Sunday, September 24, 2006
Chick lit
My evil friend Dahlia showed up one day recently and dumped not one, but FOUR paperbacks by Anne Bishop - the Black Jewels Trilogy (yes, four books, the new meaning of 'trilogy' in Fantasy circles, I suppose) on me. I resisted manfully (hah) at first, taking a strong dislike within the first 15 pages to the depressing characters and the ridiculous naming conventions and seemingly pointless dark-is-good inversion (the good guys were Saetan and Daemon; and Saetan was the cheerful old High Lord of Hell). But unfortunately, after casting the first book aside, I took it up again and got suckered in.
So these novels are perfectly targeted at women - the central character is a young woman with serious angst but who is so powerful she is the salvation of her world, but who can't cook or find her shoes. She's surrounded by males she chooses to be her father, brother, and mate, who are enormously powerful and who live to serve her. She eventually does save the world and then chooses to give up her power to become a 'normal' witch - which means she can cook and find her shoes and not scare people by blasting Bad Men to smithereens with a look and no longer has the fate of the world resting on her powerful-but-vulnerable shoulders. Somehow it strikes me as a metaphor for post-feminist angst about wanting to leave the career world and settle down with a garden and a flock of chickens. ;-)
AND of course there are the obligatory animals-that-can-talk. I blush to even write about these books - which, by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed (which is NOT to say I'd recommend them unless you have time to burn and you're female).
One plot device that grew very old very fast was the 'misunderstanding' - "Oh, he looked crosseyed at me; he hates me because I'm poor/rich/powerful/weak/daft," followed by a series of crosseyed looks delivered in the OTHER direction, causing distress on the other side of the True Love Pair, ratcheting up until a village got slaughtered or whatever (these are powerful people, dontcha know) and then everything gets settled out... util the next crisis-of-confidence. Please. That gets old fast, even in fiction (especially in fiction).
Thanks, Dahlia. Not!! :-) ¶ 6:53 PM
So these novels are perfectly targeted at women - the central character is a young woman with serious angst but who is so powerful she is the salvation of her world, but who can't cook or find her shoes. She's surrounded by males she chooses to be her father, brother, and mate, who are enormously powerful and who live to serve her. She eventually does save the world and then chooses to give up her power to become a 'normal' witch - which means she can cook and find her shoes and not scare people by blasting Bad Men to smithereens with a look and no longer has the fate of the world resting on her powerful-but-vulnerable shoulders. Somehow it strikes me as a metaphor for post-feminist angst about wanting to leave the career world and settle down with a garden and a flock of chickens. ;-)
AND of course there are the obligatory animals-that-can-talk. I blush to even write about these books - which, by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed (which is NOT to say I'd recommend them unless you have time to burn and you're female).
One plot device that grew very old very fast was the 'misunderstanding' - "Oh, he looked crosseyed at me; he hates me because I'm poor/rich/powerful/weak/daft," followed by a series of crosseyed looks delivered in the OTHER direction, causing distress on the other side of the True Love Pair, ratcheting up until a village got slaughtered or whatever (these are powerful people, dontcha know) and then everything gets settled out... util the next crisis-of-confidence. Please. That gets old fast, even in fiction (especially in fiction).
Thanks, Dahlia. Not!! :-) ¶ 6:53 PM
