When Bad Books ATTACK
Aug. 26th, 2008 08:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xraytheenforcerOh. My. Gods.
While I was purging the bookshelves, I ran across a mmpb that someone shoved in my hands at NY ComiCon. It is one of the cheesiest, worst-written books I've ever read. It's AWESOMELY BAD. Or maybe BADLY AWESOME. No, it's both.
Here is the premise, sketched helpfully in pop-culture detritus: Driving Miss Buffy Mars the Sex Elf Slayer.
Yes. We have a Buffy (we're talking the movie Buffy, not SMG), who happens to be from Podunk, Georgia, investigating the murder of her sister. In Ireland. But she's being pursued by Fae with sex magic. Fae who make human women so crazed for hot, throbbing elf cock that they screw themselves into an early grave. And she has to kill these Sidhe Sex Demons to save the world. Yes, good people, this might be the book of my warped, filthy, pestilent dreams.
So, that's the premise and plot. Pretty awesome, all around. The writing, though, is terrible. This bothers me, to be honest. It hews to every convention seen in romance and thriller novels -- characterization by way of hobbies, displayed as bare as an autopsy photo (OMG, I totally love iTunes and I love pink!), name-brand dropping to indicate social status (I put my iPod into my dad's Bose Sound Dock), and incessant descriptions of clothing as the scene opens to indicate the characters internal state. I was really pissed that Scott Bakker glommed onto this habit in the early chapters of Neuropath, but took it as his send-up of the genre.
In any case, as an editor, this rigid consistency of cliche bothers me because it indicates a couple of (not mutually exclusive) things: 1) editors demand that their writers (some of whom are just slumming it because romance pays) include this horrific shit because the readers expect and want it, 2) writers automatically include it because it's a convention, and what is most genre fiction but a good cementing of the conventions, and the readers now expect it, and 3) the readers will not buy books that do not stick to these conventions.
I know that this writer can do better -- her name is suggestive enough to be a pseudonym and there are brief flashes of talent beneath the crust. Hell, it's pretty obvious that writer is taking the piss (think early Anita Blake) -- whether Dell wants to sell this book as a satire or not, I don't know. It makes me wonder: what about all the other hundreds of books that aren't piss-takes?
I want to take one of these editors out for drinks one night, pick their brain. Quite frankly, I'm fucking fascinated.
In any case, I am only half-way through the book. Our Barbie-Buffy hero has had to (horror!) cut her long hair and dye it dark brown and look all sultry because...well, I'm not really sure. Something about "disguise" but that's just a lie. It's because good blonde girls do not chase elf cock. Slutty brunettes, however, gag for it. I look forward to the shuddering clima...er...denouement of this literary wonder.
While I was purging the bookshelves, I ran across a mmpb that someone shoved in my hands at NY ComiCon. It is one of the cheesiest, worst-written books I've ever read. It's AWESOMELY BAD. Or maybe BADLY AWESOME. No, it's both.
Here is the premise, sketched helpfully in pop-culture detritus: Driving Miss Buffy Mars the Sex Elf Slayer.
Yes. We have a Buffy (we're talking the movie Buffy, not SMG), who happens to be from Podunk, Georgia, investigating the murder of her sister. In Ireland. But she's being pursued by Fae with sex magic. Fae who make human women so crazed for hot, throbbing elf cock that they screw themselves into an early grave. And she has to kill these Sidhe Sex Demons to save the world. Yes, good people, this might be the book of my warped, filthy, pestilent dreams.
So, that's the premise and plot. Pretty awesome, all around. The writing, though, is terrible. This bothers me, to be honest. It hews to every convention seen in romance and thriller novels -- characterization by way of hobbies, displayed as bare as an autopsy photo (OMG, I totally love iTunes and I love pink!), name-brand dropping to indicate social status (I put my iPod into my dad's Bose Sound Dock), and incessant descriptions of clothing as the scene opens to indicate the characters internal state. I was really pissed that Scott Bakker glommed onto this habit in the early chapters of Neuropath, but took it as his send-up of the genre.
In any case, as an editor, this rigid consistency of cliche bothers me because it indicates a couple of (not mutually exclusive) things: 1) editors demand that their writers (some of whom are just slumming it because romance pays) include this horrific shit because the readers expect and want it, 2) writers automatically include it because it's a convention, and what is most genre fiction but a good cementing of the conventions, and the readers now expect it, and 3) the readers will not buy books that do not stick to these conventions.
I know that this writer can do better -- her name is suggestive enough to be a pseudonym and there are brief flashes of talent beneath the crust. Hell, it's pretty obvious that writer is taking the piss (think early Anita Blake) -- whether Dell wants to sell this book as a satire or not, I don't know. It makes me wonder: what about all the other hundreds of books that aren't piss-takes?
I want to take one of these editors out for drinks one night, pick their brain. Quite frankly, I'm fucking fascinated.
In any case, I am only half-way through the book. Our Barbie-Buffy hero has had to (horror!) cut her long hair and dye it dark brown and look all sultry because...well, I'm not really sure. Something about "disguise" but that's just a lie. It's because good blonde girls do not chase elf cock. Slutty brunettes, however, gag for it. I look forward to the shuddering clima...er...denouement of this literary wonder.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:37 pm (UTC);-P
no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:32 pm (UTC)And it's written by Laurell K Hamilton, right?
N
no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 01:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 06:56 pm (UTC)I'd love to see what Mr. Ringo would do with such a cool plot!
no subject
Date: 2008-08-26 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-27 12:02 am (UTC)Thank the Gods I have you to enlighten me.
:-)
no subject
Date: 2008-08-27 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 05:35 am (UTC)I think I can help. About 10 years ago I remember reading about a hentai series called Bondage Fairies, in which unspeakably cute fairies with wings and antennae have unspeakably kinky things done to them. It's pretty hot... er, if you like watching cuddly anime girls whip each other and get fucked by giant worms.
http://www.bondage-fairies.com/
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2164101/anime-hentai-ebooks-lesbo-bondage-fairies-1
no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 11:37 am (UTC)Everyone needs a hobby. ;-)