beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I started reading a new book by a new author this evening, and I sort of ground to a halt and started, erm, thinking other stuff mostly involving Owen Harper, which isn't particularly relevant.
So I sat down to think why this book wasn't pulling me in. ( Read more... )

So I've got a pretty clear idea of what isn't working for me.

The more I read other people's stuff lately the more I want to write something, because I can't seem to find what I'm after. Differences based on choice, equality and strong women relating to each other about something other than men, and the kind of power differential that lets me play with metaphoric representations of disability but still doesn't erase actual disabled people or their contributions. Team stories!

Why do I keep finding books with one central protagonist? In comics you get single character books *and* team books. Do novels just not do that? I've seen more innovation in fanfic, with sequential point of view shifts that give you something from each of the team. I seem to keep on picking up books where One Special Snowflake has to battle a world where everybody else is too dumb to live. Er, okay, overstating it slightly, story can focus entirely through central character and still be fun. Miles Vorkosigan is all about the quality of his team. But... there's so many layers of but I'm just really frustrated.

Where's the partners stories even? Not the unequal partnership or the will they won't they romance, the equal partners getting the job done?

I think I'm going to go read the Diane Duane wizardry books through again in the near future, because they might be about teenagers or talking cats, but they actually fit my criteria. People working together, differences cause they've studied different things, towering forces opposed by sticking together.

I'm so grumbly.
I'll go sleep.

I finished reading the book I was half way through last night.

Points that bothered me then boiled down to
a complicated set of issues around the central female character, including how she doesn't interact with women very much, it's usually about men, she hates her own body, and while she seemed headed for getting to accept herself the method seemed very likely to be Because Men Like Her

and a weird thing about use of the word 'racism' to include things that felt a bit odd.
( Read more... )

I do not like books where the central protagonist thinks she's ugly and everyone else tells her she's pretty and she's continuously surprised and then there is sex. It's... where does this come from? Is it just not allowed to be powerful and comfortable in your own body? Blah.

I could read the whole story from a different angle and try and make it about how she gets over being tortured and left with prosthetics by... shagging her torturer and letting him magic up her prosthetics so they don't hurt? No, sorry, that's still freaky.

So, conclusion by end of the book:
This version of 'racism' still gives me a sandpapery feeling, even though it seems to really be trying
and this central female character... annoys.

There's a thread about how the bad guys are the ones who don't like mixing so the good guys are the embodiment of mixing. I could live with that. Except being mixed makes them miserable, sometimes in pain, and possibly unwell or even addicts. That's... not good.

Eh.
does nothing for me and I'm not going to read the next book.