lirazel | (no subject)

Have any of y'all read A Strange and Stubborn Endurance? I can't decide how I feel about it.

+ It's well-written. The word choice is a little overwrought (how many times can you read "made my ablutions" in one book?), but that's just my opinion and everything else works--the syntax, the level of maturity, the pacing. It's an adult fantasy! Really truly! Written for an adult audience!

- Half of the book is written in first person from Vel's point of view; the other half is written in third person from Cae's. This is SO discombobulating to me!!!! I know a lot of people complain about books like, say, Spinning Silver, where we get at least 5 or 6 povs, all in first person, without being told at the beginning of the chapter whose mind we're in. I get those complaints! But I still found it much easier to switch back and forth from pov to pov while in one tense than to switch povs and tenses. I don't like it!

+ It's a "learning to get along after a political marriage" story which is my ultimate bullet-proof narrative kink.

- But I'm not overcome with the kind of feelings I usually am in stories about marrieds who fall in love? The two main characters are almost too good? It's not that they don't have flaws or are endlessly talented. They're not Mary Sues. But somehow they tend to communicate like people who have been to years of therapy and picked up all lingo and not like normal people. Sometimes they misunderstand each other, but there's no...accidentally hurting each other or being thoughtless or anything like that. It's just...too seamless? I guess? I can't even put this into words, how I felt reading it, but it reminds me of certain kinds of fanfic where you feel like someone wrote the story in a certain way so that it wouldn't get criticized by the kind of people who like to pearl-clutch about "unhealthy" dynamics or whatever.

+/- Culture clash is a thoroughline, and I love culture clash. But somehow there isn't enough of it or it isn't the right kind or something? Like...the fact that it's there but isn't quite what I want is more frustrating than if it wasn't there at all?

+/- The worldbuilding is fine! Nothing mindblowing but certainly not the shallow kind that pisses me off so much in some fantasies.

Idk idk...I just can't articulate why this book, which should have been a favorite of mine, instead inspired no particularly strong feelings in me.

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But somehow they tend to communicate like people who have been to years of therapy and picked up all lingo and not like normal people. Sometimes they misunderstand each other, but there's no...accidentally hurting each other or being thoughtless or anything like that. It's just...too seamless? I guess?

I totally get what you mean. I think in the wake of the heightened awareness of problematic interaction in fictional romances that was really normalized for a long time, we’ve swung a bit too far in the opposite direction to try to correct it — which in turn kind of takes some of the crackle and spark out of the romance if there’s never ANY misunderstanding or unwise or heated feelings. I think it also removes the stories of authentic human behavior a bit sometimes. Like, you can try to make your characters totally un-problematic, but what actual human being alive shares that quality, and therefore how can they possibly feel authentic?

Anyway, I haven’t read this one and probably won’t because adult fantasy isn’t my genre, so I don’t have any perspective on it. But re: your last point — sometimes we just don’t have that Spark with stuff even when technically it checks all our boxes! Idk if it is possible for humans and books to have chemistry, but I think it’s kinda like that. 😂

we’ve swung a bit too far in the opposite direction to try to correct it — which in turn kind of takes some of the crackle and spark out of the romance if there’s never ANY misunderstanding or unwise or heated feelings. I think it also removes the stories of authentic human behavior a bit sometimes. Like, you can try to make your characters totally un-problematic, but what actual human being alive shares that quality, and therefore how can they possibly feel authentic?

RIGHT? And as a super progressive bleeding-heart, if even I am like, "This is too far!" then it must really be too far!!!

sometimes we just don’t have that Spark with stuff even when technically it checks all our boxes! Idk if it is possible for humans and books to have chemistry, but I think it’s kinda like that

This is both true and wise!

I haven't read this, and the point you make about first and third has really dissuaded me from seeking it out. It just seems like something that would throw me out of the narrative!

I think I've read other books written in first person for some POV characters and third person for others, and that switched tense between POV characters, and I also found it very distracting.

Edited 2022-09-18 00:56 (UTC)

I have never read anything like it before! Is it a new thing? I hope it doesn't stick around!

I think I read this book 10+ years ago. I wish I remembered what the book was.

If you remember, let me know!

I've come across it before as well, and not that recently either! I remember it in The Shattering by Karen Healey, where there are three viewpoint characters and two of them are third person and one of them is first person. That book came out in 2011. And I found it baffling and irritating in that book too!

Yes, both baffling and irritating!

It's so weird! Both of the tenses work! But not together! Even though it's not like a back-and-forth per chapter--it'll be six or so chapters from one, then six or some from the other. Still!

this one's on my to read list yet, and now I'm really curious to see what I'll think, because the things you talk about that SHOULD work for you in this book but somehow don't are things I love too, so I'll be interested to see if it leaves me as cold as it does you!

I am super, super interested in hearing what you think of it!

well it seems to be available at my library so perhaps you shall hear sooner than later!

Looking forward to it whenever!

well I'm about halfway into it right now and finding it kind of infuriating! so I think you're going to get to read some extensive thoughts about it on my blog, once I finish it and distill my thoughts into something coherent!

Yessssss! You have a way of articulating the specific things that don't work for me in a book, so I'm excited to see if you can do that for this one too. And even if you can't, commiseration is also appreciated!

oh I have NOTES. I think I'm gonna get there! :D

I repeat myself: Yessssssss!!!!

But somehow they tend to communicate like people who have been to years of therapy and picked up all lingo and not like normal people. Sometimes they misunderstand each other, but there's no...accidentally hurting each other or being thoughtless or anything like that. It's just...too seamless? I guess?

I feel like this is increasingly common, and honestly, I trace it back to Tumblr. At some point, we went from "I like this relationship because it's interesting/angsty/complicated/hard-earned" to "I like this relationship because the characters never do anything potentially problematic or hurtful to each other." I think it's also part of the callout post cycle, where someone will make a name for themselves by announcing that "this book is VERY PROBLEMATIC, the main relationship is TOXIC (so buy my book instead.)" And Foz Meadows is certainly part of that culture, so I guess it makes sense that they'd write a book to match.

Yeah...yeah. I think you're right.

It really reminds me of the stiltedness of Christian fiction. In both cases, the writers are writing to advance an agenda, not tell a story, and it shows.

. . . you know, I never thought of it before, but that's EXACTLY what it is.

Yup. It is exactly the same. The book is preaching at you.