Not exactly graceful
Sep. 14th, 2013 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I'm not sure if you know this already, but my absolute favourite, favourite kind of story involves angels and demons, over-the-top battles between them, and theologically-tinged interactions between angels, demons and humans. Discussions of free will, the value of flawed humanity, and the incomprehensibility of angelic/demonic nature to ordinary individuals are all desirable bonuses. Unfortunately, very few authors get the tone or narrative right - or rather, very few tell the kind of story I want to read. (I should also clarify that I'm not a religious person, and the kinds of stories of this type that I enjoy normally bear little resemblance to any recognisable depiction of angels or demons within any religion.) I can only think of about five stories that did what I wanted, and they all have their flaws: Paradise Lost (which only works for me if I read it against Milton's intentions), His Dark Materials, Supernatural (which has other, massive problems that a lot of people find extremely off-putting, with reason, and also comes saddled with one of the worst fandoms I have ever encountered), Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books (in which the angels are extremely peripheral to the main story of a masochistic holy prostitute and her adventures as a spy), and Memnoch the Devil by Anne Rice (shut up! that book is WONDERFUL). Sarah Rees Brennan's Demon's Lexicon trilogy is fabulous, but its demons don't come from any recognisable theology and aren't really the point of the narrative.
In order to get the stories I want, I've waded through a lot of rubbish, from Sharon Shinn's Angels of Samaria series, with its anaemic love stories and irritating plot twist, to some truly dreadful YA paranormal romances (anyone ever read Fallen by Lauren Kate?), in which angelic nature is simply a convenient way to engineer EPIC, IMMORTAL SOULBONDS. I expect very little when picking up a story about angels and demons, which is why Estelle Ana Baca's Cherubim and Seraphim, the first in her Ministers of Grace trilogy, doesn't bother me as much as it could have. But it's so full of typical weaknesses of characterisation and plot that I feel exasperated. Why is it that almost no one can write angels and demons right?
Lazy characterisation
1. Our heroine Sage has always felt different. So far, no problem. That's fairly standard YA coming-of-age fare. The issue is that this difference is expressed by feeling nothing in common with her parents, and nothing in common with her peers. I get that this is an easy way to make a character isolated even before the plot starts happening, but it makes the character seem arrogant and unlikable. (See: Bella Swan.) Giving a character some friends or a close relationship with his or her family can be done in a way that still recognises the character's difference. A good example is Kami Glass is Sarah Rees Brennan's Lynburn Legacy series. She speaks in her head to an imaginary friend, and is quite open about it. Some people find this off-putting, but she has a best friend, Angela, who genuinely cares about her (and has a story of her own within the narrative), is good friends with Angela's brother Rusty and has a good relationship with her family. As the story progresses, she gains more friends and connections. Throughout all this, we are aware of Kami's unique nature and the importance of her story, but her relationships and connections make the stakes seem higher, giving her something to fight for and us a reason to care about her.
2. None of the other characters have much personality. Sage's demonic love interest is angsty and self-sacrificing, her angelic mentors are wise and protective, her adoptive parents are oblivious and gaslight-y, her new friend Merula is vaguely bossy, and her demonic antagonists are cruel and antagonistic without any real motivation. This gives the impression that all of them are scenery against which Sage plays out her own story. All of them should have their own stories independent of Sage's, and we should get some impression of them.
3. If angels are good and kind in this universe (something with which I don't agree - if anything, angels should simply be inhuman and not behave in ways that make sense according to human psychology), why do they keep falling in love with human women and having children with them? In the universe of this book, carrying an angelic child tends to kill the human woman. This is unspeakably cruel, but no one comments on how horrific this is. I'm cool with angels and humans falling in love - in fact, I want more stories about it. I'm even cool with this having a destructive effect on the humans concerned. What I want is some in-text condemnation of such unions, which are effectively murder.
Problems of plot and worldbuilding
1. The plot simultaneously requires Sage to be ignorant of her heritage and power, and super-special and quick-learning (during some unfortunate training-montage sequences) so that Baca can info-dump as quickly as possible. Imparting information about a complicated fictional world can be done well (I'd argue that the first couple of books in the Harry Potter series managed this feat, although your mileage may vary), but it needs to be done in a way that we don't notice.
2. Sage - and, on occasion, her love-interest - seem to gain certain powers whenever the plot requires it. Need to hear what the demons are saying without revealing you're nearby? Never fear - all of a sudden, Sage can telepathically snoop on them and understand all languages, even though she is stubbornly monolingual in the flesh. Need Sage to evade capture? Never fear, at that moment, we'll discover that she, alone of all half-angels, can communicate telepathically with half-demons! Need to convince an Austrian woman and her half-angel son that they're safe? Never fear, the demonic love-interest can speak every language in the world, including German!
3. This ties in with another major problem: everything is too easy. The world is set up so that Sage and the angels will easily win. Her adoptive parents are in danger from demonic attack? Plant a warrior angel in the house disguised as Sage so they remain safe! Need to travel the world to chase after demons? Don't worry, all angels can teleport instantaneously! (This simultaneously fixes the problem of how our heroes can survive without steady flows of cash.) They can already communicate across great distances with ease (something that always irritates me immensely in this kind of story, as a simple way to raise the stakes is to have characters unable to communicate or act according to faulty communication), and they seem to have a huge number of inaccessible safe-houses everywhere. I sometimes feel that authors take these kinds of shortcuts because they don't want anything seriously bad to happen to their characters, or because (in the case of YA) they're squeamish about letting anything traumatic happen to teenage characters in a story aimed at a teenage readership. But the end result is that we can't invest in the story. A good counterexample is Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon. It's a comparatively gentle YA novel: for the most part, nothing genuinely horrific happens to his trio of main characters,* but they do suffer, and they are at times in real danger. As a result, the reader feels invested in their plight.
4. This final point is really nitpicky, but it annoyed me greatly. Why do the angels speak Latin? They mainly have Hebrew names (the names of 'real') angels, Christianity (let alone Catholicism) is largely absent from the story, and the Latin thing strikes me as simply lazy. Baca wanted her angels to communicate in a sort of otherworldly, evocative way, she already knew Latin and thought it was appropriate in a sort of medieval way, and didn't really consider the implications. I keep coming back to this, but angels should be inhuman and unknowable. They shouldn't speak any human language (and if we're going for consistency, it should be Hebrew), and their names should be approximations along the lines of 'humans need to comfort themselves and make things comprehensible by giving them names'. Latin is out of place and adds nothing.
In spite of all those complaints, I'll keep reading the trilogy, because, as I've already established, beggars can't be choosers. I guess I should get on with writing my own 'war of angels, demons and humans' book that I've been writing for years. After the PhD, maybe.
---------
*Although one is orphaned in a really terrible way.
In order to get the stories I want, I've waded through a lot of rubbish, from Sharon Shinn's Angels of Samaria series, with its anaemic love stories and irritating plot twist, to some truly dreadful YA paranormal romances (anyone ever read Fallen by Lauren Kate?), in which angelic nature is simply a convenient way to engineer EPIC, IMMORTAL SOULBONDS. I expect very little when picking up a story about angels and demons, which is why Estelle Ana Baca's Cherubim and Seraphim, the first in her Ministers of Grace trilogy, doesn't bother me as much as it could have. But it's so full of typical weaknesses of characterisation and plot that I feel exasperated. Why is it that almost no one can write angels and demons right?
Lazy characterisation
1. Our heroine Sage has always felt different. So far, no problem. That's fairly standard YA coming-of-age fare. The issue is that this difference is expressed by feeling nothing in common with her parents, and nothing in common with her peers. I get that this is an easy way to make a character isolated even before the plot starts happening, but it makes the character seem arrogant and unlikable. (See: Bella Swan.) Giving a character some friends or a close relationship with his or her family can be done in a way that still recognises the character's difference. A good example is Kami Glass is Sarah Rees Brennan's Lynburn Legacy series. She speaks in her head to an imaginary friend, and is quite open about it. Some people find this off-putting, but she has a best friend, Angela, who genuinely cares about her (and has a story of her own within the narrative), is good friends with Angela's brother Rusty and has a good relationship with her family. As the story progresses, she gains more friends and connections. Throughout all this, we are aware of Kami's unique nature and the importance of her story, but her relationships and connections make the stakes seem higher, giving her something to fight for and us a reason to care about her.
2. None of the other characters have much personality. Sage's demonic love interest is angsty and self-sacrificing, her angelic mentors are wise and protective, her adoptive parents are oblivious and gaslight-y, her new friend Merula is vaguely bossy, and her demonic antagonists are cruel and antagonistic without any real motivation. This gives the impression that all of them are scenery against which Sage plays out her own story. All of them should have their own stories independent of Sage's, and we should get some impression of them.
3. If angels are good and kind in this universe (something with which I don't agree - if anything, angels should simply be inhuman and not behave in ways that make sense according to human psychology), why do they keep falling in love with human women and having children with them? In the universe of this book, carrying an angelic child tends to kill the human woman. This is unspeakably cruel, but no one comments on how horrific this is. I'm cool with angels and humans falling in love - in fact, I want more stories about it. I'm even cool with this having a destructive effect on the humans concerned. What I want is some in-text condemnation of such unions, which are effectively murder.
Problems of plot and worldbuilding
1. The plot simultaneously requires Sage to be ignorant of her heritage and power, and super-special and quick-learning (during some unfortunate training-montage sequences) so that Baca can info-dump as quickly as possible. Imparting information about a complicated fictional world can be done well (I'd argue that the first couple of books in the Harry Potter series managed this feat, although your mileage may vary), but it needs to be done in a way that we don't notice.
2. Sage - and, on occasion, her love-interest - seem to gain certain powers whenever the plot requires it. Need to hear what the demons are saying without revealing you're nearby? Never fear - all of a sudden, Sage can telepathically snoop on them and understand all languages, even though she is stubbornly monolingual in the flesh. Need Sage to evade capture? Never fear, at that moment, we'll discover that she, alone of all half-angels, can communicate telepathically with half-demons! Need to convince an Austrian woman and her half-angel son that they're safe? Never fear, the demonic love-interest can speak every language in the world, including German!
3. This ties in with another major problem: everything is too easy. The world is set up so that Sage and the angels will easily win. Her adoptive parents are in danger from demonic attack? Plant a warrior angel in the house disguised as Sage so they remain safe! Need to travel the world to chase after demons? Don't worry, all angels can teleport instantaneously! (This simultaneously fixes the problem of how our heroes can survive without steady flows of cash.) They can already communicate across great distances with ease (something that always irritates me immensely in this kind of story, as a simple way to raise the stakes is to have characters unable to communicate or act according to faulty communication), and they seem to have a huge number of inaccessible safe-houses everywhere. I sometimes feel that authors take these kinds of shortcuts because they don't want anything seriously bad to happen to their characters, or because (in the case of YA) they're squeamish about letting anything traumatic happen to teenage characters in a story aimed at a teenage readership. But the end result is that we can't invest in the story. A good counterexample is Saladin Ahmed's Throne of the Crescent Moon. It's a comparatively gentle YA novel: for the most part, nothing genuinely horrific happens to his trio of main characters,* but they do suffer, and they are at times in real danger. As a result, the reader feels invested in their plight.
4. This final point is really nitpicky, but it annoyed me greatly. Why do the angels speak Latin? They mainly have Hebrew names (the names of 'real') angels, Christianity (let alone Catholicism) is largely absent from the story, and the Latin thing strikes me as simply lazy. Baca wanted her angels to communicate in a sort of otherworldly, evocative way, she already knew Latin and thought it was appropriate in a sort of medieval way, and didn't really consider the implications. I keep coming back to this, but angels should be inhuman and unknowable. They shouldn't speak any human language (and if we're going for consistency, it should be Hebrew), and their names should be approximations along the lines of 'humans need to comfort themselves and make things comprehensible by giving them names'. Latin is out of place and adds nothing.
In spite of all those complaints, I'll keep reading the trilogy, because, as I've already established, beggars can't be choosers. I guess I should get on with writing my own 'war of angels, demons and humans' book that I've been writing for years. After the PhD, maybe.
---------
*Although one is orphaned in a really terrible way.
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no subject
Date: 2013-09-16 11:16 pm (UTC)Anyway, I don't know if you were up for manga, but Yuki Kaori's Angel Sanctuary seems to be very much up that angels/demons/humanity valley. It is very frequently incomprehensible and/or completely cracktastic, but it's really epic and has a Heaven that is rotting on the inside and Hellish demons in love with angels and some humans caught in the midst of it all.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-17 09:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 10:08 am (UTC)The paranormal romance craze has produced some impressively dreadful angel and devil books.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-24 10:52 am (UTC)Hush, Hush is abysmal. I read it and Fallen at the same time and they've both kind of smushed together into one horrific YA angel and demon paranormal romance. Ugh.
The thing is, and I think that most YA paranormals miss the point, that YA romance should be a bit scary and a bit larger than life, because that is what love feels like when you are fifteen. (Or at least it did for me.) All the vampires and werewolves and demons are a metaphor for that. But what is scary is the fact that young love takes you outside yourself, and that you're experiencing things you've never experienced before. You're travelling without bearings, as it were. The scary thing should not be that your (supernatural-as-a-metaphor-for-all-this) boyfriend is violent and abusive. But that's what you end up with in 90 per cent of these novels. They emphasise the wrong things and end up with unintentionally ghastly, hilarious results.