Nothing to read. *sighs*

[marguerite_krux]

Damn it. Burnt by yet another fantasy book. 

I know there are people in the world to whom reading is something they are forced to do in school and despise every moment of it. It just pains me that I have a deep-seated fixation on reading, since I grew up an only child with nothing else to do, yet my standards are too high for most books to meet.

 

The last sci-fi book I read was a disaster. Four main characters, two male, two female. I empathized with the doctor, investigating a murder. I enjoyed the friction between her and the security agent who was reluctantly assisting her. Then halfway through the book, she’s brutally murdered, body ripped apart, entrails wet and glistening, limbs hacked off. Uh, not the best character to be vicariously living through. Not one of my happier experiences, I can tell you that.

 

Now this book. This new miserable failure of a fantasy excursion. [I should stick to romance, methinks]

 

I am just so frustrated at how authors casually wield their power to create and destroy. I accept that at times, a character serves the plot best by dying, but only with the utmost reluctance and regret. It was done particularly well by Diane Duane, and at least she only used it sparingly on one occasion [unlike, *ahem*, JK Rowling and the massacre that was the last Harry Potter book- what was the point of that book anyway? She just killed off the entire cast of characters, pretty much] and its effects had a huge influence on the outcome of that book, and rippled through the following two or three. It was awful, it made me cry, but she made it work and that is pure genius.

 

However, the source of my current frustration [which shall be unnamed, in case I happen to spoil it for anyone randomly reading this] is literally overkill. The main character is a young woman, wielding incredible power, as is the norm in these sorts of books. The man she gave her virginity to betrays her. The man she falls in love with is murdered before her eyes. The old man who mentors her is also murdered. And the seal that saves her life in battle is killed in her place. [It’s interesting that people say ‘murdered’, when it’s one-on-one, or a group on one; but in war, it is ‘killed’. I suppose because murder is a crime, but war only leaves behind ‘casualties’. Because if you could be prosecuted and imprisoned for joining a war, no one would do it.]

 

Lastly, and quite devastatingly, her mother disowns her. For being forced to kill people in order to defend herself. I mean, everyone wants to kill her or use her, and because she resists being made a pawn or a corpse, the woman despises her own daughter. Freak.

 

So yeah, this is heavy reading. The frustrating thing is that it’s engaging and fast-paced and the character is intriguing enough for me to follow her travels, despite all the heartache she suffers. But now I read a chapter ahead, just to prepare myself for any tragedies to come, so that I’m not caught off guard. I wince with every page I turn, expecting another death or hardship to befall her. It’s not fun. I’m not particularly enjoying it. I rather hate the author for inflicting this on me, but read it I will. I hate gritty realism, and I will never agree that it has a place in what’s supposed to be entertainment, but I’ll admit this author has a lot of talent, enough to keep me going on.