Scan barcode
roseice's review against another edition
3.0
Overall, an enjoyable read. It was very informally written, with minor spelling mistakes and inconsistencies (while harping on other author's inconsistencies, Lissauer shows a few of her own in changing how she spells things periodically, like dwarfs and dwarves, etc). Many of the things Lissauer observed here were common knowledge, and not much (more interesting) theoretical ground was covered, and when she did mention such (meta-text, etc), she didn't go very deeply into it.
I do disagree with a lot of her observations, such as Katniss' poverty being disingenious because she didn't breed her sister's goat. The whole section on The Hunger Games kind of irked me, because Lissauer's righteously calling out the series and saying people here don't behave like normal human beings. In intense circumstances, they absolutely do. Oppressed by a powerful Capitol, it's very realistic that a society would deteriorate to such a state, because human beings are selfish and fearful and malleable. Parents watching their kids carted off to the Games? The Hunger Games does a good job of illustrating how the Capitol has beaten them into submission; you resist, you die. At first they probably did, and learned their lesson. Unrealistic for OUR society? Yes. For theirs? Not at all. Lissauer merely compares the setting to our world rather than taking into account the actual setting crafted, the society of the books on the whole. It's true that Panem is the remnants of our society, but how many years have passed? The generations that knew our ways have long died out.
Anyway, not a bad read, but what I was looking for was a more focused, deeper look at individual tropes in fantasy novels. Lissauer spends a lot of time talking about books and using examples of tropes without analyzing them more deeply in her own voice. She just goes from one example to another. Alas.
I do disagree with a lot of her observations, such as Katniss' poverty being disingenious because she didn't breed her sister's goat. The whole section on The Hunger Games kind of irked me, because Lissauer's righteously calling out the series and saying people here don't behave like normal human beings. In intense circumstances, they absolutely do. Oppressed by a powerful Capitol, it's very realistic that a society would deteriorate to such a state, because human beings are selfish and fearful and malleable. Parents watching their kids carted off to the Games? The Hunger Games does a good job of illustrating how the Capitol has beaten them into submission; you resist, you die. At first they probably did, and learned their lesson. Unrealistic for OUR society? Yes. For theirs? Not at all. Lissauer merely compares the setting to our world rather than taking into account the actual setting crafted, the society of the books on the whole. It's true that Panem is the remnants of our society, but how many years have passed? The generations that knew our ways have long died out.
Anyway, not a bad read, but what I was looking for was a more focused, deeper look at individual tropes in fantasy novels. Lissauer spends a lot of time talking about books and using examples of tropes without analyzing them more deeply in her own voice. She just goes from one example to another. Alas.
More...