Gregverse Discourse Amnesty Post
Jun. 25th, 2021 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterI finished Rule of Wolves about a week ago and have been waiting to see if my annoyance would die down, but it hasn't. I also originally meant to include this in a general negative/critical media post, but it turns out I have a lot to say, so I guess I'll save my complaints about the predictably disappointing Bleach live action adaptation for another post and keep this one focused on the Grishaverse.
So, after falling in love with the worldbuilding and characters in earlier novels, I ended up finding the Nikolai duology a bit of a slog. Bardugo's prose has definitely improved since the start, but if anything I feel like her sense of pacing has deteriorated - or, I guess, fallen victim to her editor's much lighter touch on the later instalments of an already successful series. The story is actually two parallel stories that, until the very end of the duology, have virtually nothing to do with each other: the main characters are in Fantasy Russia facing a supernatural apocalypse, while a single member of the Crows cast is off dismantling gender norms in Fantasy Norway. I assume the cycle of 'cliffhanger in Fantasy Russia, cliffhanger in Fantasy Norway, repeat' was intended to create suspense, but for me it had the opposite effect - every time I started to get swept up in the narrative, it would abruptly change tracks and dissipate all my built-up emotional investment.
Of course, I'd have forgiven all that in a heartbeat if the story had done right by my faves. But it didn't, and that's why I'm really here to gripe.
The dominant theme was women's anger, and for the first half of the first book, I was so on board for it. All the main female cast have suffered horribly in previous books, and seeing that properly addressed - seeing them get to have ugly feelings, to hold grudges, to lay the blame for their ordeals where it belonged instead of internalising the pain - felt wonderful. The problem I started to have the longer the books dragged on was ... well, the heavy-handedness. Obviously, in real life, trauma recovery is often circular, frustrating and repetitive. I'm not convinced that portraying it exactly so in fiction is the best way to engage an audience. By the fifth or six time a given character broke off into the same internal monologue about the same old wound, my attention was starting to drift. Like. I'm a huge fan of angst and hurt/comfort, and I'm forever keen to see more of it centred on female characters in ways that aren't horrifyingly sexualised, but it's not really on Bardugo to single-handedly balance out all the world's accumulated manpain. I've generally found that one or two canonical scenes of trauma per character, plus one or two scenes of post-trauma introspection, is enough. More than that risks tipping the scales from sympathetic to grating.
Also in the 'sledgehammer authorial messaging' bucket is the Darkling's redemption arc. In the abstract, it's more or less my dream redemption. The Darkling embodies the concept of a villain who thinks he's a hero, with a worldview and agenda that make perfect sense viewed through the clouded lens of his own traumatic history. Eventually his good intentions win out over his selfishness and cruelty: he saves the day for our heroes, and then sacrifices himself to a Fate Worse Than Death in order to stop the apocalypse and save the world from certain destruction. This is not, and nor should it be, enough to heal the often deeply sadistic hurts he has caused or make his victims think warmly of him. It's the exact complexity I crave most in these kinds of stories, where a character's good and bad deeds are both so equally huge in scope and impact that balancing their moral checkbook becomes all but impossibly.
You can probably see where I'm going with this complaint. Bardugo seems to think that balancing the Darkling's checkbook is actually super easy, barely an inconvenience. I'm on board for any or all of the characters maintaining their anger towards him post-sacrifice; I'm not on board for the author leaning out from between the pages to personally warn me against failing to share their anger. The final chapter is literally a debrief session where the surviving main characters take turns expounding on why they, for their part, will never forgive the Darkling and in fact think he deserves the eternal torture he volunteered for. (Actually they reframe it as them having condemned him to eternal torture, which is a minor detail that irks me deeply: if everyone in the room agrees that the Darkling's crimes were too grave to be atoned for by any good deed, why pretend the good deed didn't really happen?) The whole thing has a very soapboxy feel to it, which also aligns with comments I've seen Bardugo make in interviews about the 'fight she's asking readers to take on' by giving the Darkling so many redeeming qualities. Again, in the abstract, I agree with her on the basic premise that even the most dangerous, destructive people have a lovable side. But the conclusion she seems to take that premise to is 'therefore, we should work harder to identify evildoers, and resist the temptation to waste sympathy on them that could better be directed towards their victims'.
It's not that I even think she's wrong in a sweeping cultural commentary sense. Not to stray too far into heavy territory (though I mean, what's YA for if not unsubtle takes on contemporary issues?) but a lot of what's in these books feels like a reaction to the #MeToo backlash where we got to see just how scary a number of people feel sorrier for men who get outed as predators than for the women they preyed on. It's a worthy conclusion if so, but a conclusion to a completely different argument than the one that's been going on to date in the Grishaverse. The Darkling isn't a media mogul exploiting women for his pleasure - he's a social revolutionary who takes his struggle too far. Those are two completely different villain archetypes! With completely different emotional resonance! You can't just -
- idk, basically I feel like I showed up at a restaurant and the waiter shoved a spoonful of cod-liver oil down my throat. Yes, I know it's good for me; yes, I know it prevents rickets. But it's sure as hell not what I came to this joint for and I'd prefer it if you let me take the next dose in my own time please and thank you. Or, minus the metaphor, I'd prefer if Bardugo had extended her audience a bit more trust to a) remember her characters' trauma without being pointedly reminded of it every three pages and b) decide for ourselves whether or not we think he's redeemable.
Anyway, once the main cast got finished writing their joint Darkling callout post, they agreed that for their own peace of mind they were going to find a way to kill him once and for all, so I assume that means there's a sequel coming. Don't get me wrong. I'm still going to read it fucking avidly. If I didn't love the 'verse so much, I wouldn't be this annoyed.
So, after falling in love with the worldbuilding and characters in earlier novels, I ended up finding the Nikolai duology a bit of a slog. Bardugo's prose has definitely improved since the start, but if anything I feel like her sense of pacing has deteriorated - or, I guess, fallen victim to her editor's much lighter touch on the later instalments of an already successful series. The story is actually two parallel stories that, until the very end of the duology, have virtually nothing to do with each other: the main characters are in Fantasy Russia facing a supernatural apocalypse, while a single member of the Crows cast is off dismantling gender norms in Fantasy Norway. I assume the cycle of 'cliffhanger in Fantasy Russia, cliffhanger in Fantasy Norway, repeat' was intended to create suspense, but for me it had the opposite effect - every time I started to get swept up in the narrative, it would abruptly change tracks and dissipate all my built-up emotional investment.
Of course, I'd have forgiven all that in a heartbeat if the story had done right by my faves. But it didn't, and that's why I'm really here to gripe.
The dominant theme was women's anger, and for the first half of the first book, I was so on board for it. All the main female cast have suffered horribly in previous books, and seeing that properly addressed - seeing them get to have ugly feelings, to hold grudges, to lay the blame for their ordeals where it belonged instead of internalising the pain - felt wonderful. The problem I started to have the longer the books dragged on was ... well, the heavy-handedness. Obviously, in real life, trauma recovery is often circular, frustrating and repetitive. I'm not convinced that portraying it exactly so in fiction is the best way to engage an audience. By the fifth or six time a given character broke off into the same internal monologue about the same old wound, my attention was starting to drift. Like. I'm a huge fan of angst and hurt/comfort, and I'm forever keen to see more of it centred on female characters in ways that aren't horrifyingly sexualised, but it's not really on Bardugo to single-handedly balance out all the world's accumulated manpain. I've generally found that one or two canonical scenes of trauma per character, plus one or two scenes of post-trauma introspection, is enough. More than that risks tipping the scales from sympathetic to grating.
Also in the 'sledgehammer authorial messaging' bucket is the Darkling's redemption arc. In the abstract, it's more or less my dream redemption. The Darkling embodies the concept of a villain who thinks he's a hero, with a worldview and agenda that make perfect sense viewed through the clouded lens of his own traumatic history. Eventually his good intentions win out over his selfishness and cruelty: he saves the day for our heroes, and then sacrifices himself to a Fate Worse Than Death in order to stop the apocalypse and save the world from certain destruction. This is not, and nor should it be, enough to heal the often deeply sadistic hurts he has caused or make his victims think warmly of him. It's the exact complexity I crave most in these kinds of stories, where a character's good and bad deeds are both so equally huge in scope and impact that balancing their moral checkbook becomes all but impossibly.
You can probably see where I'm going with this complaint. Bardugo seems to think that balancing the Darkling's checkbook is actually super easy, barely an inconvenience. I'm on board for any or all of the characters maintaining their anger towards him post-sacrifice; I'm not on board for the author leaning out from between the pages to personally warn me against failing to share their anger. The final chapter is literally a debrief session where the surviving main characters take turns expounding on why they, for their part, will never forgive the Darkling and in fact think he deserves the eternal torture he volunteered for. (Actually they reframe it as them having condemned him to eternal torture, which is a minor detail that irks me deeply: if everyone in the room agrees that the Darkling's crimes were too grave to be atoned for by any good deed, why pretend the good deed didn't really happen?) The whole thing has a very soapboxy feel to it, which also aligns with comments I've seen Bardugo make in interviews about the 'fight she's asking readers to take on' by giving the Darkling so many redeeming qualities. Again, in the abstract, I agree with her on the basic premise that even the most dangerous, destructive people have a lovable side. But the conclusion she seems to take that premise to is 'therefore, we should work harder to identify evildoers, and resist the temptation to waste sympathy on them that could better be directed towards their victims'.
It's not that I even think she's wrong in a sweeping cultural commentary sense. Not to stray too far into heavy territory (though I mean, what's YA for if not unsubtle takes on contemporary issues?) but a lot of what's in these books feels like a reaction to the #MeToo backlash where we got to see just how scary a number of people feel sorrier for men who get outed as predators than for the women they preyed on. It's a worthy conclusion if so, but a conclusion to a completely different argument than the one that's been going on to date in the Grishaverse. The Darkling isn't a media mogul exploiting women for his pleasure - he's a social revolutionary who takes his struggle too far. Those are two completely different villain archetypes! With completely different emotional resonance! You can't just -
- idk, basically I feel like I showed up at a restaurant and the waiter shoved a spoonful of cod-liver oil down my throat. Yes, I know it's good for me; yes, I know it prevents rickets. But it's sure as hell not what I came to this joint for and I'd prefer it if you let me take the next dose in my own time please and thank you. Or, minus the metaphor, I'd prefer if Bardugo had extended her audience a bit more trust to a) remember her characters' trauma without being pointedly reminded of it every three pages and b) decide for ourselves whether or not we think he's redeemable.
Anyway, once the main cast got finished writing their joint Darkling callout post, they agreed that for their own peace of mind they were going to find a way to kill him once and for all, so I assume that means there's a sequel coming. Don't get me wrong. I'm still going to read it fucking avidly. If I didn't love the 'verse so much, I wouldn't be this annoyed.
