May 2, 2005

Lara from The Fifth Ring has got to be the most annoying heroine EVER. Apparently she's the only girl in town who fences, she's as good at it as any of the boys, yet she still acts like a total girl even though her wearing of dresses isn't so much for herself as it is for the guy whose attention she wants which pisses me off even more because she's totally not being true to herself. She acts all innocent and naive when she sees a couple of prostitutes and immediately proceeds to calmly point a knife at a guy's area when he makes advances on her. For all her bravado that she struts off, she sure isn't consistent with it. I think the author was trying too hard to make her "perfect" and only succeeded in making her fake. There doesn't seem to be anything remotely unique about her and she doesn't have much in he way of a personality (or a point in the story). Actually, most or all of the author's female characters seem this way -- flat. I'm still waiting for an author to write a girl who's real and not annoying or too serious. I am most certainly not going to have an annoying heroine. Most of my stories don't look like they're going to have room for many super-prominent female characters at all. I'm not a feminist. It just doesn't feel real enough to have the girls just as good (and often better) at everything in this sort of world. Other than the annoying females thing, the book doesn't seem that bad so far. The action sequences, when they can be found, are quite intense.
After plodding on through four hundred pages, I decided the hell with Mathew Lewin. He wasn't all that likeable anyhow. I fear I may have spoken too soon when I said that the characters were well-developed. Most of them are in a severe need of a bash over the head. It seems living in the same small town all their lives has made them more or less exactly like one another and incredibly boring. I can't believe how difficult it is to find decent fantasy novels. At least my hopes for having a writing career are looking bright every time I read a really bad book and see things I know I can do better. I don't understand why every single story needs people to fall in love or something of the sort. We could do without that every now and then, or at the very least not have it take over the rest of the story. It's so much better when they don't make a big bloody deal over it. I'm going to give Shadow Moon a try. At least I know George Lucas thinks up good stories (or used to at any rate). One of these days I'll just resort to reading Tolkien and Rowling over and over again and write my own damn book.