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A review by arachne_reads
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan
1.0
I didn't enjoy this book. How do you give a bad review to a book without being an asshole? I don't like trashing people's work. I do get something out of pinpointing what fell flat for me, though, and will attempt to do so here.
Throughout the book, I kept thinking to myself, "this reads like the plot of someone's Changeling game..." only to come to the end, and find in an author interview that Brennan had indeed used exactly that as the core of her novel. There was little to hide Brennan's references to various Changleing kiths, despite her researches into specifically English faeries. Vidar reads as a sluagh. Dame Haelgestra reads as a troll. Rosamund and Gertrude read as boggans. Everyone else reads as sidhe. Other clues? The Wild Hunt as an organization instead of ghostly or faerie event; White Wolf made many references to mythological events as "really" some kind of secret society-- it's a theme that runs through Changeling, Vampire, Werewolf, all their games set in The World of Darkness. Brennan almost makes reference to the Deep Dreaming. That was disappointing for me. I think, perhaps, if I had known this first, I might not have picked up the book.
The effect was such that Lune didn't feel like a fully fleshed-out character. There was nothing to tell me, "this is what Lune would say or do in this situation." I don't even know what Lune looks like. I've gotten that feel from people's roleplaying characters before: they are simply a shorthand, a splice, for the player in question, and the character sheet is merely an overcoat for them to wear about the world, but the other players all seem to imagine the character as an outgrowth of their friend. This made Lune feel to me like paper vessel to contain plot, and not like an entity about whom I harbored any feelings of warmth, or being on her side. I had not been part of that game. Reading a story about it did not bring me any closer to the pathos of that particular game.
More disappointing was how... very surface?... the politics of it all felt. Everything had clear simple answers, that tied the story up too neatly. The obscuring factors were all lifted neatly away with very simple realizations, and none of the people who knew fragments of Suspiria's tale was very far off from the truth.
That brings me to heart of my dislike of the book, the underlying story of Suspiria and Francis, and problematic cultural notions of love.We are culturally supposed to uphold this notion of "true love" above all else, and thrill at the idea of walking through fire for our beloveds, but Suspiria makes a deal with hell to forgo her curse and flings her love aside. And yet, Tiresias/Francis still loves her. After she abuses him disgustingly. We as readers don't get to see any of this love develop. We don't get to see any of the underpinnings of why in any of the flashbacks. Even the "love" that develops between Michael Deven and Lune just reads like they are working partners, but because we have a male lead and a female lead, clearly, it's love. All despite Lune's masks and betrayals. None of it felt like anything other than a plot bullet point, and yet it still tried to toe the party line that "true love conquers all," a notion that has been used in my own life to try to keep me in highly questionable situations against my better judgement. Here, it functions as a kind of cultural shorthand, "it is this kind of story" without building the visible structures in the narrative itself. .
I have enjoyed other works of Brennan's. This work didn't sit well with me.
Throughout the book, I kept thinking to myself, "this reads like the plot of someone's Changeling game..." only to come to the end, and find in an author interview that Brennan had indeed used exactly that as the core of her novel. There was little to hide Brennan's references to various Changleing kiths, despite her researches into specifically English faeries. Vidar reads as a sluagh. Dame Haelgestra reads as a troll. Rosamund and Gertrude read as boggans. Everyone else reads as sidhe. Other clues? The Wild Hunt as an organization instead of ghostly or faerie event; White Wolf made many references to mythological events as "really" some kind of secret society-- it's a theme that runs through Changeling, Vampire, Werewolf, all their games set in The World of Darkness. Brennan almost makes reference to the Deep Dreaming. That was disappointing for me. I think, perhaps, if I had known this first, I might not have picked up the book.
The effect was such that Lune didn't feel like a fully fleshed-out character. There was nothing to tell me, "this is what Lune would say or do in this situation." I don't even know what Lune looks like. I've gotten that feel from people's roleplaying characters before: they are simply a shorthand, a splice, for the player in question, and the character sheet is merely an overcoat for them to wear about the world, but the other players all seem to imagine the character as an outgrowth of their friend. This made Lune feel to me like paper vessel to contain plot, and not like an entity about whom I harbored any feelings of warmth, or being on her side. I had not been part of that game. Reading a story about it did not bring me any closer to the pathos of that particular game.
More disappointing was how... very surface?... the politics of it all felt. Everything had clear simple answers, that tied the story up too neatly. The obscuring factors were all lifted neatly away with very simple realizations, and none of the people who knew fragments of Suspiria's tale was very far off from the truth.
That brings me to heart of my dislike of the book, the underlying story of Suspiria and Francis, and problematic cultural notions of love.
I have enjoyed other works of Brennan's. This work didn't sit well with me.