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The Girl of Fire and Thorns (Rae Carson)
Jul. 13th, 2012 06:11 am3+/5. I... didn't dislike this as much as I was prepared to. Which, um, is better than it sounds? I did like it! It's got a bunch of things going for it -- a not-quite-your-typical-whitewashed-medieval-Europe-vaguely-Spanish-based society. The writing seems good -- less clunky, more polished, than a lot of first books I've been seeing lately. Elisa, the heroine, gets to win through bravery and interesting plotting, which is kind of nice. I also liked that religion is treated as a Thing, even with different sects, though I suppose I've been forever spoiled for in-depth religion world-building by The Curse of Chalion.
And yet... I don't know... a lot of things rubbed me just a little the wrong way, culminating in a feeling of restless annoyance. The big thing, I think, was the narrator Elisa's whininess. Oh, no one likes me. Oh, my sister hates me. Oh, I'm fat. (I'll get to that one in a moment.) I mean -- I'm all for family conflict and insecurities, I enjoy reading it, but I have to have more to work with than "So my sister's mean!" (which is basically all we're told about her, until we're then told that she isn't in fact mean -- I have no idea what their relationship entails, no idea of what lies between them). And I prefer not to get the anvils to the face. Like, in The Perilous Gard, Kate has a whole boatload of insecurity with respect to her sister, but she doesn't say so very much explicitly, and I don't think she ever thinks that Alicia is mean -- the issues come across more in the way the two of them are treated and the way she responds to things, not because she whines about it constantly, like Elisa does.
Okay, so, the fat thing. Elisa is fat, and therefore ugly, I guess, at the start of the book. I don't know, this rubbed me the wrong way too. In general I didn't really understand why she had to whine about it so very much. I mean, she's a Chosen One, she's always known she has to make a dynastic marriage, she is taking classes in lots of things (oh, another thing that annoyed me... apparently she's smart? Smarter than her sister, whom Elisa thinks is the smartest person Ever? But we aren't shown examples of this, or how this might have come to take place, or how this is a natural outgrowth of how she grew up, we're just told so, by fiat, when Elisa does smart things) -- doesn't she, like Kate, have other things to worry about? And then we find that walking miles in the desert handily gets rid of this "problem." I don't even... I mean, I knew about this before I read it, and I was prepared to dislike this more than I did; I appreciated that it was a fairly minor subplot (the main plot is about how Elisa makes interesting plans and is brave and so on), and I did like how it was making a point at the end about how people respond to looks, but I don't really see why it needed to be as big a part of her personality as it was, and that irked me.
I really, really wish that the ending had been different. ( Fairly major spoilers: )
And yet... I don't know... a lot of things rubbed me just a little the wrong way, culminating in a feeling of restless annoyance. The big thing, I think, was the narrator Elisa's whininess. Oh, no one likes me. Oh, my sister hates me. Oh, I'm fat. (I'll get to that one in a moment.) I mean -- I'm all for family conflict and insecurities, I enjoy reading it, but I have to have more to work with than "So my sister's mean!" (which is basically all we're told about her, until we're then told that she isn't in fact mean -- I have no idea what their relationship entails, no idea of what lies between them). And I prefer not to get the anvils to the face. Like, in The Perilous Gard, Kate has a whole boatload of insecurity with respect to her sister, but she doesn't say so very much explicitly, and I don't think she ever thinks that Alicia is mean -- the issues come across more in the way the two of them are treated and the way she responds to things, not because she whines about it constantly, like Elisa does.
Okay, so, the fat thing. Elisa is fat, and therefore ugly, I guess, at the start of the book. I don't know, this rubbed me the wrong way too. In general I didn't really understand why she had to whine about it so very much. I mean, she's a Chosen One, she's always known she has to make a dynastic marriage, she is taking classes in lots of things (oh, another thing that annoyed me... apparently she's smart? Smarter than her sister, whom Elisa thinks is the smartest person Ever? But we aren't shown examples of this, or how this might have come to take place, or how this is a natural outgrowth of how she grew up, we're just told so, by fiat, when Elisa does smart things) -- doesn't she, like Kate, have other things to worry about? And then we find that walking miles in the desert handily gets rid of this "problem." I don't even... I mean, I knew about this before I read it, and I was prepared to dislike this more than I did; I appreciated that it was a fairly minor subplot (the main plot is about how Elisa makes interesting plans and is brave and so on), and I did like how it was making a point at the end about how people respond to looks, but I don't really see why it needed to be as big a part of her personality as it was, and that irked me.
I really, really wish that the ending had been different. ( Fairly major spoilers: )
