Seer of Sevenwaters

[gabbygrl]

I've loved the Sevenwaters novels by Juliet Marillier since early adolescence when I discovered them. It's been ten years (more or less) so it's hard to say if I'd love the early ones as much. Maybe my perspective has changed, or maybe the books have actually declined in quality, but as an adult my response to the books has certainly changed. Some

Comments

[idemandjustice]

I love Juliet Marillier, but she really fell short with this one. I reviewed it on amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2HZO3UXQACOU6/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

[gabbygrl]

I completely agreed with everything you said in your review. I've read almost everything Marillier has written (not the Bridei books, but all the Sevenwaters, and Heart's Blood, and Foxmask and Wolfskin, and the DIVINE Wildwood Dancing and its iffier sequel Cybele's Secret) and even when I felt "meh," I'd never felt as let down as I did by this one.

I clicked that you were helpful to me, just becuase you so perfectly aligned with my views on this book, including some points I didn't really touch on here. Marillier always did such a good job painting vivid characters with believable and thrilling stories, but this book was so bland and pointless it made me angry.

[idemandjustice]

I didn't manage to go into as much detail as you, but thanks. :)

[mjfastlane]

Thank you for highlighting everything I thought was wrong with this book. I read it perhaps a month ago, and I don't tend to do much analysis on my first read-through, but something nagged at me the whole way through. Reading this, I know what it was, and I know just why I was so frustrated at the end. Where were the compelling characters I'm used to from Marillier? Because they certainly weren't present here. I highly doubt I'll bother to reread the book, because it's just shoddy, rushed work.

Also, pretty sure Svala means serpent. So if that isn't a massive giveaway, I don't know what is.

[gabbygrl]

I commented further on what I perceive as the difference between her early work and this below; to sum up, in the original books the romances were slower to develop instead of simply being there, the women seemed to want something other than a romance, and, in addition to falling in love, the characters were each in the books FOR A REASON rather than just being thrown together.

I'll contrast it with Daughter of the Forest for an example. Sorcha was trying to save her brothers from a magic spell; Sibeal is just chilling on an island. Hugh found Sorcha while he was looking for his brother, and he takes an initial interest in her because he thinks she knows something useful; Felix literally washes up at Sibeal's feet for no discernible reason other than Marillier decided that's what would happen. Hugh and Sorcha learn to trust each other slowly over a period of years; Sibeal and Felix have an instant connection, even though only one of them was even conscious. Sorcha ends her book settling down on her ancestral land with her brothers

[dolorosa_12]

Absolutely agree with everything you've said. I think someone posted recently on slievegullion, the Marillier comm, about this a while ago.

After thinking about the problems with Seer, I realised they were present in all her books, but became steadily worse. Basically, every Marillier book boils down to shy-girl-meets-damaged-boy. Love is transformative, turning dangerous guys into loving fathers and identity-seeking girls into purposeful mothers. The problem is that as her series has progressed, she's given us fewer and fewer reasons to believe why her central couples fall for one another.

Oh, I have a world of problems with Marillier's books, but Seer was truly dire.

[gabbygrl]

Like I said, it's been a long time since I read the original trilogy, and I'm not at all sure how I would feel about them today. Your criticism is definitely warranted (esp. of Son of the Shadows, my least favorite of the originals), but at least in the early books there was something else going on in addition to shy-girl-meets-damaged-boy. Sorcha and Hugh's romance kind of happened at the side of the main story-- i.e., her actually doing something. Liadan was kidnapped to use her healing skills. Fainne was trying to assert herself in a world where there wasn't a place for her, and also that whole tangential prophecy thing the book was named after. (I actually BELIEVED in Fainne and Darragh, if only because their relationship wasn't played off as being unrealistically immediately romantic, whereas increasingly it seems like romance descends onto our heroine's heads before they've even given the man in question a good look.) ((A further digression-- Fainne had some real self-esteem issues and I loved that about her; there was no

[ziata]

I agree. I really loved the original trilogy, but I was really bored by this. And you have articulated far better than I why that was and why the ending bothered me so much!

I was actually expecting her to give him up, until the last 5 pages - it was that late in the book. Grrrrr.

[gabbygrl]

As I discussed above, I've found there to be major differences in the handling of the tropes between the books I loved and the ones I didn't.

The middle book of the original trilogy was definitely the hardest to get through-- it's a lot longer and I didn't really connect with the characters-- but for me it was totally worth it because the third one wouldn't have made much sense without following a subplot from the second book, and I adored the third book.