Time to stop wasting my time
Saturday, October 6th, 2007 09:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsaikoSo I stopped reading Tanith Lee's White as Snow last night. Notice I didn't say "finished." I didn't finish the book. I got about 1/3 of the way through, read the last couple of pages, and just stopped. Ugh.
I thought I was use to the way, as Terri Windling puts in the foreword, The Fairy Tale Series seeks to "reclaim" fairy tales from children. In other words, these people want to make these stories "adult." You know how these authors do that? By adding sex, blood, dark twisted sex, sex, more dark twisted sex, horror, sex, murder, sex, more sex, oh and did we mention SEX? Right. Never mind that you can make a book horribly adult without spilling a drop of blood or even alluding to sex. That's too hard. These authors go the easy route, and I totally understood what I was getting into.
Oh god, nothing could save this book. Nothing. It started out great even with the rape of what was to become the evil Queen. There was plot. There was motivation. It was setting itself up to be one kick ass story.
Then the author decided that the Queen should go into shock for nine months until her kid is born. Okay, she was uprooted from her home, raped, and then forced to marry the guy who raped her. That's fine. I can understand her going into shock until the kid is born and even hating the kid. Wait... she then goes into emotional shock for another seven years, letting life just go by, until she see some hot young thing she wants and instantly falls in love with him? WTF? You have got to be kidding me. Talk about shallow characterization. At least I get to read about "Snow White" for... a whole ten pages. Then we're back to the Queen. In the 105 pages that I read, Snow White shows up exactly twice, for about five pages each. She's maybe mentioned another 1/2 dozen times. Who is this book supposed to be about again?
And then the beatings with the symbolism stick start. I don't usually get symbolism. It's very hard for me to do. When I feel like I'm getting beaten with the symbolism stick, then I can only imagine other people must feel like they are getting hit by a Mack truck that then shifts into reverse and backs over their still twitching bodies. I get that the mirror is important to the story. It's fucking Snow White. Every child over the age of five gets that the mirror is important in the story. Hell, most kids even get that the mirror is a symbol for something else. I don't need to be reminded of that fact every three pages.
That's not the worse though. The worse is that the author then decides to combine the Persephone/Demeter myth with Snow White. Okay... sure. Right. But that's not enough. Nope. We then have to add some Christian mythology (the dwarves appear as the seven deadly sins) and some Pagan rituals as well. Because really, all this story needed was a little more SYMBOLISM. It's not like Snow White came with any already.
At this point, I'm wondering where the dark, plot driven story I started reading went. It seemed to have unraveled completely. Maybe it gets better? I decide the only way to find out is to read the last five pages of the story.
Dear god, it got worse?!?!?!?
I kid you not, this is what I found out in the last five pages. One of the dwarves (they actually show up as real people at some point) sleeps with the Prince so that the Prince will give up Snow White so that she and the dwarf can run off into the sunset together. Snow White is pregnant with the Prince's child that was conceived while she was poisoned and lying like a corpse in the glass coffin. Oh and the Prince? Also slept with and brutally killed the Queen in front of Snow White, doesn't understand why Snow White is horribly traumatized by this fact, and is letting her go with the dwarf because she didn't appreciate the gift of her mother's death enough.
No. Just... no. I'm through with this book. And after the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snail_mail_porn challenge, I'm writing a fairytale just to cleanse my brain of this crap.
I thought I was use to the way, as Terri Windling puts in the foreword, The Fairy Tale Series seeks to "reclaim" fairy tales from children. In other words, these people want to make these stories "adult." You know how these authors do that? By adding sex, blood, dark twisted sex, sex, more dark twisted sex, horror, sex, murder, sex, more sex, oh and did we mention SEX? Right. Never mind that you can make a book horribly adult without spilling a drop of blood or even alluding to sex. That's too hard. These authors go the easy route, and I totally understood what I was getting into.
Oh god, nothing could save this book. Nothing. It started out great even with the rape of what was to become the evil Queen. There was plot. There was motivation. It was setting itself up to be one kick ass story.
Then the author decided that the Queen should go into shock for nine months until her kid is born. Okay, she was uprooted from her home, raped, and then forced to marry the guy who raped her. That's fine. I can understand her going into shock until the kid is born and even hating the kid. Wait... she then goes into emotional shock for another seven years, letting life just go by, until she see some hot young thing she wants and instantly falls in love with him? WTF? You have got to be kidding me. Talk about shallow characterization. At least I get to read about "Snow White" for... a whole ten pages. Then we're back to the Queen. In the 105 pages that I read, Snow White shows up exactly twice, for about five pages each. She's maybe mentioned another 1/2 dozen times. Who is this book supposed to be about again?
And then the beatings with the symbolism stick start. I don't usually get symbolism. It's very hard for me to do. When I feel like I'm getting beaten with the symbolism stick, then I can only imagine other people must feel like they are getting hit by a Mack truck that then shifts into reverse and backs over their still twitching bodies. I get that the mirror is important to the story. It's fucking Snow White. Every child over the age of five gets that the mirror is important in the story. Hell, most kids even get that the mirror is a symbol for something else. I don't need to be reminded of that fact every three pages.
That's not the worse though. The worse is that the author then decides to combine the Persephone/Demeter myth with Snow White. Okay... sure. Right. But that's not enough. Nope. We then have to add some Christian mythology (the dwarves appear as the seven deadly sins) and some Pagan rituals as well. Because really, all this story needed was a little more SYMBOLISM. It's not like Snow White came with any already.
At this point, I'm wondering where the dark, plot driven story I started reading went. It seemed to have unraveled completely. Maybe it gets better? I decide the only way to find out is to read the last five pages of the story.
Dear god, it got worse?!?!?!?
I kid you not, this is what I found out in the last five pages. One of the dwarves (they actually show up as real people at some point) sleeps with the Prince so that the Prince will give up Snow White so that she and the dwarf can run off into the sunset together. Snow White is pregnant with the Prince's child that was conceived while she was poisoned and lying like a corpse in the glass coffin. Oh and the Prince? Also slept with and brutally killed the Queen in front of Snow White, doesn't understand why Snow White is horribly traumatized by this fact, and is letting her go with the dwarf because she didn't appreciate the gift of her mother's death enough.
No. Just... no. I'm through with this book. And after the
snail_mail_porn challenge, I'm writing a fairytale just to cleanse my brain of this crap.