t it suffered from what my Soviet literature professor called "plotlessness"--- the disease of idealizing society and your characters to the extent that stories aren't allowed to contain real conflict
OMG, yes! I never thought to connect it to the Soviet lit/socialist realism approach, but this was exactly the thing that most bothered me about Small Angry Planet -- that the "good guys" were idealized to the point that they could not have character growth or interpersonal conflict, and so the book was both plotless (something I can handle, though I do consider it a flaw) and also arc-less (which was the deal-breaker for me). Well except for outsourcing all the flaws to the rotten West Corbin.
It was such a relief that by book 2 Chambers had apparently realized that it was OK for characters to be flawed and learn things and grow as the book went along.
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Date: 2021-04-03 05:33 am (UTC)OMG, yes! I never thought to connect it to the Soviet lit/socialist realism approach, but this was exactly the thing that most bothered me about Small Angry Planet -- that the "good guys" were idealized to the point that they could not have character growth or interpersonal conflict, and so the book was both plotless (something I can handle, though I do consider it a flaw) and also arc-less (which was the deal-breaker for me). Well except for outsourcing all the flaws to
the rotten WestCorbin.It was such a relief that by book 2 Chambers had apparently realized that it was OK for characters to be flawed and learn things and grow as the book went along.