There's a Reason It Got an "F"

Today is A-Z Wednesday, from Reading At the Beach, and today's Letter is F. My book is Fearless Hearts, by Linda Hudson-Smith, and it was really awful. Romance books often skimp on characterization, and I only wish this one had done that much more, because almost every effort to depict the characters failed miserably. Well, sometimes it failed hilariously. I found myself laughing out loud during this read.

Taleah and Lorenz meet when her brother-in-law brings along an military buddy during a leave. They fall in love, get married, discover that Lorenz is a bigamist, and get remarried. I'm sorry if I'm spoiled any plot points, but honestly, the plot is not what you notice. You notice the prose. I offer a selection from a page chosen at random: "...I know Lorenz is the man for me. Our spirits became entwined the same moment our eyes locked for the very first time." Er, ouch?

From Jared, Talah's brother: "Jared was actually heartbroken over Taleah moving away to another continent, but he'd never let her know how deeply hurt he was. Since they were so sensitive to each other's emotions, he figured she already knew." Hudson-Smith uses this contradiction effect quite often, with one sentence making the previous one meaningless. The constant product placement also kept jarring me; when Lorenz and Taleah come home from a romantic dinner to dance in their living room, the groove to "the old-school album Rufasized featuring Chaka Khan, now available on CD." What, no label information?

I liked the book's depiction of the struggles military families have, but small details irritated me -- on the second page, we learn that Taleah won't drive because of an accident that she only survived by NOT wearing her seat belt, Lorenz has a child that he completely ignores until the very end of the book, Taleah's complains that Lorenz does too much housework (actually, I liked the complaint -- she worries that he doesn't approve of her or won't accept things from her, but her idiotic way of complaining was irritating). I can't really recommend this book to anyone except aspiring editors looking for something to practice on. I ended up having a lot of fun; if my sister had been around I probably would constantly poke her and make her listen to good paragraphs.

On the other hand, I don't read many modern romances; I got this one from a friend when I mentioned I was trying to read more books by people of color. So maybe it's just using a different set of expectations, and the whole line specifies what brand of lipstick each character wears.

Avoid At All Costs

I like vampire books. I started with Sunshine, moved onto Charlaine Harris, and enjoy Patricia Briggs, Kim Harrison, even Laurell K Hamilton, who is awesome in her awfulness. But L.A. Banks' books are painful for me. It seems as if the sentences come careening out of some dark space, colliding and crashing into paragraphs assembled by random destruction. I couldn't get into her vampire books, but I heard a lot of people liked her stuff, so I tried a werewolf one. It was even worse.

Sasha is a werewolf. Well, sorta. See, there are good werewolves and tainted werewolves and shadow wolves. Sasha is a super-secret army shadow wolf with a hint of werewolf taint but not the bad taint because she is all good. The other shadow wolves don't like her, but they are just mean. She finds Hunter, who is another shadow wolf who also has some werewolf badness but he's still good. He's a Ute, and is in touch with nature and the land and his shaman grandfather. His pack peers resent him and don't want to let him play their reindeer games. He gets to be the leader anyway, and they turn to the bad side, but not until the last chapter. Her army buddies also face the bad side. There is lots of danger and badness, much of it utterly random, and a big conspiracy that relies on endless stupidity for success, a clever move in a book such as this. Sasha and Hunter trust each other in all sorts of strange rituals that they invent that only true love can survive, but Sasha is shy of commitment. The sex scenes are very explicit. Oh, I am frantically scrubbing this book from my brain, but I have officially given up on this paranormal author.

"Having to put down she-shadows gone were-demon had really messed with her man's mind. That would haunt Hunter for a long time; regular doses of primal female medicine seemed to be the only cure." Ugh. F.

Words vs. Pictures of Words

Today I drove from Seattle to Salt Lake City, so I listened to a book instead of reading it myself. Safer for the other highway drivers, y'know. I shared the car with five other people, ranging in age from 74 to 6, so I tried to pick a book with broad appeal. I came up with the audio for The Green Glass Sea, a book by Ellen Klages and narrated by Julie Dretzin.

It was a good pick. The story covers a few years on The Hill, the Los Alamos base where the nuclear bomb was developed. Dewey and Suze, two pre-adolescent girls whose parents work on the project, meet and become friends. The kids like the developing relationship between the girls, from antagonism through respect to friendship and collaboration. The adults also enjoyed the history, as the girls encounter famous names such as Bethe, Teller, Feynman. It's a fascinating look at a very small town during a crucial moment of history, and Klages' beautifully evocative prose brings each day to vivid life. I'm not sure I liked Dretzin's reading; it felt like she was enjoying the language as she spoke it, which is understandable but distancing. When I read the book, the prose was transparent, but listening to it I felt pushed to notice the phrases, to see how each sense was evoked, to appreciate the tiny metaphors.

Tomorrow I'll officially ask the other listeners to rate the book, and maybe update with their responses. For me, I give the book an A and the reading a B-.

More Small Humor

I was hoping Eats, Shites & Leaves: Crap English and How to Use It would be an entertaining response to the original, with essays about how to break the rules for effect. Instead it is a compendium of hard to spell words, poorly worded advertisements, silly politician misspeakings, and other short jokes about the English language. As a bathroom book of short humorous pieces I give it a B+, but as a parody of the panda book only a C-.

Disappointed

Barbara Metzger writes romances, mostly Regency (or Historical Regencies). At her best she is witty and sweet, with a may pole of couples and intertwining phrases that amuse while telling an amiable story of true love, often with cute animals. At her worst, the puns and word play lie soggily between the enforced antics of her lurching, wooden characters.

I'd say Hourglass was her worst. But she has written many better, so I'll still try her next book.