Hugos incest watch, unpopular opinions, etc

[lizbee]

Having recovered somewhat from the overwhelming badness of Among Others, I moved onto attempting Mira Grant's Deadline. I say "attempting", because it's the second book in a trilogy I had otherwise decided not to read, and while I had to give it a go, I promised myself I could stop if I really hated it.

I MADE IT FIVE CHAPTERS, GUYS, YOU SHOULD BE PROUD OF ME.

To sum up: the Newsflesh trilogy is set in a sci-fi zombie apocalypse dominated by pop culture references that are already outdated now. (Strike one.) The protagonist in the second book has his dead twin sister living in his head, but that doesn't save him from being deeply annoying. (Strike two.) And then someone (thankfully) warned me that the trilogy's OTP are siblings. (Strike three.)

It wasn't HOLY SHIT, THIS IS BAD! on the scale of Among Others, but the little bit I read killed any desire to read any of Grant's other work ever.



...also, the "it's not incest if they're only adopted!!!" meme makes me really angry. (It keeps coming up in Korra fandom, too.) It's insulting to adopted families. It's also a line that gets used in cases of real life abuse, ie, my grandfather and the daughter he adopted.



I'm now trying to read Ray of Light by Brad R. Torgersen, one of the nominated novelettes. I say "trying" because, while it's technically good and all, so far it suffers from All The Female Characters Are Symbols And Archetypes Syndrome, and also a bad case of PrecociousInnocentChildItis. I'm beginning to wonder if this year's nominations are actually an elaborate attempt at trolling.

Something I did like! I'm on a couple of YA panels at Continuum -- I also came third in the short story competition! -- so I've been catching up on some YA sci-fi. (I have to say, the contrast with the adult-oriented Hugo nominated novels is striking. And I'm still convinced that the really interesting stuff is being written for teens.) Really enjoyed Feed by M T Anderson, even though it is full of things I usually avoid -- cyberpunk, douchebag male protagonist who learns an important lesson from a borderline manic pixie dream girl, etc. Mostly because it is so well written that it turns the cliches inside out and into interesting origami shapes, and is also short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm not saying that I was crying on the train as I finished it, but ... yeah, I was totally crying on the train.

As long as I'm kicking lots of popular genre works, here are four more unpopular opinions:

- The actress who played Sif in Thor was really embarrassingly bad...
- ...and Darcy is kind of not that interesting to me
- Korra/Asami is possibly the most boring f/f pairing on the entire planet, and I'm sure I have good reasons for believing this that aren't just "They get in the way of Korra/Lin"
- it kind of skeeves me out that so much of the Korra/Tahno fan art on my dash puts Korra in a stereotypically feminine nurturing role

OH YEAH, and I'm also on a Continuum panel about vidding! So I should probably maybe go watch some vids? Said panel is at 11pm Friday night, btw, so if you come -- it's gold coin entry on Friday! -- maybe bring me some Red Bull, because I turn into a pumpkin at 9.30.

Comments

[ljwrites]

Totally hear you on the most interesting stuff being written for teens. My recent reading is heavily skewed toward YA, I've noticed. I'm still trying to figure out why so much good stuff is coming out purportedly for teens. Maybe because it's such a marketing godsend, since you gain teen as well as adult demographics. This has a positive feedback effect since good YA fiction with substance will draw in more adult (and teen) audiences. Maybe it's because fiction for grownups is growing less fresh and more self-indulgent, and readers and writers are getting fed up. I'm not familiar enough with the fiction market to come to a conclusion, but those are some of my theories. Whatever the cause, the effects for me as a reader, particularly of spe-fic, are very good indeed.