busyTHERE WILL BE SPOILERS.
Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.) I will be DELETING all comments containing spoilers which have been left on other posts. No one gets to spoil people here without a label.
You can also start a discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.
Have fun, and try not to bleed on the carpet.
March 10 2013, 21:36:23 UTC 4 years ago
Yes, there were a number of good parts. But unlike the books with Toby and Velveteen and Rose, both of the Verity books have left me feeling, well, off-balance. Not in the good "Oh, what a plot twist, didn't see that coming" way, but rather in the "Huh?!?" way.
In MBS, the biggest thing in this department was the big build-up and then the almost total disappearance of The Rescuers. Once Sarah has taken over the narrative, there is a lot of effort put into getting the various people (I include both humans and cryptids in that term) that like Verity into being a rescue team. The mice would scout, Uncle Mike could take care of the traps they found, Istas could provide carnage and so on. They would set aside their differences and all help. This had the feeling of a Very Important, Never-Seen-Before Alliance of many disparate types. And then... nothing.
Oh, I realize that it's Verity's book. I expected her to get more than half of the action in getting her out of her captivity. But after the buildup I expected The Rescuers to have a much larger part than they did. Maybe 70% Verity fighting her way out and 30% The Rescuers fighting their way in (perhaps Providing A Significant Offstage Distraction At A Crucial Moment for Verity to take advantage of). But having Verity fight hard and lose and then The Rescuers Are Suddenly Right There To Save Everything just left me off-balance. It felt like there were a couple of chapters that just went missing.
Now, maybe I'm just projecting about what I'd like to have seen. With the repeated mention of how well the Aeslin Mice could (and WOULD) scout, I have to admit that I was really anticipating that something would be done with that. Maybe another POV shift to the scouting team, or maybe have Sarah get Attuned to one of the Mice (more disparate-cryptids-cooperation!) and stay with her POV - but instead, there was nothing.
Then there's Uncle Mike, introduced early on as A Powerful Ally - he pretty much doesn't do anything in the whole book. Again, feeling off-balance. All the references to Istas on the carnage front (love for it and capability for it)? No carnage from her. Sarah and Istas Getting Help From The Dragons? A big build-up, but the payoff was what - a single line when they're in the aftermath? Something like that. Margaret showing up at Sarah's hotel while having an anti-telepath device? It works OK if Dominic DID tip off The Covenant - but since we later find out he DIDN'T, how does that work? Do we just assign both of those things to Margaret's "Healy Luck"? Verity's Big Decision about Dancing vs The Family Business? Well, DA was awash with how Dancing Was Such An Integral Part Of Her Life. MBS, however, had just the barest of mentions in a couple of places. It just didn't seem like Her Love Of Dancing was really a part of this book.
So - lots of good individual moments, but the book as a whole left me feeling off-balance.
March 11 2013, 15:59:50 UTC 4 years ago
As for Verity's Big Decision...you know, I think it wasn't even a contest from the getgo. The girl has been RAISED to be a cryptozoologist since birth. You can't really get out of that, you can't stick your head in the sand and pretend you don't know who's a cryptid and who needs help when shit comes up. There's so few people that can be called on when the baby-eating monsters come. Plus there's the part where she'd still have to spend her life under a false identity hoping the Covenant doesn't watch reality television if her Healy cheekbones are that distinctive. (I assume they don't watch Dance Or Die in Europe.)
They say we have free will and can choose, but I actually suspect there's a fair chunk of situations out there where TECHNICALLY you have free will....but not really*. The decks are so stacked for you making one decision and against you making the opposite decision, that it would be a near-impossibility to choose the other side. Even if Verity did give up cryptozoology and her family and her cryptid friends and family, could she really? Is she going to send home her mice? How many days or weeks (I won't say months) could "Valerie Pryor" try to live a dance-only life before Verity is needed again? Once you're in the superhero life, there''s no "normal life" option available for you, really. Maybe if "Valerie" tried to have a dance career in Australia where she knows nobody and isn't down with the local wildlife, she might have a shot...but it's a long shot and not going to stick anyway.
I think the point was that Verity could try to do both and see how it goes, but in the end, like every other cryptozoologist, she can't really juggle them both as two serious jobs. That was the point in that conversation with Mike. So while it was a debate for Verity, in reality....dance wasn't going to win. It couldn't.
* I have been trying to find a vocabulary word for this for years and have been failing. I still think we need one.