My biggest issue was Bradley's overpowering method of pushing her own agenda and beliefs in the book. She tried creating this book with all these feminist ideas and ended up creating a bunch of female characters that were almost entirely loathsome, and male characters that were so incredibly stupid that you couldn't respect them. It seemed like by the end there were no characters left for you to sympathize with. I know that you're supposed to identify with Morgaine, but I found it impossible. There were a number of points in the book where you thought you had finally seen some sort of character growth, only to find you'd been bamboozled when two paragraphs later the character is back to being the same tired stereotype they've been through the entire book. Even Morgaine showed little or no growth from the start to the finish of the book.
Hm. I agree the male characters were lacking, and the feminism was rather overwhelming... but I liked some of the female characters well enough. Morgaine does absolutely get harder to identify with later on, as does Vivian. And Mordred isn't exactly weak or stupid, but, well, kind of evil.
I also wasn't a huge fan of the way that people would look at one another and basically be able to tell everything about them. There must have been dozens of times in the book where someone would look at someone else and fall in love, or know that they were in love with someone. It got old really fast.
Fair enough.
The other thing I would have liked to see was a bit more work on the descriptions in the book. Bradley's style of description was quite lacking, with such simple descriptions as "the castle was old gray rock" instead of describing the castle itself. This is a common criticism of character driven works, but in the fantasy genre one comes to expect a bit more descriptiveness about the setting to help draw you deeper into the story...and this was sadly lacking. Bradley relied too much on the readers preconceived notions of Arthurian settings, and I think it was a big shortcoming in her book.
That didn't bother me... the descriptions were quite extensive enough. Of course I first read it at a rather young age, I think I was 14 or so, so maybe my standards for such things weren't as high, and when reading in English some of the description inevitably gets lost to me anyhow, even now, and a lot more so at the time.
There was quite a bit more about the book that I hated, but I guess I could sum it up by saying that I don't really think it was the story that was lacking, rather I think it was the characters and the writing. Bradley is a quite capable author, I've read many of her Darkover books and enjoyed them, but I couldn't enjoy this book even though I went into it really wanting to. A little more subtlety, a little character growth, and some adequate descriptions and I might have enjoyed the book. As it is, I hated it. In spite of that I do actually intend to give it one more chance; I'm going to read through it again to see if I can't ignore, or at least put on the backburner, some of the things that bothered me so much the first time through.
I think if I read it again I'd probably be the opposite, I'd find much more flaws in it and like it a lot less.
Edit: though I say "feminist" I wouldn't exactly call what she's pushing as feminist ideology. Feminist ideology I have no problems with...I'm just not entirely sure what to call Bradley's agenda in this book, and I think it may have been what she thought feminism should be.
Oh, it is feminist, but just one kind of feminism of course. There are many different kinds of feminist ideology... Bradley's was not the most attractive kind, that's for sure.
So...what books DON'T you like?
- 06/09/2009 04:57:28 AM
1977 Views
I have a couple I really disliked
- 06/09/2009 05:28:38 AM
1374 Views
Some examples
- 07/09/2009 08:25:37 PM
1175 Views
You think Battlefield Earth is bad, try reading his Mission Earth series. *NM*
- 08/09/2009 02:09:22 AM
685 Views
I read those in high school. I liked them. Stupid comic escapism. *NM*
- 08/09/2009 02:18:31 AM
737 Views
I read them when I was in high school too...at least the first 3 or 4
- 08/09/2009 02:47:12 AM
1297 Views
Re: I read them when I was in high school too...at least the first 3 or 4
- 08/09/2009 04:18:07 PM
1397 Views
Re: I read them when I was in high school too...at least the first 3 or 4
- 08/09/2009 06:26:00 PM
1251 Views
No, thanks. I think all my masochism got spent on Terry Goodkind *NM*
- 08/09/2009 07:25:41 PM
710 Views
*NM*
- 08/09/2009 07:25:41 PM
710 Views
Political polemics, for one. Utopian novels, for another.
- 06/09/2009 05:29:54 AM
1194 Views
I don't have enough hours in the day to detail this or something even worse
- 06/09/2009 05:45:35 AM
1338 Views
Oh, a lot of things. But I wonder.
- 06/09/2009 07:00:34 AM
1333 Views
Re: Oh, a lot of things. But I wonder.
- 06/09/2009 07:05:51 AM
1300 Views
!
Oh plenty
- 06/09/2009 09:37:23 AM
1309 Views
I hated Wuthering Heights more than Jane Eyre, but I hated Jane Eyre, too. *NM*
- 06/09/2009 02:54:49 PM
761 Views
I like all books I have ever read.
- 06/09/2009 12:09:51 PM
1350 Views
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer. In Ye Olde English, it's harder to translate than ancient Greek. *NM*
- 06/09/2009 05:07:49 PM
735 Views
The Canterbury Tales are not Old English. They are Middle English.
- 06/09/2009 05:59:59 PM
1366 Views
Indeed, translating old english, and reading middle english are very very different
- 06/09/2009 07:11:13 PM
1263 Views
As I'm translating some ancient Greek right now, I call bullshit on that. *NM*
- 06/09/2009 08:45:46 PM
687 Views
I was going to, but I felt I had already been pedantic enough. *NM*
- 07/09/2009 02:34:04 AM
749 Views
The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
- 06/09/2009 05:58:39 PM
1289 Views
*NM*
Catcher in the Rye and Heart of Darkness, among the "classics." *NM*
- 06/09/2009 08:15:12 PM
727 Views
Vellum by Hal Duncan and The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson
- 06/09/2009 08:16:12 PM
1344 Views
Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- 06/09/2009 08:24:07 PM
1245 Views
I liked a Portrait of the Artist, personally, though the (lack of real) punctuation grated *NM*
- 07/09/2009 12:18:50 AM
660 Views
I didn't mind Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog...I mean Man
- 07/09/2009 02:40:14 AM
1235 Views
What?
- 06/09/2009 08:28:17 PM
1420 Views
Oh, and maybe it was lost on me, but I never got much joy out of War and Peace
- 07/09/2009 12:22:48 AM
1161 Views
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.
- 07/09/2009 12:54:41 AM
1301 Views
Don't flame me for saying it....
- 07/09/2009 04:49:40 AM
1358 Views
One last one: Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley *NM*
- 07/09/2009 07:44:48 AM
730 Views
Have you ever seen the mini-series?
- 07/09/2009 05:42:45 PM
1287 Views
Never have I seen such good acting in such a dreadful movie/mini-series.
- 07/09/2009 05:44:47 PM
1187 Views
I love really really bad TV movies sometimes....they make for lots of laughter
- 07/09/2009 06:06:38 PM
1163 Views
Actually, you might like it. As in, think it's good.
- 07/09/2009 06:11:14 PM
1213 Views
I had a couple of issues with the book that I could easily see being removed from the movie
- 07/09/2009 07:01:40 PM
1153 Views
Yeah, you might like it then.
- 07/09/2009 07:20:04 PM
1219 Views
A Confederacy of Dunces.
- 08/09/2009 06:13:59 AM
1294 Views
Crap. That's two people now.
- 09/09/2009 01:42:40 AM
1166 Views
*NM*
Hitchickers guide to the galaxy and The Good earth by Pearl S. Buck
- 09/09/2009 01:07:01 AM
1261 Views