lauren kate - fallen

I picked up this novel despite (or perhaps because of) the strong suspicion that I wouldn’t be able to stand it, so I admit the bitter taste in my mouth right now is self-inflicted. But its stunning cover seduced me, and I wanted to test out my local digital lending library, so I took a deep breath and dove in.

First, the good. There’s a prevailing feeling of darkness thanks to the reform school the protagonist Luce attends, which I think is the first reform school I’ve ever seen in YA. I was pleased by Luce’s surprisingly complex relationship with her parents, who condemned her to reform school as a last resort after she possibly murdered someone in a fire; they love her and fear her and want to protect her all at once, and I’m glad that the protagonist sees their flaws and loves them nonetheless. I only wish that the other character relationships were as intriguing. Most of the writing is merely serviceable, but at times it touched on the beautiful. One line I particularly liked:

She spotted a lone dandelion, and it crossed her mind that a younger Luce would have pounced on it and then made a wish and blown. But this Luce’s wishes felt too heavy for something so light.

I did a little victory dance when, after 200 pages of the designated love interest Daniel showing nothing but contempt for her, Luce finally stands up for herself. She points out that far from being as stupid as he apparently thinks, she’s extremely academic. Full scholarship. 4.0 GPA. She speaks several languages. She does the Sunday crossword! And she’s going to be a psychiatrist! Immediately my love for Luce started to bloom like a previously stunted flower.

Unfortunately, as with the rest of the book, this flare of promise subsides into disappointment. The supposedly academic Luce never uses any of the skills she claims to have. Everything she learns is served up to her on a silver platter by a nosy friend. If she were as smart as all that, I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t get into a strange car to go to an unknown place to meet her violent soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend, without telling anyone where she’s going. The evilness of the evil characters is written in letters big enough to be visible from space, but somehow genius Luce misses it. People keep saying how special Luce is -- “Believe me. You have no idea how many strong and impossible things you are capable of” -- but it’s never actually backed up in the text.

I think the key failing here is that the author never gives her an opportunity to shine. The narrative is so in love with perfect beautiful Daniel and his beautiful perfection that Luce is an afterthought. She’s just a window through which the reader is invited to ogle those rippling muscles. In the entire book Luce is given nothing to do, so she accomplishes nothing -- her only action in the climax, and I use the word action loosely, is to lie on an altar while the antagonist attempts to sacrifice her, only to be saved at the last moment (of course) by the designated love interest.

It’s a shame, because this book could have been redeemed. I feel like I got a brief glimpse of the Luce who could have been -- a heroine who stormed through this book, kicking ass and taking names, using every bit of that intelligence -- but then the moment died.

Verdict = 3 out of 5 stars.

rob thurman - nightlife

This week I’ve been reading the first book in Rob Thurman’s Cal Leandros urban fantasy series, Nightlife. While I found it an overall enjoyable read, I also have mixed feelings, not least about the gender roles. I recommended it to my friend and fellow gritty urban fantasy fan Dystophil, but not without reservations.

I picked up this book because I have a good track record with urban fantasies about two brothers pursued by the forces of evil: I love the TV show Supernatural, and I’m a huge fan of Sarah Rees Brennan’s YA debut The Demon’s Lexicon. On that front, Nightlife did not disappoint. The two Leandros brothers are well-drawn and sympathetic; much as in The Demon’s Lexicon, a younger brother for whom evil is in the blood is saved by his older brother’s redemptive love, a trope I adore. The world is dark, there’s plenty of violence and the dialogue is amusingly snarky.

Unfortunately, the author has a serious case of overwriting. No good line goes uncluttered. Dialogue tags drip with adverbs and adjectives. At times I wanted to take a red pen to the novel. The novel could lose a good 10,000 words and come out leaner and tighter.

About two-thirds of the way through comes a story decision that dropped my jaw: the protagonist Cal is taken over mind and body by a third party. For nearly the entire rest of the novel, including the climax, Cal is just completely gone. Not only does he not make an appearance onscreen, in a metaphysical sense he doesn’t even exist! He doesn’t reappear until the resolution. I can’t understand what the author was thinking here. What kind of protagonist is entirely absent during the climax of the novel? I’m coming to think that maybe the first-person viewpoint is a ruse, and older brother Niko is the real protagonist. Niko is present while Cal is absent. Niko is suffering while Cal is not. Niko makes the decisions while Cal doesn’t even exist. Cal isn’t even there when Niko heroically saves the world. I found that extremely disappointing.

And then there are the gender roles. Yikes.

All the main characters are male. 95% of the screentime is devoted to male characters. All the important relationships are between male characters. Everybody present at the climax is male. Everybody present in the resolution is male. The book’s primary relationship is between two brothers, but that’s neither cause nor excuse for the complete exclusion of female characters. Look at The Demon’s Lexicon: there’s kickass Mae Crawford, demon-summoning dancer Sin and Goblin Market matriarch Morris, and that’s not even mentioning the protagonist’s crazy mother.

But most worryingly, the only female characters featured in Nightlife are all either virgins or whores, and the whores are made to suffer.

• Georgina, the virgin, is the personification of innocence. She’s “truth and faith ... hope and warmth ... Everything about George was gentle”. Despite being only two years younger than Cal, she’s treated as being much younger. (Disturbingly, Cal’s romantic interest sees it as her role to “be a child for [him]”.) Not gruesomely killed.
• Meredith, the whore, is heavily sexualised. She wears revealing outfits, her breasts get enough screentime that they should have their own credit in the ending sequence, and her flirtation is both a manipulation technique and a nuisance the male characters have to tolerate. She’s presented as artificial -- hair dye, plastic surgery, breast augmentation. Gruesomely killed.
• Sophia is a literal whore, as in Cal’s father paid her to have sex with him. She’s also physically and emotionally abusive, a liar, thief and drunk, who extorts money from her own sons. Gruesomely killed.
• Promise, the whore, marries old men for their money and then they die shortly afterward. Cal thinks of her as the “human version of a succubus”, before he discovers that she isn’t actually human at all. She’s a vampire who takes supplements to avoid having to drain blood. (Pity there isn’t a supplement she can take to avoid having to drain money.) Gruesomely k -- sorry, that was a reflex: Promise is the only sexually active female character who is not gruesomely killed.

I think I need to repeat that with more emphasis. Every sexually active female character but one is gruesomely killed.

Verdict = 3 out of 5 stars. Like fast food, Nightlife is tasty. Enjoy it, and don’t look too closely at what went into it.