fredericks

I'm still up. I finished a book I didn't like. I wrote a rant on it. I'm posting it in my journal. I'm not cutting it because _[put your own reasoning here]_ .

-Bad, fantasy; bad, or "why I didn't like Flewelling's Nightrunner Series (through Book 2)"-
by

fredericks, Grade 17

I read fantasy, some of it "meh" most of it good enough to warrant a second (or third or fourth) visit. Not this time around. Lynn Flewelling's (doesn't that sound like a pseudonym?) Nightrunner series has rubbed me the wrong way for a number of reasons:

1. One of the protagonists screams "Mary Sue" - Meet Seregil. Hard name? No worries, he pronounces it phonetically for you in the early parts of the first book. Seregil is awesome at nearly everything he does: he's a great thief (dexterity +10, lock-picking skills, all that jive), excellent swordsman, master of many languages, great with costume changes (a helluva convincing cross-dresser), rich, well-connected, and an all-around sexy guy. Oh, and he likes the ladies and the gents in equal measure. *swoon* He was caught with a guy by his father, a guy who somehow framed him for a crime he didn't commit, and then he was exiled from his people, this mythical race that somehow isn't so mythical or distant because his sister makes an appearance like there's nothing to it. Seregil is close to perfect, and that makes him boring. But, no worries! bored with your Mary Sue? here's another character for you:

2. The young naive protagonist - inevitably drawn to the Mary Sue like a moth to a flame. Our young protagonist (Alec) is a Sue-in-training: we find him in prison after he more or less witnessed his father's death (he's an orphan! aww!), he's great with a bow and arrow but horrible with a sword (couldn't they just boost his agility points and have him chill in the *back row* for battles?), and he's cute as a button. Seregil impulsively decides to take him on as an apprentice of sorts after meeting him in the prison because? duh duh duh! it's a mystery. Seregil trains him to be a right honest thief, cleaning him up and teaching him suave moves ala a sex-reversed "My Fair Lady". The title is actually "Watcher" but the job seems to entail lots of sneaking around, spying, and otherwise doing questionable acts in a rather small area so you'd think people would realize something is up, but apparently the crime rate in that burg is RE-diculously high. This of course brings up another problem...

3. WTF do Seregil and Alec do precisely? They watch...for what? The only things I got them watching for in the books were things directly related to what they'd managed to cause. They work with the magicians and...? I read perhaps 750 pages of text and still had little clue what the protagonists did, which is funny because...

4. EVERYONE TALKS IN EXPOSITION. That pissed me off so very badly. Using the naive young protagonist as exposition fodder is one thing, but everyone talks miles and miles about what is going on except, for the most part, the bad guys...and that's probably because by the time they really get some page presence Seregil and Co. have explained everything to the ground. It was annoying beyond measure. I honestly would have preferred Tolkien-esque blocks of descriptive *text* to listening to Seregil go on and on about some obscure cultural reference in a way that completely took me out of the story.

Ah, but what else did I dislike? I'm glad you asked!
5. Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor, table for two please? I'm going to ignore the numerical ages of the two protagonists for the moment and start with this - one's relatively older, one's relatively young. Yet they fall in love. Not lust (which would be understandable since they're both apparently hot as hell), not just *like* (which would work since they have great friendship chemistry on the page), but full-on passionate lurve. How do the readers pick up on this? via Flewelling's not-too-subtle hints:

"I was watching Seregil's face tonight," Kari said as they lay together in the darkness that night. "He's in love with Alec, you know."

Me: "What tee-eff??!!??! NO, I did not know!"

The World: "What 'chu talkin' 'bout, Flewelling?"

There are ways to show love blossoming. Not like that. It's not believable and it doesn't flow, and that stinks because those two are the heart of the series. To Flewelling's credit she does try to give little clues about the protagonists feelings towards one another, but all the hints get drowned out by the stark reality that Seregil is roughly 50 years old (a young 50, as his race is long-lived like elves *snort*) and Alec is only 16. I'm not one to be hampered by Western statutory laws (if you know what I'm sayin...unless you're a cop in which case what I'm saying is completely innocent) but there are definite maturity differences between someone who's been around the block for half a century versus someone who's barely made half that. Lust is understandable, but it's when I start hearing about this all-inspiring love taking hold that I start rolling my eyes snarking.

6. How many books are in this thing anyway? Things do not really start moving until halfway through book 2. That's a helluva lot of background beforehand, and only a smidgen of it actually proves useful. We find in book 2 that Alec is half mythical race (the mystery alluded to in book 1) and that tears him up - for a good four lines. Then he's right as rain being cute with Seregil whom he loves but...right, that's another gripe.

7. FORBIDDEN LOVE, only thing not really because homosexuality is a problem then it isn't a problem and then it is/n't. Sailors raping young boys? confronted in one of the early pages of the first book (the possibility, of course - our young naive protagonist doesn't get with a man until Mary Sue...but surely I'm not spoiling this fanfic for you, right?) Alec was raised in the Bible Belt and looks down on men sexin' with other men until he spies Seregil looking delectable in a male/male brothel, then cue the sexual angst! Will he? won't he? Will he? Of course he fuckin' will: he's enamored with the Mary Sue, remember?

8. Who are you and why are you taking up my precious pages? We meet a couple of periphery characters who end up taking up valuable page time throughout the end of the second book. For example - Beka, Micum's daughter, whom I guess was supposed to represent a strong female presence, took up time with her military exploits that I would have much rather have spent with the protagonists figuring out what the hell was going on. My suspicion was that Beka was there to be a foil to the Seregil/Alec relationship, and my reading of reviews for Book 3 over on Amazon.com confirmed it. Why waste my valuable time setting up for your next book? Fine, Beka and her troops help our Sues save the day at the end...still, she's boring. Then there was Thero, who ended up not being fleshed out but it doesn't matter because he helps our Sues out in the end. Two-dimensional characters are not the same thing as complex characters.

Last and most definitely least -
9. Where's the brisket? So the end of the tale comes - drama drama drama almost death! drama aww! - and in the course of things Sue and Sue Jr. admit they love (*barf*) one another. They kiss once, twice, rather chastely. And then...cue the next book. No goddamned money shot. WTF? I paid for the sexin', dammit.
Okay, this point? a bit ridiculous. But I had to put it up here.

Why'd I finish reading if I disliked it? Well, there was the occasional peek of interesting dialogue or the potential for a truly ingenuous plot-twist, but nothing happened. Before I'm asked, I will most likely not get Book 3.