I did not enjoy this book. But I seem to be the only person on the internet who thinks that it’s a confusing mess of un-fleshed out concepts and clumsy writing, and outright hates it. Therefore I conclude that I must be a bitch.
I am currently reading A Discovery of Witches. I thought I’d like to read a chick lit as a break from all the sci fi, and I was curious about all these ‘paranormal’ romance novels. Thus the Witches. And I have to admit it started out great. Academician, Oxford, lots of interesting science and historical shit going down. The scholar-witch opening a book that apparently contains the answer to the origins of witches, vampires and demons, and promptly returning it like any good researcher.
And then the most gigantic brain fart in the form of the main characters’ romance. Everything goes downhill from there. The protagonist devolves from Diana, A Person, into Blank Female Character Who Can’t Do Shit, as the hunky vampire biologist (sounds so much better in theory) devolves into an older version of Edward Cullen. I’m about halfway through, and after the beginning, it more or less became nonsense. I currently have no idea what is going on, but the scientific and historical stuff is keeping me hooked. I like all these ‘beginning of the vampires/witches etc’ theories, like Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned. Although I did not particularly enjoy that book.
Robin = awesome. Diana = lame. Also Amon > Matthew because he’s not got his boxers up his arse.
You know, I really expected the hero here to be someone I could fall in love with (keep in mind at one point I was in love with Sherlock Holmes, and later, with Anne of Green Gables’ poetry-loving son, Walter. I suppose based on that, my ideal guy would be some sort of high-as-a-kite literary genius who may or may no be a sociopath), a floppy haired gentleman scientist, who was kind and polite but hid a dark secret without being a complete self-martyrising ass about it.
But no. We have a six foot tall chiseled specimen of a man who is a genius in various areas of biology, and also practices yoga and has fancy wines. He then loses every single characteristic that makes him UNLIKE the usual hypermasculine male lead. All he does is tell Diana, the female lead, what to do, or he does it himself, or he’s protecting her by putting her to sleep or throwing her over his shoulder. Because that’s what you do when you’re with the most superawesomeultrapowered witch in all the entire world. Who turns out to be a useless sap of a woman.
This is how you do vampire.
Anyway, I am still reading this book. I probably won’t bother doing a review of it because it’s just very weird. It’s a cheesy, not-thought-through romance with one-dimensional characters that started out okay, yet it’s got interesting faux-academic aspects that signal the potential of a really good novel. I just don’t understand it. The romance is pointless. It would have been far more interesting if it was a story of Diana finding out the truth and coming to terms with her magical ability by herself, or of Matthew stalking the witch who held the key to understanding the creation of supernatural life, while facing his own personal demons. They can have dalliances at the side to satisfy the more romantic of readers. Dalliances wouldn’t waste as much time as the ‘romance’ in this book does.
More interesting than this book: googling kittens.
I have been reading an awesome chapter by chapter review of 50 Shades of Grey here. The lady reviewer has now gone on to the next book, 50 Shades Darker. And she is just as hilarious. I have no intention of reading this book, but I do have one niggling question about the heroine.
As I understand it, Steele (really. Steele. that’s kind of lame. like when you used to make up character names as a child and they’d all be like Annemarie Fyres or Jezebel Sexyface. or whatever) doesn’t own a laptop or a handphone. And she’s a literature student? Something like that.
I have a few questions, if this is true. i. Is she very poor? Because that would explain, and I would understand, why she doesn’t have a laptop or a phone. But if she isn’t: ii. Is she Amish? That is the only other explanation I can find for this.
Because does she think people study literature by staring at the soil under their feet and then writing about it? Perhaps she sends in reports based on her euphoric feelings after reading Tess of the D’urbervilles, no citations or references needed. Perhaps her university library has every single reference book and journal ever written on every topic in literature that she might happen to check up on, thus leaving her no reason to own a laptop (seeing as she has no friends aside from the one she lives with, it’s not like she needs the laptop to socialise).
Maybe she’s so hipster she doesn’t want a laptop. She writes all her assignments by hand and thinks Eliza Bennet is the best heroine in the entire universe ever. Maybe it’s just me and the really horrible educational resources in Malaysia, but I can’t imagine being a student without a laptop. Where do you type your assignments? Surf the web? Mock your friends? Access tutorials? Waste time watching Youtube videos?
Yet I will still not read 50 Shades, because it sounds terrible. And reading terrible books turns me into a F***ing Angry Person (FAP for the uninitiated *snigger*).
Yesterday my mother informed me that she had had an argument with her boyfriend (?) about the word ascetic. Apparently ascetic means someone who denies pleasure. I just thought it meant someone who likes studying (that’s the word they use to describe magicians and scholars in every book ever what).
I thought to myself, what did Seth and I talk about today? I sent him a picture of Kat Dennings because her boobs looked exactly like those owned by that actress who played Saffron on Firefly (forgot her name), and then we exclaimed over the Kuratas. Because the Kuratas is awesome shit okay, even though a hamster could overtake it on the road.
To each his own I guess.
PS I also discovered that quinoa is not, in fact, a poison that the native people of South America dip their arrows in before hunting down a herd of guinea pigs. It is a fluffy rice thing. Fascinating!
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