any good writing Harrison used. All other content can be summarized as "{insert teenage angst; copy from any other series and file off the serial numbers}."...more
I never knew a series this bad actually had a shark left to jump.
Really. Charlain Harris' quote on the front, to "Read this book at your own risk," waI never knew a series this bad actually had a shark left to jump.
Really. Charlain Harris' quote on the front, to "Read this book at your own risk," was all too relevant.
The first book was bad, but fun enough to try the second. The next two tried to get better. This one has about 15 pages of story, 10 pages of plot, and 400 pages of bad, grade-school-level writing crammed into 350 pages of schlock.
The overall plot here is the same as the last three books: is Joanna Archer ever going to realize that the man who leads her super-hero troop is a cold, heartless bastard who considers himself so superior to everyone else that he can ruin their lives to prove that he's somehow morally pure? The answer is the same, as well: No. We follow Jo trying to fix the consequences of her actions in the last book--actions which are always described as her mistakes, without challenge--and gloss over her team leader's decisions to destroy, humiliate, and otherwise dehumanize people for the betterment of... well... people. You know, the pain of the many outweighs the pain of the one, as long as he doesn't have to admit to being wrong.
But this book finally explains it: it's because he's a man. This book delves into the inherent, genetic, inalienable difference between how men--driven by vice, strength, and greed--are different from women, who are subtle (unlike Warren, who has spent three books running rings around everyone else), manipulative, and inherently morally superior, as well as being able to cloud men's minds (but not the other way around, except for how we'll read for pages about Jo's breath being taken away if she gets a glimpse of Hunter).
It's bad writing, cliches (and goes on for pages about how bad cliches are, amusingly), sexism, and huge neon signs pointing to the sudden revelations even beginnings readers will see coming. Around page 300 we finally get the payoff to the big secret readers should have predicted in the last book.
Sadly, this one is a series killer. Don't bother with it. Remember the schlock of the previous books and let those be a high point.
-------------------------------- Wrote this before the book was released: -------------------------------- Book isn't out yet, so here's a game to play with it:
Take the cover blurb. You know, "In Sin City, a little girl suffers..."
1. Join the first two sentences with a semicolon: "In Sin City, a little girl suffers from a strange and terrible malady; if she dies, the Light will die along with her."
2. Remove the "But" from the last sentence: "Joanna's price of admission is a piece of her own soul—and the odds of her escaping are slim . . . to none."
3. Randomize the sequence of the sentences and re-read.
For example: Warrior, avenger, Joanna Archer has survived countless otherworldly terrors—and has found her rightful place among the agents battling the all-pervasive evil of Shadow . . . even as she struggles against the darkness within herself. A war is raging for Las Vegas—a city without a heart—one that catapults Joanna into a new world hidden from mortal sight. In Sin City, a little girl suffers from a strange and terrible malady; if she dies, the Light will die along with her. Joanna's price of admission is a piece of her own soul—and the odds of her escaping are slim . . . to none. In this lethally seductive alternate dimension the lines blur between good and evil, love and hate, and here lies the last hope for the Light.
4. (Extra credit) Ask yourself if sentences in a paragraph should ever have no relationship discernible to one another. . ...more
I hate no-one enough to let them read this. When I finally threw the book down in disgust and dismay I called the friend who had loaned it to me to asI hate no-one enough to let them read this. When I finally threw the book down in disgust and dismay I called the friend who had loaned it to me to ask why he had done this thing. He replied that he had warned me not to read past page 200 or so; he just wanted me to see a small bit at the beginnning.
Don't even read those first 200 pages. There is nothing new or interesting in the setup, the characters are flat and undifferentiated, and you might make it up to the explicit, disgusting, and horribly-handled rape scene that will make you feel sympathetically dirty for the poor typesetter who didn't even have a part in choosing to inflict this travesty on the world....more
This is the simplified version of Ender's Game for the kiddie set that can't handle rich characters with moral ambiguity, moral introspection, and chaThis is the simplified version of Ender's Game for the kiddie set that can't handle rich characters with moral ambiguity, moral introspection, and character growth.
Card does great work teaching people how to re-imagine stories from different viewpoints and with different motivations in his workshops. It's a shame that he didn't demonstrate it here.
Instead, we get Bean (a great character in the original story) as a classic Mary Sue, a wish-fulfillment character with all of Ender's skill but none of his angst or growth around it. Even the adults who spend the first book walking a delicate line trying to save Ender from their own work fall down at Bean's feet and beg him to save them from their own inadequacies.
The one limitation he has, and I'm not kidding, from his genetically engineered childhood where he was found in a toilet tank, is that he is so smart, so physically developed, and so gosh-darn what the 6 year old reader wants to grow up to be that he's going to die young. Except, of course, you know he's not. Because Mary Sues do die young, but he obviously won't.
We have more sequels to milk, after all, and not enough uberkinder to go around.
Skip this. Do your local child a favor and don't let them read it. If they want to read pablum, let them read fun pablum, at least. This book should come with insulin....more
I have no idea who nominated this for a Hugo. Clearly, they didn't read it all, but only read the good bits. An expurgated version might be a very gooI have no idea who nominated this for a Hugo. Clearly, they didn't read it all, but only read the good bits. An expurgated version might be a very good novella.
The plot is great classic SF: race against time, predict the future, outsmart the people who know what you're going to do before you do because you already did it (from their perspective), etc. It should be a tense and tight story.
Somewhere along the way, Wilson ran into the (good) advice that a writer should make things hard on the protagonist. And somewhere, someone obviously told Wilson that he was too squeamish to write the hard stuff, or that his books were light on violence, or something of that nature.
As a result, Chroniliths is full of macho posturing and writer show-offiness. Minor characters are pulled aside into scenes of brutal violence that neither advance the plot nor develop character, yet are shown in unnecessary detail. Meanwhile, the important violence--the one that shows how the world is falling into the trap that led/will lead to the Chronoliths in the first place--is off-camera and reduced to hearsay.
I don't mind violent stories. This came nowhere near to squicking me. But violence that seems to be showing off how the author can be crude and cruel (to the reader) is distracting from the plot and the characters.
It didn't help that the story itself has little tension until the ending. Time travel stories are hard to wrap up in a satisfying manner and Wilson does a good job (although nowhere near as good as, say, Michael Swanwick in Bones of the Earth, which was also Hugo-nominated that year).
I made it through this one, and I'm glad I did, but there are too many good books out there to recommend it....more
It looks good. New author, first novel, recommendations on the cover by Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, and Diana Gabaldon(2). Woman becomes a Super-PIt looks good. New author, first novel, recommendations on the cover by Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, and Diana Gabaldon(2). Woman becomes a Super-Powered Heroine fighting forces of darkness and it's supposed to have non-stop action, some hot sex scenes, and it's set in Las Vegas, always a great setting for supernatural action.
But look more closely. The back cover has a big, glossy picture of the author: an atractive brunette with a decidedly Linda Carter look. Large pictures of the attractive author on the back are always a warning sign(3). Then read the bio: ten years as a Folies dancer at the Tropicana. Could be good, she probably knows Las Vegas well.
Good and bad. Nice setup. Let's take a look inside....
This book is firmly in that unnamed subgenre where Harrison and Harris live: female POV modern supernatural fantasy/mystery/action with a promise of sexual tension. It's a fun subgenre. Unfortunately, this one falls into the most cop-out of traps in the female POV world, that a woman can only become a strong heroine if she was raped. Of course, she is the one raped because she fights the attacker to save her younger sister. And, of course, she goes from raped to vengeful to trained and effective. It's cheap writing and it cheapens (and demeans) rape victims, implying that they should use assault as a strengthening experience and not feel traumatized. Fortunately, it only shows up in 90% of heroine stories written by men and 89% written by women(4) :-(
The main character is basically ok. Joanna Archer, daughter of mega-wealthy father Xavier (uncommon names like that always indicate villains), whom she despises and who despises her. Her younger sister (the not-raped and therefore not-heroic one), Olivia, lives the life of a beautiful and mega-wealthy socialite, and we mustn't forget her being a Playboy Playmate a few months ago. Joanna spends her days practicing martial arts and her nights wandering the dangerous streets of Las Vegas, taking pictures for her occasional art exhibits and hoping for a chance to beat up a mugger or two.
So, let's fast-forward to/through the plot.
Joanna Archer has a rule: she never says no to a first date. It's a stupid rule and it only serves to set up the first scene (and is never mentioned thereafter), but it's billed as her reclaiming her sexuality after the rape by proving she isn't afraid to date(6). So we find her on a date with a repulsive man who turns out to be a homicidal supernatural killer.
Joanna gets away from him with the help of a police group that has been following him, led by her old high school boyfriend, who will play a recurring but meaningless role in the book.
The next day is the day before her 25th birthday. Which doesn't seem all that important, but boy-howdy is it. She and her sister visit Daddy, who reveals that he has evidence--a one-line, unsigned letter--indicating that Joanna is not his daughter. Her sister takes Joanna's side but Daddy cuts her out of the will anyway.
Being a close relative who doesn't hate a heroine-to-be is rarely a good idea. Let's start a clock ticking on her death right about now, why don't we? We'll need a stopwatch, not a calendar.
Fast-forward to that night through a couple of things: hot date with the ex-boyfriend, seeing the same bum repeatedly, hitting the bum with her car, watching his bones heal almost instantly, dire warnings from the bum that indicate he'll help her, but he can't until she's 25--ie, several hours later. Assuming she lives those several hours.
She goes to her (ex?)boyfriend's house for some hot sex told in a not-hot and overlong manner(8), then back to her sister's. Her sister Olivia, we learn, is some sort of super-hacker called (of course) The Archer. While she does some snooping on the (ex?)boyfriend for Joanna she gets a call from an ex-boyfriend who wants some stuff(9) back--at 11:45 at night. She agrees. Hecontrives to stick around until midnight.
Midnight comes around and Joanna turns 25(10) and immediately gets hit with something like the Highlander effect. She's basically useless; he attacks; her "reflexes" from training(11) kick in and she buries a knife in his chest. Olivia and Joanna sit down (next to his dead body) and relax, as you do when you just killed someone and his corpse is still bleeding out on your wall-to-wall. He (of course) gets up, throws Olivia out the (penthouse) window, and attacks. Obvious what happens next, but let's list it: Joanna beats him up, takes his own knife(12), cuts off his hands, and slits his tongue open(13) so he drowns in his own blood(14). You know, the usual heroine stuff.
After a brief and strange fight scene the bum explains that he is an Agent of Light and both the date-guy and the guy she killed were Agents of Dark. Joanna, being 25 now, has some sort of super-powers (they don't know what yet) and is capable of being an agent of either. Because, Ta-Da, she is the Fated One Who Will... do something. They aren't really sure what, but she has the powers of both Shadow and Light(15). It's the usual you're-better-than-everyone-else-but-untrained-and-untrustworthy business.
Superpowers are matrilineal; her mother was another Agent of Light who seduced the head Agent of Dark--a supernatural being of pure thought, yet still able to knock uglies and inseminate--and then went into hiding after giving birth to protect Joanna--by not being there to protect her. Today is her mother's birthday, increasing her power, and it's her father's birthday, too(16), so she gets a lot of his power as well. Whether his having a daughter post haste would remove some of her powers is left unsaid, but it sounds like something he should look into.
So the Agents of Light (the good guys, remember) do the obvious thing. They knock her unconscious and--without her permission--give her plastic surgery to look exactly like her sister and make Olivia's body look like hers before it's buried so everyone thinks Joanna's dead instead of Olivia. She is ordered back into Olivia's life to spy on Daddy.
So here's the book: Martial artist/playmate with super powers and the heir to a mega-fortune works with 11 other super beings (one for each star sign, although actually 5 of the good guys are dead at the moment) to fight the machinations of 12 bad guys (one for each sign and with related abilities to their counterparts). The "manual" for the super teams is a comic book series. She's the only one who can read both sides, of course (this actually makes sense to me). There are also trading cards of the agents(19). If we didn't have the Linda Carter-esque picture on the back I'd be certain this was plotted by a high school boy hoping it makes him famous enough to get his first kiss.
'Natch, the rapist is one of the Shadows(18).
The good guys keep doing things this way. They tell her what to do. She complains. They tell her again. She does it. She complains, but she's incapable of *doing* anything on her own initiative. And that's seen as a good thing. This is my main complaint with the book. I get really sick of a heroine who bitches about something that really is wrong, doesn't do anything, and never grows out of it.
The book leads through the inevitable plot stages: the super base, the alpha-female bitch-fight, the alpha-male bitch-fight, the traitor in our midst, the alpha-male being super hot but aloof, the mentor (who turned her into her bimbo sister against her will but is inexplicably lovable) kidnapped and tortured, alpha-male is not super hot, the revelation that the mentor has her emotions bugged (which is not creepy in any way and not at all stalkerish), wait--maybe the alpha-male *is* super-hot, trapped, escape trap, rescue the mentor, alpha-male will die unless she kisses him, fight with date-guy and rapist, rescue mentor, mentor will kill them all unless alpha-male kisses him(20), and the showdown with the thought-being (who isn't destroyed, of course).
We have to ask: is it fun-stupid, or stupid-stupid? Well, if you known going in, it's fun-stupid. If it were a comic book, it would definitely be fun-stupid. But even then, I couldn't stand the doormat of a heroine(21).
Wait, you ask, how's the writing? Pyrotechnic writing can save even a bad plot for some of us. Give us some examples of interesting bits! So I will.... - And what a strange world it was when a woman had to lose herself in order to find herself. - At the time I had no way of knowing Mr. Sand's true intentions, not like now.
Footnotes. Mostly snarky. Some deleted. 2: This whole group recommends one another all the time, which makes their recommendations basically useless. 3: Nora Roberts is fond of this, too. It's a holdover from the romance genre but it's out of place in the more SF/F end of the genre, no matter how attractive Linda Carter is. Um. The author, I mean. 4: Sadly, I made those percentages up and probably underestimated them. 6: This is the first warning that she thinks giving up control of her life somehow reclaims herself. Really. 8: OK, I don't like sex scenes in general, so it may be better than I think. 9: Stuff in this case being whips, chains, gags, etc. Playboy playmate returning fetish gear to her ex-boyfriend: sound like an adolescent male fantasy. 11: Reflexes always trumping electrical discharge in your muscles. 12: Memo: Always take the knife away. 13: I don't know what to say here. It's a slit down the tongue, if I recall correctly, making it forked. I really don't know what to say. 14: As you do. 15: She has the Powers of the Gloaming! 16: Maybe her mother and father hooked up at a Sag Singles dance? 18: If you didn't see that coming, I envy your innocence. 19: Future marketing tie-in? 20: Actually, this was kind of a neat twist. 21: It's all too common. But it really, really irritates me unless it's a point of character development....more
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