Why should I finish Daughter of Smoke and Bone?
This book was recommended (loaned to me, in fact) by someone whose taste is very similar to mine. I've heard great things about it from others. Right off the bat, there are certain cool elements: the setting, the magical world secretly existing side-by-side with the mundane. And I have only read 4 chapters, which isn't a lot.
But the main character! She is such a Mary Sue, it's nauseating.
I know the term "Mary Sue" usually applies to author-insert fanfic, but in every other way, the protagonist Karou (yes, her name is Karou) is a Mary Sue. TVtropes.com defines the Mary Sue this way: "She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws - either that or her 'flaws' are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story."
One of the first things we learn about Karou is that "her hair did grow out of her head that color, pure as ultramarine straight from the paint tube." She's an orphan who doesn't know who she really is. She's the coolest girl at a private art high school in Prague. Her only "flaw" is being attracted to a hot-but-dumb ex-boyfriend (who she still resists effortlessly). She's an amazingly talented artist ("Karou's sketchbooks had a cult following around school and were handed around and marveled at on a daily basis"). She speaks a dozen languages. Oh yeah, and she wields magic powers.
I might overlook all this and like her anyway if the narration didn't fawn all over her.
Think I'm exaggerating? Here's a passage which begins with the simple observation that her best friend Zuzana is rather short: ..."whereas Karou was five foot six but seemed taller in the same way that ballerinas do, with their long necks and willowy limbs. She wasn't a ballerina, but she had the look, in figure if not in fashion. Not many ballerinas have bright blue hair or a constellation of tattoos on their limbs, and Karou had both."
That's right, folks. Karou is just as lithe and gorgeous as a ballerina, but way cooler and edgier.
Or how about this? "Karou was, simply, lovely. Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx. Beyond merely pretty, her face was vibrantly alive, her gaze always sparking and luminous, and she had a birdlike way of cocking her head, her lips pressed together while her dark eyes danced, that hinted at secrets and mysteries."
Yeah.
I won't type it all out, but this is followed by a lengthy paragraph which begins "Karou was mysterious." It details all the reasons why her fellow beings are in awe of her mysterious allure.
The final straw - to top it all off - is that the rest of the story's told in close 3rd person filtered through Karou's thoughts, which means these gushy passages jerk us out of the proper narrative just to show us how great Karou looks to other people. It's such an amateur move, it's hard to believe Laini Taylor's published good stuff before this (& she has).
So, will anyone out there convince me to keep reading? Maybe tell me this girl isn't really the protagonist, or that she undergoes an intriguing second-act transformation?
But the main character! She is such a Mary Sue, it's nauseating.
I know the term "Mary Sue" usually applies to author-insert fanfic, but in every other way, the protagonist Karou (yes, her name is Karou) is a Mary Sue. TVtropes.com defines the Mary Sue this way: "She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws - either that or her 'flaws' are obviously meant to be endearing. She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story."
One of the first things we learn about Karou is that "her hair did grow out of her head that color, pure as ultramarine straight from the paint tube." She's an orphan who doesn't know who she really is. She's the coolest girl at a private art high school in Prague. Her only "flaw" is being attracted to a hot-but-dumb ex-boyfriend (who she still resists effortlessly). She's an amazingly talented artist ("Karou's sketchbooks had a cult following around school and were handed around and marveled at on a daily basis"). She speaks a dozen languages. Oh yeah, and she wields magic powers.
I might overlook all this and like her anyway if the narration didn't fawn all over her.
Think I'm exaggerating? Here's a passage which begins with the simple observation that her best friend Zuzana is rather short: ..."whereas Karou was five foot six but seemed taller in the same way that ballerinas do, with their long necks and willowy limbs. She wasn't a ballerina, but she had the look, in figure if not in fashion. Not many ballerinas have bright blue hair or a constellation of tattoos on their limbs, and Karou had both."
That's right, folks. Karou is just as lithe and gorgeous as a ballerina, but way cooler and edgier.
Or how about this? "Karou was, simply, lovely. Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx. Beyond merely pretty, her face was vibrantly alive, her gaze always sparking and luminous, and she had a birdlike way of cocking her head, her lips pressed together while her dark eyes danced, that hinted at secrets and mysteries."
Yeah.
I won't type it all out, but this is followed by a lengthy paragraph which begins "Karou was mysterious." It details all the reasons why her fellow beings are in awe of her mysterious allure.
The final straw - to top it all off - is that the rest of the story's told in close 3rd person filtered through Karou's thoughts, which means these gushy passages jerk us out of the proper narrative just to show us how great Karou looks to other people. It's such an amateur move, it's hard to believe Laini Taylor's published good stuff before this (& she has).
So, will anyone out there convince me to keep reading? Maybe tell me this girl isn't really the protagonist, or that she undergoes an intriguing second-act transformation?