"was I supposed to feel something here?"

[intertribal]

Reading Abigail Nussbaum's set of critical reviews of the 2009 Hugo Award-nominated novels (Part 1, Part 2) - and the comments that follow - is both hilarious and deeply, deeply frightening, and usually at the same moments.  She makes some of her nominated books seem downright wretched, and while part of me (as a reader) is going, damn, that's what's on the Hugo ballot?, another part of me (the writer) is going, what if I write like that?  FML!!

Examples:

• Saturn's Children is littered with moments like these, in which you stare at the text and wonder 'was I supposed to feel something here?'
• Stross's tendency to simply fling Stuff at the readers--sociology, physics, fashion, eroticism, philosophy, architecture, a couple of daring escapes and fight scenes--all viewed through Freya's undiscerning, unfiltered gaze, leaves the novel all but shapeless.
• Scalzi's inability to write any character voice that doesn't sound exactly like his own is a chronic problem with his writing- it's not just Zoe, it's John Perry and every other character in the books. They all sound exactly alike and they all sound like Scalzi. This is especially vexing when several of them have a conversation and any of the comments could be made by any of the six people in the room.
• The worldbuilding of the OMW universe shows its seams more and more as the series wears on, which is a definite minus for me.
• Little Brother is as tone deaf a portrait of social activism as I've ever encountered, and I'm quite baffled by the commonly voiced argument that it is a worthwhile novel because of the lessons it teaches children about liberty and civil rights. Is this really what kids ought to be learning? That it is more important to look cool than to help people, and that real heroes put their own hurt feelings ahead of the well-being of others?
• Kingdom wasn't bad so much as it was dripping all over with Slashdot-generation self-righteousness.
• I think the case for Marcus being Cory Sue is not that he sounds like Doctorow in his blog (which I never read), but that he reads like an ridiculously idealized version of a teen who has most of the same interests as Doctorow and who would one day grow up to write a blog just like Boing Boing -- I felt like I could hear Doctorow whispering in my ear "Isn't he awesome?"
• Anathem is a puzzle book, but once the puzzle has been put together there's nothing to stop us noticing just how flimsy its plot and characters are. Ultimately, Anathem really is a more humane, more intelligent, more interesting, significantly less preachy version of Little Brother, but that's not exactly high praise.
• By and large, good prose seems to live in the mainstream section of the bookstore rather than the sci-fi section.

I do like reading negative book reviews - not only because I am a hateful bitch (just kidding), but because I feel like I can learn more from them than I can from positive book reviews.  And I often find that speculative fiction novel reviews tend to be unabashedly glowing like 85-95% of the time, which I find sort of unbelievable - but maybe I'm just jaded by all the good reviews that the horrible The Descent (Jeff Long) got on Amazon.  So it's refreshing to hear people give constructive criticism and really pick at what the writer is bad at, even if it scares me - those are all very real problems.  Especially the first one.  That may actually be my worst nightmare.

Comments

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

wtf did LJ do to my quote html? grar.

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

it hates you.

[intertribal.livejournal.com]

for a while it would NOT SHOW my default userpics if I used them to comment. So yes, yes it does.