Book report time!

[megwrites]

- Staying Dead by Laura Anne Gilman




Staying Dead is the first in the Retrievers series by Laura Anne Gilman and is about Wren Valere and her partner, Sergei, and what happens when they take a "client" who has had a magically enchanted cornerstone stolen from his building and hires them to get it back for him.

I really did give this book every opportunity to impress me, but it just couldn't manage it. I spent more time circling and underlining points where I just wanted to march up to either the author or editor and ask, "Why the FRICK is this in here, what's the point of it?"

The book is slim all on it's own and was obviously padded in some areas, as evidenced by an entire page devoted to describing the main character *sort mail* or the two pages spent describing office furniture. Brevity is the soul of wit, and also the key to my heart. Tell me

I didn't like Wren one bit, because she was made needlessly "quirky" in places but still the character felt flat to me. She's trusted to be a Retriever but she can't remember to pay her bills without something reminding her? Yeah. Right. Also, her tendency to use the phrase "Jesus wept" got old fast. Her habit of talking out loud to herself seemed like a ploy to make her sparkle as a character, and it fell flat.

And might I take this chance to say, I really, really, really, really, really REALLY hate when characters refer to themselves by their last names when they're thinking.

I direct you to this quote: Don't talk to yourself in front of civilians, Valere (Gilman, 8).

It sounds like an obnoxious gym coach, and confuses me. How much do you, as a person, call yourself by your last name? It's just a part of the liberal coating of Mary Sue that is applied to this character.

There weren't any elements of the book that didn't feel rehashed (read: Joss already did it and did it way better) from other books, TV series, and movies in this genre and of course there's a big repressive Council - because there's always a big repressive Council.

The scene with Sergei and the Council really just made me laugh, because I could literally see the author straining to make the Council look cryptic and powerful and difficult, but really it all came off as ridiculous.

The relationship between Wren and Sergei didn't evoke anything in me besides boredom.

Although it might have been a vastly better novel if the author had bothered to realize just how frelled up a relationship between Wren and Sergei would have been. He takes custody of her when she's 18, is part of a secret organization, and is basically her partner and caretaker?

That could go to so many dark, delicious, frakked up places. That would be a novel worth reading.

But no. This author kept it on the pedantic side.

I gave it the plus, because it is a quick, simple read and didn't offend me in anyway.




While we're on the topic, can I just ask a favor of all you writers of fantasy (contemporary, urban or otherwise) that see fit to set your tale in the fair city of New York?

Remember that there are five boroughs. FIVE. They are not all Manhattan. So maybe, just maybe, you could have someone living in the Bronx or Brooklyn or Queens or something. That'd be just dandy.

Thanks.

I live in New York City, and boy am I tired of people acting like the four other boroughs don't exist. Yes, I work in Manhattan, and I can understand why people are taken by it. It's swanky, suave, exciting, fast paced. And it gets old after the first gazillion novels.

It also gets tiring when you set it in the same three or four neighborhoods.

The other boroughs have their charms, their quirks, and their fascinating places. You want to be different? Try another borough on for size. Manhattan's been done.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book, so no comment on that, but Gilman lived and worked in Manhattan.

So there's probably hometown bias there.

Um. I refer to myself in my head by last name when self-addressing habitually. (I only refer to myself in the third person when I'm mad at me. But I do it every single time.)

<--Mary Sue?

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I, too, yell at myself in the third person and by last name. I have no idea why. I never even really realized I did it until I accidentally ran a red light shortly before I got married and said, "Good job, Fuller!" and was all amazed that I had switched over mentally from Haskell already. And then I was chagrined that I had called myself by my last name. :)

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

And then I was chagrined that I had called myself by my last name

Just a question. When you do this, is it usually when you're angry/frustrated or is just part of your regular internal conversation process?

People are sounding off and saying that they *do*, in fact, call themselves by their last names, and since I was wrong, I'm curious as to why and what goes into that.

I realize it's a weird thing to examine, but I'm interested.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

Writers are all about examining weird things, no?

Uhm... part of my normal internal conversational process, I guess? Because I don't usually refer to myself as any name in particular, other than my last name. But it is only when I've done something boneheaded, and not necessarily when I'm frustrated/angry...

Further--it's a relatively new thing, in my personal history, and something I've only done since acquiring male friends who refer to anyone and anything by their last names when they do something boneheaded. It's definitely a conversational tic I picked up from them. I did not come from my mother's house doing this.

Also, to be fair, if this is your pet peeve, it's your pet peeve. My peeves include spelling magic with a k at the end and a variety of other things.... And you firmly entrenched the last name part in the personal opinion part of the review. I'm just saying, I do it. It's not the most Mary Sue thing on earth. Probably. But what do I know? I have pretentiously spelled first name and green eyes. I'm practically a walking Mary Sue! :) :) :)

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

<--Mary Sue?

Depends on if you're part of a lukewarm psuedo-noir magic PI novel. If you are then, yes, you are a Mary Sue. Shame on you.

I apparently stand very, very corrected on the referring to yourself by last name. I guess it wasn't something I'd ever thought about that deeply (my bad).

You and like, two other people have chimed in and told me that I was wrong. Huh.

So there's probably hometown bias there.

Yeah, and as a New Yorker, I can't really argue with her accuracy of New York, it's just that as someone who lives in Queens and spends lots of time in Brooklyn as well as working in Manhattan? It'd be kind of nice to see other parts of the city get some love.

I remember when I used to set every single thing I ever wrote in a medium sized Southern town (because that's where I'm from at the time), so it's sort of a pot and kettle situation going on. But still. There are five (FIVE!) boroughs. Can't the other four get some love?