trashy summer fiction, part two
Jul. 28th, 2005 01:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyThis week I read Magic Street by Orson Scott Card. Very disappointing. Sad, but true.
He should never have tried to write about a black community. That was just all kinds of bad. Also, portraying some fey as evil and some as good misses the point that he makes himself, which is that they're all very amoral and simply don't care.
And then last night and today I read Sandstorm by James Rollins. OMG the drek. Oh the drek. Painful drek. It had some similarities to Katherine Neville's The Eight but was way, way less cool.
What was interesting (in a horrifying way) was the way that women's roles were portrayed in this book. The main villain character was a "woman in a man's job" who is not willing to be subordinate to her partner. There is also a "priestess" character whose power comes from femininity and her body. Then there is the protagonist - somewhere in between the two, but willing to be subordinate to men and unwilling to embrace her own power, whose main motivation is guilt for something she didn't do. She also winds up taking away the priestess' power, who then thanks her in a choked voice "for taking away my burden." The power also kills the villain character.
So I think the overall message of the book is that we should all be gender traitors, because women's power is dangerous and BAD. If I had ended the book, it would have been done much differently.
Grrrr...
He should never have tried to write about a black community. That was just all kinds of bad. Also, portraying some fey as evil and some as good misses the point that he makes himself, which is that they're all very amoral and simply don't care.
And then last night and today I read Sandstorm by James Rollins. OMG the drek. Oh the drek. Painful drek. It had some similarities to Katherine Neville's The Eight but was way, way less cool.
What was interesting (in a horrifying way) was the way that women's roles were portrayed in this book. The main villain character was a "woman in a man's job" who is not willing to be subordinate to her partner. There is also a "priestess" character whose power comes from femininity and her body. Then there is the protagonist - somewhere in between the two, but willing to be subordinate to men and unwilling to embrace her own power, whose main motivation is guilt for something she didn't do. She also winds up taking away the priestess' power, who then thanks her in a choked voice "for taking away my burden." The power also kills the villain character.
So I think the overall message of the book is that we should all be gender traitors, because women's power is dangerous and BAD. If I had ended the book, it would have been done much differently.
Grrrr...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 08:16 pm (UTC)did it just come out or something? or is it just coincidence?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-28 08:20 pm (UTC)