I kept waiting for the wise immortal alien to rip the argument apart or some other satisfying smackdown. I mean, the book is blatant wish-fulfillment, so surely we'd, well, get that wish fulfilled? Nope. Not a bit. And I'm honestly not sure whether the author was just clueless enough to think that obviously readers would get how wrong Jill's dad is (haha if only) and, I don't know, imagine a satisfying smackdown of their own somehow, or if he meant it seriously. And I don't care, because whatever he was thinking, it's awful on the page.
There's a tricky balance between inventing a secret history where aliens or witches or a secret society have been around forever and influencing history without people realizing, and inventing a secret history where the Secret Whatsits are responsible for literally everything and the rest of us are like furniture or something. This book falls into the latter camp. I like "hidden" histories, but loathe the ones where the Secret Whatsits are the only things that matter in history.
I'm generous this morning and will allow that most books have flaws that will sink them for someone, and that books I like whose flaws I can overlook for the parts I love are someone else's NO WAY IN HELL books. For other people, maybe this one has enough of... something... that it still works for them. But it's firmly on my NO WAY list. Just can't stand it.
It's just so exhausting! I need lots of breaks from the anger or it's too much to bear. I'd like some fluffy wish-fulfillment for me a little more often.
There's a few modern writers I like, and I try to reassure myself that in classic lit times, there were lots of terrible writers too but they haven't survived, so looking at lists of new books and going "ugh... ugh... ugh, not that either" isn't a new problem. But it's hard some days.
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Date: 2016-06-04 04:02 pm (UTC)There's a tricky balance between inventing a secret history where aliens or witches or a secret society have been around forever and influencing history without people realizing, and inventing a secret history where the Secret Whatsits are responsible for literally everything and the rest of us are like furniture or something. This book falls into the latter camp. I like "hidden" histories, but loathe the ones where the Secret Whatsits are the only things that matter in history.
I'm generous this morning and will allow that most books have flaws that will sink them for someone, and that books I like whose flaws I can overlook for the parts I love are someone else's NO WAY IN HELL books. For other people, maybe this one has enough of... something... that it still works for them. But it's firmly on my NO WAY list. Just can't stand it.
It's just so exhausting! I need lots of breaks from the anger or it's too much to bear. I'd like some fluffy wish-fulfillment for me a little more often.
There's a few modern writers I like, and I try to reassure myself that in classic lit times, there were lots of terrible writers too but they haven't survived, so looking at lists of new books and going "ugh... ugh... ugh, not that either" isn't a new problem. But it's hard some days.