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remindmeofthe) wrote2013-05-18 04:18 pm
remindmeofthe) wrote2013-05-18 04:18 pm
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I finished reading Mira Grant's Newsflesh trilogy. To the surprise of no one, the commentary I meant for the last book, Blackout, for next week's media consumption post turned into a multi-paragraph essay, so it gets its own post.
After what I've had to say about this trilogy for the last couple of weeks, it might surprise you that I actually really like a good portion of this novel. I like it for the same reason I like Dollhouse: I am a total sucker for the kinds of identity questions that only science fiction can really ask, and I love when they are handled with anything resembling competence. When they're handled well, I fall over with joy. So, the way Blackout examines the Georgia clone's identity, and how her understanding of who she is evolves with her understanding of the situation as a whole, is like delicious, delicious candy to me. It also doesn't belong in the third installment of a trilogy - the plot should be heating up and barrelling toward the climax, not slowing down for character study. I can just imagine how people who don't have my extremely specific interest in clone identity issues (blamelienne, I do) felt about that whole thing, especially the segment in the CDC which, much as it pains me to say, does go on too long. Actually, the entire book goes on too long. It throws a bunch of unnecessary subthreads and complications at us (I especially love how the whole Monkey thing went NOWHERE) to make up for the fact that the Newsflesh story really should not be a trilogy. At all. Streamline the main story, cut out the extra shit, and you have a two-parter at most. The final Big Reveal is at heart very simple, and upon this reread I was fucking annoyed to realize how much time I'd spent reading and investing energy in stuff that had fuck-all to do with the point of the story. It's not a bad book, it's much better than I remembered, but it's a far cry from the promise of Feed.
Why do I remember it being bad? What is the only thing that I bet a large portion of readers remember about the fucking thing? Yeah. Turns out that, after spending two books exploring an unhealthily codependent sibling relationship between two very damaged people without cheaping out and taking the VC Andrews route . . . Mira Grant cheaps the fuck out and takes the VC Andrews route. And I don't really give a fuck about the incest, okay, I've been reading fanfic way too long for sibling incest to bother me, especially since they're both adopted and not even blood-related. Shit, I was in Supernatural fandom for years. That barely even counts as incest in my book. What bothers me is that, with that revelation, a lot of the interesting Shaun/Georgia interaction and character building in the first two books becomes disingenuous. Once you know they were in fact romantically involved the whole time, you can't stop asking yourself upon rereads why it NEVER COMES UP IN THE NARRATIVE. Everything in the books is first-person POV. There are a shit-ton of places where a romantic relationship between these two ought to color the narrative because we are INSIDE THEIR HEADS. And okay, the whole thing with Shaun and Becks was a big neon clue (Shaun says Georgia's name after he and Becks sleep together and, in retrospect, Becks's reaction is obviously in part because she's figured out why), but everything else about Shaun and Georgia's relationship is so carefully presented to direct the reader away from the incest conclusion that I at least was inclined to explain that away as another part of Shaun's ongoing nervous breakdown. That is cheating, goddammit. If you're gonna do the incest story, do the incest story. OWN the incest story. VC Andrews cracks aside, I think Grant could have done some really interesting stuff with it if she'd just done it properly. I am still so mad about this and how fucking insulting it is it's little wonder my memory of the book was so negative.
So where do I think things started going wrong in this trilogy? Pretty early on, actually, with Buffy's death in Feed. Even the first time I read it, I recognized that her death was going to present some major problems plotwise, since up to that point the book had been making a big deal out of how crucial her technical genius was to the entire operation. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the trilogy proceeds to rely on tech she left behind and the frantic work of other reporters whose combined effort is almost enough to replace her. I was willing enough to let that go for a long time, because what the hell, everything has its flaws, and if that had been the only problem with Buffy's death then I'd be identifying Georgia's death as the first big issue instead. (Yeah, not a whole lot of important female characters make it out of this trilogy alive.) The second big problem with it is that her motivations for the actions that led to her death don't make any damn sense for the character. We're told over and over how devout Buffy is and that's supposed to be why she betrays Georgia and Shaun, but the ability to commit such betrayal against her best friends simply does not work with how the character is presented. Buffy's a light character, both in brightness and in composition: little frothy, little ditzy, brimming with life, loves technology and telling stories. We're supposed to see her as too clueless to realize what she was getting into, but - no, dammit, she's not stupid. Not in the ways she needs to be for her betrayal to make sense, ESPECIALLY since later on Shaun and Georgia keep telling us how she never would have bought into Tate's presenting himself as the major villain at the end of Feed. Even before any of that, though, I never thought Buffy's death worked on a character level. Maybe if she were more featureless, like Alaric (does anyone remember any distinguishing characteristics about him? Anyone?), or just less vivid, like practically every other character except for Shaun, Georgia, and Dr Abbey, it would work better, but I think Buffy is one of those characters who just ends up standing out more strongly than the author wants them to.
And the final problem is her constant presence throughout the rest of the trilogy. It is understandable that Shaun and Georgia would spend a lot of time thinking about their dead friend, especially when her death precipitated such a shocking change in their lives, but they bring her up to the reader so often, telling us how she should be there and should never have died, that it's really hard to forget that Buffy's death was a poorly-done plot contrivance. Newsflesh is a fairly meta trilogy, as a story about a zombie almost-apocalypse that is only "almost" because of George Romero's films would kind of have to be. (And no, Buffy's name is not a coincidence, and yes, Grant cheerfully brings that to our attention by having Buffy explain that she chose the nickname herself in homage.) So - and maybe this is partly because I was watching the Scream movies not so long ago, speaking of meta - I started in this reread to get the impression that Georgia and Shaun know damn well that Buffy's death was an OOC plot device to get things rolling and they're upset about the integrity of their story as well as the loss of their friend. So they don't let her go. They insist so strongly that she should be there that after a point, you start to agree with them. And even if you think I'm going a little too far with that, there's still enough at issue here to point up Buffy's death as the first big crack in the storytelling. It's cheap writing, it causes more problems than it solves, it sparks plot developments that could have happened some other way, and it practically screams "LOOK SOMEONE IMPORTANT DIED SHIT HAS NOW GOTTEN REAL." It's the first big indication of why the story goes downhill the way it does - these are the kinds of mistakes Grant keeps making, and that's fine for one book's worth of story, but if you're setting up a foundation for a trilogy, that foundation cannot have cracks in it or the entire thing will crumble.
After what I've had to say about this trilogy for the last couple of weeks, it might surprise you that I actually really like a good portion of this novel. I like it for the same reason I like Dollhouse: I am a total sucker for the kinds of identity questions that only science fiction can really ask, and I love when they are handled with anything resembling competence. When they're handled well, I fall over with joy. So, the way Blackout examines the Georgia clone's identity, and how her understanding of who she is evolves with her understanding of the situation as a whole, is like delicious, delicious candy to me. It also doesn't belong in the third installment of a trilogy - the plot should be heating up and barrelling toward the climax, not slowing down for character study. I can just imagine how people who don't have my extremely specific interest in clone identity issues (blame
lienne, I do) felt about that whole thing, especially the segment in the CDC which, much as it pains me to say, does go on too long. Actually, the entire book goes on too long. It throws a bunch of unnecessary subthreads and complications at us (I especially love how the whole Monkey thing went NOWHERE) to make up for the fact that the Newsflesh story really should not be a trilogy. At all. Streamline the main story, cut out the extra shit, and you have a two-parter at most. The final Big Reveal is at heart very simple, and upon this reread I was fucking annoyed to realize how much time I'd spent reading and investing energy in stuff that had fuck-all to do with the point of the story. It's not a bad book, it's much better than I remembered, but it's a far cry from the promise of Feed.Why do I remember it being bad? What is the only thing that I bet a large portion of readers remember about the fucking thing? Yeah. Turns out that, after spending two books exploring an unhealthily codependent sibling relationship between two very damaged people without cheaping out and taking the VC Andrews route . . . Mira Grant cheaps the fuck out and takes the VC Andrews route. And I don't really give a fuck about the incest, okay, I've been reading fanfic way too long for sibling incest to bother me, especially since they're both adopted and not even blood-related. Shit, I was in Supernatural fandom for years. That barely even counts as incest in my book. What bothers me is that, with that revelation, a lot of the interesting Shaun/Georgia interaction and character building in the first two books becomes disingenuous. Once you know they were in fact romantically involved the whole time, you can't stop asking yourself upon rereads why it NEVER COMES UP IN THE NARRATIVE. Everything in the books is first-person POV. There are a shit-ton of places where a romantic relationship between these two ought to color the narrative because we are INSIDE THEIR HEADS. And okay, the whole thing with Shaun and Becks was a big neon clue (Shaun says Georgia's name after he and Becks sleep together and, in retrospect, Becks's reaction is obviously in part because she's figured out why), but everything else about Shaun and Georgia's relationship is so carefully presented to direct the reader away from the incest conclusion that I at least was inclined to explain that away as another part of Shaun's ongoing nervous breakdown. That is cheating, goddammit. If you're gonna do the incest story, do the incest story. OWN the incest story. VC Andrews cracks aside, I think Grant could have done some really interesting stuff with it if she'd just done it properly. I am still so mad about this and how fucking insulting it is it's little wonder my memory of the book was so negative.
So where do I think things started going wrong in this trilogy? Pretty early on, actually, with Buffy's death in Feed. Even the first time I read it, I recognized that her death was going to present some major problems plotwise, since up to that point the book had been making a big deal out of how crucial her technical genius was to the entire operation. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the trilogy proceeds to rely on tech she left behind and the frantic work of other reporters whose combined effort is almost enough to replace her. I was willing enough to let that go for a long time, because what the hell, everything has its flaws, and if that had been the only problem with Buffy's death then I'd be identifying Georgia's death as the first big issue instead. (Yeah, not a whole lot of important female characters make it out of this trilogy alive.) The second big problem with it is that her motivations for the actions that led to her death don't make any damn sense for the character. We're told over and over how devout Buffy is and that's supposed to be why she betrays Georgia and Shaun, but the ability to commit such betrayal against her best friends simply does not work with how the character is presented. Buffy's a light character, both in brightness and in composition: little frothy, little ditzy, brimming with life, loves technology and telling stories. We're supposed to see her as too clueless to realize what she was getting into, but - no, dammit, she's not stupid. Not in the ways she needs to be for her betrayal to make sense, ESPECIALLY since later on Shaun and Georgia keep telling us how she never would have bought into Tate's presenting himself as the major villain at the end of Feed. Even before any of that, though, I never thought Buffy's death worked on a character level. Maybe if she were more featureless, like Alaric (does anyone remember any distinguishing characteristics about him? Anyone?), or just less vivid, like practically every other character except for Shaun, Georgia, and Dr Abbey, it would work better, but I think Buffy is one of those characters who just ends up standing out more strongly than the author wants them to.
And the final problem is her constant presence throughout the rest of the trilogy. It is understandable that Shaun and Georgia would spend a lot of time thinking about their dead friend, especially when her death precipitated such a shocking change in their lives, but they bring her up to the reader so often, telling us how she should be there and should never have died, that it's really hard to forget that Buffy's death was a poorly-done plot contrivance. Newsflesh is a fairly meta trilogy, as a story about a zombie almost-apocalypse that is only "almost" because of George Romero's films would kind of have to be. (And no, Buffy's name is not a coincidence, and yes, Grant cheerfully brings that to our attention by having Buffy explain that she chose the nickname herself in homage.) So - and maybe this is partly because I was watching the Scream movies not so long ago, speaking of meta - I started in this reread to get the impression that Georgia and Shaun know damn well that Buffy's death was an OOC plot device to get things rolling and they're upset about the integrity of their story as well as the loss of their friend. So they don't let her go. They insist so strongly that she should be there that after a point, you start to agree with them. And even if you think I'm going a little too far with that, there's still enough at issue here to point up Buffy's death as the first big crack in the storytelling. It's cheap writing, it causes more problems than it solves, it sparks plot developments that could have happened some other way, and it practically screams "LOOK SOMEONE IMPORTANT DIED SHIT HAS NOW GOTTEN REAL." It's the first big indication of why the story goes downhill the way it does - these are the kinds of mistakes Grant keeps making, and that's fine for one book's worth of story, but if you're setting up a foundation for a trilogy, that foundation cannot have cracks in it or the entire thing will crumble.
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