(no subject)

[quigonejinn]

Dear God. The storytelling in the book is as disciplined as a freshman girl in Cancun for spring break -- so much drunken POV hookups forgotten the next morning, so many wet rambling monologue contests, and hey, how about another stand at the POV keg? There was even an ill-advised appearance on the Girls Gone Wild/superobvious Freudian stage, what with mama rubbing the snake's head and Alexander humping mama's bare body while daddy gets naked, flashbacks extra free.

I mean. It was fucking great in some places. See all the places above where I screamed. See, too, when I had to throw down the book and run around the apartment because omg Hephaestion swapping pillows with Alexander because akdj;lgkdjfadf omg Renault, you write sappy gay martial devotion in a way that makes me squeal like a pig. But I now understand why two_if_by_sea couldn't make it through the first part of the book.

Stick to the first person, Mary. It'll not only keep you from getting the world's worse of crotch itch, but you'll probably also end up writing a book that's actually, you know. A book. And not just 400 pages of writerly indulgence.



In other news, I'm going to be (mostly) out of commission for the next week or so while the laptop is off in the shop. Again. Because I am awful hard on my computers.

Comments

[neotoma.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. It sounds like I wouldn't get through it at all. Messy POV switches tend to make me dizzy, and then I put down the book and forget about it...

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Ditto. Except, for me, there's a detour to throwing the book across the room and yelling at the author to stop being a fucking retard or whatever. XD

If the world sounds intruiging, try The Persian Boy by the same author. Even more crazy-ass goodness, but since she's writing in the first person, there aren't any of those POV shifts.

[gentilhomme.livejournal.com]

The book sounds like a trainwreck, which half makes me want to read it and half run away screaming.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

XD It's not that bad, in a way, if you don't try to sit down and read the whole damn thing. If you only keep at it for about fifteen or twenty minutes a day, the POV shifts aren't so insane, and the awesome little details that Renault throws in -- hetaira machinations! Hephaestion's OMGWOEZ crush! -- get to shine.

Then again, you could just read The Persian Boy, which comes chronologically afterwards, but has all the squeal-inducing details, and much less of the stupid, stupid writing.

[two-if-by-sea.livejournal.com]

um my favorite part of that book is when somehow Hephaestion and Alexander hook up but RENAULT MANAGES TO SKIP THE HOOKUP? WTF WOMAN. I WAS WAITING THE WHOLE BOOK FOR IT.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

OMG. YEAH. AND THEN OH, UM, LOOK, THEY DID IT IN THE PIG-HOLLOW OR WHATEVER. HOW COME THE LITTLE FOXES GET TO WATCH AND WE DON'T?