Five stars for amazing writing. Didn't finish because it depressed the hell out of me and eventually I couldn't function from the downer-ness of this...moreFive stars for amazing writing. Didn't finish because it depressed the hell out of me and eventually I couldn't function from the downer-ness of this book (and its vividness.) Had to quit early. Still don't know how it ends.(less)
I finished Escape a few days ago and felt a little confused about my feelings over this book. I even...moreAll right. We're going an even three on this one.
I finished Escape a few days ago and felt a little confused about my feelings over this book. I even mentioned this in a phone conversation with another writer-friend.
The story is compelling. It would be compelling if it were fiction; the fact that it's true takes it somewhat beyond compelling and into horrifying territory. The FLDS "church" is perpetrating human rights atrocities on American soil, and the government has, until very recent years, turned a blind eye to it because of how much we all like to tip-toe around any time a person starts screaming about their right to the free practice of religion. In a country where religious rights are often far more precious than human rights, is it any wonder that the FLDS have developed a tradition, a memetic heritage, in fact, of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse, all stitched neatly into the doctrines of their twisted faith? Add to that a healthy dose of interstate and international trafficking in children and adults for the purpose of sexual slavery and you've got a story shocking enough to keep anybody engaged to the very end.
The weakness of Escape is in its terrible writing. Truly, it is terrible; it is, I think, the worst I've ever seen in a traditionally published book, just in terms of repeated failure of craft. I tried to be kind and lenient in this regard, at first. Carolyn Jessop was born into a culture that actively hates and fears education. There is no reason to expect her to be an excellent writer, and why should somebody who's already escaped and survived the misery she endured -- and brought eight children out with her -- have to shoulder the extra life burden of learning how to write well?
Jessop doesn't need to be a good writer. But her GHOST WRITER, so prominently involved with the production of this book that her NAME IS ON THE COVER, really ought to do better. I found myself growing increasingly more frustrated with needless repetitions (telling the reader once that sex is the only form of power or currency available to FLDS women was sufficient. Two or three times would have been understandable. I saw this same sentiment expressed, often in the same exact words, at least once per chapter, or so it seemed, and sometimes more than once.) The writing was lackluster beyond mere dullness; if not for the sensationalism of the story I would not have read past the first chapter simply due to the frustration of slogging through the poorly written words. Dull, dull, dull. And sloppy. There is just no reason to repeat the same sentence, verbatim, at both the beginning and the end of a paragraph. Laura Palmer, this is your fault. I lay the blame squarely on you. What did you do to earn your paycheck on this gig? Just put your name on the cover?
Oh, how I would love to read the same story with writing that's even slightly stronger. Even a tiny bit more professional, more conscious, more engaging. It would have been an auto-five-star, no question.
I think it's a very important story. People need to know about the crimes perpetrated by the FLDS. It should be read. But gird up your loins.(less)
Thin and ultimately silly, as all Anthony's stuff is, I give this book one more star than it deserves because I read it in eighth grade and actually e...moreThin and ultimately silly, as all Anthony's stuff is, I give this book one more star than it deserves because I read it in eighth grade and actually enjoyed it then, when I was a kid who would find something to like in any fantasy novel and who still harbored a secret passion for magical horsies. An attempt to re-read it had me rolling my eyes by the middle of the first chapter.
Will fill the gullet if you crave the fluffiest of fluff. Not destined to be a classic of the genre.(less)
I don't even remember how far I got into this book before deciding to just give up on it. Not far enough to fully realize what awful shits all the cha...moreI don't even remember how far I got into this book before deciding to just give up on it. Not far enough to fully realize what awful shits all the characters apparently are, according to other reviewers. Thank goodness for that, or this would have been a one-star review.
The biggest problem I faced with this book is that nobody writes letters like this. Nobody. Not the most highly educated woman in the world. Letters are meant to be personal and accessible, not coldly academic. Okay, sure, maybe her aloof, palisade-of-thesaurus style was meant to convey what a cold, distant mother/wife she was, but the effect was too extreme. I stopped reading because it didn't feel believable to me. Such a high-brow style would have worked much better in plain first person, not in an epistolary style.
Additional star because apparently this is one of the best books ever, according to the rest of the world. I was thoroughly unimpressed.(less)
I made an honest attempt to read Dearly, Departed but had to put it down with a sigh of relief about half way through.
This is one of those books I ju...moreI made an honest attempt to read Dearly, Departed but had to put it down with a sigh of relief about half way through.
This is one of those books I just can't figure out. Why did this get published? Why wasn't more heavy editing done? Why is this kind of writing encouraged in this industry? I can't fathom it.
The problems with this novel are legion, but I think the biggest problem, and the most offensive to me, is the feeling I get in reading it: That as long as it can be slapped into the YA category, anything goes. This book, like so many others recently published in the YA genre, left me with this oily sensation that writers and publishers alike don't believe young adults (or the grown adults who like to read YA) have any discernment -- that you can literally stick anything at all on a YA shelf in Barnes & Noble, give it a vaguely spooky-dark-looking cover with a brooding female prominently featured, and it will sell. This kind of attitude about YA readers is so disrespectful. It rather turns my stomach.
But hey -- the publishers aren't wrong. It sells, doesn't it? Look how many people are eating this book up, just because it has the trend of the moment in it: Zombies. Woo. Another zombie book. As with vampires several years ago, there are lots of people out there who will literally buy and praise ANYTHING as long as it has zombies in it. The actual quality of the storytelling, the probability of the circumstances, the development of the characters, and the consistency and quality of the prose mean nothing. All that matters is zombies. Throw in a steampunk-esque setting and you've got a double-whammy of carelessness and cluelessness turned into baffling success.
I just don't get it.
Since this book is set in a future time, I can see certain strange, uniquely modern slang terms holding over, virtually unchanged, for a couple hundred years. After all, the word "cool" standing in for "desirable" or "admirable" is still being used in basically the same context as it's been used since at least the early 1900s. But it does strain credibility far too much to think that the language of Ye Olde Internets ("facepalm," "unicorn-fart special," etc.) would hold over unchanged as an entire, massive, intact lexicon, unaltered and still fully in use, nearly two hundred years in the future, when most of modern technology has been destroyed. It wouldn't have taken much effort for Lia Habel to come up with similar, plausibly altered-by-time's-passage slang terms. And a little effort in that area would have gone a very long way toward building some goodwill between writer and reader. As it is, the lazy use of language reads like a loogie in the eye of the hapless reader. It's just insulting.
Aside from the bizarrely unoriginal use of language, there is really no differentiation in the point of view characters' voices. The entire book could have been told in one character's viewpoint and it would have read the same way. There was so little actual craft deployed in the writing of this novel that I felt like I was reading a rough draft.
All that said, the premise for the setting was intriguing. I got the overall impression that Habel could be a really good writer with fully developed craft given a little more time, less praise, and more constructive criticism. She clearly has some good ideas (even if zombies are way played out) and a vivid imagination. I almost feel as if Habel has been victimized by her publishers, who threw a contract at her, eager to get anything zombie-related into the hands of the zombies who only care that a book has zombies in it, and don't care about anything else. This book needed a lot more development and revision before it was ready for print, but to print it went, and "BRAINS! BRAINS!" the fans all cry as they line up to buy more in this poorly crafted series. Publishers: 1. Lia Habel: 0. Kind of sad when you look at it that way.
I love it when a good author succeeds in the face of trying circumstances. But I only love it when that success is deserved. Ms. Habel will get there with time, but she's not there yet, and her editors aren't helping her right now. This book's many problems prove that she doesn't understand the craft well enough yet to build a successful career -- once the zombie fad finally gets its head cut off and it stops twitching and biting at all of us, I don't see much chance for her if she continues on as she's been going. It's up to her editors to help guide her toward better writing if they want to publish her zombie-filled ideas. But it sure seems, based on the confusingly sloppy state of this book, that it was rushed to press just to satisfy the masses. Oh, Bottom Line, you bitch of a mistress, you.
I hope the author is able to recover from this early-career gaffe and go on to publish works people will take seriously -- people other than those in the all-zombies, all the time crowd, I mean. Though it will probably require a change in pen name.
Sometimes that's just how this industry goes.
P.S. If you want to read a series that has a steampunk setting and deals with zombies AND is very well-written by an author who really knows her business, I recommend Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.Boneshaker(less)
Ugh. Where do I start with this miserable excuse for historical fiction?
First, let me say that I was prepared and willing to like this book because it...moreUgh. Where do I start with this miserable excuse for historical fiction?
First, let me say that I was prepared and willing to like this book because its prose is competent and evocative, and that is a rare thing to find in historical novels -- especially historical novels whose first duty is to function as "inspirational" (read: religious) fiction. I can forgive much if a writer can bring me into a different setting, but even I have my limits.
My reasons for finally giving this book one star, in spite of its decent writing, can be summed up in a single word: swastikas. Summed up in one word, yet allow me to elaborate all the same. I've spent about twelve hours of my life listening to this audiobook, growing ever more enraged over the swastikas and all they represent. And I'm not talking about Nazis. No, in the context of this book, swastikas don't represent the genocide of the Jews but rather very very bad historical fiction. And while I am logged into Goodreads, nothing pisses me off more than bad historical fiction.
Early on in the book Hadassah, the heroine, witnesses her family murdered at the hands of mysterious raiders whom she can only identify by the "twisted cross" they wear as their symbol. Yes, swastikas. In 500 BCE Persia. Used exclusively as symbols of Jew-hatred. Easily-googled history shows that the swastika, although used for many centuries in various ancient cultures, was not adopted as a symbol of hatred against Jews and other "inferiors" until the 1920s. In Europe. Not in Persia. Frankly, to bend history double in this way struck me as insulting toward real history -- toward the shameful history of the Nazi party and the Holocaust, to say nothing of the laziness it indicates on the part of the writer.
Xerxes' Persia was a historically rich, fascinating, dramatic historical setting, well documented and easily researched. To ignore all the many historically appropriate ways the marauding, Jew-hating Amelechites could have been represented (almost any made-up, distinctive symbol would have served the same purpose) and to just say "Nope, swastikas. Go with it!" was to reach for the low-hanging fruit. Modern western readers instantly recognize the swastika as a symbol of hatred and evil (even though, to be fair to the cultures which still use it in its original positive context, it's not, technically) so Tenney chose that symbol -- chose simple, stupid over-accessibility rather than taking the effort to draw the reader into another time and place, which is what historical fiction is all about.
Or should be. As I continued to listen to Hadassah and continued to grow more frustrated with the oft-paraded specter of the SPOOOOKY ANACHRONISTIC SWASTIKA, I began to doubt that this book was intended to function as historical fiction at all, that its setting in the potentially fertile world of Xerxes' Persia was just happenstance, 'cause that's what the Bible says, hy-uk hy-uk. I mean, really, why write this story if you're not fascinated by Persian history? Xerxes and his court were amazing! What a missed opportunity!
Instead, the closer I came to this book's grisly, disturbing ending the more obvious it grew that this is pure and simple religious fiction, without any pretensions to historical accuracy, likable characters, logic, or anything else that makes good reading good. This book's only goal is to repeat faithfully what's in the Bible, sense and humanity and character be damned.
I can just pick up the Bible and read the Book of Esther if that's what I want to get from my reading experience. It would take up a lot less of my time than wading through this claptrap. Have you seen the Book of Esther? It's like five pages long! Cake!
Oh, god, I have barely even scratched the surface and I still feel I've got tomes to write on why this book fails and insults. Where to next? I suppose I ought to touch on the disturbing nature of its narrator and heroine, Hadassah/Esther.
Hadassah is understandably traumatized by her early brush with death and her witnessing of her family being slaughtered for the "crime" of being Jewish. No doubt, this is a terrible thing for a child of seven to see, and the reader expects Hadassah to either grow up with a forgiving nature (and thus to be a typically virtuous character) or to grow up filled with rage and bitterness -- less fantasy-world virtuous, but more psychologically real (think Arya in A Game of Thrones.) Either path for this character would feel true to the reader. But a character can't walk with feet firmly planted on both paths and still feel likable or understandable to the reader. If the duality of her nature is only revealed at the end of the book, that fission seems all the more difficult to swallow.
Hadassah grows up hiding her Jewish heritage, fearful of more attacks by the anachronistic-swastika-wearing Amelechites. Fair enough. Her nature is sweet, kindly, demure...typical traits for the "virtuous" character type. As she grows closer to King Xerxes she only seems all the more virtuous, spending their fabled one night together innocently talking about their histories, not doing the nasty as one might expect. Virtue, virtue, virtue! Good! We have a clear idea of who our heroine is.
Oh. No, we don't. Surprise. Near the end of the book Esther (Hadassah) not only engineers the execution of Haman, the leader of the Amelechites (who wear anachronistic swastikas...HAVE I MENTIONED THE OUT-OF-PLACE SWASTIKAS YET?), but then literally falls on her knees and begs her husband to hunt down and slay every single last one of the Amelechites, including women and children and babies, because Samuel or Saul or somebody not carrying out a thorough GENOCIDE a generation ago is what got Persia into this Jews vs. Amelechites kerfuffle in the first place.
OKAY. Pleading for a genocide is quite an about-face for a virtuous, sweet, kindly, demure character to make. Esther's stance would have been easier to swallow if she'd been represented all along as a warrior queen, made cold and hard by her horrific childhood experiences. If she were a Boudicca, okay, I'd get it. Instead, she was a sweet little wafting butterfly of a woman who only did as her adoptive father asked her. This sudden lust for every drop of Amelechite blood comes a bit out of left field, to say the least.
Esther's utter lack of concern, not even a twinge of guilt or sadness, over the possible genocide of the Amelechites is nothing short of disgusting. The glee with which she narrates Haman's execution, with his family forced to look on while he dies slowly and horribly, is revolting, and totally unacceptable from a virtuous character.
Yes, the Amelechites attempted a genocide on the Jews and as we all know, genocides are bad. Wiping out an entire people is a shitty thing to do. But if it's shitty for one group to do, then it's shitty for all groups to do, and if your group has been the would-be victims of an attempted genocide, that does not give you carte blanche to commit genocide in return. At least, not without a serious case of the Big Guilts over it. If Esther had felt compelled by God to see to the genocide, and wrestled with the horror of this command, but chose to carry it out anyway because she fears God more than she fears genocide, then I could even accept that. Instead, the narrative fairly capers with horrible joy when the Amelechites get their comeuppance. Hooray, the "bad guys" (who were only trying to kill the Jews off because a Jewish king had killed all but one of them off just a generation ago) got their just desserts! Jews win! If Yahweh is on their side then they're automatically in the right! In your face, Amelechites!
An eye for an eye makes everyone blind, Tommy Tenney. But I guess not if the Bible says otherwise.
While I'm on that subject, let me say in this book's favor that it does portray the Old Testament God more faithfully than any other novel I've read. Too many Biblical novels strive to portray Yahweh (the OT Yahweh, that is) as the touchy-feely, lovey, kind God that Jesus represents in the New Testament (sort of, if you ignore all the family-spurning and fig-tree cursing and ordering the deaths of all those who don't want to follow Jesus. But yeah, the Sermon on the Mount was pretty good.) But portraying OT Yahweh as a kind and gentle God is in itself anachronistic. The Old Testament doesn't depict a kindly God. It depicts the kind of God we see here, and see reflected here in Esther: ruthless, whimsical, blood-thirsty, and utterly without remorse. So kudos to Tenney for actually portraying the OT God as he appears in the Bible.
But that's just a small aside. I didn't approach this novel as theology. I approached it as historical fiction, and in its disturbingly two-faced heroine with her total lack of remorse, it fails as good historical fiction.
But that's not all! Several instances of the text contradicting itself most obnoxiously, sometimes within the same paragraph, leapt out at me and made me want to throttle this book. At one moment Hadassah says she never found out whether her father ever learned of her sneaking around dressed as a boy. A few sentences later, she tells him to his face...so I guess he did find out after all. This is but one of many examples of sloppy editing. This kind of editing foul-up is understandable if the contradictions are separated by a few chapters. Such laziness is inexcusable when just a few lines separate these contradictions.
I grow weary of expending so much energy on this disturbing, icky book, so I will try to keep my remaining criticisms brief.
The anachronisms continued apace in the language that was used. Words rooted in German, Greek (when the character had no contact with anybody who was not a Jew), and other implausibly foreign words, as well as too-modern expressions, threw me far, far out of the setting and again raised my considerable ire with the laziness that went into writing this novel. A person in Persia in 500 BCE would have no cause, ever, ever, ever, to use the word angst. She would not be given an "aphrodisiac," but rather a "potion to inflame her desire," or something similarly acceptable within the setting. Yes, I know they wouldn't be speaking in English, either, but such stand-out words just have no place in thoughtfully constructed historical fiction.
And finally, the way even the Bible itself was bent to service this story was just embarrassing. Hadassah is encouraged by her ultra-religious Jewish nanny to dress up like a boy and sneak around the streets of Babylon. The nanny even says that Jews have a long and storied tradition of cross-dressing as "disguise" when it suits them. O RLY? Because the last time I checked Deuteronomy, it specifically said that for men and women to wear the clothing of the opposite sex is an abomination. Yikes. But I guess whatever gets the story where the author wants it to go with the least amount of actual research or careful writing on his part is fair game.
Gag me.
And don't think I've been so harsh on this novel because it's Biblical fiction and I'm an atheist. I gave a well-deserved five stars to Orson Scott Card's Sarah, which is about as Biblical as they come but which is also damn good historical fiction. It is entirely possible to write a good book with believable characters and still cleave to the Bible's stories with a reasonable amount of fidelity.
This is the kind of historical novel that made me start writing historical novels, because it's the kind that points out how easy it is to do better. Much, much better.
Consider the story of Esther added to my "I can do this much better than you" list. Maybe you'll see a novel about Esther from me some time in the future. If you do, I hope you enjoy it more than I enjoyed this book. And I guarantee you it will be 100% swastika-free. (less)
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