The Sabina Kane Series

Writing about good authors is so boring. Re-reading my post about Eugenides is so boring. Of course Eugenides is a good writer. Nobody cares if I think he’s a good writer. There’s actually nothing to discuss, unless we get into it academically. Complaining about shitty writers who disappoint me at every turn is way more fun.

Now, my choice to torture myself by reading the second part of Deborah Harkness’ witch thing series turned out to be a bust. I was unable to read past the part where Matthew’s brain takes leave of his body, and he becomes stupider than usual. You must admit that as heroes go, he is a dumbass. He has no idea what’s going on and why he does things, and then he tells the whole, still-burn-people-at-the-stake world that his wife is a witch. Matthew has special snowflake syndrome. He thinks he’s special because he married a witch and nothing can hurt them because of their specialness. And that is exactly how Harkness intends for it to be. If you have read the book, TELL ME THAT’S NOT TRUE EH? EHHH?

Noooo! I’m too special for this!!!

Reading Shadow of whatever left me positively devastated at the state of urban fantasy. Like. How come everything sucked? Why is stupidity celebrated? Lack of plot encouraged? Personalitiless characters glorified? Surely there is a writer out there who can write DECENT urban fantasy without pissing me off. With this goal in mind, off I went to goodreads.com to check out the highest rated urban fantasy whose synopsis didn’t sound like rubbish.

Which brought  me to Jaye Wells and the Sabina Kane series. Now, all of the books in this series have a 4-star or higher rating on goodreads (but then the 50 shades books also have a 4-star rating, so I don’t think goodreads is reliable. And after reading Wells, I can assure you that it is not reliable at all. At. All.). I happily downloaded ALL OF THE BOOKS. ALL OF THEM. And I read ALL OF THEM. Now that I think about it, I must have been infected with some compulsive disease that wears off after you have completed a herculean task that accomplishes nothing.

ALL OF THEM.

One of the things I hate about urban fantasy heroines is that many of them evolve. Evolution is fine, mutants did it and so should magical heroines. But every single one of the heroines so far have gone from Toad-level powers to Scarlet Witch reality-obliterating abilities (if they don’t start out with Scarlet Witch powers on the reveal). It’s disgusting. What’s the point of reading about a heroine who can just wipe dangers out with the snap of her fingers – but the whole book is about how she doesn’t because she’s so goddamned stupid (CASE IN POINT – Harkness’ Diana).

So. Sabina Kane. It started out pretty interesting. There’s the setup of duality in Kane: witch/vampire, killer/friend, right/wrong. The potential for an interesting character is there. Basically Kane is a half witch half vampire (with purple eyes? right? because this is the sort of character you came up with when you were 15 and watched too much Buffy and Fushigi Yuugi) who works as an assassin for the vampire queens. She’s actually related to one of them, but because she’s tainted with witch blood, she is unworthy of a noble education, thus killing people is her job. There’s a dynamic between Kane’s feelings of inferiority, her desire to be accepted and the way she’s treated by the other vampires. Or at least there could be, if anyone other than her grandmother (one of the queens) treated her shittily.

Like this.

Or this. 

She finds out things are not as they seem with the vampires, discovers she has a twin sister and then goes on some godawful pointless quest to save the world. There are two main things I didn’t understand at all about this series. Spoilers ahead. Not that it would reduce the enjoyment of these confused books if you read them.

1. THE TONE. I believe the tone of these books got hit by a bus and then run over by Optimus Prime. Because it starts out serious and dark, with Kane killing someone she claims is her friend, and the whole muddy relationship with the vampires, parental issues etc. And then Giggles the demon makes an appearance, and the whole tone is shot. Everything becomes a joke. You don’t know whether to take this series seriously or not. And it goes on like this the whole time. People die, Kane is sad, some slapstick humour is introduced. The absolute worst was the final story arc, where some fellow who is supposed to destroy the world pretty much ruins Kane’s life and kills her father (and sister I think. Not sure) is revealed to  be some pathetic jilted lover to be made fun of. LOL. He’s so lame and stalker-y, like that guy you went out with once and then wasn’t interested in, but then he kept emailing and calling you and sending you poetry?? LOLOL. Guess what? It’s not funny!! Fuck you Jaye Wells. Fuck you for raising my hopes and then shitting on them with your lousily-paced slapstick humour.

2. THE MARY SUES. Yes, there is more than one Mary Sue. Can you believe that? Kane and her twinnny twin twin. They turn into goddesses at the end. You can’t get more Mary Sue than that. But in true uneven Wells fashion, she can’t decide that after they defeat the big bad (who was more like lame and snivelly) whether they are still as powerful, so Kane is happy just taking some title on the vampire council or whatever. Gimme a break. You use goddesshood as a Deus Ex Machina, and you can’t even  be bothered to follow through with the implications of having a goddess among the unwashed supernatural masses? Like hell she would just sit on some damned council and let people continue to disrespect and ignore her like before. Like hell the other, less powerful characters would allow that.

Oh, and I just thought of 3. DISTURBING UNDERTONES OF SEXUAL IMPRISONMENT. That’s just a dramatic heading because I didn’t want to outright type HOMOPHOBIA. Basically there’s this lesbian werewolf who has hooked up with a vampire girl. Her father is the leader of some pack and keeps insisting that she get married off to some other pack dude. I actually thought that Kane would do something about it, or it wouldn’t be a serious issue (considering the tone of the book) but what happens is the werewolf girl gets married off and Kane gets invited to the public mating/marriage ceremony. Where they turn into wolves and mate onstage. And Kane actually sees the werewolf girl try to run away from her mate, and then she turns away and all she can hear is her despairing howls. Basically the girl is forced into marriage and then raped by her husband. Onstage. And Kane’s reaction? OH, TOO BAD. Can’t do nothing about it. And later on in the last book (I think), she finds out that the werewolf girl and her mate have a child, and she’s like, AW SHUCKS, I GUESS EVERYTHING TURNED OUT FINE.

Unless you’re, like, gay. Or a werewolf. Or both. 

Now do you see the problem with the tone of this series? What am I supposed to take seriously? What do I not? Why is she so flippant about rape and sexuality? She builds up to deaths, and then they become meaningless because the villain is a joke. In fact, if I could describe Wells’ writing in one word, it would be flippant.

I think I have made myself upset thinking about point no 3, so I will stop here. I think Wells has other series’, and I hope that she has fixed the flaws that made Kane so uneven. I’ll probably read them when I’m desperate again.

Cheerful recommendation: Naomi Novik’s addictive Temeraire series.

Awesome Temeraire pic from fuckyeahtemeraire.tumblr.com.

Shadow of Blahhhh – Deborah Harkness

Before I Kindled the sequel to Deborah Harkness’ atrocious A Discovery of Witches, I asked myself, Why?

Why would I put myself through that mind-numbing frustration, vacillating between being impressed with descriptive writing and being appalled at the utter stupidity of the so-called romance and the so-called plot. Plot! Hah! My roast vegetable have more plot than this book. Plus the roast vegetables are freaking delicious!

Look at all that delicious plot. 

Why? According to Seth, it is because I enjoy being miserable. He should know, he has to listen to me when I am. Also, that sounds like something my mother would say about me. My brother claims he understands that I have to see this through. I HAVE TO KNOW. Or maybe I am a sadist, like that lady who does chapter by chapter reviews of 50 Shades of Grey. (I have heard a lot of accusations saying this book is un-American despite being set in Boston or whatever, because of tea or prams or whatever, but my main bug in this line is the spelling of Grey. Grey is British spelling; Gray, American. Everytime I see the cover, I mentally correct it to Gray).

Every dang time.

So far I have gotten to Chapter 4. As you can imagine nothing important has happened, even though they are on the run for their lives basically. Christopher Marlowe makes an appearance. Other people do too, but I had to read Faustus last semester (weird and unimpressive, only because I was expecting something like a play version of Swinburne’s Faustine), and was curious about Marlowe. Of course, Marlowe is in love with Christian. I mean Matthew. Because Matthew is so lovable despite being grumpy, rude and one-dimensional. Also stupid. How stupid? Oh LET ME COUNT THE WAYS.

One of the reasons they go back in time is because the Congregation (the Creature Council, basically) disapproves of marriage/mating between species. Diana and Matthew are threatened and tortured because of it. And also because drama = plot for Harkness. So in modern times, Matthew says the Congregation is not as powerful as it once was, but they still managed to do a lot of harm. So what is the first thing Matthew does when he GOES BACK IN TIME, WHEN THE CONGREGATION IS EVEN MORE POWERFUL?

He fucking tells everyone that Diana is a witch and she is his wife. Every. Bloody. One. His servants, his friends, the bitter guy with an unrequited love for him. And for what purpose? No freaking idea. It doesn’t serve anymore purpose than if he’d just  told them she was his captive, or some girl he’d found or some friend of the family’s that he was now responsible for. Nope. Matthew is SO BRAVE, that’s why he tells every Tom, Dick and Harry that the goddamned witch is his wife. What happens? She gets accused of witchcraft in the village.

In fact, this is unworthy of a full facepalm because it is just too ridiculous.

The other reason they go back in time is because witches of our modern era are weak and   have no mojo to teach SuperPoweredGoddesWitch Diana to get a handle on her powers, and so they need a proper witch from the past to educate Diana. So I assumed that when they chose that specific time to return to, it was because Matthew knew there would be a witch or witches there to teach Diana. Otherwise, what was the point of going all the way back there and putting your friends and family in jeopardy while you took off, right?

This is how I think they feel about their friends and family.

So guess what happens when they get there. Nothing. Nothing happens. Because Matthew not only doesn’t know a single goddamn witch, THEY’VE ALL MOVED AWAY BECAUSE OF HIM. This may have occurred to him while hatching this plan with his mated nitwit Diana, but as you can see, Matthew is not the brightest bulb on display. Instead of some awesome witch, they drag in the village healer so that Diana can show off in front of her so that later she can accuse Diana of being a witch in the marketplace. Oh joy.

See what I mean by frustration? Yet the descriptions of food is just so wonderful, and I can see there’s a talented writer under all that absolute buffoonery.

That’s right Deadpool, a man I would love more if he were not so incomprehensible.

A Discovery of Blahhh – Deborah Harkness

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.