Book Review

So I mentioned before what I had checked out from the library, and rather than do real reviews, I'm just going to let you know if you should read it:

• North By Northanger, or The Shades of Pemberley: A Mr. & Mrs. Darcy Mystery by Carrie Bebris -- yes, if you like Jane Austen and mysteries--omg, there's this one-liner at the end that totally cracked me up
• The Full Cupboard of Life: More from the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith -- yes
  
• The Sunday Philosophy Club by Alexander McCall Smith -- eh, the Ladies series is better, but I'll read another one in this series before I pass judgment
  
• The Starter Wife by Gigi Levangie Grazer -- eh/no, it's super fast, but don' t spend money on it. I wouldn't have considered it w/o the mini-series. Full of cliches, but the cliches are totally expected, so it's not really a let down.
  
• Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link -- YES! wonderful, though not for kids or teens prone to nightmares. "Haunting" is the best adjective, and all that it implies -- scary and beautiful.
  
• Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist -- NO! Dear Lord, NO! This is just horrible, like some sort of sick cross between Stephen King and Danielle Steel with no sex and only the bad parts. The AT index is not a MOTIF index. Irish and Celtic are DIFFERENT. That is not how one gets a grad adviser. WHY do writers have to to be protagonists? An heiress!? A fucking heiress!?!?! Girls that are supposed to "have a good head on their shoulders" do not give up college for a cute boy on a whim. That is not how one gets a job writing movie scripts. TONGUES DO NOT DART. "Well I'll-be-go-to-hell" is a stupid curse. Shakespeare is NOT a reliable source for fairy LORE. The characters are SO unbelievable. Freakin' Masons -- not even a part of the damn plot, but they still get creepy cult mention. Sucky sucky suck suck. AhhhhH!@!!!!

Ok, I happen to specialize in the material that makes up the background for this last book, and while the guy has certainly done research, and is probably well aware of where he gets some stuff wrong because he has shaped it to fit his story, you can't just imply authenticity and then just change stuff around to fit your needs. If you want to do that, don't make your characters folklorists, anthropologists, or psychologists -- even amateur ones. For the love of god, don't make them academics who would freakin' know better!*

Ok, without the "that is SO not right" moments that an average reader probably won't get . . . Seriously, the writing is weak. People are stunned like deer in headlights in this book. People "absently" pull at their clothing in one sentence and "absently" think in the next (on the first page!) in this book. TONGUES DART in this book. You cannot put the word "pussy" in your book and expect readers to read it as "full of pus" (okay, this one was funny -- "If I'd known it was this deep a pussy mass . . ."). The cliches are everywhere. The stereotypes are so overdone. I just don't know why I even finished it. I really hate leaving books unfinished. It took me 15 years to read The Scarlet Letter, but by god I read it, and it was okay once I decided not to read the prologue which just about sucked away my entire will to live. I could have finished this much faster had I not kept shouting "no!" and taking time to envision throwing it across the room (because it's a library book so I can't actually throw it across the room because it's not mine to damage).

If I were 12, and had just started reading adult fiction, so that I was not aware of all of the conventions, I still think I'd be "this sucks."

I think the frustration had subsided. And now that I have finished ranting, I can pretend that reading the book was not a waste of time because I have warned you (WARNED YOU) of its horror. It is indeed a scary book.


*To be fair, "anthropology" is not mentioned, but you can't be a folklorist in the field (which is what three of the characters are doing regardless of whatever it's called in the book) and not be using anthropology because you're studying people and communities.