The Chronicler reviews the rest of The Darkest Kiss

The Darkest Kiss, by Gena Showalter

After the Loinfire Club struggled through the first chapter of The Darkest Kiss, the Chronicler picked it up (always the masochist when it comes to terrible fiction

) and decided to finish it. Here follows a report for those who are curious about how the story about Anarchy and Death live happily ever after...

First of all, The Darkest Kiss is really quite a bad book, but it doesn't suffer from the stereotypical problems of normal romance novels. The heroine is more free of the classic I Am Not A Slut complex than most (with one or two incredibly annoying and notable exceptions, but I'll get to that.) The hero isn't full of rape and ravishment threats, doesn't stalk the heroine, invade her personal space and call it love.... And yet all this doesn't stop it from being really quite an annoying book.

The World Setting

The Chronicler is that most of The Darkest Kiss' readers probably don't care about the metaphysics of its fictional universe and exactly how it all operates. Given that it's the second book in the series, perhaps it should not be expected to lay down the setting with introductory simplicity. And yet it makes no effort to advertise it's Not-the-First-Book status.* That said, the Chronicler really doubts her problems with the setting are answered in the previous book.

The setting is riddled with sweeping statements and loopholes. For example, the origin story is mind-boggling:

Once upon a time, there was Pandora's Box (aka dimOuniak) and in it were lots of demons. These warriors, led by one who felt insulted he didn't get to guard it (?!), opened the box. As punishment, they were made into living prisons for the demons.

Now, this story seems simple. Or at least. Showalter thinks so. But it's not. She's vague as to how much our version applies. Was the pre-box-opening free from Death, Pain, Promiscuity, Lies and all that? Are these simply demons of the concepts as in they are the physical embodiment of them, free from personality and scheming or are they more sophisticated? Were they physical, as in, after release, did the demons personally kill/rape/torture/lie to everyone in their way or did they just possess people and make them do so?

The Chronicler really wants answers because it's actually relevant to the plot. Galen, the Keeper of Hope... wait, Hope is a good thing, right? It was in the original. So why was the demon of it imprisoned in the box along with the other demons? Was the pre-box-opening world also free from hope? And if it's a good thing, should he be allowed to go about and do his work, keeping people's spirits up despite all the death, promiscuity, lies, doubt, defeat (etc) that is happening all over the place?... Sorry, derailed myself there. Galen, who has demon of Hope imprisoned inside him, is running around being the leader of an organisation that busies itself tracking down the imprisoned demons** and killing them all, because the blame the demons for all the shitty things that happen.

The main characters are justified in not knowing what would happen if the imprisoned demons are killed, but they seem phenomenally uncurious about the effects of their death. Baden, Keeper of Distrust, has died and the world doesn't seem to be devoid of distrust, but you can't really fault the hopeful warriors of Galen to keep trying. I'm really okay with them being selfish about their own death versus the world being painless forever, but can they not at least consider the possibilities? What would answer my question is a description about the pre-box-opening world, but Showalter just doesn't want to share.

But then we get to other metaphysical problems. The Greek deities are real. Fair enough. And they differ somewhat from legend, which is again, fair enough. Though it would be better if Showalter actually acknowledges these differences and addressed them, since of all the pantheons the average person would have heard of Greek is quite high on the list. But the immediate question that follows is: Are any other pagan pantheons real? They certainly aren't geographically confined to their original continent, so where is everyone else? They don't have to exist, but it's just really odd because there is a Christian heaven and hell, where some select souls get to go after death (very select, I'll come to that), and yet there are no other gods. Showalter doesn't even feel the need to say, "I know the ancient Greeks believed in an underworld that's different, but that's because they're wrong and were off their tits on mushrooms." Most books employing an existing mythology in its world-building puts in a line or two, the standard: "What a silly superstition you humans have about garlic and vampires. We fear it not."

The Anthropologist suggests perhaps that Showalter simply doesn't realise that other religions have a different vision of heaven and hell. But then she does as she mentions Hades later, but it doesn't seem to feature in any great way.

It's just weird to try to fuse the two.

 

Lucien, Incarnation of Death

Which really quite neatly brings me to Death Himself. Now, beauty is the eye of the beholder and all that, but it really defeats the point of having an ugly hero if the heroine finds him irresistible. The point of Beauty and the Beast is that Beauty grows to love him despite his appearance and eventually grows to love his appearance as well (the latter part surfaces in modern retellings and I quite like it.) But if she thinks he's walking porn to begin with, then he might as well be walking porn to everyone else.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, the scars so puckered they abraded his palm. Had they scratched Anya?

Anya's over-the-top attraction to Lucien comes across as delusional. His descriptions of himself as horrifically scarred don't add up to her descriptions of him. He wonders if his scars are scratching her but whe

n we're reading from her point of view, Anya hasn't even noticed, which is weird considering how much attention she was paying to him.

Now that I think about it, who is the man on the cover? He has the mismatched eyes of Lucien, but he lacks the horrific scaring. Also, as the Anthropologist notes, MrCoverModel is incapable of ever moving his arms since it would distort his carefully placed shoulder tattoo.

Lucien's insecurities are ridiculous. He obsesses about how Anya is perfect and how he is so scarred all her attraction must be feigned... but what is most annoying is that he possesses the ability to see emotions with his damned SpirtEye. He saw her passion. But after this one use of his magic power, he doesn't really use it again in the book. He doesn't even use it to see if Anya's faking it. Seriously.

In this spiritual realm, Anya’s passion appeared a blazing pink. Real. Not faked, as a part of him had assumed. That pink trail glittered with a dazzle unlike anything he’d ever seen.

 

Lucien, Keeper of Death

But that's not really the bone I want to pick when it comes to Lucien and his job of soul-ferrying. He insists he hates his job and that he finds the taking of innocents distasteful, but he never really articulates this hatred as anything other than (as Azrael puts it) the hatred one has for an exceptionally dull desk job. If he believed that his own death would stop death forever in the world and if his existence was really that joyless... wouldn't he try to end it? Why doesn't he have some sort of philosophical stance on the necessity of death, if only to justify to himself his existence and not feel like a bastard?

Now he was charged with the responsibility of collecting human souls and escorting them to their final resting place. Even if he opposed the idea. He did not like taking innocents from their families, found no joy in delivering the wicked to their damnation, but he did both without question or hesitation

One isn't really sure how free will and the gods (keepers?) interact. Is he personally responsible for the deaths of his victims or not? He didn't chose to have the demon of death stuck inside him, but then if he believes what he's doing is truly Evil. He mysteriously thinks he is, but he arrives at the scene and sees the mangled bodies of the soon-to-be dead. (The Anthropologist notes a quick comparison thing to Death of the Pratchett's books, who sees his job as a necessity but doesn't see any reason to make it any worse for the people concerned.) Lucien thrusts his arm into the chests of the dying, retrieves their soul, teleports to the gates of either heaven or hell and tosses them in, all rather unceremoniously. I understand he's on a tight schedule, but really, it can't be pleasant. Nor does it seem very Greek since they have ideas about Charon, the ferryman of Hades.

He was still at a loss as the pearled gates opened wide, revealing golden streets and bejeweled, arched lampposts hanging like diamond-studded clouds. White-clothed angels lined the sides, singing a melodious welcome, their feathered white wings gliding gracefully behind them.

I can't get over how Christian heaven and hell are. Pearly gates with golden streets is very specifically Christian. It's straight out of The Book of Revelations, "The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate being made from a single pearl." There is nothing of this in Greek mythology and it is jarring. But that isn't what is getting to me.

“Lots of people die. Every minute. Every hour. Why don’t you have to escort all of them?”
“Some remain to wander Earth, some are reborn and get the chance to start anew. Some, I think, are escorted by angels.”

That practically makes him redundant. I know that he can't be too tied up with this whole soul-ferrying business since he needs to have time for being with Anya and hanging around with his heterosexual friends, but it really diminishes the character when we find out he doesn't deal with all death, that he's just one soul-collector amongst many.

HE WAS KNOWN AS THE Dark One. Malach ha-Maet. Yama. Azreal. Shadow Walker. Mairya. King of the Dead. He was all of those things and more, for he was a Lord of the Underworld...

The other odd thing is what qualifies as evil enough to land a soul in hell.

The man’s sins suddenly flickered through the demon’s awareness and in turn through Lucien’s. As the man had already proven, he had considered himself above the law, slaying anyone who got in his way—men, women, children—all in the name of a better world.
Bastard.
Maintaining a strong grip on the protesting spirit, he flashed to the entrance of hell. Not Hades—that gloomy underworld was reserved for those who did not deserve either the tortures of hell or the glories of heaven. This man deserved the flames. Though the gates to the fire pit were closed, Lucien could feel the intense heat radiating, could hear the symphony of tormented screams inside, the demonic laughter. The jeers. The stifling scent of sulfur permeated the entire area, enough to make a man gag.

Firstly, as the Anthropologist points out, considering himself above the law isn't really more than what Anya is doing in her daily life. Given how many legal systems Lucien must have lived through, it seems odd that he would attach that much significance to any actual law code.

But more importantly, this man wasn't just working for a better world. He was working for a world that is devoid of pain, suffering, death, war, lies... He is working for paradise on earth. I'm not saying that I feel this means he deserves heaven, I'm just saying that in his paradigm, it's justified and I'm uncomfortable with the idea that this man deserves eternal torment. I'm uncomfortable with the adamance with which the hero thinks this. I'm not saying that I personally believe that the ends justifies the means every time, but there are many things that have been done in the name of the Greater Good and these things do include the American War of Independence (picking an example that most Americans would like to think of as a Good Thing) and the French Revolution and the Cultural Revolution.***** Perhaps again it is that Showalter doesn't think that the audience may disagree on this point, that her reader won't read that and feel uncomfortable. It's that the Universe judges it so with Absolute Morality, not simply the hero's personal morality.

Two bodies lay on the floor, a man and a woman. The man, Lucien instantly knew thanks to his demon, had wrongly suspected the woman of cheating on him, had shot her and then turned the gun on himself.
Bastard, he thought, then stilled.

Now, I'm not saying that killing your girlfriend for cheating on you is morally right. But again, I'm uncomfortable with the idea that it deserves eternal torment in hell. Eternal is a very long time, like seriously. And he did kill himself afterwards. I'm not saying that I like him or that he deserves heaven, but eternity in hell?

Furthermore, what did that woman do to deserve heaven. Again, I'm not saying she necessarily doesn't, but what differentiates her so very much from everyone else since this is a setting where only a select few get into heaven.

She  [the dead spirt] saw him and gasped. “Naked,” she said, staring at him. “Am I in…heaven?”
Should have dressed first. “Not yet.”

Can you really respect Death who goes to work naked?

 

Anya, Minor Goddess of Anarchy

Yes, minor. 

“You are the minor goddess of Anarchy.”
“There’s nothing minor about me.” Minor meant unimportant, and she was just as important as the other, “higher” beings, damn it.

No, minor means she wasn't widely worshipped, which she wasn't. She doesn't have a cult, let alone a widespread one. She has no temples or shrines dedicated to her. She's minor and none of her quibbling is going to change that. Her petulant, foot-stomping tantrums come across like a six-year-old insisting that they're all grown up, because being a child is unimportant. She doesn't hold power in the divine courts of the Greeks, uninvolved in godly politics. She seems to serve no function in the everyday running of the world. I'm not sure you can get more minor than that.

When she’d first come to earth, she hadn’t known how to control her rebellious nature. Gods had been able to protect themselves from it, humans hadn’t. Besides that, she’d been almost…feral from her years in prison. A simple comment from her—you aren’t going to let your brother talk to you like that, are you?—and bloody feuds erupted between clans. An appearance at court—perhaps laughing at the rulers and their policies—and loyal knights attempted to assassinate their king.

Showalter has no idea what anarchy means. When Showalter describes Anya's deep need for anarchy, she describes pyromania and kleptomania. Anya controls her instincts to anarchy and disobedience by stealing, and whilst that is anarchic on a personal level in that she is disobeying the law that tells her not to steal... kleptomania just isn't anarchy. Neither is doodling moustaches on the original Mona Lisa. And really, it's quite unremarkable and dull.

Eventually she’d learned that if she fed her need for disorder with little things—petty theft, white lies and the occasional street fight—huge disasters could be averted.

What immediately came to mind as something she could be doing is feeding her desire for anarchy by inciting rebellion against tyrannical leaders across the world. She would justify to herself that many of the riots she incites may not succeed, but that freedom is a cause worth dying for. She would tell herself that she has a need to incite rebellion so she should at least do it in a place where she knows there is an unjust dictator. She could work ferrying equipment to guerrilla fighters and pass messages. She probably won't get personally invested in any cause too much, but she'd hang around salons  and bitch about dictators, though she wouldn't put much store in political idealism. Would that cut a little close to home for escapism? Perhaps, but it would make her so very much more interesting. That heroine is one I can root for... pit she only exists in my head.

“Once I attended a masked ball and dressed as the devil. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but the year was eighteen-nineteen and I created quite a stir, let me tell you. When I asked Baron something-or-other to sell me his soul, he tried to stab me with a butter knife.”

It was great when Showalter finally decided to tell us a little of what Anya was doing for the last few millennia, but why she doesn't talk nostalgically about past rebellions? I disbelieve she wasn't there for the French Revolution, wasn't involved in the English Civil War or the Glorious Revolution, didn't care about the leaderless state of medieval Iceland.****

Showalter's blindspot really cripples Anya's potential as a character. She seems so very petty when compared with what she could be doing. Self absorbed and really... well, what claim has she in being a goddess when she isn't doing anything to affect the world? She's hardly the embodiment of a force if she isn't involved in places where anarchy is at its zenith. Surely not all rulers deserve their thrones? And not all laws are just?

 

The Goddess of Lawlessness and Sexual Sin

Dysnomia is really obscure a figure, usually coming in lists of personifications. She is named daughter of Eris...

"But abhorred Strife [Eris] bore painful Toil [Ponos] and Forgetfulness [Lethe] and Famine [Limos] and tearful Sorrows [Algea], Fightings [Hysminai] also, Battles [Machai], Murders [Phonoi], Manslaughters [Androctasiai], Quarrels [Neikea], Lying Words [Pseudea], Disputes [Amphillogiai], Lawlessness [Dysnomia] and Ruin [Ate], all of one nature, and Oath [Horkos] who most troubles men upon earth when anyone willfully swears a false oath." (Hesiod, Theogony 226; as quoted on Greek Mythology Link).

Now, in the context of that list, it is quite easy to see that Dysnomia is not associated with promiscuity. She is lawlessness in the sense of chaos and anarchy. She is lawlessness as in the world turned upside down. The opposite of ordered, stratified Greek society. She is by no means an important figure, but the reduction of her to some slutty goddess (which isn't really true in Hesiod, at least) who sleeps her way around Olympus seems a bit of a slap.

Her kiss had been sinful. Delightfully so. But the woman he’d held in his arms had not seemed evil. Sweet, yes. Amusing, absolutely. And, shockingly enough, vulnerable and wonderfully needy. Of him.

The whole novel is firmly set in the moral framework that views sex as sinful (the standard of romance novels) and it's really quite jarring. Anyone with a passing knowledge of the Greek pantheon would know that they hardly adhere to our sexual standards. A classicist would be able to describe all the nuances of Greek sexuality, but suffice to say it is hardly identical like our own. Read Thornton's Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality, for example. No, we don't know what it was like exactly and there is hardly critical consensus, but they are not exactly like us. If they were, it would be really dull. These are immortal warriors from the dawn of time, can't they at least think a little differently?

Why did he have to look so sexy standing there? The sun was acting like his lover, caressing him, weaving an angelic halo around his dark head. Yes, angelic. He was a fallen angel just then, causing her pulse points to throb and her stomach to quiver.

Even more perplexing is the constant reference to angels. At first the Chronicler simply thought it was metaphorical (which is odd since they don't exist in Greek Mythology) but then references to real angels happened. The reader is never told how they fit into the hierarchy. Presumably with the existence of demons there are also angels, but who are they working for? What purpose do they serve?

 

Anya the Warrior Princess

Showalter allow Anya to fight competently when it comes to the various combat sequences, but why does she dress her in the literary equivalent of cheesecake? I know she's busy bucking trends and expectations, I know she doesn't really need mobility since she can teleport but...

"Despite what you seem to think, I am a powerful being, and I choose whether or not to endanger myself." [...]
Finally, he looked at her—and immediately regretted it. She wore a white gossamer gown with gold threaded throughout, and was even lovelier than he remembered. With the golden glow of moonlight crowning her and emerald plants framing her, she was an ancient queen straight out of a storybook.
The top layers of her pale hair were piled on her head, the rest tumbling down and begging for his touch.

Firstly, he was there in the ancient times and he hardly has time for storybooks, so maybe she should be "an ancient queen like that one he saw in Sparta" or something.

Secondly, her comment that she is a powerful being is really rather undermined with the gossamer gown. Maybe mortal armour is useless for her and she likes the way it looks but Showalter never justifies Anya's battle wear, especially since she doesn't blast them with her lasers, she actually enters the melee.

 

The Canonical Characters were Mean to Me

The Darkest Kiss, as the Anthropologist pointed out, is a lot like Knight of Darkness in that the author is writing about a setting she seems to despise. Kenyon dramatically recast the Arthurian setting to conform to her ideas of manliness and relationships and ideal worlds, keeping almost none of the original concepts.*** Sandra Hill did the same to the Viking era and Showalter is doing the same now with Greek mythology. She uses so very little of the classical Greek religion, the big names of the pantheon barely make an appearance. Her use of Christian heaven and hell points to a world setting badly thought out. When gods from classical myth do turn up, it's only be mean to Anya and call her names in goddess-training-school. Showalter just doesn't seem to care about her source material.

 

Inexplicable Pop Culture References

The Anthropologist wondered about the pop culture references and the tendency for these books to feel dated really quickly. It doesn't make Anya any more connectable. Or likable. Where did she pick up all that slang anyway? Surely hanging around valley girls and chavs is hardly feeding her anarchic desires.

Shortly after, he’d found her a second time and threatened her with the Lords. Now here she and Lucien were, about to go Halo 3 on each other. Score one for Team Cronus.

What does "about to go Halo 3 on each other" even mean? Does it just mean "perpetrate some sort of violence"? Or is the hero going to be permanently stuck in some suit of power armour and aliens will descend from space? It's a shooter game and most of the violence in The Darkest Kiss is even gun violence....

 

To be continued... on the subject of The Darkest Kiss...
How Not to Write Sexual Tension
Distancing the Reader: Revelations of Backstory
Romance Novel Curses
The Other Keepers

 

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* Perhaps it's publishers wishing to appeal to readers who shy away from reading books out of order, but this decision to not imprint a large number on the spine really does impair one's ability to understand the world setting and actually get into the book. MrsGiggles has complained on many an occasion about the false advertising of non-standalone books. And every dedicated Harry Potter reader is well sick of Rowling's insistence on reiterating the plot of the previous books in her first few chapters.... So, a compromise is need. This the Chronicler well understands. But the point is: two pages of things-you-should-know situated just before the beginning of the story really can't be that much effort to produce. Or maybe they feel it'd scare away readers who want to just leap into the romance and feel uncomfortable with needing to acquire prior knowledge.
But that is the crux of the problem: pretending the book can stand alone when it can't. 

** Why are they called "Lords of the Underworld" anyway? They don't possess an underworld, which presumably is Hades, but this setting has a curiously Christian afterlife. There's a heaven, complete with pearly gates and a sulphurous hell. What is the Underworld, in that case? And why does being a walking prison make them lords of it?

*** To be fair, every era does this, but the Chronicler is often annoyed when a thing goes from being interesting to boring and nonsensical.

**** Some anarchists hold that medieval Iceland is the closest thing to a realised ideal system in their book. A government where there is only one paid official (the lawspeaker) and regular gatherings to settle issues. Minimalist government, eh?

***** I'm not happy about the things that happened in the Cultural Revolution. It was horrific. Thinking about it makes my uncomfortable. But I'm not going to say I believe that everyone who participated in it was evil with a capital "E" and deserving of hell.

The Loinfire Club doesn't read.... Twilight

Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer

When 17 year old Isabella Swan moves to Forks, Washington to live with her father she expects that her new life will be as dull as the town. But in spite of her awkward manner and low expectations, she finds that her new classmates are drawn to this pale, dark-haired new girl in town. But not, it seems, the Cullen family. These five adopted brothers and sisters obviously prefer their own company and will make no exception for Bella. Bella is convinced that Edward Cullen in particular hates her, but she feels a strange attraction to him, although his hostility makes her feel almost physically ill. He seems determined to push her away ? until, that is, he saves her life from an out of control car. Bella will soon discover that there is a very good reason for Edward's coldness. He, and his family, are vampires ? and he knows how dangerous it is for others to get too close. 

The Chronicler feels she really needs to get some more horrible books to bash, or perhaps better books to gush over. Mediocrity is really quite difficult comment on and even more difficult to read. After a while the mind numbs to the dull prose and what nuggets of interest are only interesting in comparison.

Mrs Giggles wrote that Stephanie Meyer created "the most potent kind of pornography for teenage girls in Twilight - the Mary Sue epic love story." And, preamble aside, the Chronicler maintains that this assessment is the most succinct, witty and accurate assessment of Twilight possible and that anything she can add is really just flogging a dead pony. Elizabeth Hand dissects all four books with great wit and brevity... But the rambling habit never stopped me. Neither will the fact that Twilight has already received numerous awards (The 

Anthropologist remarked that she never heard anyone scream "Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year" with that much horror).

Incidentally, the cover of Twilight is really pretty. Proverbs and pronouncements aside, it was in fact the reason why The Chronicler owns a copy of the book. That and there is something compelling about the blurb:

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him — and I didn't know how potent that part might be — that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Of course, when you think about it harder there are holes to pick at and the promise of unconditional love is all well and good in concept, in quotes, but it is often makes for a perplexing – if not alienating – read. Dark, twisted obsession makes for a fascinating read, but the trap of romanticising it so often ensnares the author and the reader is presented a picture of dubious relationship practices as an ideal rather than a compelling perversion.

Isabella "Bella" Swan moves into Forks, which we are assured to be the most damp and overcast little town in all of America, and meets Edward Cullen, the sparkliest, most beautiful vampire ever. In the last quarter or so of the book, something resembling a plot kicks in and some vampire by the name of James decides he wants to hunt Bella for sport, but that is really inconsequential to the True Love that exists between Bella and Edward.

The opening chapters are interminable and shows again all the weaknesses of a first person narrative.* Meyer has an eye for incidental detail and one is torn from seeing it as clutter and seeing it as building a believable – if dull – character. Bella calls her father "Charlie" and her mother "Reneé". The Anthropologist theorises latent and repressed resentment or that they're "hip" parents who insist on being called their first names. However, Bella calls them "Mom" and "Dad" in speech and emails thus the "voice" of her narrative seems somehow... off.

Bella's description of her new truck makes me wonder if she's aware that the indomitable Toyota Pickup is foreign:

Plus, it was one of those solid iron affairs that never gets damaged — the kind you see at the scene of an accident, paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.

But much of Twilight shows a great blind spot in general knowledge, such as when Edward tells Bella that his favourite blood is that of a mountain lion and "Grizzly [Bear] is Emmett's favourite." He adds:

We have to be careful not to impact the environment with injudicious hunting. We try to focus on areas with an overpopulation of predators.

The Balance, ever the voice of reason and conservation biology, notes that this would mean nowhere. Whilst neither the grizzly bear nor the mountain lion is currently listed under "threatened" by the World Conservation Union, both populations are somewhat precarious. "Near threatened" is hardly a green light for vampires to start wrestling down mountain lions and draining them of blood.

But maybe the world of Twilight is completely different from our own when it comes to this and has a real problem with predator overpopulation...

The Anthropologist notes that Meyer seems to recycle common vampire tropes by substituting in less famous names in hopes that this obvious filing off of the serial numbers would give the impression of an original idea. Instead of Navajo skin-walker werewolves, she has them as Quileute. Instead of Michelangelo and Raphael Sanzio being inspired by Vampires to paint, it's Francesco Solimena, also of the Italian Renaissance. The new names doesn't make it feel more fresh or original.

Meyer struggles with creating the obliviously beautiful heroine – the ugly girl who is simple a pretty girl with glasses:

I should be tan, sporty, blond — a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps — all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.

Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete. 

"Ivory-skinned" is in no way a derogatory descriptor. Neither is a soft slenderness. In fact, all one can get from the passage is that she is conventionally attractive. She tells us both her height (5' 4") and weight (110lbs), conveniently allowing us to work out her Body Mass Index, which we, of course, proceeded to do. (The Anthropologist was rather gleeful about this since she'd never been given the information to do this to a romance novel heroine before.)

It rather difficult to actually give Bella's claims of being an unpopular outcast any credence. She soon has a plethora of male admirers and multiple female friends (most of whom are nice but mildly jealous of her).

On the other hand, it is perhaps quite easy to see why she hadn't many friends back in Phoenix as she goes through her first day making unsympathetic snap judgements on the people who are nice to her:

When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.

"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.

It's not even that I don't like snarky people, but Bella's brand of sarcasm comes across as unpleasant, borderline misanthropic and not particularly incisive (or funny, for that matter). She is also utterly oblivious to the possibility that she may be doing something wrong in her inability to communicate and sympathise with her peers.

(Incidentally, we never do discover whether or not "Chess Club Eric" is actually member of any chess club – or if there is a chess club at this school – he is given this label by Bella and it is used forevermore.)

Meyer claims that Bella's sudden surge in popularity in Forks high school is based in part on her own ugly-duckling-now-swan university experience. Of course, there is quite a big difference between switching from one high school to another and from high school to university. Usually, the case of "stock surge," as Meyer put it, is caused by there simply being more people at college and exposure to a greater number of people. The Anthropologist also quips that Meyer's anecdote is probably coloured by the fact that she attended Brigham Young University, where the beauty is measured by willingness to become a happy housewife. (The Anthropologist would like to add that she was being very snarky at this point and doesn't mean it literally.)

Probable or not, it's immensely hard to sympathise with the self-proclaimed unattractive girl who finds herself being asked by three (not including the hero) boys to the "girls' choice spring dance." Which is really reason enough to reject them since they blatantly fail to grasp simple concepts (and will no doubt have trouble with concepts like "consent" later on in the evening.) Bella takes her new friends and admirers very much for granted. She doesn't even seem to care much about them and they start blurring together into this faceless, chattering mass, which really doesn't recommend the character to me.

The same applies to most of Twilight, there is a great distance between the showing and the telling. As readers, we're told repeatedly that Bella is clumsy to the point of endangering herself, yet we little evidence of this in her actions. I understand the need for comic hyperbole, but the "joke" of Bella's clumsiness needs to be reinforced with some actual correlation with reality. I don't know, she could get hit by a volleyball more. Or walk into a lamppost whilst reading. We're told Bella is bookish, yet she is rarely shown reading and it seems never to surface in her conversation – surely any seventeen-year-old who has wild imagination and a bookish way can come up with something more creative than "Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker" in an entire month. For that matter, "Bruce Wayne" is a stupid explanation for Edward's supernatural abilities since Batman has none; he's just really, really rich. 

I had decided to read Wuthering Heights — the novel we were currently studying in English — yet again for the fun of it...

I know I've odd opinions about the Brontës, but who reads Wuthering Heights "for the fun of it"? It's an immensely emotionally draining book. (Unless, of course, you find it alienating, messy and dull, which is another popular opinion.) It's really quite dark and unlike, say, Jane Eyre, it's quite difficult to overlook the dark bits – the murderous hero, the unapologetically selfish heroine... But perhaps this attitude to the events of Wuthering Heights will explain her later reaction to Edward's vampirism.

 

But yes, the vampires of Twilight, the main attraction... they are quite possible the least subtle ones this side of serious literature. They are aloof, never talk to any of the students and sit by themselves in their little huddle in the cafeteria:

[They] were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel.

(At this point, the Chronicler hastens to add that she clearly doesn't mean any of the medieval masters...)

Not only that, but they all have:

dark shadows under those eyes —purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose.

...which you'd think would crimp their perfect, perfect beauty. It's explicitly describes as being more like an injury rather than overly enthusiastic eye-shadow application. But clearly Bella (or Meyer) is of the opinion that abuse victims are hot.

The deathly pale complexion, unearthly beauty (despite adopted) and uniformly bruised eyes aside, they also don't eat. They all sit there with their food in front them, looking at nothing in particular ("away from each other, away from the other students, away from anything in particular as far as I could tell") and not eating. They then proceed to throw away their uneaten food. And this happens, we could but assume, every day. Wasting the food aside, it seems inane that no one has noticed this. Especially since I'm sure anorexia is quite a problem in high schools (one that is looked out for) and the girls look like "Sports Illustrated" models, which implies underweight to me.

I hope you're getting a full image here, dear reader: inhumanly beautiful, deathly pale clique with uniformly bruised eyes sit together, not looking at anything, not eating, every lunch time at the cafeteria. I wouldn't suspect vampires, but cult would be high on the suspicions list.

Bella and Edward stare at each other, a lot. Edward stares at her with a "hostile, furious" expression on his face. And she shies away from his gaze, but stare at him when he's not looking. This game of stares goes on for far, far too long. The blurb makes no secret of Bella and Edward's eventual relationship so it really begs the question why it can't cut to the chase, especially when the misunderstandings and double-meaning really gets on my nerves. 

Edward heavy-handedly hints at how very dangerous he is and the reader is in on the fact that he's a vampire, but Bella isn't and... suffice to say, the Belief Turnstile is badly handled. It's a very, very long time before Bella finds out that Edward's a vampire and the whole sequence lacks suspense (since the reader already knows he's a vampire and is impatient for the revelation) and momentum, let alone actual believability. Bella hears about vampires from Jacob Black, a family friend and then ends up googling it. She then ponders if Edward could be. Later, he confirms this... it's just dull. And never does she actually feel threatened by him.

Of course, it's never clear what Bella's worldview was, pre-vampires. She swallows the website wholesale and moves on to speculate whether the Cullens were vampires. She doesn't need to, well, fit them into an emerging picture of the world she lives in. If someone were to prove to me that vampires exist, then the next question is whether or not other folkloric creatures exist and which versions of the folklores are most accurate. Then is the question where they fit in the universe: Is there a heaven and a hell? Do we have souls or not? Etc, etc...

Bella's just incredibly uncurious. She asks Edward about popular culture vampires, but neglects to ask him about the three pages of Wikipedia reading she did.

I felt a spasm of fear at his words, and the abrupt memory of his violent black glare that first day… but the overwhelming sense of safety I felt in his presence stifled it.

Their relationship is described with self-contradicting hyperbole and never does the reader glimpse the "heart" of the relationship, how the two characters actually function together as a couple. Bella falls in love with him without really interacting with him in any meaningful way beyond stares (and they're not even meaningful stares, the sort the allegedly pierce the heart and make one feel truly understood) and a few words of cryptic conversation. We never find out the contents of her Edward-filled dreams, since she doesn't really know enough of his personality to extrapolate what interacting with him would be like (unlike he, who was probably busy listening in on every conversation she has via mind-reading). Besides his statuesque beauty – literally, actually, since vampire skin resembles marble in its texture and hardness – he seems to have little to recommend him.

The most remarkable conversation is this one, early in their relationship:

I couldn't remember the last time I'd talked so much. More often than not, I felt selfconscious, certain I must be boring him. But the absolute absorption of his face, and his never-ending stream of questions, compelled me to continue. Mostly his questions were easy, only a very few triggering my easy blushes. But when I did flush, it brought on a whole new round of questions. 

He asks her questions like "What music is in your CD player right now?" and what her favourite gemstone/flower/colour/book/movie is. It 's even likened in the book to psychoanalysis. It's baffling, since most hold these topics to be conversation starters, where there is an exchange of opinion and discussion as opposed to a one-sided interrogation. One could read this as how a vampire (due to being dead) is utterly unable to really experience real preference and opinion, thus is leeching of her vivid and exciting life experience, but it's not really the way it's presented to one. Plus, Edward does actually have opinions and is functionally the same as a normal human.

The Anthropologist posits that it's because the teenage female desires a teenage boy who inundate them all the questions like those on facebook and myspace, desiring to know all those pointless preferences like a "which angel are you?" quiz, because that is their standard of meaningful correspondence.

 

Meyer uses Edward's bloodlust as an odd metaphor for sexual desire – Edward's sexual desire is equated to his desire to drink (and kill) Bella – which gives the whole book an odd allegorical side, which Meyer explicitly point to. But it's a tightly-controlled-yet-overpowering desire which Bella can never understand, neither does she feel anything akin to it – really quite repulsive, outdated sexual politics, in my opinion, but it's found in trace quantities in at least half the romance novels on the market, so I'll not harp on that too much. Elizabeth Hand finds in Meyer "unrequited female erotic yearning", but it's hardly the case. There's nothing even vaguely erotic about Bella's yearning. She's a good girl. Her admiration of Edward, though isn't physical – or so she insists. It's what's behind the face, she tells her friend, she's fascinated by the idea of a redeeming monster.

But Bella (unlike Jane Eyre, for example) isn't the agent of his redemption, she's remarkably passive throughout the story. Edward is already well on the road to redemption (set on by Dr. Cullen) when he meets her. Pillywiggin goes as far as calling her the "meatbag" Edward wheels about the place and refuses to let talk. Edward notes that he feels the most "human" when around her, but it's never really explained what that means.

(Actually, Dr. Cullen's backstory is really odd. It takes him, literally, months to develop the philosophy to drink animal blood instead of human. Seriously. How thick is this founding father of vampire "vegetarianism"? In addition, after a few centuries of self-control, he manages to resist bloodlust so much he can work in a hospital.)

Still, telling her that she must stay absolutely still when he kisses her, or else, he'll accidentally kill her, seems a bit much.

There really was no excuse for my behaviour. Obviously I knew better by now. And yet I couldn't seem to stop from reacting exactly as I had the first time. Instead of keeping safely motionless, my arms reached up to twine tightly around his neck, and I was suddenly welded to his stone figure

Edward's declarations of his immense skull-crushing strength is weird:

"If I was too hasty… if for one second I wasn't paying enough attention, I could reach out, meaning to touch your face, and crush your skull by mistake. You don't realize how incredibly breakable you are. I can never, never afford to lose any kind of control when I'm with you."

With that kind of strength... well, surely he'd be accidentally putting holes into walls, breaking doorbells, stamping through floors... telephones must be a nightmare as he accidentally punches them apart with his fingers. But of course, this sort of strength only applies when with Bella (or alternatively, Bella is just made of tofu).

Speaking of kisses, the book also boasts of what Pillywiggen has branded the most unsexy kiss she's ever read:

He seemed unaware of his watching family as he pulled my face to his, lifting my feet off the floor. For the shortest second, his lips were icy and hard against mine. Then it was over. He set me down, still holding my face, his glorious eyes burning into mine.

Bella is rather frail, she faints at blood (especially inconvenient when dating a vampire) and later faints at Edward's kisses. She has a special scent that only Edward can smell (no, I don't know why, or how he knows this) though she is still immensely attractive:

"If you didn't smell so appallingly luscious, he might not have bothered." [...]

"I thought… I didn't smell the same to the others… as I do to you," I said hesitantly.

"You don't. But that doesn't mean that you aren't still a temptation to every one of them. If you had appealed to the tracker — or any of them — the same way you appeal to me, it would have meant a fight right there."

After Bella is told that she is to inform her father that she's going out with Edward (so that he has an incentive to bring her back), she promptly decides to not do so, since if Edward succumbs to bloodlust and kills her, she doesn't want to get him into trouble.

It's probably common knowledge by now and barely worth mocking, but Meyer's vampires literally sparkle:

His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare.

The Anthropologist has much snark concerning how this conforms to teenage female aesthetics, but it's really getting too easy...

 

There is something compelling about the lion-in-love-with-the-lamb trope, and Meyer does milk it for all its worth, but she doesn't let the story darken or deepen. Edward really isn't a very objectionable vampire. Vampires being harmed by holy water and daylight reinforces as metaphysical acknowledgement of their inhuman, inherently diabolical nature. By getting rid most of the traditional vampiric trappings, Meyer's vampires just aren't very monstrous. Or scary. 

There is nothing that isn't immediately forgiven by Bella. She isn't repulsed by the fact he doesn't drink blood, or that he has killed numerous people (admittedly serial killers, rapists and muggers) in the past in order to drink their blood. Her acceptance of him, this unconditional love, doesn't seem tested by his revelations. She takes it all in her stride. Monstrous, Byronic heroes work only if the heroine, the author, the reader, the rest of the cast, all acknowledge that he's actually monstrous.

It's telling, perhaps, in the phrasing of how Meyer says that Edward is based on Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester, because both "see themselves as 'monsters.'" It's the self-perception as monstrous, but Meyer, however sees Edward as a gentlemen, full of "olde-worlde charm." Of course, the Chronicler often finds that the world seems to reading a different book than her. Rochester is monstrous, in many ways. He was ready to commit bigamy (no small sin in Victorian England), he's got his wife locked up in his attic, madness aside, he's not really giving her any decent care or treatment. He also had mistresses (also no small sin in Victorian England). Jane is drawn to him, but she cannot forgive him and cannot marry him, so she runs away from temptation. But the point is, Rochester is a man weighed down by his past inhabiting a world that acknowledges his sinfulness. He's genuinely haunted by that past. Edward Cullen, on the other hand, flits about his teenage classroom. His decade of murdering murderers is brought up only once and never again, not even by Bella (seriously, that more than half her age spent drinking blood). Bella's absolute faith in Edward to control himself, to not kill her simply adds her mind-numbing naiveté and solidifies Edward as "just misunderstood."

Perhaps it's because he's so very well-controlled that Edward comes across as an automaton. Meyer speaks of "sacrifice" and she relates it to her college experience at Brigham Young University... It's as though she's not really aware that when most people write about "sacrifices" made for love, they don't mean "no sex before marriage" or "no alcohol at college." They usually mean things grander, more epic, shall we say. That Edward's sexual/bloodlust struggle is rather too dull to be placed at the fore of the book... well, we know he's not going to succumb. Bella's hardly going to die by his hand.... So where's the tension?  Bella doesn't have graphic fantasies of him gnawing her neck off and doesn't really actively tempt him beyond just existing.

Meyer also notes in the same interview that "Edward goes to great lengths so nothing bad happens to Bella, she is cared for so much. A lot of the book's appeal is the thought of being loved to that extent [...] There has been some antagonism from men about Edward. They are jealous because they don't want to try that hard."

Of course men don't want to try that hard. And no man should. It's creepy. Edward seems to do nothing else but stalk her (and hunt for food). He spends all his sleepless nights sneaking into Bella's room and watching her sleep, seemingly immune to boredom. (Pillywiggin theorises that Bella's a one-woman radio station in her range of sleep-talking, but I doubt that's what Meyer has in mind.) He stalks her, literally following her about and finding out where is by reading the thoughts of those around her. And this is all before they actually get together and declare their love and all that.

Yes, Edward can hear the thoughts of everyone around him (except for Bella) and has no qualms eavesdropping on her conversations with other friends and acquaintances. Bella simply cannot talk to anyone about him, cannot confide in anyone without him finding out. It's creepily invasive.  Worse, Bella doesn't have a problem with this. She doesn't feel as though her privacy was invaded, neither does she discourage him doing so beyond a jokey reprimand and she also doesn't feel that perhaps her friends wouldn't want creepy century-old vampire crawling all over their thoughts, making her come across as thoughtless and sociopathic. 

At the end of the day, Edward looks seventeen, but why is he condemning himself to year after year of high school education? This is never elucidated in the book, but as Mrs Giggles points out, "I can only shudder as I imagine how vapid Edward must be to enjoy being a permanent teenage kid." But he doesn't act like a seventeen-year-old. Hand describes him as "an obsessively controlling adult male," more father than boyfriend, and she's not far off the mark.

"You are my life. You're the only thing it would hurt me to lose."

I know, you're seventeen and you've no idea what to do with the rest of your life yet. But to anchor your entire existence on someone else is creepy and unhealthy. Has she not thought of her parents, her friends, her studies. Has no other hobbies that would be inconvenienced due to her vampirism? Perhaps it's because Meyer's so very de-fanged her vampires there's really not much choice. Being a vampire is just better. Eternal youth, supernatural strength, agility, perception and beauty.... There simply aren't any downsides. White Wolf's vampires, for example, have no creativity and all that they feel and create is merely a reflection of their alive years. Admittedly it's ridiculously angsty, but at least, it's a tangible downside. "I want to be a great artist, but I also love you, dear vampire" is a reasonable (if angsty) plot.

In conclusion, it's bad. And boring. Bella is infantile, passive and spineless. Edward is annoying, holier-than-thou and inhuman. As a bonus it also contains ideas about sex and relationships that I'd rather teenage girls didn't make into the stuff of their daydreams.

 

---

* A first person narrator is limited to narrating what he or she sees. It is through this character's eyes that the reader perceives the world – a great asset when the character is interesting and has an idiosyncratic world view, but also an immense weakness when the author imperfectly hides behind this persona and starts puppeting characters about or worse, when unintentional voyeurism, sadism or masochism is created through lingering descriptions of things.

The Loinfire Club doesn't read... About that Night

About that Night, by Jeanie London

The plan is simple. Julienne Blake will use self-hypnosis until she's discovered the sexy woman inside, then she'll seduce Nick Fairfax during an unforgettable night. And with a tantalizing performance for an audience of one, she does just that. But her sensual plan seems to have worked just a little too well, because Nick is begging for a return engagement.

Nick has never met a woman who could capture his attention so completely as Julienne has. Her risqué moves have him pursuing her all over sultry Savannah just to be alone with her. But he's not a long-term kind of guy, so his desire to extend this passionate affair has him completely baffled. Somehow he has to convince her there's more than that night between them....

 

The Chronicler will get back to the joys of My Fair Viking, no doubt, but first just a brief summary of the horrors of About that Night.

The Chronicler admits the use of the word "horror" is largely unjustified; the book was by and large quite s quite dull. The sex scenes were tepid, the choice of words routine (pebbled, check; turgid, check; suckled, check; use of sex to mean cunt, check) and really, even at less than two hundred pages, the London is distinctly running thin of ideas. The book smacks of the sort of three-year-old naughtiness, back when it's edgy to say "damn" when no one's looking.

But a reader who buys a book marketed containing hot, steamy sex (it is a "Blaze," after all) should really be less easily shocked.

(Or perhaps this all speaks of the youth of today being rubbish. Who knows? But Description Inflation is always a problem that haunts us all...)

London is far too fond of the word "naughty." It comes across as childish, especially from a woman who is three decades in age. Admittedly, that's her theme, but the words "naughty boy" elicits not a the mental image of some unrepentant playboy, it reminds me only of bad governess fantasies and that scene in Child in Time. Really. There is nothing remotely sexy about "naughty boys."

Jules (or Julienne) self-hypnotises. Yes. She repeats uninspiring phrases to herself repeatedly to condition herself to be more "naughty", and the reader has to suffer with her as London threads these phrases in italics throughout the narrative.

Naughty girls feel good about being naughty.

The Anthropologist thought this was a novel about a really sexually repressed woman discovering herself, fighting the expectations of a sexually conservative (probably quite religious, this being set in Savannah, Georgia) society around her. But there is no evidence of this. If anything, the heroine (or the author) has so completely internalised her "nice girl" attitudes that there are not expectations for her to defy and confound besides that of her Uncle Thad (but we'll come to that.) No one even raises an eyebrow over Risqué Theatre, a building allegedly festooned in plaster phallus-wielding cherubs (also an unsexy image, seraphim maybe, but not cherubs. I'm not sure any world of politicians capitalising on the fundamental interest humanity has in sex can really justify government funding for this. Is there no one who thinks its tasteless and pornographic in all of Savannah? In a society so comfortable with its own sexuality, why is Jules so very uptight about hers?

The Chronicler also categorically state here, dear reader, that there is nothing remotely sexy about winged children with erections.)

Where is she getting her "good girl" ideas from? Maybe it's just Uncle Thad and she really has no other friends, thus giving him plenty of space to instil his ideas of womanhood into her. Jules doesn't need to escape the judgement and hypocrisy of the tag "good girl", there simply isn't the chorus of condemnation needed to create that atmosphere. Jules' friends and students and colleges all cheer her on and even the scandal that looms towards the end of the book over her sleeping with Nick is really rather tame. Hardly anyone is scandalised by it; instead the campus coos over how sweet and wonderful it all is. I suppose London has to construct and environment that Jules can later be comfortable in, but it results in creating a heroine with seemingly completely groundless neuroses.

Naughty girls feel naughty.

Jules is, frankly, stupid, when it comes to trying to self-hypnotise herself into self-confidence. For starters, she decides to unleash her inner sex kitten on one man and only man – Nick Fairfax, the man she has stalked for years (technically she's only obsessively read all his articles, books, theses and know about all his projects). This plan is ever so doomed to trample on her poor, poor ego if this book was set anywhere other than RomanceNovelLand. After all, whilst he has a "naughty boy" reputation, he might not be into her type. He might be having a bad night. He might have already made plans. Who knows? But the point is, it opens her up to the very real possibility of rejection and rejection for reasons that have nothing to with her. Hanging all her hopes of self-confidence and self-discovery on Nick flirting back seems unwise, to say the least.

Naughty girls talk the talk.

She is naive to the point of oblivious, especially since she allegedly regularly visits the Risqué (for architectural appreciation, I'll have you know) and has a saucy-speaking stylist. She is ridiculously surprised that phone sex involves masturbation:

"Touch yourself, Jules." [...]

Julienne lost her fragile hold on her growing confidence. Poof. [...] She supposed she should have seen it coming. After all, she was playing naughty with a man who'd honed the concept to a science.

Phone sex really isn't that scandalous. The whole business of Jules running into something and getting entangled deeper than she expected is tedious and rather insulting. I suppose it boils down to "nice girls don't ask for sex", but this never played with in the novel. It really just reinforces the ideas, if anything. "I dress in really provocative clothing and then flirt with a man with a reputation, after a sex show might lead to him trying to get me in bed? I couldn't have guessed." "You mean trying to arouse someone by talking sexy to them on the phone might lead to masturbation? I'm so surprised I get shocked out of my self-hypnosis!"

"I don't see what can be accomplished by making our relationship public? What's the point?"

"To broadcast we like kinky sex."

Dear reader, you misled by the above throwaway line that there is anything other than vanilla sex between the protagonists. There is talk of exploring fantasies about halfway and the Chronicler thought we might dabble in... no, just no. There isn't. London has no idea what she's writing. Maybe she thinks "kinky" means "really hot." The closest they get is the use of a sex swing, which whilst unconventional doesn't qualify as "kinky."

Nick wonders about women-who-you-marry and women-who-you-shag-and-leave. Whilst I'm really not that keen on secret-identity plots this book could actually have benefited from one, because his wondering over the woman is silly when he knows, frankly, both Jules (the naughty girl) and Julienne (the unsexy professor). He knows both of them and sees them work in their capacity, both inside the bedroom and out. 

Most of the self-agonising comes from Jules wondering about how to reconcile the fact that she's now self-hypnotising herself to be with Nick. She thinks that it's a Deception and it makes her an evil woman. Equally she's lying to Uncle Thad as he disapproves of any possible relationship between Nick and herself (EVIL!)... but the argument that self-hypnosis is an external force that obscures the "true self" is somewhat odd. As the Anthropologist pointed out, that makes sentences like this possible: "Oh, I started going to Yoga class and then I met this guy. But he doesn't know the real me, the pre-Yoga me that isn't as calm and flexible. I'm deceiving him!" or the more extreme: "I'm bipolar and I take mood-stabilisers, but I shall never know True Love and no one can possibly know the Real Me that I'm suppressing!"

Incidentally, these neuroses over her own are cured by Nick telling her (talking to her ex, who's the a professor of hypnotherapy) that hypnosis can't make you do anything that isn't "in you" already.

Seriously. It's at the beginning of every book of the subject. A big warning sign to all who think they can use hypnosis to convince a stranger to kill their enemies for them. It's all about giving the control back the patient, not taking it away, accessing inner selves and resources and all that. How can she miss it?

And having sex. Which proves she's actually a passionate woman, deep down. The Anthropologist thinks she's really just a very lazy woman and blames the whole nice/naughty dichotomy for her failure to quite a dull five-year relationship and actually do anything worthwhile with her time.

There are minor wtf?! moments that reminds the reader that this book isn't set anywhere near reality. This is a world that takes active tabloid-sprawling interest in the love lives of its preservation  architects. This is a world where it's unusual for graduate students to be used as a source of cheap labour (seriously, ever spoken to an archaeologist? A biologist?) and instead they hire random, seemingly untrained, locals. This is a world where a radio play called Hush Hush Honeys about an illicit, yet idyllic, love affair is the most popular thing on a student radio station named "Rebel Radio." This is a world where nepotism is perfectly acceptable and normal. This is world where snogging behind the bleachers qualifies as a naughty high school fantasy, where no one complains about students being made to work in a cock-studded theatre (seriously, it's America. Land of Abstinence Education. Surely some interest group will pick up on it.) This is a world without standardised data sheets (yes, this surprises us). This is a world where your professor's uncle can hijack the lecture and tell instead a random unrelated, but cute anecdote about your professor as a child (without anyone complaining that they'd really rather things went back on track. Like really. It might be useful.)

But really, what gets me the most the Great Plot Revelation: the hero and heroine conduct their super secret torrid affair, really rather badly. There is then the radio sensation that is Hush-Hush Honeys, about a pair of illicit lovers named Darling and My Love that seems eerily akin to their affair.

"Damn. That sounds like a guided tour of our weekend. We should check our clothes for surveillance equipment."

Who would go to such efforts to tacitly expose (or threaten exposure) their rather sedate sexual escapades? Is it the desperate debt-worn student who runs Rebel Radio and can benefit from the programme's phenomenal success? Is it Jules' bitter ex who wants to tear apart the couple by threatening exposure and thus shaming the hussy into getting together with him again?

No, it's Uncle Thad. The man who raised Jules himself. His source was listening to their phone conversations which he taped. He didn't just listen to some idle chatter and suggestive weekend plans. He was spying on their phone sex. And he didn't just end up listening to them out of a morbid and masochistic curiosity, a sort of inability to press the stop button when realised what the voice mail accidentally picked up. He listens to all their conversations, repeatedly to write the scripts of Hush Hush Honeys.

And instead of being horrified and saying something along the lines of "I understand you did this because you care. I love you, but I really don't think I can face you right now. And I'm moving out," Jules swiftly reconciled herself (after a brief bout of shame and mortification) with Uncle Thad and is understanding of his motives. He made her fling all about him and his relationship with her (as though everything in her life was about him) and then claims that he's actually letting her go.

His admission filled the ensuing silence with such richness of emotion that Nick had never before seen the like. Jules seemed to melt before his very eyes, her gaze suddenly bright with tears. She lifted trembling fingers to her mouth and blew her uncle a kiss. With a wink, he pretended to catch it in some private game. A charming little girl and her devoted uncle.

The whole confrontation scene is riddled with unintentional creepiness.

...as long as his dating Julienne hadn't harmed her relationship with her uncle...

No, Nick. Your dating Julienne doesn't and shouldn't harm her relationship with her uncle. His listening to the two of you having phone sex repeatedly, however, is a different matter altogether.

I can't really explain as well as Uncle Thad himself why he did it:

"I didn't write the serial to throw you to the wolves. I wrote it because I couldn't see another way of getting you both to wise up. You seemed quite content to treat your relationship with very little respect, like you were conducting some sort of sordid affair. I hoped if other people vied it with an equal lack of respect you might just come your senses."

And at the end of the day, the book doesn't celebrate "naughtiness," all it does is tell us what we all know already. Good little heroines are allowed to have good sex with the hero, but they must buckle down, get serious and get married at the end of the day. And it's not an affair coming maturity (forgetting to end, even) so much as showing how very damaging the assumption of no-strings-sex can be and that a Conscious Decision must be made before a relationship can be truly considered "serious."

 

Afterthought: Why is it that heroines are almost inevitably in the careers of their fathers/mothers/uncles? There's a creepy little bonding moment between Nick and Uncle Thad as Nick tells him that he'd always admired and been inspired by the veritable Titan of preservation  architecture that was Uncle Thad, even from a young age. And Uncle Thad confesses that he greatly admired Nick even though he disapprove of his personal life. Now, Uncle Thad alo has a protégé in Jules, who admires and is inspired by Nick... There is something to be said for male bonding through an exchange of women.

Not to mention he plans her future life and job with Uncle Thad before he consults her about it.

"As much as I enjoy our sexy phone conversations, I want to be with you, which is why I spent the afternoon talking to your uncle about a solution."

Unsure whether to smile or cringe when she imagined Nick and Uncle Thad with their heads together over a drafting table, Julienne braced herself for the worst.

Seriously, if you're searching for a solution as to how to best avoid a long distance relationship with the woman you love, shouldn't you talk to her instead of anyone else? Even if he is her respected and revered uncle who spies on your phone sex?

My Fair Viking, continued, part two

Part one of this masochistic dissection was here.

Clash between slapstick and gritty plot

My Fair Viking strains between gritty realism and wacky matchmaking-driven slapstick. The result is a book that jumps from one to the other in no logical emotionally true order, trying to elicit sympathy for one thing that is later laughed off as inconsequential.

Here, the winters were long and bitter, often with only one or two hours of daylight; survival took precedence over all else… or it should have.

No one at Stoneheim cares about survival. But more to the point, the slapstick: we're treated with a scene intended to elicit heart-wrenching grief, the scene that should be setting up Adam's inner turmoil and reasons why he doesn't easily open up to people anymore.

Adam the Healer dropped to his knees and beat his breast.

It is the Big Reason why he doesn't want to ever heal again, why he is willing to just sit on his estate and write his book... but then we leap straight into a scene of Rashid (the wacky, comical relief Muslim) pestering to have a harem. The change is simply too abrupt.

And this happens repeatedly. Bolthor (the comedy relief skald) entertains us all with a terrible, terrible poem about how Trya captured Adam and hurled him over her shoulder (in order to get him to save her father, of course):

Now, some say she needed his talent,
That a miracle in him the gods sent.
That very well may be true,
But on this idea you should chew:
Exactly which talent of the knave
Did the fair maid crave?

But this is whilst Thorvald is still in a coma, his life still at risk and no one knows whether or not he'll survive. If he dies , the succession will be in question; whilst Tyra is supposed to take over and has been groomed to take over by her father, but the reader is given no indication that she is capable (because the narrative is too busy grooming her to be Adam's bride and helpmeet, see below) of that responsibility. But more to the point, it's fundamentally tasteless to be suggesting that an action done out of filial piety is done for sexual desire when the fate of her father is still unknown, when in theory they're all bracing themselves for his possible death and consequent political turmoil. Perhaps afterwards there can be some ribbing about it, when the danger has passed (not all danger, of course, that would be silly)but joking during, and especially when everyone knows Tyra is uncomfortable with the idea of being with Adam, it seems... yes, tasteless.

Tykir and Alinor declared it the best poem Bolthor had ever created.

Of course, some may find it amusing, this undermining of their commander's power in a time of potential invasion. The humour isn't even potentially bracing or encouraging. Bolthor is singing this to Tyra's family (all about to suffer personal loss) and the three hundred fighting men of Stoneheim. These men are about to put their lives on the line to defend the place; they need to be utterly confident that Tyra is the best warrior to lead them.

The second day, she'd taken a bath, willingly, in a marble tub big enough to hold twelve people. Then it took eight eunuchs of considerable size to hold her down while every single hair on her body was plucked off.

Tyra is plucked clean of hairs at the harem where she was held captive. This is clearly quite a traumatic experience for her since she was held down during it and afterwards her shaved crotch is enough to drive her to run away from Adam so that he won't see it.

"They plucked all the hair off my body. So there! Now you know." She started to weep again, this time with mortification.

But this incident isn't treated as a violation of her, only actual rape counts as that. Adam reacts violently to the possibility that Tyra may have been raped during her stay at the harem:

He immediately stiffened. "You were raped? My God, I will go back and kill the old buzzard. I thought you said you had not been touched."

However, having hairs plucked from her body, is something to be laughed off until the woman realises she's being silly. It surprises him that the experience bothers her. That being held down by burly eunuchs and plucked, chicken-like, is a physically painful and traumatic experience whilst being held captive in a land where no one speaks her language surprises him. He does not even bother assuring her that she is still attractive without hairs and simply wouldn't stop the stream of chicken-jokes – under the impression, no doubt, that such humour will shame her out of feeling violated. Hill seems to share this opinion as Tyra's mortification is played for laughs and it really doesn't make me feel inclined to like Hill.

My Fair Viking is simply surreal in the characters' inability to react to the gritty reality around them and the author's refusal to acknowledge that the reader may find some of these details harrowing. There isn't even a show of stoical survivalist ethic against the hardships. They are simply forgotten within the chapter. No one remembers the women and children who were taken in the raid. Dagma's rape, difficult labour and consequent stillborn child is brought up in the middle of a sex scene. (I know Hill's going for unsexy, irrelevant conversation to contrast with the "sexplay" but it's unpleasant to point of reminding us of... well, see below)...

 

The Rapist Hero

It's often the case that one hero or another is described as having dubious ideas about consent (Decadent's hero comes to mind) or is a little too forceful for one to be actually comfortable with him.

"Nay, I will not kill you immediately. [...] I have other plans for you first. [...] First, I intend to tup you till your toenails curl.[...] Then I will tup you again till your eyes roll up into your head. [...] And then I will make love to you again and again till you beg for more. That should take, oh, a sennight or two… or five. [...] Then… and only then… will I kill you," he concluded, and grinned mirthlessly at her.

Azrael: "It is creepy. It is not a piece of hero dialogue. That is cheap villain dialogue. Normally, in this genre, I would expect that paragraph to be eventually followed by a revelation that the speaker is secretly an evil gay paedophile."

After he is captured by Tyra, he is tied to the mast and part of their merry banter includes his threats of raping her when he gets free. Now, granted, he's held captive against his will and there is some obvious physical attraction between them – but attraction is certainly not consent. And from his point of view, without the aid of an omniscient narrator, he's just issuing threats of repeated rape that ends in murder. That's neither sympathetic, justified nor sexy. 

The dialogue must also be placed in the context of a world in which rape is a very real threat. Dagma, a fourteen-year-old girl, we are told, has been raped by a passing tradesman. Women and children were captured by Danes and you can imagine what will follow. Tyra is held captive in some sultan's harem and whilst not actually raped, felt violated and it was a distinct possibility in her time there. 

When he was done stitching her wound, he acted quickly. Grabbing her by the waist, he tossed her onto the table face down and flipped up her tunic. She was screaming like a banshee and trying to rise, but he had one hand firmly on her neck and the rest of his body weight pressed over her bottom. Leaning back, he noted that she was not wearing a codpiece, but she did have on some kind of loin cloth. He ripped it off so that he could examine her arrow wound. 

For a bit of context, this takes place right after Tyra has claimed she word a codpiece under her clothes. Tyra had specifically stated last time he offered to look at the wound that she doesn't want his hands on her. Adam is "examining" the arrow wound her on her ass (from Alrek's careless bowmanship; because Vikings never bother teaching their children the common sense of not firing when there's someone between you and the target) without her consent. I really don't care that he's a doctor and is more qualified than the blacksmith. He simply didn't even bother asking her to show it him before flipping her over and ripping her loincloth off. As Azrael put it, "Well, he's clearly a cock."

 

Chronology and Internal Inconsistencies

It's October throughout the book. Despite constantly being informed that sennight after sennight has past in the italics before a chapter, it's always, always October. Adam arrives in Norway in October, sees "Butchering Day" (early October, we're informed) and after the wacky adventures in the Byzantine Empire (taking at least seven sennights of travel or something like that, it's still October.

Exactly when does Adam earn his fame as a healer? I know people have long memories, but he was in the East learning medicine from "the world's best physicians" (but not a university the way a real medieval physician would have) for several years, during which he wasn't practicing and therefore can't be reputation-earning. After returning and finding Adela dead, he hides for two years – It's upwards of five years he spends away from the West. How is it that he is still the most far-famed and allegedly best Healer in the West? Is his absence making him into some sort of living myth? Have people forgotten about his failures? Is it because he's related to Rain?

Also, why does Adam have a dozen changes of clothes, his sword, his books and his shield with him at Stoneheim? He was kidnapped and wasn't exactly given any time to pack for his trip and his captors are hardly the considerate sort that would helpfully gather his belongs for him. Even if they gathered whatever looked like medical equipment, why would they pack his weapons? He's not going to need it on a trip to heal the king of Stoneheim.

Ingrith sniffed the air that morning, noticed the frost on the herbs in her kitchen garden and a few snow flurries in the sky. Clear signs that winter was almost here.
Satisfied, she gave a hearty shout of "Butchering day!" in the great hall where everyone was breaking fast.

Yes, but different cattle and pigs were butchered at different times during the year. Given that we're in October, it should be cattle and sheep that meet the fatal knife, not pigs. Swine get butchered later, somewhere in November, usually.

 

Wacky Muslims

"Nay, master, do not speak such sacrilege. Only Allah, or your Christian God, should make such destiny-decisions," his assistant Rashid cautioned softly, putting a comforting hand on Adam's shoulder.

Rashid is the wacky Muslim sidekick of Adam. He specialises in obsessing over harems and doling out Arabic proverbs. It's a walking, talking insultingly simplistic stereotype. He's also really, really annoying.

To all of these, Rashid nodded and replied, "I swear on the feet of Allah!"

Islam is an iconoclastic religion. Among many other things, it doesn't do humanoid depictions of its deity. Allah doesn't have feet. Even a quick swing onto The Godchecker could tell you that.

The odd thing about Rashid is his sheer inability to get along with anyone. He cites his god Allah with great frequency, he tries to get every attractive woman to join his harem and generally makes a nuisance of himself by offering unwanted advice. The real question is, why hasn't he been chased out of whatever settlement he's in with pitchforks? He's obviously foreign, speaks in some unknown language (possibly of curses) and keeps calling on his heathen God. The Norse might put up with him, what with being polytheistic and quite far travelled (the men, at least), but why are the Anglo-Saxons putting up with him? It's mind-boggling how no one regards him with even the slightest bit of suspicion. Especially since he's doing a lot of dodgy things: he utters a constant stream of blasphemy; he almost certainly doesn't attend church and he's been hitting on all the woman.

"Perhaps you could travel partway with me… you and Rashid. He speaks often of a yearning to return to the warmer clime of his homeland."

And why does Rashid return with Adam to Hawkshire at the end of the book? He's been trying to get Adam to travel back with him home for most of the book, but then when he's in the East... he comes back?

 

Names, oh, the names!

Yes, England has shires, Sandra Hill. Well done. But none with names like "Hawkshire" and "Ravenshire." They stick out like sore thumbs and in a bad way. Shires, sorry to disappoint, don't have romantic names like that. Just to name a few: Bedfordshire (Shire of Beda's Ford), Legeceastershire (Shire of the city of legions), Grantbridgeshire, Wiltonshire (shire of Wilton, name of town, which is named after the river Wylye), Hertfordshire (Shire of hart's fjord), Buckinghamshire (Shire of Bucca's home), etc, etc...

Stoneheim's keep was a wood fortress, like most others throughout Norway. But that was the only way in which it was similar.

Stoneheim. What sort of a name is that? Heima is Old Norse for "home," which is why it appears in mythological place names like Jötunheimr (home/homeland of the giants). The settlement of Stoneheim is certainly not made of stone and the fields of its holdings are stone-studded. Are the people of Stoneheim made of stone? Where is the stone? And why mix an English word (Stone) with an Old Norse one (heima) in this jarring way? What reason has she to do so?

Dragonstead. Stead is English. Staðr, however, is Old Norse, meaning "place" or "stead," so pretty much the same thing. But why mix it with "Dragon"? (The Old Norse word would be Draki.) Dragons aren't really a good thing in Germanic myth and legend. You put it on the front of your longship because it's fearsome and scary, not because it's cuddly and lovely.

Fagrfjord. Here, we have an Old Norse word. But Fagr? Fair Ford?

Now, not all places in Norway or England or the rest of the world have prosaic names. After all, there's a Ravenswood and a Seven Oaks... but there's also the places in Iceland named by Ingimund when he got there: Saudadal (Sheep valley), Svinavatn (Swine lake), Hunavatn (Cub's lake), Hof (Temple), Stigandahrof (Stigandi's Shed), Hrutafjord (Rams' fjord), Vididal (Willow valley), Bordeyri (Plank headland) and Thordisarholt (Thordis' wood).

In fact, all of Tyra's sisters were legitimate. Her father had a tendency to marry his women, even more than one at a time.

Breanne, Drifa, Vana, Ingrith, Tyra. All legitimate daughters of Thorvald.

That makes no sense given the Germanic alliterating naming traditions for royal families. That's all I can say. They should all begin with same letter, if not the same component.

To be continued...