Just finished reading 'Spellbinder' by Melanie Rawn.
Not really my kind of thing. From my way of looking at it, the plot was spread a bit thin and slow and off around the edges. From the books way of looking at it what I was calling 'plot' was interruptions. That's what the subtitle says - 'A love story with magical interruptions'. So I can't say I wasn't warned, except that line only appears inside the book, not on the cover, and it was shelved with the urban fantasy not the romances, and I bought something that was quite frustrating in parts. Plus it has a whole lot of detail in the research. And a central character who stops to lecture quite often, as a plot point and indeed a way of saving the day. At points it felt more like a discussion or a set of essays than an adventure. So, in many ways, I am not sold on the style.
Plus the ending... I'm pretty sure what I'm finding flawed in the ending isn't intended the way that would be a problem. But... the last line of the regular chapters is her going to be husband telling her to "Shut the fuck up." And then the Epilogue deals with them leaving to go back to her childhood home so she can have babies. And all it deals with is how he adjusts. It doesn't say anything at all about her career. And given how much of the book is about her power, discovering her power, realising that her power is creation - through words and the books she writes... her shutting up because her husband tells her too? Would be really messed up. So just one line about how the latest book was lining up to get born just like the kids were would fix my disquiet about that ending. Otherwise it looks kind of like she gives up all that word stuff to go be a mother! But I think the point is probably that it's all creation - that to create baby humans needs a lot of words and learning and stuff too. There's a tension throughout between her being valued for her biology (inherited power) and for her skills (writing) and it pretty much resolves by winding them both together. And then there's babies, biology, but the last scene is all about blessings, words. So that should work.
... I just wish it was clearer she was still having her career, and the focus was more evenly shared between the pair of them in that last little bit.
That said... it woke up some stuff in my head that I just realised has been going out of focus for a long while. About looking for the sacred in the world, the power of creation, the spark that we can see reflecting in each other. I haven't really done much of that lately, maybe. I don't know. Not in such a formal way. And there's power in the forms too.
Also I was thinking that I really, really need to sit down and write something. Soon.
College would quite like it if the something included the essay I has to write to pass this unit, but I mean also and different.
Something I make up.
... I've had a plot bunny develop all day that is not a fanfic bunny at all. I thought it was shiny. A lady artist asks people on the street if she can paint them, and the three people who agree she has conversations with, and finds their god/myth aspects; and then the three come together by chance to save someone's life with small skills that the artist found in them earlier. It would be about ways of looking at the world, different angles, and the power to be found in people that don't think of themselves as powerful. One of the three would be in a wheelchair, one blind, one just this scrawny office person who does the same thing every day.
And then I realised that my bunny was about one woman and three men, and then a victim woman and a criminal man, and neither of the women actually relate to other women and the victim woman is, well, a victim. And then I wondered how it is that the exact things I'm always complaining about in other stories just casually sidle into my stories and set the structure. There's no inherent reason all those three people should be men, they just were when they turned up in my head. And, okay, today that's partly because I was researching god-aspects not goddess-aspects for once, but it's hardly the first time my stories have done that. And that needs fixing. And it especially needs fixing that when I need a random character to get stabbed I automatically thought of a woman! And I know it was meant to be a quickie, but why so isolated? Why no friendships or feeling of being part of a network?
This Spellbinder book had strong connections between the central woman character and her best friend and her aunt and some other women and a whole lot of ancestors. I think the guys still outnumber them, but there was a strong friendship between women right there in the middle of it. So that part is good.
Right at the back of the book there's a note from the author:
"To those who are disappointed that this isn't another book - The Captal's Tower {er, *raises hand*, that was my first thought yes} [...] - well, what can I tell you? Life happens. So does clinical depression. If it happens to you, and I earnestly hope it doesn't, get help."
And around then I felt vaguely guilty about being dissatisfied with the book.
But really, I'm not complaining about the author, or even the book mostly, I'm just writing down what it made me think. Which is not the same as kicking someone for not delivering while down. Right? Probably.
I'm also glad she wrote it down in the book. More talking about depression = more helpful.
Anyway, is nearly midnight and I get up at 0645. As usual. Blah.
*goes away. probably to eat chocolate. and at least think sleepy thoughts.*
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}