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A review by ker0wyn
Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye
3.0
Wow, in like a lion, out like a lamb! The first third of the book is SO GOOD; it's this lovely self aware and darkly comic cousin to Jane Eyre with the perfect amount of drama necessary for a good Gothic romance. It's all hardness and sharp edges and it just feels so RAW.
A few quotes to give you an idea:
"Patience Barbary had shed her smug bravado as snakes do skins; everything about her was new, from the swollen pink edges of her eyelids to her raw expression, tender as a cut where the scab has peeked away." WHOA, intense.
Or "I bit the inside of my lip until I could taste all I had left of my mother, which was her blood." So deliciously emo.
I felt for her as she was mistreated with the same intensity that I felt for Jane Eyre, so it is so satisfying when she takes the life of those who have wronged her! I had worried it would be sensational or campy like so many of the Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies clones, but it is just too well done and earnest to be that.
BUT THEN- It just becomes this completely different book. Like I would not be surprised if it was a different author completely. Suddenly all the scrabbling for survival is gone, all the mistrust, the ambition, the drama- gone. UTTERLY gone.
It becomes this soft thing, this kind of sweet-ish romancy mystery. Every bit of momentum, every sense of dire consequences hiding around the corner, goes out the window. It was perfectly pleasant, mind you, but I went from not being able to put it down to taking 2 weeks to finish it.
And the biggest sin of all in my book: it is very obviously being set up for a sedate, predictable, STERILE little husband-wife detective mystery series. No, no, noooooo *pounds fist* UGH. NO.
A few quotes to give you an idea:
"Patience Barbary had shed her smug bravado as snakes do skins; everything about her was new, from the swollen pink edges of her eyelids to her raw expression, tender as a cut where the scab has peeked away." WHOA, intense.
Or "I bit the inside of my lip until I could taste all I had left of my mother, which was her blood." So deliciously emo.
I felt for her as she was mistreated with the same intensity that I felt for Jane Eyre, so it is so satisfying when she takes the life of those who have wronged her! I had worried it would be sensational or campy like so many of the Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies clones, but it is just too well done and earnest to be that.
BUT THEN- It just becomes this completely different book. Like I would not be surprised if it was a different author completely. Suddenly all the scrabbling for survival is gone, all the mistrust, the ambition, the drama- gone. UTTERLY gone.
It becomes this soft thing, this kind of sweet-ish romancy mystery. Every bit of momentum, every sense of dire consequences hiding around the corner, goes out the window. It was perfectly pleasant, mind you, but I went from not being able to put it down to taking 2 weeks to finish it.
And the biggest sin of all in my book: it is very obviously being set up for a sedate, predictable, STERILE little husband-wife detective mystery series. No, no, noooooo *pounds fist* UGH. NO.