Pointless, a book review rant
Alright, I'm going to be upfront. I read a book. I really, really did not like it, particularly I didn't like the end. If you do like this book, that doesn't mean I don't like you. It doesn't even necessarily mean I think you have bad taste. What it does mean is that you're taste is very different from mine, you have different priorities when reading, you have different tolerances for certain tropes or behaviors. I am bitching about these tropes, characterizations and writing, which I do, yes, think is bad. It does not, however, reflect on anyone but me, and my own ideas of what makes good writing.
That's my disclaimer.
So I read Soulless by Gail Carriger a while back. I'd heard good things. The beginning of the book had some promise, even if I didn't love it. The book over all disappointed me, and I whined a little, but I didn't hate it. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, I've finished all of my reading for school and I want something to read on the train going home. There's a copy of the sequel, Changeless in the school book store. Okay, why not? I'm not looking for deep reading, and maybe the author will have improved. Soulless was, as I understand it, her first novel. Those are usually a little rocky. Why not give into the impulse buy? It did have some potential, didn't it?
No. No, it didn't.
What's this all about?
So, Changless continues the story of Alexia Tarabotti, who got married in the end of the first book and gets to be Lady Alexia Maccon now. Either way. Important things to know about her include: she lives in a quasi-steampunk, supernatural version of Victorian England; she allegedly has no soul, which means that she cancels out the powers of supernatrual creatures like werewolves and vampires; it also allegedly affects her personality, so that she has no natural set of morals and has to make do with philosophy and such, it also might affect her interest in fashion, her ability to empathize with other people, her ability to care about other people and generally give a shit, and a variety of other things that honestly all seem to come and go based on whatever is the most expedient for the story at the time, and believe me, I will develop more on this later; her father is Italian, which makes her totally an outcast and unsuitable in England, because she's "robust," and has a large nose, and dark hair, and it's terrible because clearly just everyone in that day was blond and pale; her family, excluding her biological father who she never knew, are all totally shallow, frivolous and nasty all the time (also worth noting: the only ones of real note, particularly in this book, are female, so wonderful stereotypes there); she is married to an alpha werewolf; are she might beat people up or prod them in the crotch with her parasol gratuitously, which we're apparently supposed to find endearing (it isn't).
The story itself is pretty much you're standard urban fantasy fare. There's a mystery that has to be solved. It's done in good time by the plucky, quirky female lead and her cadre of mostly male supernatural alliances. Honestly, it's about as standard as it comes in that respect, and just about every other respect. And to be perfectly fair to it, I think that's to some degree intentional. See, Changless is supposed to be comedic--it plays around with being pastiche-y and sometimes vaguely satirical. There are times when it's satirical whether it's intentional or not--and whether it's intentional or not is hard to tell--because it just keeps hitting every note. Every single one. Every cliche, ever stock trope, every plot "twist" that's generally associated with female leaded urban fantasy, like it was going through with a fucking checklist. The main character an outsider who is human, but has some kind of mysterious and potentially game breaking power that makes her a magnet for supernatural trouble? Check. Can the reader tell she's really beautiful, even if everyone around her acts like she's a hideous sea hag? Check. Is she burdened with a family that's unsupportive and misunderstands her constantly? Check.
It's pretty much impossible that this is accidental. So what is Carriger doing with it? The hell if I know. I know what she seems to be trying to do with it, which is tell this kind of story tongue in cheek. Unfortunately, this tends to fall apart around the climax when suddenly we're supposed to take the threat seriously, or when the plot demands that we take the romance seriously in order to actually be invested in it, and... there's just no reason to. Why? Not the characters, who are pretty much to a one shallow, stereotypical and unlikable. The few exceptions to this are the characters who are shallow, stereotypical, BUT still manage to be somewhat likable because if someone throws enough stereotypes at you, well, eventually you'll find one or two who you actually do like. Unfortunately for me, the few likable stereotypes are never characters in major enough roles to be much motivation.
Honestly, this is a book, or a series, that suffers from a problem very similar to Glee. It wants to jump around between parody and satire, and playing tropes straight, and that takes a better writer than this book had. Yes, yes, I can see the author has indulged her desire to throw around some Austen style "wit," but she's not doing it sincerely, so when the time comes to sincerely care about Alexia, I can't.
Of course, there are a lot of reasons it's hard to sincerely care about Alexia. You might have noticed above, but I was not impressed by her characterization. And by not impressed, I mean that Changless pushed her from vaguely annoying to outright offensively unlikable. Is it intentional? Maybe. Perhaps her judgmentalness, her casual violence, her dismissiveness and self-centeredness are all supposed to be flaws, and those flaws are supposed to be related to who lack of soul. At times, I think that is indeed the case! Or, you know, the intention. The problem is that the execution makes it almost impossible to tell. Or one of the problems is that. The other problem is that the writing is very inconsistent about these things. Alexia is horrible and dismissive of her friend Ivy, to the point of seeming like they're friends not because she cares, but because Ivy is just too stupid to know Alexia is constantly snubbing her, but while she's often prickly and difficult with her husband, it is clear she's genuinely capable of caring for him and worrying about his well being. Even, shock of shocks, occasionally caring about his opinion. Of course, the narrative seems to support Alexia in this, because Ivy's chief characterizations are 1) she's flighty and dramatic, and 2) she wears really hideous hats. That's it. She pretty much exists on the page to be a stereotypically feminine Victorian woman for Alexia someone to contrast against as modern, rational and independent--and by extension, for modern readers who wish to indulge to feel smugly superior to those other women. Women who care about traditionally feminine things like marriage and fashion are characters pretty much exclusively as grasping, anti-intellectual and stupid. There are "smart" female characters, but the only way for the characters to get that respect from the narrative, and from the lead character, is to be unequivocally non-conforming. Sorry girls, you can't be femme and still a valid person.
Making it worse, is that Alexia is really only unfeminine to the point where it doesn't stop her from being pretty. Somehow, despite caring so little about fashion, there's a lot effort devoted to explaining how her French maid (one of those grasping women I mentioned before), and a bevy of gay men keep her looking good. It would be a shame if she actually ended up unattractive because of her disinterest in being attractive, wouldn't it? She casually brushes by her friend's romantic woes, not just because she doesn't have the time (which again to be fair, she doesn't, and could have been a way to write it well), but because it's patently clear that even if she hadn't been busy, Ivy's problems aren't real problems. They're just distractions and impediments to the plot. There's some vague handwaving to this direction, but narratively, and from Alexia's POV, they are never, ever going to be anything worthy of her time or interest. Okay, you know what, that's fine. But then why have a friend at all? In this story, it's really a mystery.
And don't think that romantic troubles are never serious. They're very, very serious when they're Alexia's. If they weren't, there would be absolutely no reason to read the next book, or to care about its hook.
Similarly, being snappy and rude is only endearing if Alexia's doing it. Don't for a moment forget that her sisters and mother are nasty, shrill, stupid harpies without a single thought in their head that doesn't revolve around marriage, social climbing, and whether or not long sleeves will be in fashion this spring. Oh, and being nasty and cutting to Alexia. Alexia's sister puts in a pretty much entirely gratuitous but long running presence in Changeless, and her whole role is just to spit out insults. Constantly. Did you remember Alexia was swarthy? Did you remember she had a large nose? Oh, and look, she seems to be gaining weight! (And if you guessed when you read that that she'd be pregnant--ding, ding, ding--yes, it's that predictable. Especially when you throw in all of the comments about nausea.) A charitable person could see this as Alexia having grown up from the same environment, and speculate that Alexia's attitude isn't supposed to be any less of a flaw. I am not inclined to be a charitable person about this. I admit, this relates to a huge peeve of mine. A huge, huge, huge peeve. I don't care if something is satirical. I don't care if you are making the parody to end all parodies, the parody that will bring back a Blazing Saddles era of beauty and light and comedy and finally slay the wretched beast of Scary Movie sequels. I don't want to see characters who exist for no other reason than to be nasty. End story. I don't care. It makes a writer look too stupid to come up with a slightly more complex psychology than "evil bitch," and in this story, Alexia's female relatives are just that. You could say it's satire of genre conventions, poking fun at the whole evil step-sisters (in this case, half-sisters) trope. But there's a problem with this theory. There's no pay off. There's no humor from it that doesn't come from playing it devastatingly straight. And if it were that golden light of parody, the nastiness would serve a purpose. Here, it's not. It just lays on the page, as a totally unnecessary garnish, and makes Alexia seem less tongue in cheek urban fantasy heroine, and more straight up, old fashioned Sue, and hypocritical besides.
It doesn't work.
This inconsistency with characterization is about 1/3 what killed the book for me. The next 1/3 is the same problem, only with the plot instead of characterization. As I said, Carriger hits every note. Every cliche. Every twist. If you're familiar with the genre, then there will never be a surprise. Not a single, solitary fucking surprise. This works alright, if you like the humor, when the books are humorous. But even pretending that the humor was 100% effective for me, that still means that then you get to the climax, or the point where you're supposed to take things seriously, where you need that non-humorous payoff... and the same way I didn't care about the characters, I also have no sense of suspense. At all. I've already solved the mystery, and picked out the obvious red herring. It's just... boring. And what's more, it makes Alexia look stupid for taking as long as she did to put it together. It's predictable. And in a way, this is a failure of the humor as well--even if you're using the generic plot map checklist, there ought to be humor adding surprises. The humor here never surprises. It just states the cliche in a somewhat snarky, self-aware way, that isn't quite as self-aware as it thinks it is. (Steamhipster?)
The predictability becomes even worse when what you're predicting is something stupid. Something offensively, overwhelmingly stupid. Which unfortunately is the case for the end of Changeless and makes up the last 1/3 in this triumvirate of fail. That pregnancy thing? Yeah, you see that coming about five miles away. In fact, you see it coming from so far away, you have time to wonder why the werewolves don't smell it. They really ought to, with those dog noses. Lord Maccon can smell his wife arriving in Scotland via blimp and show up to meet her, but he can't smell a pregnancy? Seems unlikely, doesn't it. But you know he won't notice, because that would ruin the reveal that has to come at the end, when everyone finds out she's pregnant--and because Lord Maccon has already made it clear that werewolves are dead, etc, etc, you know how he'll react. Thus waiting for the "twist" at the end becomes like watching a terrible low speed car crash. Like watching two cars going at each other at like 5mph, and still, somehow, never turning away. No! Don't do it!
But it does. After everything, after Alexia's offensive stupidity in not realizing she's pregnant (despite apparently being pregnant enough for people to remark on her weight gain DESPITE CORSETRY?), and the offensive stupidity of the werewolves not realizing it, and the offensive stupidity of adding up the clues only in time for the climax, after the reader (by which I mean, me) had it worked out since the fucking blimp, then comes the final hook for the next installment in the series. Lord Maccon, Alexia's beloved husband, does not believe the child is his! And after all of her emotional coolness and distance, she is terribly hurt as he throws insults at her and she's kicked out of his family's house.
It's all so convenient, it's painful. Which, really, sums up most of the writing. Alexia's characterization, the other characters, the attempts at humor and suspense, in the end, are pretty much all dictated by what's convenient writing, not what's good writing. Consistency takes work, and it means sometimes not getting to include this thing you think is really cool for the sake of being really cool. Thoughtful characterization and motivation takes work, so much more work than just throwing out some stereotypes--you're not supposed to sympathize with these people anyway, so why bother with the effort of actual personality. Intelligent characters are difficult to write. Mysteries are always hard, because you want them to make sense after the reveal, if you have a modern aesthetic, you probably want it to be possible for an observant reader to put things together, but at the same time, you want them to be surprising. If they're too simple, the characters look stupid for not figuring them out earlier. Most importantly, balancing humor, and different styles of humor, is difficult. It's much more convenient to just flagrantly walk back and forth scene to scene, paragraph to paragraph, even line to line, in whatever tone you want at the moment. I'm sure it was fun to write--I won't claim I've never been there before. That was pretty much last year's NaNo. I'm sure some people found it fun to read. Judging by the Amazon reviews, most people found it fun to read. And good for them. For me, it's a sad inability to be challenging, and actually provide me a reason to continue reading that isn't rooted solidly in masochism and morbid curiosity. Is it really going to end like that? Will there really be no subversion at all?
Yes. Yes, there really won't be.
That's my disclaimer.
So I read Soulless by Gail Carriger a while back. I'd heard good things. The beginning of the book had some promise, even if I didn't love it. The book over all disappointed me, and I whined a little, but I didn't hate it. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, I've finished all of my reading for school and I want something to read on the train going home. There's a copy of the sequel, Changeless in the school book store. Okay, why not? I'm not looking for deep reading, and maybe the author will have improved. Soulless was, as I understand it, her first novel. Those are usually a little rocky. Why not give into the impulse buy? It did have some potential, didn't it?
No. No, it didn't.
What's this all about?
So, Changless continues the story of Alexia Tarabotti, who got married in the end of the first book and gets to be Lady Alexia Maccon now. Either way. Important things to know about her include: she lives in a quasi-steampunk, supernatural version of Victorian England; she allegedly has no soul, which means that she cancels out the powers of supernatrual creatures like werewolves and vampires; it also allegedly affects her personality, so that she has no natural set of morals and has to make do with philosophy and such, it also might affect her interest in fashion, her ability to empathize with other people, her ability to care about other people and generally give a shit, and a variety of other things that honestly all seem to come and go based on whatever is the most expedient for the story at the time, and believe me, I will develop more on this later; her father is Italian, which makes her totally an outcast and unsuitable in England, because she's "robust," and has a large nose, and dark hair, and it's terrible because clearly just everyone in that day was blond and pale; her family, excluding her biological father who she never knew, are all totally shallow, frivolous and nasty all the time (also worth noting: the only ones of real note, particularly in this book, are female, so wonderful stereotypes there); she is married to an alpha werewolf; are she might beat people up or prod them in the crotch with her parasol gratuitously, which we're apparently supposed to find endearing (it isn't).
The story itself is pretty much you're standard urban fantasy fare. There's a mystery that has to be solved. It's done in good time by the plucky, quirky female lead and her cadre of mostly male supernatural alliances. Honestly, it's about as standard as it comes in that respect, and just about every other respect. And to be perfectly fair to it, I think that's to some degree intentional. See, Changless is supposed to be comedic--it plays around with being pastiche-y and sometimes vaguely satirical. There are times when it's satirical whether it's intentional or not--and whether it's intentional or not is hard to tell--because it just keeps hitting every note. Every single one. Every cliche, ever stock trope, every plot "twist" that's generally associated with female leaded urban fantasy, like it was going through with a fucking checklist. The main character an outsider who is human, but has some kind of mysterious and potentially game breaking power that makes her a magnet for supernatural trouble? Check. Can the reader tell she's really beautiful, even if everyone around her acts like she's a hideous sea hag? Check. Is she burdened with a family that's unsupportive and misunderstands her constantly? Check.
It's pretty much impossible that this is accidental. So what is Carriger doing with it? The hell if I know. I know what she seems to be trying to do with it, which is tell this kind of story tongue in cheek. Unfortunately, this tends to fall apart around the climax when suddenly we're supposed to take the threat seriously, or when the plot demands that we take the romance seriously in order to actually be invested in it, and... there's just no reason to. Why? Not the characters, who are pretty much to a one shallow, stereotypical and unlikable. The few exceptions to this are the characters who are shallow, stereotypical, BUT still manage to be somewhat likable because if someone throws enough stereotypes at you, well, eventually you'll find one or two who you actually do like. Unfortunately for me, the few likable stereotypes are never characters in major enough roles to be much motivation.
Honestly, this is a book, or a series, that suffers from a problem very similar to Glee. It wants to jump around between parody and satire, and playing tropes straight, and that takes a better writer than this book had. Yes, yes, I can see the author has indulged her desire to throw around some Austen style "wit," but she's not doing it sincerely, so when the time comes to sincerely care about Alexia, I can't.
Of course, there are a lot of reasons it's hard to sincerely care about Alexia. You might have noticed above, but I was not impressed by her characterization. And by not impressed, I mean that Changless pushed her from vaguely annoying to outright offensively unlikable. Is it intentional? Maybe. Perhaps her judgmentalness, her casual violence, her dismissiveness and self-centeredness are all supposed to be flaws, and those flaws are supposed to be related to who lack of soul. At times, I think that is indeed the case! Or, you know, the intention. The problem is that the execution makes it almost impossible to tell. Or one of the problems is that. The other problem is that the writing is very inconsistent about these things. Alexia is horrible and dismissive of her friend Ivy, to the point of seeming like they're friends not because she cares, but because Ivy is just too stupid to know Alexia is constantly snubbing her, but while she's often prickly and difficult with her husband, it is clear she's genuinely capable of caring for him and worrying about his well being. Even, shock of shocks, occasionally caring about his opinion. Of course, the narrative seems to support Alexia in this, because Ivy's chief characterizations are 1) she's flighty and dramatic, and 2) she wears really hideous hats. That's it. She pretty much exists on the page to be a stereotypically feminine Victorian woman for Alexia someone to contrast against as modern, rational and independent--and by extension, for modern readers who wish to indulge to feel smugly superior to those other women. Women who care about traditionally feminine things like marriage and fashion are characters pretty much exclusively as grasping, anti-intellectual and stupid. There are "smart" female characters, but the only way for the characters to get that respect from the narrative, and from the lead character, is to be unequivocally non-conforming. Sorry girls, you can't be femme and still a valid person.
Making it worse, is that Alexia is really only unfeminine to the point where it doesn't stop her from being pretty. Somehow, despite caring so little about fashion, there's a lot effort devoted to explaining how her French maid (one of those grasping women I mentioned before), and a bevy of gay men keep her looking good. It would be a shame if she actually ended up unattractive because of her disinterest in being attractive, wouldn't it? She casually brushes by her friend's romantic woes, not just because she doesn't have the time (which again to be fair, she doesn't, and could have been a way to write it well), but because it's patently clear that even if she hadn't been busy, Ivy's problems aren't real problems. They're just distractions and impediments to the plot. There's some vague handwaving to this direction, but narratively, and from Alexia's POV, they are never, ever going to be anything worthy of her time or interest. Okay, you know what, that's fine. But then why have a friend at all? In this story, it's really a mystery.
And don't think that romantic troubles are never serious. They're very, very serious when they're Alexia's. If they weren't, there would be absolutely no reason to read the next book, or to care about its hook.
Similarly, being snappy and rude is only endearing if Alexia's doing it. Don't for a moment forget that her sisters and mother are nasty, shrill, stupid harpies without a single thought in their head that doesn't revolve around marriage, social climbing, and whether or not long sleeves will be in fashion this spring. Oh, and being nasty and cutting to Alexia. Alexia's sister puts in a pretty much entirely gratuitous but long running presence in Changeless, and her whole role is just to spit out insults. Constantly. Did you remember Alexia was swarthy? Did you remember she had a large nose? Oh, and look, she seems to be gaining weight! (And if you guessed when you read that that she'd be pregnant--ding, ding, ding--yes, it's that predictable. Especially when you throw in all of the comments about nausea.) A charitable person could see this as Alexia having grown up from the same environment, and speculate that Alexia's attitude isn't supposed to be any less of a flaw. I am not inclined to be a charitable person about this. I admit, this relates to a huge peeve of mine. A huge, huge, huge peeve. I don't care if something is satirical. I don't care if you are making the parody to end all parodies, the parody that will bring back a Blazing Saddles era of beauty and light and comedy and finally slay the wretched beast of Scary Movie sequels. I don't want to see characters who exist for no other reason than to be nasty. End story. I don't care. It makes a writer look too stupid to come up with a slightly more complex psychology than "evil bitch," and in this story, Alexia's female relatives are just that. You could say it's satire of genre conventions, poking fun at the whole evil step-sisters (in this case, half-sisters) trope. But there's a problem with this theory. There's no pay off. There's no humor from it that doesn't come from playing it devastatingly straight. And if it were that golden light of parody, the nastiness would serve a purpose. Here, it's not. It just lays on the page, as a totally unnecessary garnish, and makes Alexia seem less tongue in cheek urban fantasy heroine, and more straight up, old fashioned Sue, and hypocritical besides.
It doesn't work.
This inconsistency with characterization is about 1/3 what killed the book for me. The next 1/3 is the same problem, only with the plot instead of characterization. As I said, Carriger hits every note. Every cliche. Every twist. If you're familiar with the genre, then there will never be a surprise. Not a single, solitary fucking surprise. This works alright, if you like the humor, when the books are humorous. But even pretending that the humor was 100% effective for me, that still means that then you get to the climax, or the point where you're supposed to take things seriously, where you need that non-humorous payoff... and the same way I didn't care about the characters, I also have no sense of suspense. At all. I've already solved the mystery, and picked out the obvious red herring. It's just... boring. And what's more, it makes Alexia look stupid for taking as long as she did to put it together. It's predictable. And in a way, this is a failure of the humor as well--even if you're using the generic plot map checklist, there ought to be humor adding surprises. The humor here never surprises. It just states the cliche in a somewhat snarky, self-aware way, that isn't quite as self-aware as it thinks it is. (Steamhipster?)
The predictability becomes even worse when what you're predicting is something stupid. Something offensively, overwhelmingly stupid. Which unfortunately is the case for the end of Changeless and makes up the last 1/3 in this triumvirate of fail. That pregnancy thing? Yeah, you see that coming about five miles away. In fact, you see it coming from so far away, you have time to wonder why the werewolves don't smell it. They really ought to, with those dog noses. Lord Maccon can smell his wife arriving in Scotland via blimp and show up to meet her, but he can't smell a pregnancy? Seems unlikely, doesn't it. But you know he won't notice, because that would ruin the reveal that has to come at the end, when everyone finds out she's pregnant--and because Lord Maccon has already made it clear that werewolves are dead, etc, etc, you know how he'll react. Thus waiting for the "twist" at the end becomes like watching a terrible low speed car crash. Like watching two cars going at each other at like 5mph, and still, somehow, never turning away. No! Don't do it!
But it does. After everything, after Alexia's offensive stupidity in not realizing she's pregnant (despite apparently being pregnant enough for people to remark on her weight gain DESPITE CORSETRY?), and the offensive stupidity of the werewolves not realizing it, and the offensive stupidity of adding up the clues only in time for the climax, after the reader (by which I mean, me) had it worked out since the fucking blimp, then comes the final hook for the next installment in the series. Lord Maccon, Alexia's beloved husband, does not believe the child is his! And after all of her emotional coolness and distance, she is terribly hurt as he throws insults at her and she's kicked out of his family's house.
It's all so convenient, it's painful. Which, really, sums up most of the writing. Alexia's characterization, the other characters, the attempts at humor and suspense, in the end, are pretty much all dictated by what's convenient writing, not what's good writing. Consistency takes work, and it means sometimes not getting to include this thing you think is really cool for the sake of being really cool. Thoughtful characterization and motivation takes work, so much more work than just throwing out some stereotypes--you're not supposed to sympathize with these people anyway, so why bother with the effort of actual personality. Intelligent characters are difficult to write. Mysteries are always hard, because you want them to make sense after the reveal, if you have a modern aesthetic, you probably want it to be possible for an observant reader to put things together, but at the same time, you want them to be surprising. If they're too simple, the characters look stupid for not figuring them out earlier. Most importantly, balancing humor, and different styles of humor, is difficult. It's much more convenient to just flagrantly walk back and forth scene to scene, paragraph to paragraph, even line to line, in whatever tone you want at the moment. I'm sure it was fun to write--I won't claim I've never been there before. That was pretty much last year's NaNo. I'm sure some people found it fun to read. Judging by the Amazon reviews, most people found it fun to read. And good for them. For me, it's a sad inability to be challenging, and actually provide me a reason to continue reading that isn't rooted solidly in masochism and morbid curiosity. Is it really going to end like that? Will there really be no subversion at all?
Yes. Yes, there really won't be.