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jadenefarious 's review for:
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
by Theodora Goss
It's unfortunate that the author chose to use a metanarrative affection in the novel. I'll get to that, but without that, I might have given it a four stars, as it was a good romp. If it weren't for the potential of the concept, I would have given it two stars, but I'm hopeful she drops this next time, so went with three.
A conceit in the novel is that it's being explicitly written by one of the characters, who injects dialogue from the modern versions of the characters into the narrative.
Every time this happens, it's a slap in the face that drops the reader out of the narrative. And it happens a lot.
Now, to use such a device imposes a cost, but it's okay if it pays off more than its price. She explicitly says why she did it early on and I never saw anything to suggest anything deeper. Basically, it's to introduce us to the women, but their characterizations aren't deep in those comments, and they certainly aren't orthogonal to the story. That doesn't earn the slaps in the face. A more standard narrative would have achieved the same effect and fostered immersion. Perhaps she felt challenged by some criticism in earlier drafts, and chose this as a method to solve it, but it doesn't work.
Good metanarratives add dimension, and move the interest of the narrative out of the story.
As a super low-brow example, in Mystery Science Theater, the cast doing the riffing take us out of a movie we wouldn't want to be immersed in anyway. The fun is outside the film with the riffers.
In more interesting cases, the heart of the story is never told to the reader. There might be two stacked unreliable narrators, for example, and from clues the reader tries to puzzle out what truly happened. Or the future narrator might be a dramatically different version of the same character who is telling the story, so we as the reader wonder what gave rise to the change which is never directly depicted, or alternatively we come to see that the apparent gulfs aren't as great as we thought. For example, a naive,innocent individual tells the main story but a BDSM dominant adult version of that character comments on it. We then wonder how such a huge leap occurred, so that creates an interesting tension. Such a narrative can be great if the clues are just enough to make us think we figured it out, but not so much to make the linkage overly obvious.
For these examples where this can work, the true subject of interest isn't in the narrative anyway, so being kicked out of it is desirable as it reminds us to reflect.
That isn't how it works in this book, though. All too often, in fact, the commentary has eye-rolling aspects to it. One could argue that the self-referential applause for particular lines is the author being self-deprecating in a winkingly ironic fashion, but as a whole, the book doesn't read that way.
The reality is, no matter how masterful an author believes themselves to be, it is unwise to play games like this. The best writer of all time would still need to ask themselves if this conceit cannot be done some other way. It's better to just write the bloody novel.
In any event, if the next book drops this, I'll be happy to read it. If it doesn't, I won't.
A conceit in the novel is that it's being explicitly written by one of the characters, who injects dialogue from the modern versions of the characters into the narrative.
Every time this happens, it's a slap in the face that drops the reader out of the narrative. And it happens a lot.
Now, to use such a device imposes a cost, but it's okay if it pays off more than its price. She explicitly says why she did it early on and I never saw anything to suggest anything deeper. Basically, it's to introduce us to the women, but their characterizations aren't deep in those comments, and they certainly aren't orthogonal to the story. That doesn't earn the slaps in the face. A more standard narrative would have achieved the same effect and fostered immersion. Perhaps she felt challenged by some criticism in earlier drafts, and chose this as a method to solve it, but it doesn't work.
Good metanarratives add dimension, and move the interest of the narrative out of the story.
As a super low-brow example, in Mystery Science Theater, the cast doing the riffing take us out of a movie we wouldn't want to be immersed in anyway. The fun is outside the film with the riffers.
In more interesting cases, the heart of the story is never told to the reader. There might be two stacked unreliable narrators, for example, and from clues the reader tries to puzzle out what truly happened. Or the future narrator might be a dramatically different version of the same character who is telling the story, so we as the reader wonder what gave rise to the change which is never directly depicted, or alternatively we come to see that the apparent gulfs aren't as great as we thought. For example, a naive,innocent individual tells the main story but a BDSM dominant adult version of that character comments on it. We then wonder how such a huge leap occurred, so that creates an interesting tension. Such a narrative can be great if the clues are just enough to make us think we figured it out, but not so much to make the linkage overly obvious.
For these examples where this can work, the true subject of interest isn't in the narrative anyway, so being kicked out of it is desirable as it reminds us to reflect.
That isn't how it works in this book, though. All too often, in fact, the commentary has eye-rolling aspects to it. One could argue that the self-referential applause for particular lines is the author being self-deprecating in a winkingly ironic fashion, but as a whole, the book doesn't read that way.
The reality is, no matter how masterful an author believes themselves to be, it is unwise to play games like this. The best writer of all time would still need to ask themselves if this conceit cannot be done some other way. It's better to just write the bloody novel.
In any event, if the next book drops this, I'll be happy to read it. If it doesn't, I won't.