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bloodyrosemccoyDammit, there has got to be at least one speculative fiction novel out there that doesn’t introduce a female protagonist by RAPING HER.
It’s not so much that I disapprove of it happening in a story—stories are great because all sorts of totally awful things can happen to pretend people, instead of to real people, and I could write a whole dissertation on this. All I'm sayin' is, when it becomes the default way to introduce someone, I … get a little unsettled.
This book is pretty damn good anyway, and it does look like the incident serves some purpose of character and/or story development, but I'm starting to regard authors with suspicion when they open this way. Good grief.
It’s not so much that I disapprove of it happening in a story—stories are great because all sorts of totally awful things can happen to pretend people, instead of to real people, and I could write a whole dissertation on this. All I'm sayin' is, when it becomes the default way to introduce someone, I … get a little unsettled.
This book is pretty damn good anyway, and it does look like the incident serves some purpose of character and/or story development, but I'm starting to regard authors with suspicion when they open this way. Good grief.
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Date: 2010-03-12 10:02 am (UTC)Normally my book-choosing algorithm is pretty good; spec fic is a broad genre, what with the whole idea of "speculation." It's just that some authors have enough imagination to pull it off, and some don't. (Also, some authors are misogynistic douchebags.) You can't always tell from the book jacket, so you've got to open the book and find out for yourself. And for some reason, a lot of the lousy authors in any genre (and a few of the good ones) like to fling that trope around because it's GRITTY or TITILLATING without being part of the story. That's the frustrating part.