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nilchanceMelusine, Sarah Monette.
I'll admit it. In the last 100 pages, I started a drinking game. Felix cries? Take a shot. Felix weeps? Take a shot. Mildmay weeps? Take a slightly bigger shot. If I wasn't drinking tea, I'd have to get my stomach pumped.
Okay, I loved Companion to Wolves. I did. It had poly, it had wolves, it had beserkers. I figured, hey, magic and manpain! I like manpain! I like brothers with incesty manpain! There's no bad there!
Um, yeah. I think Sam Winchester would break Felix's nose and steal his lunch money. John would be like, dude, drink a beer and let it GO, already. Which may be my impatience with the fact that right off the bat, Felix tries to self-destruct and takes the kingdom's main source of magic with him. You'd think that'd be a painful reminder that he needs to take responsibility for his emo angst and its destructiveness. You would be WRONG. No, Felix continues to be just as self-absorbed and "wah, my angst, let me destruct" and by the end of the book, he was starting to take his brother WITH him, and... no. Just, no. I have ISSUES with that kind of mindless self-destructive pattern, and that's my deal, but I have never wanted to slap a character so badly in my life. And I don't know WHY that bothers me but John "I Self Destruct Twice Before Breakfast" Winchester doesn't, but it does.
Mildmay, though. I like him. He was coarse and hurty and kind of selectively moral, and I love that in a character. (Which made it more frustrating that Felix was obliviously flailing away at his shadows and hurting whoever was closest.) But Mildmay never called Felix on his shit, and THAT made me kinda want to shake them BOTH by the last few pages.
Also, Monette has issues with POV shifting. In that she switches back too often to a character who isn't DOING anything or contributing to the story. (Back to Felix: still crazy? Oh, yes. Okay, with that resolved, back to Mildmay and the PLOT.) Not that the story really had a traditional MEANING in this book, because Monette got to the end and just... stopped. Just stopped. No real resolution. No real promise. Just, eh, I got my 50,000 words and I'm spent.
I've heard the second book is better. I bought it because... well, masochism, generally. So we'll see.
I'll admit it. In the last 100 pages, I started a drinking game. Felix cries? Take a shot. Felix weeps? Take a shot. Mildmay weeps? Take a slightly bigger shot. If I wasn't drinking tea, I'd have to get my stomach pumped.
Okay, I loved Companion to Wolves. I did. It had poly, it had wolves, it had beserkers. I figured, hey, magic and manpain! I like manpain! I like brothers with incesty manpain! There's no bad there!
Um, yeah. I think Sam Winchester would break Felix's nose and steal his lunch money. John would be like, dude, drink a beer and let it GO, already. Which may be my impatience with the fact that right off the bat, Felix tries to self-destruct and takes the kingdom's main source of magic with him. You'd think that'd be a painful reminder that he needs to take responsibility for his emo angst and its destructiveness. You would be WRONG. No, Felix continues to be just as self-absorbed and "wah, my angst, let me destruct" and by the end of the book, he was starting to take his brother WITH him, and... no. Just, no. I have ISSUES with that kind of mindless self-destructive pattern, and that's my deal, but I have never wanted to slap a character so badly in my life. And I don't know WHY that bothers me but John "I Self Destruct Twice Before Breakfast" Winchester doesn't, but it does.
Mildmay, though. I like him. He was coarse and hurty and kind of selectively moral, and I love that in a character. (Which made it more frustrating that Felix was obliviously flailing away at his shadows and hurting whoever was closest.) But Mildmay never called Felix on his shit, and THAT made me kinda want to shake them BOTH by the last few pages.
Also, Monette has issues with POV shifting. In that she switches back too often to a character who isn't DOING anything or contributing to the story. (Back to Felix: still crazy? Oh, yes. Okay, with that resolved, back to Mildmay and the PLOT.) Not that the story really had a traditional MEANING in this book, because Monette got to the end and just... stopped. Just stopped. No real resolution. No real promise. Just, eh, I got my 50,000 words and I'm spent.
I've heard the second book is better. I bought it because... well, masochism, generally. So we'll see.