Unraveled, by Courtney Milan

[rowyn]

This is the third and last book in the Turner series I've been reading. It's also my favorite of the three. The characters are refreshingly forthright about what they want, and there's a lot of good banter. The characters are lovable and their motivations clear and intelligible.

One of the things I like best about Milan's work are its contra-trope facets. This one works against the idea of the "broken hero that only the heroine can fix through the power of LOVE". The male lead in Unraveled had a traumatic childhood, and he's quite plainly traumatized by it. But he's got established coping methods, functions fine in society despite the trauma, and doesn't regard himself as "broken". Neither does the female lead. It's cute.

Another thing: in each of Milan's books, there is at least one point where one of the leads has the opportunity to pick up the Stupid Ball. This is a chance to do something profoundly awful that the protagonist doesn't really want to do. The protagonist is given a handful of quasi-sound justifications for picking up the Stupid Ball. The reader, however, can tell that doing so will damage the relationship between the two protagonists, betray the trust of one of them, and benefit no one in the long term. This will happen around two-thirds of the way through the book, so the reader knows there's still time to patch over the damage from the Stupid Ball, and it's frankly exactly the sort of stupidity one expects in a romance novel. (Like "let's be irrationally jealous of this clearly platonic relationship!") The protagonist will then consider all of the reasons to pick up the Stupid Ball and run with it. And then, the protagonist will go "Nah, forget that, it's obviously a terrible idea." THIS IS SUCH A RELIEF. It's as if your favorite sitcom looked like it was about to use that plotline you hate and you're already cringing in anticipation of how bad it will be, and then it's all "HA FAKE OUT" and the episode is about something good instead.

Unraveled does have a poorly-developed sideplot with a resolution that's simplistic and naive, so I'll mark it down for that. But the central romance is delightful. I'll give this one an 8.5.

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Was that the one about Smite? I liked that one too. :)

[rowyn]

Yep! Lord Justice ftw. :D

I didn't read the back cover blurb until I finished the book, but it's the first one where the back cover blurb didn't make me wince and think "I don't want to read this".

It is a very strange phenomenon when the back cover blurbs of books that I turn out to enjoy put me off from reading them. o_O

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

*reads a handful of the blurbs* I dunno, they sound typical for romance novels? I generally just tick off boxes when reading romance blurbs, since so many of them sound alike:

1. Male/female or male/male or something else? (Strangely don't see a lot of F/F ones, but sometimes there's a triangle)
2. Power relationship (Y/N?) (i.e. is one of them royalty/in charge/etc and the other a pauper/poor/etc)
3. Age difference? (Y/N) (I'm not a huge fan of the 'ingenue helps exhausted, older lover revive' thing)
4. Expected plot? (stuff like 'prostitute is rescued, woman is saved from financial ruin, etc')
5. Era?
6. Unexpected stuff? (Cross-racial, for instance, or were-creatures that aren't common. I saw were-cockatrice the other day. o_O )

Once I tick off the boxes, I check to see if they add up to something I usually enjoy, and if they do, I go for it.

[rowyn]

I've almost entirely stopped reading blurbs to pick books to read. 95%+ of what I've read in the last few years was based on "I know the author" or "someone recommended it to me." o_O

Romance novel blurbs are especially bad, because they tell me nothing that I want to know about the story, and what clues they do give are often misleading. For example, the blurb for Unveiled makes Ash sound like a monster and Margaret sound like an idiot for liking him at all. I would've expected a "hate at first sight" novel from it, where the characters can't stand each other and get together only due to intense sexual attraction: one of my least-favorite romance novel tropes. But none of those things are true of Unveiled.

The things I look for in a romance are more like:

* characters who are interesting people with lives outside of the romance
* humor and wit in the character interactions
* romantic interactions that are about the protagonists discovering one another's good qualities
* protagonists that enjoy each other's company

and some others that are even harder to quantify. For instance, I like the trope of "one protagonist accidentally harms the other, and then takes action to repair the damage and to comfort the other protagonist".The scene in Unraveled where Smite explains why he reacted so badly when Miranda touched his face was my favorite in the book for this reason. From the blurb, I might think that Unveiled would do this too, but it doesn't. It's just not something people mention in blurbs.

Like Michelle Sagara put it, 'it has to fit the very narrow slice of my emotional need', and it's too narrow for me to find filters that work for locating it.

Though if I could, I'd probably get sick of it and want something else. :D

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I think the problem with jacket blurbs is that they are, after all, a form of advertisement. I've all too often read jacket blurbs that sounded like FASCINATING setups ... and then I read the story and felt that some of the blurb details were misleading if not outright lies about the actual contents of the book. (I've felt the same way sometimes about fantasy/sci-fi novel COVERS, but I know that historically, sometimes that was honestly because the cover art WAS NOT specifically made for this story, but rather the publisher had a stock pool of "fantasy/sci-fi art" and would just slap on something that might remotely fit the story ("close enough!") or be generic enough not to matter.)

If I'm going to read any sort of "blurb" about a story, I'd prefer it to be from a third party who's giving his or her spoiler-free assessment of the story (after actually reading it, I hope). That's pretty hard to get shy of personal recommendations, though.

As for the personal recommendation part, I'd say 75% of the books I've read in the last few years have been because Gwendel got it and said, "Here, read this." (I am not counting comics & graphic novels in this. For some reason, our taste in comics and graphic novels varies more widely than our tastes in conventional written novels.)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Re: Romance:
I do not read romance novels, per se. (I've watched a few romance ANIME with Gwendel, though.) I confess that I am still interested in the romance angle of a book.

I do not like "slap-slap-kiss-kiss" romances in stories. I vaguely recall some joke being made in one of those "When I'm an Evil Overlord..." checklists being along the lines for watching to see if a male and female adventurer enter the kingdom, if they appear to intensely HATE each other, then to see to it that they are killed immediately, because they're obviously destined to fall in love and defeat the Evil Overlord in the process. If they actually already like each other, then they've probably got some OTHER Evil Overlord they're already on a quest to defeat, and with any luck they'll just pass through this kingdom uneventfully.

Or something like that. Sorry, I couldn't guess at the magic keywords to find a handy Google link to supplement my spotty memory.

I confess that I DO tolerate a certain amount of discord between the future romantic interests -- like, they have different viewpoints about how to tackle a problem, or different values, or maybe they're rivals but they have RESPECT for each other. I suppose this might be influenced by my own upbringing, as my parents very often differ with each other, and LOUDLY, on a lot of not-inconsequential issues, and yet I don't doubt for a moment that they still love each other.

But I am so sick of the TV/movie cliche where a man and woman are calling each other names and practically screaming bloody murder right in each others' faces and then suddenly (oh surprise!) they mash faces together, and possibly even commence disrobing. Any "resolution" to their disagreement is apparently only possible by the POWER OF HORMON-- er, I mean, THE POWER OF TWOO WUV. (Which seems to mean, "one party shall acquiesce to the demands of the other, but still occasionally snark about it.")

Considering how often I complain about things, this is probably no surprise, but I can probably more readily identify what I DO NOT LIKE in romance better than what I like. ;)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

One thing I do not like is the "forget any actual romance, we're DESTINED FOR EACH OTHER."

I just finished reading "Magic Kingdom for Sale" by Terry Brooks last evening. (Why? It was in the Goodwill for a buck.)

Our protagonist is a widower from the mundane world who, through contrived and poorly-presented means, ends up buying a ticket to a super-generic magical fantasy-land. And one night he goes bathing in a river, and there's this beautiful girl bathing there, and he just feels this URGENT NEED for her, and she claims, "Oh, prophecy dictated that I bathe here every night and then pledge myself to the first man who saw me thus," and ... ARGH.

There is no chemistry here. Past this point, the impossibly-attractive fairy girl throws herself at the resistant-yet-obviously-intrigued guy ("We are DESTINED!") until he relents. What are her interests? What does she do with her life? Does she even HAVE a life outside of this so-called romance? I dunno. She's a fairy. She does whatever fairies and bears do in the woods, for all I know. And the author tells us she's impossibly attractive, so that should be enough, I guess. Granted, she's a fairy, and she turns into a TREE every now and then, so that's kind of cool, I guess, but that's a novelty, not the basis upon which to build a lifetime commitment.

I think I would've respected the story more if he'd just said "No!" and stuck with it. (Do romance novels ever end with the two main romantically-eligible characters NOT getting together?) It didn't help that the cast of characters was so small, and -- aside from the arbitrarily-wicked witch (who struck me as a much more interesting character) that he only finally met toward the end of the book -- she was the only female character specified to be around.

I think the problem is when a "romance" is presented and I just get the sense that this romance is just a short-sighted wish-fulfillment for one party or the other. One party can be the most handsome or most beautiful, and there can be plenty of low-lidded eyes and short breaths and mashing of faces, and I'm simply not going to CARE. How are they going to get on together further down the road? Do they have a future together? Do they have any common interests (and "each other" DOES NOT COUNT)? How long until one party is dreadfully BORED of the other? Is one just destined to be a recurring hostage that the other has to rescue all the time? (Okay, that's more a concern in fantasy/sci-fi/superheroics than in your typical romance, I'm sure. ;) )

[rowyn]

Oh, heck yes. "Love at first sight" is one of the tropes I dislike, and it's made much worse if the characters never establish any common ground or reason to care about each other later. x.x I'm like "okay, some people do feel an immediate attraction and are able to build a real relationship out of that. I will grant you this. But don't expect me to swoon over how romantic it is that they're DESTINED for each other. I'm not even going to THINK it's romantic until they HAVE a relationship based on communication, caring, and generally more than 'oooh kissyface'."

The only kind that's even more annoying is the "we hate each other but are going to have a relationship based solely on sexual attraction". UGH. Just NO. I stopped reading the Gail Carringer "*less" books because the protagonists' relationship was too much like this. I want my protagonists to love each other, not just lust each other.

What I think of as the "romance genre" never ends with the main pair deciding it won't work out, because I define the romance genre as "the characters get together and live happily ever after." There are otherwise romance-centric books that do end this way, though.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Re: Definition of Romance Genre:
Yeah, that makes sense. Just because a story happens to have a romance in it does not mean it belongs in the Romance genre, any more than "The Cat Who Saw Stars" (from Lilian Jackson Braun's silly "Cat Who..." mystery series) would qualify as Science Fiction just because there's some cheesy implication of UFOs in the background. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhh man. I know exactly of what you speak when it comes to the Stupid Ball moments. I've been suffering through that lately as Gwendel has been on a kick to watch the entirety of the "Quantum Leap" series from the late 1980s (to early '90s? I forget the exact run), and there are just so many moments when I want to shout at the main character to STOP IT, STOP IT NOW, STOP DOING THE STUPID THING YOU'RE DOING, made all the worse by how he's supposed to be such a brilllllllliant ubermensch (doctor with photographic memory, accomplished pianist, knows kung-fu, knows all kinds of SCIENCE, invented time travel, et al.). It's not just sitcoms, but certain drama shows where I can see a MILE AWAY how things just aren't bad enough, so our protagonist is going to do something STUPID to make things worse. (Why? Because "otherwise we wouldn't have a story." Argh!)

Depending upon how it's done, having a protagonist who considers and DROPS the stupid ball might be a welcome relief ... or else I might just go, "Well, thanks, but I don't know if it was worth all the anguish I was feeling that your otherwise good story was going to turn stupid on me." ;)

(I've once or twice made the mistake of just giving up on a show or book because I could see things turning stupid "a mile away," and it turned out that, no it didn't quite happen like that after all -- so I realize that my "genre savvy" has its limitations.)

[xyzzysqrl]

With Quantum Leap at least there's the "Excuse" that our hero has literal brain damage from the experiment, with memory loss and whatnot accompanying.

I'm not sure that show would get on the air today.

[rowyn]

I watched a few episodes way back when, and never realized he'd suffered brain injury in the initial accident. Interesting!

[xyzzysqrl]

It was only really played up in a few of the episodes and some of the books. (why no I wasn't a fan or anything.) His memory got "swiss-cheesed", as they put it, and sometimes this manifested in funny ways. It was usually used so he could dramatically REMEMBER that he had some skill at the last minute, but once they got used to playing that card he would just as often have forgotten something vital that Al needed to remind him of for the benefit of the audience.

(The novels really played up that aspect of it. One of my favorite bits in one of them is Al going to work and wondering who'll end up working where today, because Sam's futzing with the timeline keeps changing their working conditions and work roster while Al's in the chamber with him and thus protected from time-travel effects. This was of course a bit too high-concept for the TV screen at the time. I think other shows have done something similar since.)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Actually, I find that sort of "high-concept" stuff to be quite interesting.

For instance, Al leaves Dr. Beckett for long periods of time. (This often results in unfortunate circumstances for Dr. Beckett. Where's Al when you need him? ;) ) Presumably he's NOT camped inside the complex 24/7, even though this is a 24/7 job for Dr. Beckett. Well, what if Dr. Beckett does something that sends a butterfly ripple effect while Al is outside the protective shell of the chamber?

Presumably ZIGGY would know of this (since Ziggy is able to report "You've changed time!" and such) and fill in Al on what he missed, but I could envision this resulting in some awkward moments where Al DOES NOT REMEMBER something that Dr. Beckett does (or remembers it DIFFERENTLY), because Al was part of the "future update."

I'm going to guess that Dr. Beckett simply CANNOT alter time to such a degree that it would result in a paradox that would eliminate the Quantum Leap program, etc. -- or, from a certain point of view, that would only create an unstable time loop that would collapse on itself, so due to "quantum immortality," we would only observe the final state where it sorts itself out and it seems as if amazing chance just determined that whatever the change made, the events leading to the Quantum Leap program's creation went forward anyway. :D

(That's kind of like the explanation given in the sci-fi series "Stein's Gate" for how the universe seemed so ridiculously malevolent in its interference when the protagonist attempted to deliberately change the past. And at the same time, various things that he incidentally changed in the past -- which he didn't really care about and which had no bearing on his motivation to time travel in the first place -- would still "stick," so obviously it WAS possible to change the past to what sometimes was a pretty radical degree. It wasn't that the universe cared one whit or another whether a particular person lived or died; it's that if he changed the past in such a way that he removed his motivation for going into the past -- or removed his ABILITY to go back into the past -- it created an unstable time loop; the only stable time loop would be one, no matter how improbable, in which he still has motivation and ability to invent the time machine. He doesn't "remember" all the dead-end alternatives which, from his point of view, never happened.)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: I just wrote a whole ranty-rant about the final season of Quantum Leap. For the sanity of all involved, I've deleted it. That was just SO off-topic of me. Sorry! Gwendel and I have only one disc left before we're finally through Season 5.

Anyway, yes, in the early parts of the series his "Swiss cheese memory" is an excuse for them to keep introducing new skills he has but doesn't know about (piano-playing, singing, photographic memory, Shakespearean acting, medicine, astronomy, all brands of SCIENCE, etc.). In Season 5, they introduce the phenomenon of him having "little bits" of the mind of whomever it was he replaced, so in the Lee Harvey Oswald episode he keeps going psycho, and in the second part of the wretched "Trilogy" sequence, he's all Randy McLustforbrains about the woman who'd previously been his little-girl DAUGHTER in the previous leap. (Oh, the CREEPINESS!)

So, out of fairness, they have a "reason" for the idiot ball ... but, boy, that idiot ball gets quite the workout in the last season, and it's still something were a good portion of the time you can just SEE IT COMING. (Even before then, throughout the series: Oh, people doubt our hero's sanity? Here comes Al the Invisible Hologram! What are the odds that Dr. Beckett is going to have an animated conversation with him in public and -- ohhhhh, someone SEES him talking to apparently empty air? Sur-prise, SUR-PRISE! ;) )

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Aw, you should share the rant on your own journal. So we can read it. ;) It's not like I haven't ranted a time or two about series on my journal.

[rowyn]

I am always sad when the wuf mentions deleting something unsent, too! Aww, now I can't read it.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Seriously, I write and delete-before-posting at least 5 times as many posts and comments as those that I ever actually send or put up.

Now if only I could do that in REAL LIFE with what comes out of my MOUTH. Wow. :D

[xyzzysqrl]

I am very glad I'm not watching television with you.

[rowyn]

Hah! The first Milan book I read was kind of like that, in the level of dreading-the-stupid-that-never-came. Now that I know it's a thing she likes to do, I can skip the dread and just enjoy it, I think. :)

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

It is kind of relieving when people don't pick up the idiot ball, but on the other hand people do pick up the idiot ball all the time, and it's annoying when you have characters that always act in completely rational ways.

Especially if they're all smug about it.

Especially especially if they're 12 years old or something like that.

[rowyn]

Especially especially if they're 12 years old or something like that.

*coughs HarryPotterandtheMethodsofRationality coughs* :D

These are romance novels, so there's still gobs of irrational actions, some of them stupid. It's not that they're perfect, it's just that they're skipping the cringe-inducing trope I really didn't want to read AGAIN. :D

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

YAAAAAARRRRRRRGHHHHHHH!

(Must not rant about Methods of Rationality here. MUST NOT!)

Ahem. Yeah. Always right + smugness can be just as infuriating as an otherwise intelligent person picking up the idiot ball, and LESS realistic.

Although I get annoyed by the idiot ball in stories, I do not necessarily think that it is unrealistic in and of itself.

All too often, the idiot ball is mine, ALL MINE, especially when I'm angry. When I get angry over something, my IQ drops to something slightly above moldy cheese, and whatever it is that has my ire is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD, and so is my reaction, even if it means trampling all over the feelings of anyone else present.

If I'm lucky, I listen to the little voice that reminds me, "You are angry. Of course, you are right. But the problem is, in an hour or so, when you are not so angry, you will not be so sure. You might even think you were wrong. Even if you don't, you never win arguments anyway. Speaking more loudly and developing an ugly, growly voice and letting your face turn red does not persuade anyone. GET OUT OF THE ROOM NOW. SEE IF YOU STILL FEEL RIGHT IN 15 MINUTES."

If I'm lucky, that is. I am not often lucky. Even if, 15 minutes and a cool-down later, I still feel like I was "right," I almost always feel that the way I went about it was utterly WRONG, and I feel the weight of that idiot ball in my hands. (Or, more likely, in my aching temples. Ouch. Getting into heated political/religious/game-rule arguments gives me nasty headaches.)

So, I believe in the idiot ball whenever anger is involved. I just don't particularly like witnessing an otherwise intelligent protagonist succumb to it.