Bradley's Reviews > Written in Red
Written in Red (The Others, #1)
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![4213258](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p2/4213258.jpg)
I'm rather surprised that I didn't get into this nearly as much as I had hoped I would. Something wasn't clicking with me, and as I kept reading, I spent way too much attention on other things.
Like little things like why I ought to care.
I expected Urban Fantasy, and to me, it doesn't even remotely equate with sparkly vampires or huggable monsters of any stripe. I like grit. I love plot. Characters are everything, but if I had to place all my hopes upon one thing and one thing only, I'd say it had to be conflict.
For way too long in the novel, there was no real conflict. Sure, we have the Others and the Monkeys. We have Meg running from her past and her late-revealed ability. That's all out there as a potential conflict, but in the meantime, we've got growls and innuendo and something that smells entirely of a different kind of novel.
Like I said, it took me a long time to figure it out. But it dawned on me: this isn't really a UF novel. If you ignore all the light fantasy elements, what we've really got is a novel about an awkward girl from a bad home that ran away and took up living with a gruff immigrant community, and specifically with a mean-sounding bookstore owner with a heart of gold. She gets bedazzled into being a jack-of-all-trades and she eventually gets adopted by the enclosed community.
Mary-Sue syndrome? Yeah. Self-esteem issues boiling down to cutting, but magic making it a useful trait? Yeah, there's that, too.
If there hadn't been magic in the novel at all, it might have been a rather heartwarming tale about a kid finding a community to belong to, with other heartwarming elements like befriending the abused puppy, discovering that sorting mail really is interesting as long as you can use REAL PONIES... oh wait.. I mean elemental steeds... and getting that heart-in-throat moment when, against all odds, your new friends go way out of their way to protect you when your official family tries to drag you back to your old hell.
And you know what? I might have been more at home in this real-life setting kind of tale. I'd likely have attached to each character more deeply.
And you know what really scares the living shit out of me? I'm A HUGE FAN OF SF/F, almost to the exclusion of all other genres. I NEVER say this kind of shit about any book. I never pine about how a tale might have been better-served vanilla. And yet, I just did.
There were a few elements of magic and history that were promising, such as the drowned city. Maybe if a little bit of the plot had revolved more around the implications of the magic rather than just being bad ass and driving away all the bad monkeys, I'd have at least had that to point at, but as it was, almost the entire novel was mundane this and mundane that. Getting Sam to trust anyone, let alone quasi-human Meg, was all very nice, but he was just a hybrid abused boy/abused dog.
I wanted to like this more. I really did. The end action was, unfortunately, too little, too late. The magic and the UF elements were too bland. I couldn't even taste them through the mundane. Needs more spice.
I'll read the next in the series later this month because I've already promised that I will, but I really hope it picks up with more real conflict than this.
Mundane conflicts are mundane conflicts. They appear larger only as long as there's nothing else to compare them with. Once you add some truly breathtaking conflicts, the rest of it just fades into the background.
Maybe for some readers, all this mundane buildup served the function of complex character building, but I haven't seen that much in the way of character development or change except in how Meg is no longer prey and is accepted. Of course, all of that could have been accomplished with some severe editing out of 300 or so pages until we were left with an actual interesting story with all the fantastical elements not being drowned out.
Here's to hoping it gets better!
Like little things like why I ought to care.
I expected Urban Fantasy, and to me, it doesn't even remotely equate with sparkly vampires or huggable monsters of any stripe. I like grit. I love plot. Characters are everything, but if I had to place all my hopes upon one thing and one thing only, I'd say it had to be conflict.
For way too long in the novel, there was no real conflict. Sure, we have the Others and the Monkeys. We have Meg running from her past and her late-revealed ability. That's all out there as a potential conflict, but in the meantime, we've got growls and innuendo and something that smells entirely of a different kind of novel.
Like I said, it took me a long time to figure it out. But it dawned on me: this isn't really a UF novel. If you ignore all the light fantasy elements, what we've really got is a novel about an awkward girl from a bad home that ran away and took up living with a gruff immigrant community, and specifically with a mean-sounding bookstore owner with a heart of gold. She gets bedazzled into being a jack-of-all-trades and she eventually gets adopted by the enclosed community.
Mary-Sue syndrome? Yeah. Self-esteem issues boiling down to cutting, but magic making it a useful trait? Yeah, there's that, too.
If there hadn't been magic in the novel at all, it might have been a rather heartwarming tale about a kid finding a community to belong to, with other heartwarming elements like befriending the abused puppy, discovering that sorting mail really is interesting as long as you can use REAL PONIES... oh wait.. I mean elemental steeds... and getting that heart-in-throat moment when, against all odds, your new friends go way out of their way to protect you when your official family tries to drag you back to your old hell.
And you know what? I might have been more at home in this real-life setting kind of tale. I'd likely have attached to each character more deeply.
And you know what really scares the living shit out of me? I'm A HUGE FAN OF SF/F, almost to the exclusion of all other genres. I NEVER say this kind of shit about any book. I never pine about how a tale might have been better-served vanilla. And yet, I just did.
There were a few elements of magic and history that were promising, such as the drowned city. Maybe if a little bit of the plot had revolved more around the implications of the magic rather than just being bad ass and driving away all the bad monkeys, I'd have at least had that to point at, but as it was, almost the entire novel was mundane this and mundane that. Getting Sam to trust anyone, let alone quasi-human Meg, was all very nice, but he was just a hybrid abused boy/abused dog.
I wanted to like this more. I really did. The end action was, unfortunately, too little, too late. The magic and the UF elements were too bland. I couldn't even taste them through the mundane. Needs more spice.
I'll read the next in the series later this month because I've already promised that I will, but I really hope it picks up with more real conflict than this.
Mundane conflicts are mundane conflicts. They appear larger only as long as there's nothing else to compare them with. Once you add some truly breathtaking conflicts, the rest of it just fades into the background.
Maybe for some readers, all this mundane buildup served the function of complex character building, but I haven't seen that much in the way of character development or change except in how Meg is no longer prey and is accepted. Of course, all of that could have been accomplished with some severe editing out of 300 or so pages until we were left with an actual interesting story with all the fantastical elements not being drowned out.
Here's to hoping it gets better!
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Written in Red.
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Reading Progress
September 25, 2015
– Shelved
September 25, 2015
– Shelved as:
to-read
October 11, 2015
–
Started Reading
October 13, 2015
– Shelved as:
urban-fantasy
October 13, 2015
–
Finished Reading
April 13, 2018
– Shelved as:
fantasy
April 13, 2018
– Shelved as:
ya
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Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥
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rated it 5 stars
Oct 13, 2015 05:54PM
![Melissa ♥ Dog/Wolf Lover ♥ Martin](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1607553912p1/17438949.jpg)
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![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
Like a comfortable blanket that cuddles and warms you and lets you imagine you're in the soft belly of a wolf pack's den because they've invited you there and you're welcome and safe from the bad old humans that exploit you. *sigh*
Maybe it's for a ton of other readers, but it's just not for me. I read to be amused and/or challenged, and if I don't get that, then at least I'm taken for one hell of a ride. I didn't get much of any of that here.
If *I* were feeling abused and wronged and wanted pure escapist fiction to make me identify and make believe that I was Meg and getting all this love, then I'm absolutely sure I'd have LOVED this book.
It's really a matter of where we are as readers and what we really want, I think.
![Jilrene](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1440259482p1/4922337.jpg)
Great review. This one didn't work for me either. It was one everyone loved but me.
![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
It IS, however, a bit boring. At least the monsters are pretty solidly portrayed as monsters. There's lots of "Special Meat" available at the butchers.
*spoiler*
It's Soylent Green.
*end spoiler*
:)
![Lindsay](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1714926597p1/10326608.jpg)
![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
I might not have judged this so poorly if we had actually begun the novel in the action-process of escape, giving us an immediate dark-mirror to the actual monster-society she gets adopted into. It's possible that I'm the only one who thinks this way, too. ;)
![Sarah](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1653492863p1/23841736.jpg)
![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
![Tani](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1521292450p1/63414753.jpg)
![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
Unfortunately, we're dealing with selection bias. The readers of this book tend to gravitate only to the same kind of thing and so discount the wide world of actual interesting books.
Then again, maybe they're like me and they judge a book based on its merits within its chosen genre. But then I'm still scratching my head. lol
So, no, you're not going crazy. Or if we are going crazy together, at least we're in good company. :)
Viva la Virgo! We ARE nuts. lol
![Alexandra](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1568913395p1/351830.jpg)
And it does seem to me that most readers today of YA Fantasy/Sci Fi are fairly limited in their experience with those genres.
![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
![Michelle Watson Forbes](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1394772176p1/29627140.jpg)
![Michelle Watson Forbes](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1394772176p1/29627140.jpg)
![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
I wonder if most virgos bounce off this book?
![Lorena](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1489184320p1/251417.jpg)
![Bradley](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1508811508p1/4213258.jpg)
![Crowinator](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1636475495p1/283407.jpg)
![Michelle Watson Forbes](https://images.gr-assets.com/users/1394772176p1/29627140.jpg)