30 Days of Books: Day 011

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 11 – A book that disappointed you

The “Soldier Son” trilogy in general, by Robin Hobb, but specifically the second book Forest Mage . It felt like Hobb had written 2 books worth of story but was contractually obligated to stretch it into 3 books. It was really disappointing. A lot of the ideas were good and interesting, some of the characters were good and interesting, but the writing wasn’t good enough across the board. The books also deal quite a bit with very fat characters– weight gain is a plot point– and the writing (not just characters’ attitudes toward fat, but what felt like Authorial Voice) veered from “fat isn’t that bad, it’s just part of life, some people are fat and some aren’t” to “OH MY GOD BEING FAT IS TERRIBLE AND DISGUSTING WHAT THE HELL JUST DIE. DEATH IS BETTER THAN FATTY FATTY FATNESS.” And while some of that was characters’ attitudes, a lot of the negativity felt like the author’s voice. And I get enough fat hatred in my life as it is. (It’s kind of extra disappointing because you had a character get fat, and his dad’s all down on him, and treats it like a personal attack, and denies him food and makes him exercise… and he’s still fat. Which slots in nicely with a lot of experiences me and other fat people have, where we diet and exercise and don’t lose weight. So it was like hey… somebody gets it… I can identify with this… so the “fat is bad” authorial voice kind of hit extra hard.) But really the most disappointing part was 2 books stretched over 3. Lots of repetition. Lots of it. Was repeated. Over and over. Much of the story was repeated. Again and again. And retold. In different ways. Over and over. The good parts were really good, but not worth the bad parts.