so who here has read octavia butler
Things are returning to normal; I just read five books and disliked nearly all of them! I feel much more myself.
Descent into Dust, Jacqueline Lepore:
Well, that was painfully mediocre. I hung in there because dude, come on, it’s Buffy set in Victorian times with a main character who is not a teenager! And it starts with lines from “The Waste Land”! It turns out that it is still possible to make this suck. From extreme mediocrity. It was just painfully formulaic. There was an Important Little Girl and a Gay Best Friend and even THEY could not save this shizzle. It was just boring. And also, okay, we are in the twenty-first century. YOU DO NOT GET TO WRITE ABOUT THE ROM THAT WAY ANYMORE. As the neighbors say, JESUS CHRIST SHIT.
School of Fear, Gitty Daneshvari:
Also pretty boring. The obvious debt to A Series of Unfortunate Events made it readable, but it was predictable as all hell. The characters were pretty charming, but… meh. Just not anything special.
The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance, Glenn Dakin:
Even more painfully Nothing Special, and more painful again because I’m going to have to read the rest of the series, grit my teeth, and smile, because Cousin J likes it a lot. Formulaic and ill thought-out.
Tabloid Dreams, Robert Olen Butler:
I didn’t dislike this, I thought it was lovely in its way, but it did feel a bit pointless. I am rather indifferent overall. And then I think about it and start liking it more, I don’t know.
And, oh god. Fledgling by Octavia Butler. Okay, I don’t understand. I was so set to love this. Octavia Butler is supposed to be really good, I mean that’s what I’d heard, and holy shit some fantasy (sci fi? horror? murder mystery with vampires? whatever this was supposed to be) with a main character who IS NOT WHITE, I was SO SET to love this. And it was awful. Like, not just mediocre; this book actively sucked. I am deeply upset, and yet there it is.
It was poorly written. That has to be some of the worst use of the first-person I’ve ever seen; all the narration felt like exposition. And speaking of exposition, that was all the dialogue ever was, it was the weirdest thing. No matter what they were talking about, it read as exposition; even emotional conversations. “Let me expound at length upon how I am feeling at this moment in a way that leeches all power from the actual emotions I am describing.” It was also distractingly poorly edited and repetitious (Shiori says at least three times that she can’t even mourn her dead family since she doesn’t remember them so for her it’s as if they never existed, for example).
And it was creepy as fuck, and not in a good way. I don’t care how old your character is mentally; if she has the body of a ten-year-old, she DOES NOT NEED TO BE SCREWING GROWN MEN. And if a man screws her, do not expect me to believe for a SECOND that he is in any way a good person. Also, if your character has no memory past a week ago, SHE IS NOT MENTALLY FIFTY-THREE. SHE IS MENTALLY A WEEK OLD. GROSS ICK NO. I mean, there is a way to do this that works, technically, although I may not want to read it, but this way is to acknowledge that there is something creepy going on. Not to act like this is good and right because your characters are ~special.~ Also this woman needs a good long talk from Agent Ballard about there being no such thing as consensual slavery, holy crap. That was so disturbing, and it just wasn’t written like any of it mattered, the slavery or the pedophilia.
And speaking of the characters being ~special~, that was probably the biggest problem with the writing for me. I am hugely baffled because SERIOUSLY, this is OCTAVIA BUTLER, there was even a blurb on the back about how she’s one of the few writers today who appreciates how people work with and against each other… and that is not at all what goes on in this book. This book is written the way I wrote when I was like thirteen. “I know that THAT is how people usually behave, but you see due to MAGIC and LOVE, MY characters - who are, you may have noticed, very special - are going to behave THIS way.”
In fact, overall, you know what this book reminded me of? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… Laurel K. Hamilton. THAT is what it reminded me of. Anite Blake. Yes, I just went there. The main character is horrific but gets away with it because everyone loves her and wants to bang her and be in her harem. The heroine even has the same ability to addict people to her. And there is no sense anywhere in the writing that enslaving people and banging them while they’re essentially DRUGGED is wrong in any meaningful way. It’s extraordinarily juvenile and porn-logic-esque.
So yeah, that sucked. And I would have put it down when the DUDE STARTED BANGING THE LITTLE GIRL but it’s Octavia Butler. And she has used her good name to hurt me deeply. We’re finished professionally.
I like vampires. WHY IS VAMPIRE FICTION NEVER GOOD.
Descent into Dust, Jacqueline Lepore:
Well, that was painfully mediocre. I hung in there because dude, come on, it’s Buffy set in Victorian times with a main character who is not a teenager! And it starts with lines from “The Waste Land”! It turns out that it is still possible to make this suck. From extreme mediocrity. It was just painfully formulaic. There was an Important Little Girl and a Gay Best Friend and even THEY could not save this shizzle. It was just boring. And also, okay, we are in the twenty-first century. YOU DO NOT GET TO WRITE ABOUT THE ROM THAT WAY ANYMORE. As the neighbors say, JESUS CHRIST SHIT.
School of Fear, Gitty Daneshvari:
Also pretty boring. The obvious debt to A Series of Unfortunate Events made it readable, but it was predictable as all hell. The characters were pretty charming, but… meh. Just not anything special.
The Society of Unrelenting Vigilance, Glenn Dakin:
Even more painfully Nothing Special, and more painful again because I’m going to have to read the rest of the series, grit my teeth, and smile, because Cousin J likes it a lot. Formulaic and ill thought-out.
Tabloid Dreams, Robert Olen Butler:
I didn’t dislike this, I thought it was lovely in its way, but it did feel a bit pointless. I am rather indifferent overall. And then I think about it and start liking it more, I don’t know.
And, oh god. Fledgling by Octavia Butler. Okay, I don’t understand. I was so set to love this. Octavia Butler is supposed to be really good, I mean that’s what I’d heard, and holy shit some fantasy (sci fi? horror? murder mystery with vampires? whatever this was supposed to be) with a main character who IS NOT WHITE, I was SO SET to love this. And it was awful. Like, not just mediocre; this book actively sucked. I am deeply upset, and yet there it is.
It was poorly written. That has to be some of the worst use of the first-person I’ve ever seen; all the narration felt like exposition. And speaking of exposition, that was all the dialogue ever was, it was the weirdest thing. No matter what they were talking about, it read as exposition; even emotional conversations. “Let me expound at length upon how I am feeling at this moment in a way that leeches all power from the actual emotions I am describing.” It was also distractingly poorly edited and repetitious (Shiori says at least three times that she can’t even mourn her dead family since she doesn’t remember them so for her it’s as if they never existed, for example).
And it was creepy as fuck, and not in a good way. I don’t care how old your character is mentally; if she has the body of a ten-year-old, she DOES NOT NEED TO BE SCREWING GROWN MEN. And if a man screws her, do not expect me to believe for a SECOND that he is in any way a good person. Also, if your character has no memory past a week ago, SHE IS NOT MENTALLY FIFTY-THREE. SHE IS MENTALLY A WEEK OLD. GROSS ICK NO. I mean, there is a way to do this that works, technically, although I may not want to read it, but this way is to acknowledge that there is something creepy going on. Not to act like this is good and right because your characters are ~special.~ Also this woman needs a good long talk from Agent Ballard about there being no such thing as consensual slavery, holy crap. That was so disturbing, and it just wasn’t written like any of it mattered, the slavery or the pedophilia.
And speaking of the characters being ~special~, that was probably the biggest problem with the writing for me. I am hugely baffled because SERIOUSLY, this is OCTAVIA BUTLER, there was even a blurb on the back about how she’s one of the few writers today who appreciates how people work with and against each other… and that is not at all what goes on in this book. This book is written the way I wrote when I was like thirteen. “I know that THAT is how people usually behave, but you see due to MAGIC and LOVE, MY characters - who are, you may have noticed, very special - are going to behave THIS way.”
In fact, overall, you know what this book reminded me of? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… Laurel K. Hamilton. THAT is what it reminded me of. Anite Blake. Yes, I just went there. The main character is horrific but gets away with it because everyone loves her and wants to bang her and be in her harem. The heroine even has the same ability to addict people to her. And there is no sense anywhere in the writing that enslaving people and banging them while they’re essentially DRUGGED is wrong in any meaningful way. It’s extraordinarily juvenile and porn-logic-esque.
So yeah, that sucked. And I would have put it down when the DUDE STARTED BANGING THE LITTLE GIRL but it’s Octavia Butler. And she has used her good name to hurt me deeply. We’re finished professionally.
I like vampires. WHY IS VAMPIRE FICTION NEVER GOOD.