(no subject)
Today is a day I think for talking about immortal boyfriends!
Okay, more specifically, it is for talking about Tananarive Due's My Soul to Keep, which is, I believe, the first book in a trilogy about secret immortals. I really enjoyed Due's The Good House, and I had heard that her other books did some interesting and unusual things with the vampire/immortal boyfriend trope, so, while the vampire/immortal boyfriend trope does not do much for me on the whole, I thought I might as well give them a try.
I didn't like it as much as I hoped, though a lot of that is, I think, just a case of Not My Trope. Due is definitely doing something a little bit new with the Immortal Boyfriend. For one thing, not everyone is white! All of the immortals are African, and Jessica and her family are African-American, which is pretty cool. For another, it is not set in high school! By the time the story begins, Jessica and David/Dawit have been married for ten years, and they have a daughter, Kira. As far as Jessica knows, her husband is a jazz scholar who is mysteriously well-versed in historical facts and is weirdly uninterested in contemporary politics, and keeps saying strange things like "I wish you would drop your job as an investigative journalist and come spend more time with our family! WE HAVE SO LITTLE TIME!" David, for his part, is beginning to come up against his fears that the first family he has cared about is going to grow old and die. In the very first scene of the book, he comes face-to-face with the 80-year-old daughter that he abandoned when she was a child, and ends up killing her out of sheer panic and disgust. The rest of the plot spirals out of his need to cover that up, and his growing determination to break the rules of his Secret Immortal Boy's Club and transfer immortality to Jessica and Kira, whether they want it or not. Meanwhile, the Immortal Boy's Club provide some narrative tension as they start to wonder if they should kill the ladies before things get out of hand.
I think my biggest disappointment is that I kept wanting the book to go further with subverting the myth of how awesome it would be to be Married to Mr. Cullen than it did. David/Dawit is clearly shown as scary and does many things that I would consider unforgivable - not to mention all the basic worldview differences that make him and Jessica not super compatible - and for a while the book seemed like it was going to commit to highlighting that creepiness. At the same time, though, there is a whole lot about how super sexy he is and how much he loves his family and how ~everything he does is for them~, and by the end, even though it is definitely not a HEA romance, there was a lot more forgiveness for him and affirmation of his and Jessica's ~true love~ than I wanted there to be. In a way, Due does too good a job subverting the archetype - she goes so far that I really kind of hated Dawit a lot, and could not deal with it when the book asked me to sympathize with him again. (This also meant that I enjoyed the flashbacks where Dawit is dealing with fascinating historical things like slavery and the Harlem Renaissance a lot less than I would have otherwise, because they were All Dawit Angst, All The Time, and basically I did not care.) My favorite character was Jessica's sister the awesome doctor, who thinks David is a total creep and whose first reaction upon finding out about David's Magic Immortal Blood is like, "I do not care about your unhealthy relationship with your immortal husband, I CARE ABOUT CURING CANCER. >:O" I wanted to read a book about her!
Anyway. In short: angsty immortal romances, not my particular cup of tea. What about you guys? Are there any Immortal Boyfriends that do really work for you, or that you especially hate? Show your work!
Okay, more specifically, it is for talking about Tananarive Due's My Soul to Keep, which is, I believe, the first book in a trilogy about secret immortals. I really enjoyed Due's The Good House, and I had heard that her other books did some interesting and unusual things with the vampire/immortal boyfriend trope, so, while the vampire/immortal boyfriend trope does not do much for me on the whole, I thought I might as well give them a try.
I didn't like it as much as I hoped, though a lot of that is, I think, just a case of Not My Trope. Due is definitely doing something a little bit new with the Immortal Boyfriend. For one thing, not everyone is white! All of the immortals are African, and Jessica and her family are African-American, which is pretty cool. For another, it is not set in high school! By the time the story begins, Jessica and David/Dawit have been married for ten years, and they have a daughter, Kira. As far as Jessica knows, her husband is a jazz scholar who is mysteriously well-versed in historical facts and is weirdly uninterested in contemporary politics, and keeps saying strange things like "I wish you would drop your job as an investigative journalist and come spend more time with our family! WE HAVE SO LITTLE TIME!" David, for his part, is beginning to come up against his fears that the first family he has cared about is going to grow old and die. In the very first scene of the book, he comes face-to-face with the 80-year-old daughter that he abandoned when she was a child, and ends up killing her out of sheer panic and disgust. The rest of the plot spirals out of his need to cover that up, and his growing determination to break the rules of his Secret Immortal Boy's Club and transfer immortality to Jessica and Kira, whether they want it or not. Meanwhile, the Immortal Boy's Club provide some narrative tension as they start to wonder if they should kill the ladies before things get out of hand.
I think my biggest disappointment is that I kept wanting the book to go further with subverting the myth of how awesome it would be to be Married to Mr. Cullen than it did. David/Dawit is clearly shown as scary and does many things that I would consider unforgivable - not to mention all the basic worldview differences that make him and Jessica not super compatible - and for a while the book seemed like it was going to commit to highlighting that creepiness. At the same time, though, there is a whole lot about how super sexy he is and how much he loves his family and how ~everything he does is for them~, and by the end, even though it is definitely not a HEA romance, there was a lot more forgiveness for him and affirmation of his and Jessica's ~true love~ than I wanted there to be. In a way, Due does too good a job subverting the archetype - she goes so far that I really kind of hated Dawit a lot, and could not deal with it when the book asked me to sympathize with him again. (This also meant that I enjoyed the flashbacks where Dawit is dealing with fascinating historical things like slavery and the Harlem Renaissance a lot less than I would have otherwise, because they were All Dawit Angst, All The Time, and basically I did not care.) My favorite character was Jessica's sister the awesome doctor, who thinks David is a total creep and whose first reaction upon finding out about David's Magic Immortal Blood is like, "I do not care about your unhealthy relationship with your immortal husband, I CARE ABOUT CURING CANCER. >:O" I wanted to read a book about her!
Anyway. In short: angsty immortal romances, not my particular cup of tea. What about you guys? Are there any Immortal Boyfriends that do really work for you, or that you especially hate? Show your work!