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.