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alicetheowl in bookfails

A Discovery of Fails

Apr 13, 2011 22:28

You may have heard the hype about A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. If you did, I hope you also heard it's "a grown-up Twilight," and run screaming already. I was not smart enough to read the reviews before I picked it up, and so I have suffered, that you may avoid it like the plague.

( I wound up swearing at my car speakers as the audio book played. )

i think this author is overrated!!!, at least the cover is cool, character development fail, nonsparkly vampire fails, author last names g-l, like watching paint dry, there is a plot where somewhere

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Re: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF THIS BOOOOOOOOK premium_shaday April 14 2011, 05:25:18 UTC

AND ANOTHER THING ABOUT HER AMBIGUOUS(?) GENDER: That's bullshit too. I BET YOU'RE SURPRISED TO HEAR THAT. She's not actually a hermaphrodite, she's a chimera. She absorbed a male twin in utero and now has two sets of DNA fucking around in her. That doesn't amount to shit in terms of sex or gender. If her junk cells are made entirely out of lady DNA, her body will produce lady hormones and play the lady parts in reproduction without any DNA interference from her MANLY DNA, even in terms of what genes she passes on.

I am 100% POSITIVE that her lady bits are entirely lady because 1) this is TWILIGHT and it is not evolved enough to conquer the gender issue of being intersexed and 2) if she was intersexed, I'm sure we would have heard about it from Matthew while they were fucking around in bed not having sex, even if it was just a "I STILL LOVE YOU, YOUR LADY BITS AND MAN BITS ARE BOTH ENDEARING."

She comes out as a chimera, declares herself a hermaphrodite, everyone is like "OKAY THAT MAKES SENSE, I GUESS YOU'RE THE FORETOLD CHILD OR SOME SHIT" and it's never mentioned again. Not by Matthew, not by her aunts, not by Matthew's scientist vampire posse. THERE ARE LITERALLY NO REPERCUSSIONS OTHER THAN FALLING FARTHER INTO THE MOLD OF WHATEVER BULLSHIT PROPHECY SHE'S SUPPOSED TO BE FULFILLING. MAYBE THEY CAN MAKE SPECIAL BABIES, BUT THAT IS ENTIRELY UNLIKELY.

Actually, if chimerism was so badly interpreted, maybe it is possible simply by ignoring all internal logic. Maybe they'll have regular babies and then decide to be a gay couple and pop out some mpreg style ass babies.

It's magic. Anything goes- we can't be assed to make any kind of sense.

Re: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF THIS BOOOOOOOOK premium_shaday April 14 2011, 05:29:16 UTC

I almost put it down a third of the way in, but I have massive Train-Wreck syndrome. I got five pages away from the end before I realized it was a trilogy and then I was like "FUCK IT."

Why did I read that. WHY.

AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH.

Re: FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF THIS BOOOOOOOOK alicetheowl April 14 2011, 20:27:43 UTC

Yeah. The chimera thing slipped my mind because it was just a random plot point thrown in around chapter 38 or 39. I had a brief moment of "WTF?", then the characters were back to playing scrabble and taking long walks and being generally boring.

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