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Naamah's Curse - Jacqueline Carey
The Folly of the World - Jesse Bullington
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett (reread)
Two books in five weeks is a bit rubbish for me, but, gosh, both of these were hard going. It's not even that either of them were bad, if they'd been bad or offensive or anything I could have abandoned them, they were just so relentlessly... meh. Like I'd read half a page and go "that was nice, but I think I'm going to go pair my socks or organise my receipts" then not pick them up again for another three days.
Two books, more than a thousand pages combined, and not a single plot worth the name between them.
Okay, Naamah's Curse, the first problem with this is that there is no noticeable story, it's largely a protracted meander around the Asian subcontinent in the company of Carey's least engaging protagonist. The second problem is Moirin herself - okay, if you know me at all you'll know that I am not in the habit of calling female characters Mary Sues, but my god Moirin - I know the first trilogy was about Phedre being the chosen of a god, but seriously that was one god, Moirin has turned into some sort of free range chosen one who gets drafted by whatever local deities happen to be in need at any given moment. Then there's the fact that everybody she meets falls in love with her, and while it's true that all of Carey's protagonists have suffered from that a bit, between her soulbond with Bao and all the healing sex she has, Moirin is just piling trope I hate on top of trope I hate. Admittedly, the soulbond stuff was less annoying than I was expecting it to be, but only because Moirin and Bao were separated for most of the book. Poor Bao, it's not really his fault I dislike him, and I could almost forgive him for not feeling like a real person if he and Moirin weren't the third really conventional heterosexual main pairing in a row in books otherwise filled with queerness. Oh, and I can't tell you how annoyed I was that Jehanne was killed off screen, it's not just that I liked her (although I did) or that her relationship with Moirin was the only one where I didn't feel like it was forced (although...) but that her dying in childbirth felt so cheap and contrived.
I'm going to read the last book, partly because I've read eight of nine and it feels churlish to stop at this point, partly because I've been assured it's better, and partly because I'm hoping we will finally get back to the spoiled D'Angeline nobles summoning demons plot that I was getting quite into before it was abandoned in favour of a forced and drawn out field trip around Asia.
The Folly of the World suffers from the same problem, namely a complete and utter lack of plot. Okay, there were a couple of things I liked about this one, I liked that Sander was gay, and yet it's not a book about him being gay; he's mostly insane and beset by demons and impersonating a member of the Dutch aristocracy, he's just doing all that while being gay. And I found Sander's relationship with Jolanda affecting, in fact the bit where he saves her life was the bit where I thought this might turn into a page turner, sadly an effect that only lasted for three pages. But mostly this was just a mass of pointless, plotless surrealism and dropped plot threads where three vaguely dislikable people did very little slowly in fifteenth century Holland. Very much not recommended.
The Folly of the World - Jesse Bullington
Small Gods - Terry Pratchett (reread)
Two books in five weeks is a bit rubbish for me, but, gosh, both of these were hard going. It's not even that either of them were bad, if they'd been bad or offensive or anything I could have abandoned them, they were just so relentlessly... meh. Like I'd read half a page and go "that was nice, but I think I'm going to go pair my socks or organise my receipts" then not pick them up again for another three days.
Two books, more than a thousand pages combined, and not a single plot worth the name between them.
Okay, Naamah's Curse, the first problem with this is that there is no noticeable story, it's largely a protracted meander around the Asian subcontinent in the company of Carey's least engaging protagonist. The second problem is Moirin herself - okay, if you know me at all you'll know that I am not in the habit of calling female characters Mary Sues, but my god Moirin - I know the first trilogy was about Phedre being the chosen of a god, but seriously that was one god, Moirin has turned into some sort of free range chosen one who gets drafted by whatever local deities happen to be in need at any given moment. Then there's the fact that everybody she meets falls in love with her, and while it's true that all of Carey's protagonists have suffered from that a bit, between her soulbond with Bao and all the healing sex she has, Moirin is just piling trope I hate on top of trope I hate. Admittedly, the soulbond stuff was less annoying than I was expecting it to be, but only because Moirin and Bao were separated for most of the book. Poor Bao, it's not really his fault I dislike him, and I could almost forgive him for not feeling like a real person if he and Moirin weren't the third really conventional heterosexual main pairing in a row in books otherwise filled with queerness. Oh, and I can't tell you how annoyed I was that Jehanne was killed off screen, it's not just that I liked her (although I did) or that her relationship with Moirin was the only one where I didn't feel like it was forced (although...) but that her dying in childbirth felt so cheap and contrived.
I'm going to read the last book, partly because I've read eight of nine and it feels churlish to stop at this point, partly because I've been assured it's better, and partly because I'm hoping we will finally get back to the spoiled D'Angeline nobles summoning demons plot that I was getting quite into before it was abandoned in favour of a forced and drawn out field trip around Asia.
The Folly of the World suffers from the same problem, namely a complete and utter lack of plot. Okay, there were a couple of things I liked about this one, I liked that Sander was gay, and yet it's not a book about him being gay; he's mostly insane and beset by demons and impersonating a member of the Dutch aristocracy, he's just doing all that while being gay. And I found Sander's relationship with Jolanda affecting, in fact the bit where he saves her life was the bit where I thought this might turn into a page turner, sadly an effect that only lasted for three pages. But mostly this was just a mass of pointless, plotless surrealism and dropped plot threads where three vaguely dislikable people did very little slowly in fifteenth century Holland. Very much not recommended.