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Sep. 17th, 2022 05:06 pmHave 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.
+ 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.
