a quartet of book reviews: I

One of the coolest things about my job (my aspiring-novelist job, that is, not any of the others that I occasionally hold) is that part of the job is keeping up on the most recent books in my field. The upshot of that is that I get to consider it a duty to read lots of JFIC and YA fantasy novels... which is pretty much my favorite thing to do anyway.

Conveniently, Uncle Orson is a big fan of this genre as well, and has reviewed quite a few books recently. I picked up Megan Whalen Turner's Eugenides books not long ago on his recommendation, and enjoyed them so much I went combing through his past reviews for other recommendations. I picked out four, all from different authors, put them on hold at my library, and have diligently been plowing through them over the last week.

It's a mixed bag. He's an interesting reviewer, is Uncle Orson... I tend to agree with him in principle on what makes a great story, but I've found I often disagree with him when it comes to how well a particular book or movie does in fulfilling the principles. All four of the books I got received high praise, but I found one of them unpalatable, one weak, and one good but not nearly as momentous as he made it out to be. I've learned a good bit already about my craft, though, from reading them.

The unpalatable one was Mira, Mirror, by Mette Ivie Harrison. I was very excited about this one: it's a spinoff of Snow White, telling the story of a girl who was betrayed and trapped in a magic mirror. What a cool concept! To my disappointment, though, the Snow White story was barely touched on, and finished off, as far as I can tell, in the first chapter. The rest of the story seems to be entirely unrelated to the fairy tale, and instead tells the story of the mirror-girl's own redemption. I say "seems" because I only got a few chapters in. The promise of seeing a new and intriguing twist on the familiar story held my interest during the prologue, but once it became apparent that we weren't going to deal with Snow White, I found little reason to keep reading.

Two factors combined for this book's downfall. First, it's unpleasant. Magical power, in this story, comes from absorbing the life-force of another, usually by being present as he, she, or it dies. Apparently the more painful the death, the more power it gives. This doesn't make for a world I'm anxious to spend a lot of time in.

Unpleasantness alone, though, isn't enough to make a book off-putting. A book in an unpleasant world, or dealing with unpleasant things, can be very compelling. But it has to be compelling. This book, as far as I read it, simply... isn't. In fact, on the whole, I found it pretty dull. The world seems to be generic fairy-tale land, a woodsy medieval society without any distinguishing features other than the death=magic idea. And the main character is even duller. She starts out weak and innocent, and becomes weak and guilty. After being trapped in a mirror for a hundred-odd years, she has few scruples about doing what it takes to get herself out, from killing a huntsman to deceiving a lost peasant girl.

It is hard to be sympathetic to a character who behaves cruelly. It is even harder to be sympathetic to a character who behaves cruelly out of weakness. She does the things she does because she is desperate, but there's no power even in her desperation. There's no strength anywhere in her to make her interesting, no potent conflict. She doesn't agonize over the huntsman she kills to keep herself alive; she just feels vaguely sorry but tells herself she had no choice, and lets it go.

This illustrates for me something writing teachers have always said: characters need to be strong. They can be nice or they can be mean, they can be powerful or powerless, but there needs to be strength. Passion. Conflict. Something. If she's going to rationalize her behavior, let her rationalize passionately. Whatever she's doing, let her struggle. If this character had been sweet and pleasant and kind, I might have kept reading, but I would still have been bored. But an unpleasant and dull character gives me no reason at all to keep going.

The peasant girl who the mirror-girl seizes on as her ticket to freedom is, as far as I can tell, a sweet and pleasant and dull character. From the shape of the first few chapters, I could tell you how the story will proceed: the nasty and dull mirror-girl will continue trying to take advantage of the sweet and dull peasant girl, until the peasant girl's sweetness begins to penetrate and the mirror-girl has a change of heart. Maybe at some point some intensity will gather somewhere, and the book will become interesting. I don't really care to find out.

Lessons learned:
1) A fascinating biography, remarkable predicament, or link to an interesting subject are not enough to make a character interesting. If there is no spark or strength or struggle, the character is going to be boring, and that is that.

2) If you're going to make your story or your setting unpleasant, you've got to work extra hard to make it worth reading.

3) No one owes you a reading. You have to earn the readers' interest, and you have to earn it from the beginning, or they will get bored and quit. It doesn't matter how powerful and fascinating your ending is, if you lose half your readers at the beginning.