It Came From The Library!
Oct. 20th, 2009 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seriousficMagic Street by Orson Scott Card
What did we ever do to you, Mormons? Sure, we made fun of your silly religion, but whose religion don't we make fun of? Aside from the Muslims, because they'll cut our heads off.
For some reason, the premise of this book is taking the elf characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream and making them into black stereotypes. It's an okay premise, but the elves end up so unrecognizable that you could plug in any mythology and have the same result. Here, Oberon is just a Big Bad, Titania is just a femme fatale, and Puck is... well, Puck is at least a trickster, but there are so many 'shut the puck up' type jokes that you really wish he wasn't.
I'll give Card (Scott Card?) credit for doing a book with African-American leads, even if there does seem to be an undue fascination with the 'black/not black' divide, like he isn't writing about black issues so much as white men's issues with blacks. The problem is that, well, it's a middle-aged Mormon writing black kids in L.A. I know how odd it is for someone in suburban Texas to criticize someone's depiction of life in a middle-class black neighborhood, but I'm pretty sure no black person has ever called anyone a "motorcycle mama."
There is an interesting conceit, which is that at one point the Big Bad possesses a young pastor and gives him the power to do miracles. A lot of authors would have the pastor immediately turn into a religious zealot who wants to burn heathens and such, but to his credit, Card gives the character a crisis of faith where he wants to do good, but he doesn't know if he can use evil power to do it. Unfortunately, the storyline is given a pretty short shift. The third act has a bunch of wheel spinning as the characters explain the plot to each other ad nauseum, all to set up a climax that is pretty hard to follow.
There is one other thing I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for not mentioning.
So towards the end, our teenage hero turns out to have information in his subconscious that can help defeat the villain, and Titania (who, for someone who's supposed to be vulnerable to cold iron, spends a lot of time riding a motorcycle...) offers to get it out for him. The way she does this is to have sex with someone, which allows her to learn their secrets. Telesexuality, we might call it.
That's not the funny part.
Of course, this is being written by a middle-aged Mormon, so our teenage hero, when confronted with a beautiful woman who wants to have no-strings-attached sex with him to save the world, insists on getting married first. Because it's the Christian thing to do. Which, since the idea there is that you should only have sex with the person you love, makes me wonder if Card has ever heard of "the spirit of the law."
So the world's least horny teen and Titania get "one of those gay marriages that don't count" and do it. Because premarital sex is wrong, but forcing someone to marry you is A-OK! It's such a weird, awkward story beat that you wonder why Card even put it in. Certainly, nothing that comes before or after demands such an out-of-nowhere sequence. It's not like Titania is going around, schtupping the secrets out of guys beforehand, or that our hero took a purity vow. If the entire thing was just to send a "wait for marriage" message... you've gotta wonder about Card's ego. I don't care how good a writer you are, you're not convincing teenagers to stop having sex.
Unless you're Stephenie Meyer, of course. And really, how hard is it to convince women not to put out, AMIRITE FELLAS? AND HOW ABOUT THOSE AIRLINE PEANUTS!?
Angel: After the Fall
You know, I really tried to get into this, but after a while, it kinda got old how literally all the female characters were either evil, psychologically unstable, or harem girls. Well, not all of them. There's Kate, who is in a flashback, and Cordelia, who is Gwen Stacy.
Did you like that? I'm proud of it. Gwen Stacy, c'mon, that's some good shit.
What did we ever do to you, Mormons? Sure, we made fun of your silly religion, but whose religion don't we make fun of? Aside from the Muslims, because they'll cut our heads off.
For some reason, the premise of this book is taking the elf characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream and making them into black stereotypes. It's an okay premise, but the elves end up so unrecognizable that you could plug in any mythology and have the same result. Here, Oberon is just a Big Bad, Titania is just a femme fatale, and Puck is... well, Puck is at least a trickster, but there are so many 'shut the puck up' type jokes that you really wish he wasn't.
I'll give Card (Scott Card?) credit for doing a book with African-American leads, even if there does seem to be an undue fascination with the 'black/not black' divide, like he isn't writing about black issues so much as white men's issues with blacks. The problem is that, well, it's a middle-aged Mormon writing black kids in L.A. I know how odd it is for someone in suburban Texas to criticize someone's depiction of life in a middle-class black neighborhood, but I'm pretty sure no black person has ever called anyone a "motorcycle mama."
There is an interesting conceit, which is that at one point the Big Bad possesses a young pastor and gives him the power to do miracles. A lot of authors would have the pastor immediately turn into a religious zealot who wants to burn heathens and such, but to his credit, Card gives the character a crisis of faith where he wants to do good, but he doesn't know if he can use evil power to do it. Unfortunately, the storyline is given a pretty short shift. The third act has a bunch of wheel spinning as the characters explain the plot to each other ad nauseum, all to set up a climax that is pretty hard to follow.
There is one other thing I wouldn't be able to forgive myself for not mentioning.
So towards the end, our teenage hero turns out to have information in his subconscious that can help defeat the villain, and Titania (who, for someone who's supposed to be vulnerable to cold iron, spends a lot of time riding a motorcycle...) offers to get it out for him. The way she does this is to have sex with someone, which allows her to learn their secrets. Telesexuality, we might call it.
That's not the funny part.
Of course, this is being written by a middle-aged Mormon, so our teenage hero, when confronted with a beautiful woman who wants to have no-strings-attached sex with him to save the world, insists on getting married first. Because it's the Christian thing to do. Which, since the idea there is that you should only have sex with the person you love, makes me wonder if Card has ever heard of "the spirit of the law."
So the world's least horny teen and Titania get "one of those gay marriages that don't count" and do it. Because premarital sex is wrong, but forcing someone to marry you is A-OK! It's such a weird, awkward story beat that you wonder why Card even put it in. Certainly, nothing that comes before or after demands such an out-of-nowhere sequence. It's not like Titania is going around, schtupping the secrets out of guys beforehand, or that our hero took a purity vow. If the entire thing was just to send a "wait for marriage" message... you've gotta wonder about Card's ego. I don't care how good a writer you are, you're not convincing teenagers to stop having sex.
Unless you're Stephenie Meyer, of course. And really, how hard is it to convince women not to put out, AMIRITE FELLAS? AND HOW ABOUT THOSE AIRLINE PEANUTS!?
Angel: After the Fall
You know, I really tried to get into this, but after a while, it kinda got old how literally all the female characters were either evil, psychologically unstable, or harem girls. Well, not all of them. There's Kate, who is in a flashback, and Cordelia, who is Gwen Stacy.
Did you like that? I'm proud of it. Gwen Stacy, c'mon, that's some good shit.
