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sophia_sol) wrote2023-01-27 10:12 am
sophia_sol) wrote2023-01-27 10:12 am
Spellcast, by Barbara Ashford
An odd sort of fantasy novel where it's like....mostly about the experience of community theatre, and interpersonal relationships, and learning to understand yourself better, but the theatre's director happens to be a faery. I like this approach! But the book as a whole was, idk, I more or less enjoyed the reading of it but I also found it fairly frustrating.
First of all, a large cast of eccentric characters isn't really my thing; I had trouble keeping track of them all and who they were and what their relationships were with each other, and most of them were fairly one-note characters. (some of those one notes were fun! but put together it was a lot.)
Second....the romance. I liked our viewpoint character Maggie, and I found her flaws and foibles understandable and realistic for her, and I enjoyed spending time with her, but her stuff eventually gets so tangled up with her romance arc with the faery director (Rowan) and I was just NOT into the romance.
At first I found Rowan rather interesting, and enjoyed watching his dynamics with the staff and the cast, but the more I found out about him the more irritated I got. He has a history of doing some amoral things that he's now trying to atone for, but his amoral past was "uses his magic faery powers to alter someone's feelings in order to convince them they wanted to do something they didn't actually want to do" and.....his atonement is "uses his magic faery powers to alter people's feelings." A lesson does not seem to have been learned here, is what I'm saying!!!! And like, I'd get this, if the point was "faeries are indefinably but inescapably other, not human, and their moralities and perspectives don't align with those of humans," but no, he's just like any other human except extremely long lived and also can exert magical control on people.
Sigh.
The book was promising! I really wanted to like it! But the more it became about the romance and about how tragic and wonderful Rowan was, the more I squirmed and skimmed ahead. In the end I would have preferred this book to not be fantasy at all, I think. Cut Rowan and faeries entirely, narratively reprioritise how important it is that Maggie is finally able to develop close supportive friendships instead, and I'd be here for this! But that would be an different book.
First of all, a large cast of eccentric characters isn't really my thing; I had trouble keeping track of them all and who they were and what their relationships were with each other, and most of them were fairly one-note characters. (some of those one notes were fun! but put together it was a lot.)
Second....the romance. I liked our viewpoint character Maggie, and I found her flaws and foibles understandable and realistic for her, and I enjoyed spending time with her, but her stuff eventually gets so tangled up with her romance arc with the faery director (Rowan) and I was just NOT into the romance.
At first I found Rowan rather interesting, and enjoyed watching his dynamics with the staff and the cast, but the more I found out about him the more irritated I got. He has a history of doing some amoral things that he's now trying to atone for, but his amoral past was "uses his magic faery powers to alter someone's feelings in order to convince them they wanted to do something they didn't actually want to do" and.....his atonement is "uses his magic faery powers to alter people's feelings." A lesson does not seem to have been learned here, is what I'm saying!!!! And like, I'd get this, if the point was "faeries are indefinably but inescapably other, not human, and their moralities and perspectives don't align with those of humans," but no, he's just like any other human except extremely long lived and also can exert magical control on people.
Sigh.
The book was promising! I really wanted to like it! But the more it became about the romance and about how tragic and wonderful Rowan was, the more I squirmed and skimmed ahead. In the end I would have preferred this book to not be fantasy at all, I think. Cut Rowan and faeries entirely, narratively reprioritise how important it is that Maggie is finally able to develop close supportive friendships instead, and I'd be here for this! But that would be an different book.
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AGREED. Especially about the Station Eleven thing. I like Station Eleven for what it is, but its priorities are soooooooooooooo different than mine. Like, how do you write a book with a roving post-apocalyptic Shakespeare troupe and NOT have the book be about that???????