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charameiDarkest Powers Trilogy (Kelley Armstrong)
There are plenty of writers I admire. But when I grow up, I want to be the unholy love child of Charlie Higson and Kelley Armstrong.
Okay, maybe not. Mostly, I want to be Armstrong, with all of Higson's horror and none of his overdescription.
Which isn't to say that Armstrong doesn't do horror, of course. She does, usually in the same breath as the action, mystery and romance.
So. The Otherworld, then. Actually, the YA spinoff of the Otherworld, bizarrely shelved with the rest of the adult SFF in my local WHSmith's instead of in the YA section, where they shelve the Doctor Who that should be in the adult SFF... but I digress.
After reading The Summoning, I made a deliberate choice to keep the rest of the series on hold until I had all three books. I lost some of the pleasure of picking up a 'friendly' series, but gained an appreciation of the way the transitions between novels were handled (excellently - no infodumps here, oh, no, though everything that's relevant is mentioned sooner rather than later).
And... ah, man. I really need to learn to review things that I adored. All I can find to convey this are cliches, such as 'tour-de-force' and 'gradual, believable characterisation' and 'flaws' and 'strong female lead' and 'anti-Twilight'.
Hmm. Okay, anti-Twilight is a decent place to start for analysis, I suppose. So let's talk about Chloe, and then about Derek.
Chloe is our protagonist, a fifteen-year-old who looks like a twelve-year-old and wants to be a film director until she starts seeing ghosts and finds that she's absurdly powerful necromancer thanks to some genetic engineering. She's a bit jumpy (wouldn't you be, if corpses randomly came to life around you?), frequently insecure, but she's also not afraid to tell Derek - or plenty of other people - where to get off when they try to push her around.
...well, that's more than I could tell you about Bella Swan already.
I'm a great fan of Armstrong's necromancers, because they're perfectly balanced for novel-type storytelling: they have superpowers that are more suited to information gathering than kicking the crap out of things, and in order to do anything action-hero-like they really need dead bodies to be around already. Thus, no matter how ridiculously strong Chloe's powers are, she's still guaranteed to be on a level with her opponents in practically every fight she has - indeed, she starts carrying a switchblade around with her to combat this problem. Her powers are far more likely to be a hindrance than a help - and they are, all the way up until the end. She raises pretty much everything dead that she comes in contact with, often involuntarily.
In terms of personal development, she starts off as a scared, sheltered teenager and ends up as a confident, self-assured one. We get to see the change, and it's slow, believable and extremely clever.
Chloe is fucking amazing.
And then there's Derek, the werewolf love interest, who's a bit controlling and overprotective and thinks he knows everything. Ring any bells?>
Oh, wait. Edward's an unrepentant mass murder, whereas Derek kills one man out of necessity and feels guilty about it. Edward stalks Bella, whereas Derek - though overprotective - gives Chloe her space. Edward laughs in Bella's face when she resists him, whereas Derek actually listens, backs off and apologises when Chloe, being awesome, asserts herself. This relationship is mistly equal and pretty believable.
It still worries me a bit, though.
First, Derek is overprotective. Sure, he backs off when Chloe yells back at him, but I got some of the same vibes from him as I get from my father, who I'm desperately trying to get away from at the moment. Derek's bigger than Chloe and probably always will be. He's superstrong and she, as mentioned, is physically on a level with every other human being on the planet. And he frequently yells at her for things that aren't her fault. Even if he never, ever hits her, he frequently yells at her, makes her feel useless and stupid, and I have trouble thinking of an instance where he says anything positive to her. And that's a very, very wearing attitude to live with. I would like to be able to say, 'Well, she's more assertive than me and he actually does listen occasionally', except... that's kind of where I was with my dad eight months ago*, and where my parents were ten years ago. I find Derek to be emotionally abusive in a way that I don't think Armstrong intended.
Worse still is the fact that, although neither of the characters knows it, Armstrong's werewolves mate for life. So... yeah.
Chloe is amazing. Derek is interesting, but not necessarily in a good way. The actual plot, as opposed to the romance subplot, is fast-paced, full and very well constructed, and leaves plenty of room open for sequels if necessary.
And I absolutely loved this series.
*Yes, I do mean to say that I was more assertive eight months ago. Back then I still thought I had a chance of talking to him.
Night of the Humans (Eleventh Doctor Adventures, David Llewellyn)
Remember my master plan to get the hang of Amy Pond by reading the Eleven books?
...yeah. Wrong book. Not only does Amy have no discernible personality in this one, but the Doctor does literally nothing and my suspension of disbelief snapped within the first three chapters.
Last one first. What actually broke my disbelief was one of the sentient aliens, the Sittuun, saying that his species has no fear reflex as a consequence of evolving on a world with no carnivorous predators.
Now, a world with no carnivores I can buy. That's a pretty interesting sci-fi concept, actually. But how does this translate to no fear reflex? Presumably the Sittuun's world also has no:
Most of the other problems - they'd have no need for the tribal structure that they obviously adhere to; fear is one of the keys to true creativity, religion and wonder; how the hell did these people even attain sentience - are answered or at least addressed over the course of the novel, making me very happy. But this one never was, except by an implication over the course of the novel that the Sittuun do have a fear reflex, it's just not very advanced or easily triggered. Which, given how it's shown to come about, means that they would still happily stand and stare at a tree toppling on them without getting out of its way.
To make matters worse, our local carnivorous monsters, the Sollogs,sound like they were made in Spore. Giant slugs with spider legs couldn't take their own weight, and the mental image isn't so much terrifying as ludicrous.
But the trouble with losing suspension of disbelief doesn't stop there. You start questioning everything, like: what do the humans eat if there's no native life here (the Sittuun have crashed very recently, the Gyre's made of metal so they can't farm it, and the only other life form appears to be Sollogs)?
All that said, I didn't dislike this book for those flaws. I didn't really dislike it at all, although I'd hardly call it inspiring. And mostly what I want to talk about is two of the problems that are still bugging me about Eleven.
Reactivity
The Doctor does nothing. I was watching for it this time. He gets kidnapped, nearly gets killed and accidentally starts a religious war or three while trying to escape, but basically he does nothing. You'd think this would mean that Amy was up to something, but no - Llewellyn introduces a character calledAce Rimmer Dirk Slipstream to do the heroics instead.
The Doctor doesn't even seem to have the presence of mind to pick the villain's pocket at the end, after this week's quest object is taken from him at gunpoint. I wouldn't mind if this was setting Amy up to be magnificent, but as I said, she doesn't do much in the proactivity department either.
And speaking of Amy...
Amy fricking Pond
Whereas I read/am still reading Ten's books to get a handle on Ten, I'm reading Eleven's to get a handle on Amy. Mostly what I have discovered is that she's infantile.
No, I don't mean childlike. I'm not talking about her wide-eyed wonder of the universe, her naivete, her refusal to accept the world as it is, or her need to be rescued on a regular basis. I'm talking about her spending ten minutes thinking through to obvious solutions, doing little to further the plot off her own bat, and being surprised at being in the future when this novel takes place after The Beast Below.
Now, partly this is writer error. Llewellyn's one of the worst of the Who authors for hand-holding, and it makes his characters look slower than they are. Amy in particular suffers from this because we actually get to see her planning, whereas there's something of a convention that we don't see much of the Doctor's thought processes even when in his head. But partly it seems to be Amy, because the same doesn't hold true when the Sittuun characters have POV either. Llewellyn really is writing Amy as infantile and a bit self-centred.
Which... OK. That's a better starting point than I had from the TV episodes. Apollo 23 next, after I finish The Scarlet Pimpernel, and let's see if we can find out something that's actually good about this character!
My Amazon order arrived today, complete with Age of Bronze 3: Betrayal. Ooooooo...
Also, finished that godawful chapter at last! Only one more to go!
There are plenty of writers I admire. But when I grow up, I want to be the unholy love child of Charlie Higson and Kelley Armstrong.
Okay, maybe not. Mostly, I want to be Armstrong, with all of Higson's horror and none of his overdescription.
Which isn't to say that Armstrong doesn't do horror, of course. She does, usually in the same breath as the action, mystery and romance.
So. The Otherworld, then. Actually, the YA spinoff of the Otherworld, bizarrely shelved with the rest of the adult SFF in my local WHSmith's instead of in the YA section, where they shelve the Doctor Who that should be in the adult SFF... but I digress.
After reading The Summoning, I made a deliberate choice to keep the rest of the series on hold until I had all three books. I lost some of the pleasure of picking up a 'friendly' series, but gained an appreciation of the way the transitions between novels were handled (excellently - no infodumps here, oh, no, though everything that's relevant is mentioned sooner rather than later).
And... ah, man. I really need to learn to review things that I adored. All I can find to convey this are cliches, such as 'tour-de-force' and 'gradual, believable characterisation' and 'flaws' and 'strong female lead' and 'anti-Twilight'.
Hmm. Okay, anti-Twilight is a decent place to start for analysis, I suppose. So let's talk about Chloe, and then about Derek.
Chloe is our protagonist, a fifteen-year-old who looks like a twelve-year-old and wants to be a film director until she starts seeing ghosts and finds that she's absurdly powerful necromancer thanks to some genetic engineering. She's a bit jumpy (wouldn't you be, if corpses randomly came to life around you?), frequently insecure, but she's also not afraid to tell Derek - or plenty of other people - where to get off when they try to push her around.
...well, that's more than I could tell you about Bella Swan already.
I'm a great fan of Armstrong's necromancers, because they're perfectly balanced for novel-type storytelling: they have superpowers that are more suited to information gathering than kicking the crap out of things, and in order to do anything action-hero-like they really need dead bodies to be around already. Thus, no matter how ridiculously strong Chloe's powers are, she's still guaranteed to be on a level with her opponents in practically every fight she has - indeed, she starts carrying a switchblade around with her to combat this problem. Her powers are far more likely to be a hindrance than a help - and they are, all the way up until the end. She raises pretty much everything dead that she comes in contact with, often involuntarily.
In terms of personal development, she starts off as a scared, sheltered teenager and ends up as a confident, self-assured one. We get to see the change, and it's slow, believable and extremely clever.
Chloe is fucking amazing.
And then there's Derek, the werewolf love interest, who's a bit controlling and overprotective and thinks he knows everything. Ring any bells?>
Oh, wait. Edward's an unrepentant mass murder, whereas Derek kills one man out of necessity and feels guilty about it. Edward stalks Bella, whereas Derek - though overprotective - gives Chloe her space. Edward laughs in Bella's face when she resists him, whereas Derek actually listens, backs off and apologises when Chloe, being awesome, asserts herself. This relationship is mistly equal and pretty believable.
It still worries me a bit, though.
First, Derek is overprotective. Sure, he backs off when Chloe yells back at him, but I got some of the same vibes from him as I get from my father, who I'm desperately trying to get away from at the moment. Derek's bigger than Chloe and probably always will be. He's superstrong and she, as mentioned, is physically on a level with every other human being on the planet. And he frequently yells at her for things that aren't her fault. Even if he never, ever hits her, he frequently yells at her, makes her feel useless and stupid, and I have trouble thinking of an instance where he says anything positive to her. And that's a very, very wearing attitude to live with. I would like to be able to say, 'Well, she's more assertive than me and he actually does listen occasionally', except... that's kind of where I was with my dad eight months ago*, and where my parents were ten years ago. I find Derek to be emotionally abusive in a way that I don't think Armstrong intended.
Worse still is the fact that, although neither of the characters knows it, Armstrong's werewolves mate for life. So... yeah.
Chloe is amazing. Derek is interesting, but not necessarily in a good way. The actual plot, as opposed to the romance subplot, is fast-paced, full and very well constructed, and leaves plenty of room open for sequels if necessary.
And I absolutely loved this series.
*Yes, I do mean to say that I was more assertive eight months ago. Back then I still thought I had a chance of talking to him.
Night of the Humans (Eleventh Doctor Adventures, David Llewellyn)
Remember my master plan to get the hang of Amy Pond by reading the Eleven books?
...yeah. Wrong book. Not only does Amy have no discernible personality in this one, but the Doctor does literally nothing and my suspension of disbelief snapped within the first three chapters.
Last one first. What actually broke my disbelief was one of the sentient aliens, the Sittuun, saying that his species has no fear reflex as a consequence of evolving on a world with no carnivorous predators.
Now, a world with no carnivores I can buy. That's a pretty interesting sci-fi concept, actually. But how does this translate to no fear reflex? Presumably the Sittuun's world also has no:
- Geological activity: volcanoes, earthquakes, all the things that signify a planet is alive and able to support life as we know it;
- Weather patterns: thunder and lightning, hail, tornadoes, tsunamis;
- Poisonous or stinging plants to cause pain;
- Cliffs to fall over, deep water to drown in, danger of trees falling on people, etc;
- Disease, infection, other methods of population control;
- Darkness, since most species are afraid of the dark. Or maybe they just had no Vashta Nerada.
Most of the other problems - they'd have no need for the tribal structure that they obviously adhere to; fear is one of the keys to true creativity, religion and wonder; how the hell did these people even attain sentience - are answered or at least addressed over the course of the novel, making me very happy. But this one never was, except by an implication over the course of the novel that the Sittuun do have a fear reflex, it's just not very advanced or easily triggered. Which, given how it's shown to come about, means that they would still happily stand and stare at a tree toppling on them without getting out of its way.
To make matters worse, our local carnivorous monsters, the Sollogs,sound like they were made in Spore. Giant slugs with spider legs couldn't take their own weight, and the mental image isn't so much terrifying as ludicrous.
But the trouble with losing suspension of disbelief doesn't stop there. You start questioning everything, like: what do the humans eat if there's no native life here (the Sittuun have crashed very recently, the Gyre's made of metal so they can't farm it, and the only other life form appears to be Sollogs)?
All that said, I didn't dislike this book for those flaws. I didn't really dislike it at all, although I'd hardly call it inspiring. And mostly what I want to talk about is two of the problems that are still bugging me about Eleven.
Reactivity
The Doctor does nothing. I was watching for it this time. He gets kidnapped, nearly gets killed and accidentally starts a religious war or three while trying to escape, but basically he does nothing. You'd think this would mean that Amy was up to something, but no - Llewellyn introduces a character called
The Doctor doesn't even seem to have the presence of mind to pick the villain's pocket at the end, after this week's quest object is taken from him at gunpoint. I wouldn't mind if this was setting Amy up to be magnificent, but as I said, she doesn't do much in the proactivity department either.
And speaking of Amy...
Amy fricking Pond
Whereas I read/am still reading Ten's books to get a handle on Ten, I'm reading Eleven's to get a handle on Amy. Mostly what I have discovered is that she's infantile.
No, I don't mean childlike. I'm not talking about her wide-eyed wonder of the universe, her naivete, her refusal to accept the world as it is, or her need to be rescued on a regular basis. I'm talking about her spending ten minutes thinking through to obvious solutions, doing little to further the plot off her own bat, and being surprised at being in the future when this novel takes place after The Beast Below.
Now, partly this is writer error. Llewellyn's one of the worst of the Who authors for hand-holding, and it makes his characters look slower than they are. Amy in particular suffers from this because we actually get to see her planning, whereas there's something of a convention that we don't see much of the Doctor's thought processes even when in his head. But partly it seems to be Amy, because the same doesn't hold true when the Sittuun characters have POV either. Llewellyn really is writing Amy as infantile and a bit self-centred.
Which... OK. That's a better starting point than I had from the TV episodes. Apollo 23 next, after I finish The Scarlet Pimpernel, and let's see if we can find out something that's actually good about this character!
My Amazon order arrived today, complete with Age of Bronze 3: Betrayal. Ooooooo...
Also, finished that godawful chapter at last! Only one more to go!