Shinn, Sharon - Angel-Seeker
Er. So. Basically I only finished this book so I could snark about it online. Like I said before, I like some of her other books, but the Samaria ones just annoy me, and the annoyance has been getting worse and worse.
You know it's bad when you feel like rooting for the misogynistic society of evil that stones women just because you are really, incredibly sick of having the liberal goodness of everyone else pushed down your throat every. single. book.
First of all, why are the Edori so wonderful? Yeah, yeah, they are closer to God/Yovah than everyone else because they all believe they have a personal relationship with him. They are wonderful and loving and adore children and were enslaved and reviled despite their wonderfully welcoming natures, blah blah blah blah blah. I am so annoyed about the whole Edori thing. The best way to tell if someone in the book is good is to see their attitude toward the Edori. And they're all so perfectly wonderful and nice and loving! Hey, so no one had any negative personality development because of years of slavery? So they were enslaved for years and years and suffered incredible amounts of prejudice, and in every single book, the reaction is, oh we are Edori and we are nice to all people despite their meanness to us because we are Good and Noble! /noble suffering.
This goes along with the entire liberal agenda of the book. And while I am an extreme liberal who is all for things like no slavery and feminism and equal treatment of women, I am rather annoyed with the way Shinn shoves this down my throat with no complications. The good people (much like McCaffrey and Lackey) are forever good and feminist and politcally correct. The bad people are bad because they are not politically correct.
Then of course, there's the entire soulmate rhetoric, with the glowing Kisses and etc. Why yes, I find it incredibly romantic that a god chooses your future mate for you. Furthermore, this is even more incredibly romantic because the said god turns out to be a machine. I can't remember if it's Samaria or OSC's Oversoul series, but the agenda of one of the machine-gods was genetic diversity. And while Shinn has (thankfully) been getting away from having every lover recognize each other via glowing Kisses, the fact that it is a romantic ideal still annoys me. Also, why is the machine-god always right about personality matches? I sort of wish she had set up a situation in which two people had their Kisses light up and were perfectly compatible, but that they were in love with other people. Somehow, I never quite realized that love was all about compatability and less about sheer insanity. Arranged marriage via machine, wonderful.
I'm just rather annoyed by the idea of the machine-god (which is revealed in Jovah's Angel) and how it is never really dealt with. Although the big secret is revealed in The Alleluia Files (sp), the rest of the books Shinn has been writing takes place before that and never quite deals with the fact that the god the entire world worships is a machine. The problem I have is not so much the characters' beliefs (how are they supposed to know it's a machine?), but rather, with the narrative. The narrative goes along nicely and sets up the climax in Archangel as a moral victory when Jovah (the machine-god) strikes down the evil-doers, as though God is judging them. Except, it's machine programming. And the narrative seems to support the idea that machine-chosen lovers are truly meant-to-be. Why bother to set up this rather interesting world with its machine-god and never deal with the implications that the god is a machine?!
Snark about this book in particular: My first problem was the sexual politics. I picked up the book because the other ones have annoyed me but were bearable. And her latest one was more interesting, slightly, and I was wondering if she was going to oh, actually, confront some of the things she set up as "bad' in previous books. The book's titled "Angel-Seeker," after the host of human girls that chase after angel lovers in hopes of being impregnated with an angel child and thereby gaining the right to live in the angel holds all the time. In previous books, the angel seekers have been castigated as horrible, slutty girls, blah blah, people the heroine would never dream of being. Of course, this is because the heroine, unlike the rest of society, hates and distrusts the angels and sees no reason why she should be flattered by his attention. Anyhow, I am perpetually annoyed by the fact that it is always silly girls chasing after big strong angels. Shinn explains that there are no male angel seekers because it is extremely hard for female angels to become pregnant. Pretty much every female in this book ends up having "bad" sex (defined as sex without love, or sex for the sake of sex) and ends up punished horribly for it.
The only person who escapes relatively unscathed is Elizabeth, the angel-seeker of the title (unfortunately, being in the title didn't mean she was the main character), but she suffers from bad sex in the more mundane sense. No one has a good sexual experience when they are having sex with someone they don't love. Martha the Jansai girl's indiscretions are discovered and she's stoned and left for dead in the desert. Rebekah (in the stupidest plot point of the book) becomes pregnant and is also stoned and left for dead. Luckily, she's rescued because she was having sex with her true love and he saves her. Martha, unfortunately, is just painted as rather promiscuous and too risk-taking, ergo, she is punished and dies. Faith, Elizabeth's friend, is so desperate to bear an angel baby that she takes too much of a fertility drug and burns out her womb. Elizabeth, who suffers least, ends up having sex with an angel she doesn't even like, and said sex is always bad because the angel is always drunk and has no finesse. Only when she ends up in the arms of an Edori lover (argh, them again) is she happy and satisfied.
The second problem was with the entire Obadiah-Rebekah romance. Granted, in general I absolutely detest the forbidden romance schtick if the forbidding party is society, ala Romeo and Juliet. This allows the lovers to be horribly maudlin about how everyone is against them and leads to scenes in which the heroine must try to steal away from her family and the fear that she will be punished if found out. This tends to make me very antsy, and not in a good way. So I was pretty prejudiced against them from the beginning. Unfortunately, Shinn does not manage to transcend my inherent prejudices against the plotline and instead has probably increased my antipathy toward it. Rebekah, a Jansai girl (read: repressed Muslim-like society that keeps all the women veiled, etc), comes across Obadiah wounded and takes care of him. In those two days of taking care of them, they both apparently fall in love so much that she will risk death to keep seeing him. I was prepared to like Rebekah too. I wanted to see how Shinn was going to write about Jansai society without falling into cliches, if she was going to have the heroine be a believable product of the society, etc. Instead, Shinn managed to write about Jansai society with the broadest of cliches and has the heroine be one of those politically enlightened people, despite her sheltered upbringing. This was pretty easy to figure out from the first two pages about Rebekah, who is, of course, rebellious and feisty, yet utterly submissive and stupid and tragic when the plot goes on.
So, no interesting plotline about Obadiah perhaps having to overcome Jansai stereotypes or any sort of culture clash. Instead of said interesting plotline, I get a miracle baby. A stupid miracle baby. I understand that Rebekah has learned absolutely nothing about sex or her body while living her sheltered life, so she gets off somehow, but why in the world did Obadiah not think about the possibility of pregnancy, especially given the prevalence of angel seekers?! Why in the world did he not have some sort of contraceptive?! Why in the world would he risk his loved one's life in that manner, knowing how repressive her society was and how they dealt with sexual transgressions?! Oh no, instead the two sneak off and have sex again and again and again with no contraceptive devices! And why did neither of them think of the fact that Rebekah was engaged to be married and planning on going through the marriage and wonder if her husband would maybe, oh, notice she wasn't a virgin? Now I reveal my own ignorance -- I'm not sure if you can actually tell if someone's a virgin or not by having sex with them, and all my knowledge of this comes from romance novels and the "blood on the sheets" proof. So maybe her future husband wouldn't have been able to tell. But it seems a rather stupid risk to take anyway, given the fact that sexual transgressions are punished by stoning. So during the entire climactic sequence at the end, in which Elizabeth rescues poor, dying Rebekah in the desert and Obadiah is miraculously the angel who comes to help them, why does Obadiah never castigate himself for not being more careful? *headdesk* The sheer stupidity of this and my utter disgust at the stupidity of the characters cannot properly be expressed.
The good things: Elizabeth was interesting, and I liked her. Too bad she got shoved off to be the deus ex machina secondary character. I will say that Shinn very often has much more interesting secondary female characters (the overly rebellious Miriam in Angelica, the deposed Archangel in Jovah's Angel).
That's actually about it -- I spent half the book wondering if Shinn was going to make things more interesting and not go down the predicted plotline by having Obadiah and Elizabeth be "meant to be" and see how he dealt with being in love with Rebekah in that case, if Rebekah would end up in love with Obadiah but unwilling to leave her family and eventually castigating him and regretting her youthful folly. I also sort of wanted a closer look at the angel seekers that wasn't completely derogatory, because to be honest, it is an interesting factor in the society, particularly the general dislike of them, given that they are all female, and the fact that it is a viable way for females to step up the social ladder. I thought it would be an interesting look at social and economic injustices in the society, at the unspoken hierarchy that angels were at the top of, etc. But, as can be seen, obviously none of this happened, and instead, the book went down a path that I could have foretold from the second chapter. I really shouldn't have bothered finishing it.
You know it's bad when you feel like rooting for the misogynistic society of evil that stones women just because you are really, incredibly sick of having the liberal goodness of everyone else pushed down your throat every. single. book.
First of all, why are the Edori so wonderful? Yeah, yeah, they are closer to God/Yovah than everyone else because they all believe they have a personal relationship with him. They are wonderful and loving and adore children and were enslaved and reviled despite their wonderfully welcoming natures, blah blah blah blah blah. I am so annoyed about the whole Edori thing. The best way to tell if someone in the book is good is to see their attitude toward the Edori. And they're all so perfectly wonderful and nice and loving! Hey, so no one had any negative personality development because of years of slavery? So they were enslaved for years and years and suffered incredible amounts of prejudice, and in every single book, the reaction is, oh we are Edori and we are nice to all people despite their meanness to us because we are Good and Noble! /noble suffering.
This goes along with the entire liberal agenda of the book. And while I am an extreme liberal who is all for things like no slavery and feminism and equal treatment of women, I am rather annoyed with the way Shinn shoves this down my throat with no complications. The good people (much like McCaffrey and Lackey) are forever good and feminist and politcally correct. The bad people are bad because they are not politically correct.
Then of course, there's the entire soulmate rhetoric, with the glowing Kisses and etc. Why yes, I find it incredibly romantic that a god chooses your future mate for you. Furthermore, this is even more incredibly romantic because the said god turns out to be a machine. I can't remember if it's Samaria or OSC's Oversoul series, but the agenda of one of the machine-gods was genetic diversity. And while Shinn has (thankfully) been getting away from having every lover recognize each other via glowing Kisses, the fact that it is a romantic ideal still annoys me. Also, why is the machine-god always right about personality matches? I sort of wish she had set up a situation in which two people had their Kisses light up and were perfectly compatible, but that they were in love with other people. Somehow, I never quite realized that love was all about compatability and less about sheer insanity. Arranged marriage via machine, wonderful.
I'm just rather annoyed by the idea of the machine-god (which is revealed in Jovah's Angel) and how it is never really dealt with. Although the big secret is revealed in The Alleluia Files (sp), the rest of the books Shinn has been writing takes place before that and never quite deals with the fact that the god the entire world worships is a machine. The problem I have is not so much the characters' beliefs (how are they supposed to know it's a machine?), but rather, with the narrative. The narrative goes along nicely and sets up the climax in Archangel as a moral victory when Jovah (the machine-god) strikes down the evil-doers, as though God is judging them. Except, it's machine programming. And the narrative seems to support the idea that machine-chosen lovers are truly meant-to-be. Why bother to set up this rather interesting world with its machine-god and never deal with the implications that the god is a machine?!
Snark about this book in particular: My first problem was the sexual politics. I picked up the book because the other ones have annoyed me but were bearable. And her latest one was more interesting, slightly, and I was wondering if she was going to oh, actually, confront some of the things she set up as "bad' in previous books. The book's titled "Angel-Seeker," after the host of human girls that chase after angel lovers in hopes of being impregnated with an angel child and thereby gaining the right to live in the angel holds all the time. In previous books, the angel seekers have been castigated as horrible, slutty girls, blah blah, people the heroine would never dream of being. Of course, this is because the heroine, unlike the rest of society, hates and distrusts the angels and sees no reason why she should be flattered by his attention. Anyhow, I am perpetually annoyed by the fact that it is always silly girls chasing after big strong angels. Shinn explains that there are no male angel seekers because it is extremely hard for female angels to become pregnant. Pretty much every female in this book ends up having "bad" sex (defined as sex without love, or sex for the sake of sex) and ends up punished horribly for it.
The only person who escapes relatively unscathed is Elizabeth, the angel-seeker of the title (unfortunately, being in the title didn't mean she was the main character), but she suffers from bad sex in the more mundane sense. No one has a good sexual experience when they are having sex with someone they don't love. Martha the Jansai girl's indiscretions are discovered and she's stoned and left for dead in the desert. Rebekah (in the stupidest plot point of the book) becomes pregnant and is also stoned and left for dead. Luckily, she's rescued because she was having sex with her true love and he saves her. Martha, unfortunately, is just painted as rather promiscuous and too risk-taking, ergo, she is punished and dies. Faith, Elizabeth's friend, is so desperate to bear an angel baby that she takes too much of a fertility drug and burns out her womb. Elizabeth, who suffers least, ends up having sex with an angel she doesn't even like, and said sex is always bad because the angel is always drunk and has no finesse. Only when she ends up in the arms of an Edori lover (argh, them again) is she happy and satisfied.
The second problem was with the entire Obadiah-Rebekah romance. Granted, in general I absolutely detest the forbidden romance schtick if the forbidding party is society, ala Romeo and Juliet. This allows the lovers to be horribly maudlin about how everyone is against them and leads to scenes in which the heroine must try to steal away from her family and the fear that she will be punished if found out. This tends to make me very antsy, and not in a good way. So I was pretty prejudiced against them from the beginning. Unfortunately, Shinn does not manage to transcend my inherent prejudices against the plotline and instead has probably increased my antipathy toward it. Rebekah, a Jansai girl (read: repressed Muslim-like society that keeps all the women veiled, etc), comes across Obadiah wounded and takes care of him. In those two days of taking care of them, they both apparently fall in love so much that she will risk death to keep seeing him. I was prepared to like Rebekah too. I wanted to see how Shinn was going to write about Jansai society without falling into cliches, if she was going to have the heroine be a believable product of the society, etc. Instead, Shinn managed to write about Jansai society with the broadest of cliches and has the heroine be one of those politically enlightened people, despite her sheltered upbringing. This was pretty easy to figure out from the first two pages about Rebekah, who is, of course, rebellious and feisty, yet utterly submissive and stupid and tragic when the plot goes on.
So, no interesting plotline about Obadiah perhaps having to overcome Jansai stereotypes or any sort of culture clash. Instead of said interesting plotline, I get a miracle baby. A stupid miracle baby. I understand that Rebekah has learned absolutely nothing about sex or her body while living her sheltered life, so she gets off somehow, but why in the world did Obadiah not think about the possibility of pregnancy, especially given the prevalence of angel seekers?! Why in the world did he not have some sort of contraceptive?! Why in the world would he risk his loved one's life in that manner, knowing how repressive her society was and how they dealt with sexual transgressions?! Oh no, instead the two sneak off and have sex again and again and again with no contraceptive devices! And why did neither of them think of the fact that Rebekah was engaged to be married and planning on going through the marriage and wonder if her husband would maybe, oh, notice she wasn't a virgin? Now I reveal my own ignorance -- I'm not sure if you can actually tell if someone's a virgin or not by having sex with them, and all my knowledge of this comes from romance novels and the "blood on the sheets" proof. So maybe her future husband wouldn't have been able to tell. But it seems a rather stupid risk to take anyway, given the fact that sexual transgressions are punished by stoning. So during the entire climactic sequence at the end, in which Elizabeth rescues poor, dying Rebekah in the desert and Obadiah is miraculously the angel who comes to help them, why does Obadiah never castigate himself for not being more careful? *headdesk* The sheer stupidity of this and my utter disgust at the stupidity of the characters cannot properly be expressed.
The good things: Elizabeth was interesting, and I liked her. Too bad she got shoved off to be the deus ex machina secondary character. I will say that Shinn very often has much more interesting secondary female characters (the overly rebellious Miriam in Angelica, the deposed Archangel in Jovah's Angel).
That's actually about it -- I spent half the book wondering if Shinn was going to make things more interesting and not go down the predicted plotline by having Obadiah and Elizabeth be "meant to be" and see how he dealt with being in love with Rebekah in that case, if Rebekah would end up in love with Obadiah but unwilling to leave her family and eventually castigating him and regretting her youthful folly. I also sort of wanted a closer look at the angel seekers that wasn't completely derogatory, because to be honest, it is an interesting factor in the society, particularly the general dislike of them, given that they are all female, and the fact that it is a viable way for females to step up the social ladder. I thought it would be an interesting look at social and economic injustices in the society, at the unspoken hierarchy that angels were at the top of, etc. But, as can be seen, obviously none of this happened, and instead, the book went down a path that I could have foretold from the second chapter. I really shouldn't have bothered finishing it.