So Many Books... - 120 Hour Challenge

10:02 pm - 120 Hour Challenge

Just why did I think it was a good idea to commit to a book a day for the rest of this week? I've had brighter ideas in my day.



Is it just me, or does that whole image look a bit female reproductive organ-like?

Read Betwixt a few weeks ago, and am still in 2 - 3 - more - minds about it. At first I thought it was just settling-in unevenesses in the writing, which threw me out of the story a bit. Passages like this one, which comes in the middle of a section from the POV of Ondine, one of the three main characters, and then switches to her father's perspective.

How many times had Ralph Mason looked at her in just this way, trying to read what was behind her velvety eyes? He couldn't. Ondine was a normal young woman, a budding painter, a bratty sister (at times), a good daughter, a great friend to the people she chose to trust. And though he had been there at her birth - delivered her, in fact - there was something untouchable about the girl that even her own father could not get at.

Hmmm. Anyway, the three alternating POV characters, Ondine, Nix and Morgan, got rolling along with a dark and often disturbing story of -- well, of a very different type of changeling from the one normally encountered in fantasy stories. I don't know if I was being terribly thick or if the Arthurian stuff was left more than a bit confusedly seething for now (a sequel is following). For example, Morgan is called Morge(use) and Morgana at different points, and clearly has something seriously unhealthy going on with her brother (K.A.), resulting in a sickly jealous hatred of his girlfriend Neve. But as everything spiraled off further and further from the type of fantasy story it seemed to be at the start, I got more and more lost as to the significance of this.

Another thing I thought was very odd was the way Ondine was described, with phrases like 'caramel-colored face', and I think there were cappuccinos or lattes and the like somewhere there as well. She has violet eyes, to her parents' brown and brother's hazel, and that's it, until over halfway through when she suddenly says 'I'm black! I'm black!' and shortly after it says 'Usually she didn't go for ethnic solidarity stuff, but today the fact of the woman's brown skin - and her big liquid eyes, understanding and compassionate - calmed her.' Why the -- coyness? I'm not sure that's fair, but it seemed strange to use a lot of qualifiers which leave Ondine's race a very open question, until the plot requires it to be a significant point and then it's rather heavily emphasized. I almost wondered if the author thought it was going to be a tricksy 'gotcha' moment because Nix is Native American and homeless, Morgan is white and disgusted to be living in a trailer, while Ondine's family is very affluent, cultured and highly educated. Don't know.

I had a very hard time indeed with Morgan's sections, not only because she was thoroughly unlikeable but also because I got tired of her stream of narrative vitriol directed at Neve, who was a 'trashy slut; little strung-out whore; conniving little crack' etc, etc.. I also found it extremely annoying to have characters described as 'the dark haired girl' or the like, instead of just using the name. The adjective overuse was another habit that irritated me, as it seemed almost no noun could go unqualified.

But for all that, it was a compelling story, and I never felt I had the slightest idea where it would go next. It's very likely that when the sequel comes out, I'll be reading that avidly, grumbling as I go too,