once upon a time, people weren't so self-righteous
Beauty, Sheri S. Tepper
Well. That sucked.
And I was so inclined to like it, too.
The beginning was wonderful! The retelling of the fairytale - I could have read it forever.
And then. It was, okay. It was like chatfic, where people outline what could happen in a story rather than actually write the story. That's fine for chatfic. This isn't chatfic. I couldn't feel sorry for Bill's death because I never truly met him; I couldn't support Giles' and Beauty's ill-fated romance because it was so slightly alluded to; and in the end, the whole premise was so dorky, so unbelievably middle school, that I ended up rolling my eyes in disgust. I know she can do so much better than this, because I've read it.
It suffered from Origin Story Fail - or, as my friend Shane and I like to say, abusing the G-word. The Holy One verses the Dark Lord? Give me a break. I think she wanted it to be about more than traditional religious tropes, but she couldn't think up her own trope, so she fell back on them in the end. What was the point of the fairies? What was the point of the CAT?
This book is heading for twenty years old, as far as I can tell. I wonder if she still feels as hopeless about the fate of humanity now as she did then. Living in the world now, as the only one I've ever known, I can't say I share her despair. Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy this book.
Previously, on Book Glomp 2008:
Middlemarch | Invisible Monsters | A Thousand Splendid Suns | Love in the Time of Cholera | Oscar and Lucinda | Kim | Breakfast at Tiffany's | Atonement | To the Lighthouse | On the Road | Brideshead Revisited | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Bonjour Tristesse | A Passage to India | Three Men in a Boat | Vile Bodies | Prozac Nation | The Heart of the Matter | Jinx; Airhead | Doomsday Book | The Gum Thief | Choke | The Stone Gods
Well. That sucked.
And I was so inclined to like it, too.
The beginning was wonderful! The retelling of the fairytale - I could have read it forever.
And then. It was, okay. It was like chatfic, where people outline what could happen in a story rather than actually write the story. That's fine for chatfic. This isn't chatfic. I couldn't feel sorry for Bill's death because I never truly met him; I couldn't support Giles' and Beauty's ill-fated romance because it was so slightly alluded to; and in the end, the whole premise was so dorky, so unbelievably middle school, that I ended up rolling my eyes in disgust. I know she can do so much better than this, because I've read it.
It suffered from Origin Story Fail - or, as my friend Shane and I like to say, abusing the G-word. The Holy One verses the Dark Lord? Give me a break. I think she wanted it to be about more than traditional religious tropes, but she couldn't think up her own trope, so she fell back on them in the end. What was the point of the fairies? What was the point of the CAT?
This book is heading for twenty years old, as far as I can tell. I wonder if she still feels as hopeless about the fate of humanity now as she did then. Living in the world now, as the only one I've ever known, I can't say I share her despair. Maybe that's why I didn't enjoy this book.
Previously, on Book Glomp 2008:
Middlemarch | Invisible Monsters | A Thousand Splendid Suns | Love in the Time of Cholera | Oscar and Lucinda | Kim | Breakfast at Tiffany's | Atonement | To the Lighthouse | On the Road | Brideshead Revisited | Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance | Bonjour Tristesse | A Passage to India | Three Men in a Boat | Vile Bodies | Prozac Nation | The Heart of the Matter | Jinx; Airhead | Doomsday Book | The Gum Thief | Choke | The Stone Gods