dolorosa_12: (newspaper)
[personal profile] dolorosa_12
Generally, I try to keep this space positive. I find it more fun to talk about things I love, and which make me happy (or at least that I find interesting), and feel that it's a waste of my time and energy to invest a huge amount of effort complaining about things I dislike.

However, I read a very disappointing book recently, felt the urge to vent mildly, and decided to make it the subject of this week's open thread. The book in question is The Kingdom of Sweets, a retelling (or really reimagining) of The Nutcracker by Erika Johansen. (If my memory had been better, I wouldn't have picked up the book at all: after finishing the book I realised I had read and disliked her Queen of the Tearling for reasons that now completely escape me, back in the day.)


It wasn't the retelling — which took some of the trappings of The Nutcracker and inserted them into a story of twin sisters, their rivalry and conflict, and sinister magical origins — itself that bothered me, but rather the incredibly lazy and sloppy worldbuilding. This may be down to personal preference, but I feel that if you're going to (re)tell a story like this, the setting needs to be either a vague non-specific fairylandia, or it needs to be a real-world setting depicted in lavish and careful detail. (Or, I suppose, a secondary world setting inspired closely by a real time and place in our world.)

Instead, we get somewhere that's vaguely nineteenth-century Europe — somewhere — in which some characters have German names, some have Russian names, and others have English, Irish or Italian names, often all in the same family. (That's how we end up with twins Natasha and Clara Stahlbaum and their inexplicably-named cousin Deirdre and uncle Angelo.) And, as the story progresses, specific details start creeping in: this is a world with Christmas and Christianity (although we're never told the denomination(s)); other than some vague mentions of 'old pagan ways,' no other religions are mentioned as far as I can tell. The characters read a non-Latin script, but also learn to read Greek and 'English' letters — so therefore the assumption is that they live somewhere where the script is Cyrillic. There is exploitation of serfs and city workers, and a ruler who has a grudging relationship with his parliament, which he is constantly dissolving, and rumblings of revolution.

And then suddenly, the Russian Revolution, and apparently we've been in Russia this whole time and our narrator (who has by this point been living in exile in New York for many years) is an old woman and writing mournfully of 'Mother Russia.' Honestly, the whole thing is so abrupt, it's like: vague and poorly defined worldbuilding detail, vague and poorly defined worldbuilding detail, incoherence and lack of specificity, superficial description portraying surface-level understanding of 19th/early 20th century Russian politics, SUDDENLY IT'S WORLD WAR I, SUDDENLY RASPUTIN IS THERE, SUDDENLY LENIN IS THERE.

Honestly, it was the weirdest thing. It feels as if the author thought this was an amazing clever trick — beginning with a featureless, incoherent mishmash of a setting, and slowly seeding smaller and then bigger details until you realise it's been set in Russia all along — but ... why? I didn't come away from this astonished by her clever trickery — instead I started nitpicking details and noticing how lazy her depiction of early 20th-century Russia was! It's as if she watched the animated Anastasia film and read a Grishaverse novel and handpicked a few easy signposts to signal 'Russia at the time of the 1917 revolution,' and called it a day. It's as if she wanted the gravitas that comes with setting a work of fantasy fiction in a pivotal moment of human history, but didn't want to put the slightest bit of effort into actually researching that history or setting.

I genuinely can't remember the last time I was this irritated by a book. I feel stupider for having read it.

So, what about you? Let your rants out! Tell me about a disappointing work of fiction, and why it disappointed you. (Although be warned that there is a risk someone could be tearing your favourite work of fiction to shreds in the comments, so proceed with caution if that's something that's likely to make you feel fragile.)

Date: 2023-12-08 06:32 pm (UTC)
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (Default)
From: [personal profile] raven
I think you've already read my thoughts on The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard, but my god, I still hate that book! The reasons, briefly, were that it has a main character who is a civil servant in a fantasy civil service, which bears zero relationship to any real-world civil service which is in itself not a sin but the author doesn't appear to be aware she's created an autocratic leader rather than a civil servant; and, it falls squarely into the notion of the "good immigrant" and does it so hard that this immigrant threw the book at the wall.

Date: 2023-12-08 06:54 pm (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
Oh, hello fellow hater of THotE! The Great Man history of the book is depressing and enraging!

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Date: 2023-12-08 06:46 pm (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
Omg, the unbecoming glee I feel at seeing this! I felt it was my duty to read The Kingdom of Sweets when I saw my library acquired it, because I was profoundly disappointed by two other fantasy retellings of The Nutcracker last year: Hiddensee by Gregory Maguire and Winterspell by Claire LeGrand, and considered it an important responsibility to vet this one. I no longer feel that is necessary ;)

Voila le hatchet job reviews: https://chestnut-pod.dreamwidth.org/122851.html

Maguire = incoherent Orientalist Nutcracker retelling that doesn't pull a "suddenly the Russian Revolution" but DOES pull a "suddenly the Holocaust"; Winterspell = the worst hits of YA fantasy retelling (though I can't say if it was worse than this one). It did include a Pygmalion-like sex scene with the inanimate nutcracker prince, though.

Edited (clarifying some pronouns) Date: 2023-12-08 06:47 pm (UTC)

Date: 2023-12-08 08:31 pm (UTC)
lirazel: A close up of Marta from Knives Out wearing a red scarf ([film] my house my rules)
From: [personal profile] lirazel
Will we ever, ever get a good Nutcracker retelling???

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Date: 2023-12-08 07:49 pm (UTC)
muccamukk: Wanda walking away, surrounded by towering black trees, her red cloak bright. (Default)
From: [personal profile] muccamukk
Queen of the Tearlings was TERRIBLE! It made me forever judge the person in my LBS who recced it. It was VERY not like other girls, and a princess who hasn't considered anything political happening every before, and an evil queen who is EXACTLY like the other girls, and a dumb love triangle, and *incredibly* shallow worldbuilding, and that was all in the first 40 pages before I quit.

Date: 2023-12-08 08:20 pm (UTC)
nerakrose: image of stacked books with the text ❤ books (books)
From: [personal profile] nerakrose
I've not read this book (and now I definitely won't), but I remember reading Queen of the Tearling back in around 2016 after I set myself the 'stop reading books by men' challenge. It stood out to me because I'd read some other books by women and had a great time and then I read Queen of the Tearling and was like 'well, so female writers can be prejudiced writers too'. the main sticking point I remember about it was how full of fatshaming it was, and also white in a very exhausting way. at the time I intended to read the rest of the series because I'd enjoyed this book for the most part, but I had other, better books to read so never got around to it and I can't say I ever regretted not getting back to it...

I have read enough disappointing works of fiction that I could write multiple rants :'''D I decided to go for an old grievance, something I read in 2011: The Magician's Apprentice by Trudi Canavan. I hated everything about this book and it was so annoying because I wanted to like it.

- the writing was just, shit. the first half of the book was weirdly forced and stilted (and at the back of the book there was an author's note/similar where she said that the first half of the book had been written under a lot of stress for reasons I don't remember, and I remember reading the author note and just being even *more* pissed off. so edit it better! I don't want your excuse for shoddy work, let your editor help you!)

- the world building was also shit. all over the place. the magic system didn't make any sense. Apparently, everyone has magical power, but only some are naturals, yet everyone can become a magician with the right training. now, if everyone has magical powers, then everyone is a natural and being a natural is not necessary to become a magician...yet there's a giant hierarchial gap between non-magicians and magicians in spite of everyone having the same powers ????

- 701 pages in which nothing happens until page 669. I know this not because I remember it all these years later but because I still have a copy of my original rant review under private lock here on DW.

- the world building was so goddamn awful. the political tensions didn't make sense and the linguistic landscape was also just??? and my biggest pet peeve with fantasy fiction in general: random words that make no sense thrown at you and you have no idea *what* is being talked about. this book had a glossary list in the back, but honestly - glossary lists are for text books, not fiction! You just never know whether some strange named animal is a fantasy animal that doesn't exist, or whether it just has a strange name for the sake of fancy??

- there was so much more to dislike but meh, I don't want to waste more of my time on this book. suffice to say I never touched another Trudi Canavan book after this one despite all the rave reviews I kept seeing. I got the impression at the time that she was a big name in fantasy but I just... nope.

Date: 2023-12-08 08:29 pm (UTC)
lirazel: Jiang Yanli from The Untamed smiling ([tv] lotus blossom)
From: [personal profile] lirazel
It's as if she watched the animated Anastasia film and read a Grishaverse novel and handpicked a few easy signposts to signal 'Russia at the time of the 1917 revolution,' and called it a day.

Lol! This is such an evocative way to describe it--I can imagine this so easily!

I am sorry you wasted your time on this!

I have a "disappointing" tag on GoodReads, so I took a look at it. It's mostly nonfiction, but here are some fictional highlights:

+ Every Heart a Doorway. Incredible name and premise. Hated the book.
+ The Mermaid by Christina Henry. Ditto. Another good premise wasted. Mermaid books should not be boring!
+ A Natural History of Dragons. Ditto once again. Except substitute dragons for mermaids.
+ The Ruin of Kings. I have zero memory of this book but I disliked it enough to give it 2 stars
+ An Accidental Empress. I was ready to have Sisi feelings and then it just...was so bland and uninteresting


Oh, here's one I can actually rant about! That Inevitable Victorian Thing! Here's the copy:

Set in a near-future world where the British Empire was preserved, not by the cost of blood and theft but by effort of repatriation and promises kept, That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a novel of love, duty, and the small moments that can change people and the world.

Victoria-Margaret is the crown princess of the empire, a direct descendant of Victoria I, the queen who changed the course of history two centuries earlier. The imperial practice of genetically arranged matchmaking will soon guide Margaret into a politically advantageous marriage like her mother before her, but before she does her duty, she'll have one summer incognito in a far corner of empire.


And there's supposed to be an OT3! Sign me up!

And then this book did not do ANYTHING I wanted it to do! It didn't actually address imperialism or what the British Empire would look like today! It didn't explore the eugenic premise! It didn't grapple with what a threeway relationship would look like at ALL! It was queer, I guess, but in the most bland way possible!

I was so furious at this book, which was very, very basic YA love story with truly some of the worst worldbuilding I've ever read.

Serves me right for taking a chance on YA written in the last decade or so, I guess.

Date: 2023-12-08 10:08 pm (UTC)
isis: (charlie prince)
From: [personal profile] isis
Every Heart a Doorway. Incredible name and premise. Hated the book.

My thoughts EXACTLY.

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Date: 2023-12-08 10:17 pm (UTC)
muccamukk: Wanda walking away, surrounded by towering black trees, her red cloak bright. (Default)
From: [personal profile] muccamukk
I can't believe I finished Every Heart a Doorway. I just kept reading thinking somehow it must get better, and it kept getting worse and worse.


ETA: Ditto Victorian Thing. I just kept waiting for the plot to start, and it never did, and everything about it was so completely bonkers.
Edited Date: 2023-12-08 10:19 pm (UTC)

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Date: 2023-12-09 02:56 am (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
I was really shocked by the complete lack of examination of the eugenic premise in Victorian Thing.

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Date: 2023-12-08 08:55 pm (UTC)
author_by_night: (I really need a new userpic)
From: [personal profile] author_by_night
Yeah, that IS so very annoying. It sounds as though they were trying to do a whole thing, except they did it very badly.

It's as if she wanted the gravitas that comes with setting a work of fantasy fiction in a pivotal moment of human history, but didn't want to put the slightest bit of effort into actually researching that history or setting.

Oof. Really problematic.

As for mine... in general, I think I'm tired of books where:

- There is an attempt at representation of some sort, except the author clearly thinks representation = slapping on a character from a marginalized community and giving them all the cliches. I've read a few books that tried to incorporate queer characters, for instance, and their attempts at "diversity" were just offensive.

- Dark medical stories when the book/movie never indicated there would be one. Exceptions being if it's historical fiction, because then I kind of assume someone's going to get TB or cholera at some point.

Mostly it's because I hate dark medical stuff, but occasionally it also feels lazy, and I don't like that.

- Speaking of lazy motifs, characters who are boring, often in literary fiction. I was going to say unsympathetic characters, but honestly, nah. Give me a villain who has no shame. That's fine. But give me a reason to follow them anyway. Make them interesting. When characters just meander miserably being miserably miserable because of the misery of their miserable lives, I want a double decker bus to run them over so we can end the story already. It isn't ~deep~ to have a character who just sits in their study all day waiting for Grandma Moneybags to die so he can get her millions. It's more interesting if other things are going on.

On the flip side, I read a book with a character who was exceedingly chipper and perfect, which also got very boring very quickly.


- I've been let down by a few historical fiction stories that splits its time with a modern protagonist. I love the idea, but haven't found one yet where I cared about both sets of characters (old/modern).

Speaking of historical fiction, I'm also not a fan of blood and guts. Or when it's just romance. I love when couples are a team, though!
Edited Date: 2023-12-08 09:12 pm (UTC)

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Date: 2023-12-08 09:44 pm (UTC)
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
From: [personal profile] sophia_sol
ooh that sounds like such an irritating book!

the book that got me ranting at length most recently on my journal was A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows, which infuriated me so much. it just felt so endlessly pleased with itself for having created a Morally Correct Society with a Morally Correct Romance where everyone Communicates About Their Feelings, and I just wanted to argue with it on every page. My full rant: https://sophia-sol.dreamwidth.org/420745.html

Date: 2023-12-08 09:52 pm (UTC)
raven: [hello my name is] and a silhouette image of a raven (Default)
From: [personal profile] raven
Never read the book, deeply delighted by your review.

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Date: 2023-12-08 10:06 pm (UTC)
trepkos: (Default)
From: [personal profile] trepkos
Sorry you wasted your time on this book! I found "Catcher in the Rye" to be a great letdown. What a whiner!

Date: 2023-12-09 12:39 am (UTC)
justanorthernlight: jolly roger pirate flag (Default)
From: [personal profile] justanorthernlight
Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch (the sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora, which I actually enjoyed).

To make a very long summary short, the main character and his best friend (Locke and Jean) are thieves/conmen who have known each other since they were children and have many different ways of nonverbal communication for when they're in the midst of conning people.

The book begins with an in medias res action scene where Locke gets captured by enemies, and it looks like Jean helped them and turned on Locke, because Locke says Jean didn't give any of the signals they have that would indicate Jean is faking/playing along to buy time.

The book then flashes back to how they got to the action scene, and after 3/4 of the book waiting to find out why Jean betrayed Locke despite their intense bond... we find out that Jean did give the playing-along signal, Locke just didn't see it.

I almost threw the book in the trash after that.

(Other dishonorable mentions go to the Star Wars: Doctor Aphra audiobook original, which did something similar with its framing device, and most of the reboot!Thrawn books by Timothy Zahn, who I feel has gone full Steven-Moffat-writing-Sherlock with his new stuff, despite having enjoyed a lot of his older Star Wars stuff. Thrawn: Alliances was one of the worst books I've read all the way through in years.)
Edited (spelling) Date: 2023-12-09 12:47 am (UTC)

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Date: 2023-12-09 05:40 am (UTC)
got_quiet: A cat in a happy hoodie not looking happy. Captioned "aaaaahh" (Default)
From: [personal profile] got_quiet
Disappointing worldbuilding is the worst! And I get the sense that something about "retellings" seems to attract them, though "surprise, we're in Russia!" sounds egregious. 

The absolutely most disappointing book for me of all time was probably Stormrage, which was a tie in novel for World of Warcraft. I absolutely knew to have no expectations for the book and still could feel me fannishness being actively murdered as I read.  I wrote a long, seething review of it many years back and still it is immediately the book that comes to mind when prompted to think of all sorts of things that can go wrong in fiction. I can't see the word "unleashed" used in intransitive fashion without getting flashbacks.  My hateboner for Richard Knaak will never deflate. He is also one of the few authors where I'm ready to fistfight anyone who says he's good. Usually I am very much a to each their own kind of guy.

The other disappointment that stuck with me was Point of Hopes, not to be confused with Swordspoint, which I liked a lot. I like fantasy mysteries and I like m/m romances so I wanted Point of Hopes to be good but the mystery was kind of awful, and there was literally no m/m! (It turns out the two leads get together in between books in the series somehow after not even glancing at each other in the first?!)

This has been a nice "books to avoid" list haha. I'm making notes.

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Date: 2023-12-09 07:04 am (UTC)
kore: (Default)
From: [personal profile] kore
I'm sorry but SURPRISE RASPUTIN! kind of has me giggling.

Date: 2023-12-09 01:19 pm (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
Oh, that does sound annoying. /o\

My disappointment: all the modern historical novels set in 17th-19th century English-speaking places which make no effort whatsoever to capture historical writing styles, or consciously to have an interesting choice of modern writing style instead. I'm often: "oh, this looks like an interesting book...nope, the writing style is just boring and bland and falls entirely flat."

I'm aware that this is entirely a matter of taste, and that I have probably been ruined by reading too many books written in the 18th-19th centuries. But to me, writing style is a part of the historical setting that I enjoy, along with the details of material and social culture. And I don't need complete pastiche. I just need some avoidance of modern language (like, please don't be talking about your upcoming deadline if you're an 18th century character), some inclusion of historical language, and some complexity to your sentences.

I'm also okay with throwing all this out if you're doing something else interesting with your style. For example, Tanith Lee's French Revolution book is absolutely not written in 18th century style, but she's doing her own thing, and I enjoyed it! Molly Greely's The Heiress is another one which is not in period style, but is doing its own stylistic thing which I enjoyed a lot. Another point is if the characters are working-class people who might have been illiterate and not schooled in the sort of more elaborate written style of the period--this can be interesting to explore in the book's style.

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Date: 2023-12-09 03:48 pm (UTC)
likeadeuce: (Default)
From: [personal profile] likeadeuce
'The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue' seems like it should be so for me on paper but I didn't care about either of the central m/f relationships at all -- I liked most of the characters individually but just didn't buy into the way it was framed as a love story and had a serious 'want to throw this book' moment at the end when it got into 'and then she wrote a book about her life and it became a bestseller' at the end.

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Date: 2023-12-10 11:07 am (UTC)
geckoholic: (Default)
From: [personal profile] geckoholic
I recently watched The Burning Girls, a short miniseries of like 6 eps. It sets up its mysteries and narrative threads really well, and then completely butchers it all with a totally nonsensical ending in the final ep. So frustrating.

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