Zeborah's reading page

Dear Publishing, can we just stop now? NOW? Last decade would be better, but now will do.

So I picked up Brandon Sanderson's 'Warbreaker'. Which gets high praise from various sources, among them Romantic Times (I have an almost perfect track record there: anything RT loves, I dislike strongly.) But among the praise, among the things that people felt the need to highlight about this book and this writer are 'strong female characters' (Booklist), 'outstanding heroines and heroes' (Michael Moorcock), 'strong, believable characters' (Libraryjournal).
And 'subtle prose, notable for its quiet irony' (Moorcock), 'master storyteller' (Libraryjournal), 'master of large-scale stories' (Booklist).

So that set the stage for what I was expecting. (I *did* try to check my own impressions of Sanderson at the door. This isn't a first novel, he's an established, acclaimed author with more than half a dozen novels under his belt.

( Plotting and prose )

Yeah. Subtle prose, quiet irony - not exactly the words I would have chosen.

So then we get to chapter one. Which opens with a female character, seventeen, who is idle (ok, she is the fourth daughter of a minor king). She's a wilful teenager - escaping her duties, such as they are, breaking local laws, not even bothering to learn why, exactly, those laws are in place (hey, it's only for fun, right? And I didn't like the law anyway). Let me repeat: the female protagonist with which the book opens, apart from being very young and very inexperienced _spends her day idling and setting the world up for trouble_. Other than being passive-agressive, she's simply passive. She has no ambitions, no dreams, no hobbies, no nothing. And as much lack of knowledge as she's displaying, she has to have worked at that.

( Not just female, but stupid. What else? )

I'm tired of reading this story. I'm tired of reading books about manly men and spoiled girl-children.

The next scene opens with Siri's father revealing that he knows exactly what the political situation is like, and, yes, war is on the cards: but the plot is better served by an innocent, stupid little girl of seventeen (going on eleven) than by a woman of any age who understands the politics of her home country and seeks to serve it as best she can and who comes up with cunning ploys to throw the situation around and to save her home from invasion-

But no. That cannot be. If females aren't kept in their place - inferior to men, restricted to the domestic sphere, endangering others through their lack of knowledge and foresight, it appears as if the world will collapse. Or maybe it's impossible for certain writers/editors/publishers to imagine that there should _be_ other types of female characters - ones who stand at the centre of their own stories, who are neither young nor beautiful, and who are not paired with older, more experienced males; female characters who end up having better insights and skills than male characters, females who save male characters rather than exist to be saved by them, who are on equal footing. And who may be younger or older, experienced or inexperienced, but who are never inferior or put on a pedestal.

I'm sure this book has its good points, it's interesting plot (though I cannot find the magic 'system' as unique and never-seen-before as it has been praised; it's magic. Not entirely run-of-the-mill, but still magic that feels like a 'system' rather than, well, magical. There's very little of the numinous in the exact weighing and calculating of how many souls' worth of Breath a character has in him. Once upon a time, I would have ignored the infantilisation of half the human race; once upon a time I would not have noticed. (I found one of the first fantasies I've read, where it's all about teh menz and women have their agenda taken away as soon as the heroes come onto the stage… my current self said 'ugh' and did not want to read on.). But at the same time I am tired of book after book after book in which half the human race gets a footnote or two. And let's not talk about minorities or characters with disabilities or social structures other than one man, one woman, 2.4 children. (Quite often with the mother either dead or so lightweight that she might as well not be there.).

Bored now.