Mrrr. I finished Memory & Dream....

[kyrielle]

...and I'm still not sure I am pleased with it. It doesn't feel right at all and it didn't 'reward' by making good on one of the weak points. I'm going to talk freely, with possible spoilers, so pausing here for a cut. If you were linked directly or have cuts disabled, and don't want spoilers, skip the rest of this entry below the dividing line/cut. :) No idea how extensive they will or won't be. Actually, if you don't want meandering thoughts, skipping it is probably wise, too.

Edit: okay. One, I didn't like this book, and I make no bones about it. Two, the spoilers are pretty extensive. Reading them may well spoil the book...and it will certainly tend to bias you against it, if you accept my interpretations. Not pleased with this book. I strongly see the parallels with the Deliria character I played, especially my original vision of her (as opposed to how the power rules required her to become). But...not, so not impressed with this book. I'm not sure I'd have conceived of her, if I'd read this first; I'm glad I didn't. Though, the Wood Wife balances it somewhat.

---

There's a strong story here. And yet, I don't accept it. The central character alternately feels unreal and like someone I'd rather beat than sympathize with. She's too stupid and careless - stupid and careless enough to make her unbelievable. It's true the mind can gloss over things, and yet the degree to which she did so - it was unbelievable. It was this which actually held me to accepting it, because I kept expecting there to be a supernatural cause of it, especially as it mostly seemed to happen only around events where Rushkin was involved.

That either was not the case, or remained outside the knowledge of the VPCs until the end of the book. I suspect it was never the case, especially as there's a single, very important event, in which it does happen completely away from Rushkin. And without that, it falls apart for me. It simply is not believable, and Izzy is in fact the stupid, worthless, annoying git of a girl that I wanted to slap repeatedly rather than read about any more.

I don't like either the too-tidy neatness of the ending. There again, the author did not make good on his implied 'promises'. A nasty, vile situation in which the heroine should die, clearly is going to die, it looks bad, worse situation possible, etc. You want her to survive. Again and again there are things that should kill her, in the real world or in the maker's dream that is as real as the real world, for her. We're talking three or four 'obvious' things to kill her in a chapter, one of which is physical reality and clearly in the process of killing her, far from aid.

Of course, she is rushed to the hospital and lives. This is the ending you hoped for...and it's a total betrayal of the story that was building. It's a total betrayal of what should have happened, pandering to the happy-ever-after. I grant you that De Lint did not go so far as to resurrect the dead author-friend. But she did paint up numena of herself and Kathy as younger women, happy.

And that is a lie, too. The painting itself is a lie, and Isabelle knows it, and yet she likes it. It should be a betrayal of who and what and where she is; it should be worth breaking over. And yet, she does it, and yet, she likes them and is comfortable with them.

I find this book almost offensive. It strings you along with a story that is hard to read, at times brutal, and a main character who has all the assertiveness of an overcooked egg noodle. It makes impossible things like the numena - the otherworldy beings, if you haven't read the book - more believable than the primary VPC. By leaps and bounds and bounds and leaps.

And if Kathy's death and those of the many numena Rushkin killed are not reversed at the end, well, that's it. Everything else is made good and happy-shiny, rendering the story itself, ultimately, untrue and unbeliavble to me. I just do not believe in this book. I spent a lot of time and pain reading through some unpleasant scenes.

I don't want to shake Izzy any more, though. Because I no longer believe in her enough to care if she's stupid.

Comments

[mneme]

IIRC, the falseness of the ending is a large part of drcpunk's objection to the book. It didn't bother me, but I tend to read de Lint as anecdotal popcorn rather than trying to make sense of his plots, especially when he gets a touch incoherent; it clearly has major flaws, mostly on storyline logic (and on the likablity of Izzy? I don't remember her well, which makes me think that's probably the case :).

OTOH, well...the -quality- of the book isn't why we recommended it.

I think you'll probably like Someplace to be Flying better (in fact, that was the one both Drcpunk and YT thought of first as actual recommendations).

[kyrielle]

I read Lackey. Whose books eventually, many times, fall into predictable fluff. But even when she botches continuity, the story has an internal consistency that overall satisfies. This...didn't.

Izzy is...she's totally unbelievable, once you know it's all supposed to have been her, and not any form of supernatural intervention. :P

Yeah, I see the parallels. They're also there in The Wood Wife, to a lesser degree, and that's a much niftier book. ;)

And I'll check out StbF - at some point. Just now I've got a pretty good queue of books. :)

[mneme]

Different animal -- de Lint plots badly, but is rarely popcorn fantasy, instead aspiring for something more; Lackey generally plots well, but is almost always popcorn fantasy.
Which is an oversimplification, but...

[kyrielle]

Point, I suppose. This is the first by him I have read. I have to say, I'll take Lackey over this any day. I can accept the numena as more real than Izzy; and that means he fundamentally screwed up, at least by my lights. It was a lovely concept; it was a very lousy execution of it.

[mneme]

Quite.
I like the concept. I like a fair amount of the actual writing.

But when you get down to it, it cheats, and doesn't hold up to examination.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

It's been a while since I read the book, and I think I also thought that Rushkin had been using some sort of magic or hypnosis on Izzy that would account for the memory gaps. I also remember not objecting to their being her memory gaps as much as I objected to how quickly and instantly she got over them. Even if it does happen that way in real life, it cracked my suspension of disbelief.

[kyrielle]

I actually don't believe it does happen that way in RL. Oh, most of them, yes - most of the time it took her time to 'modify' events in her head, and she gradually settled down and wondered vaguely why she'd ever thought X. One of the two that stood out is still explicable - when Rushkin beat her, and she substituted the gang. Because in addition to emotional trauma, there was physical trauma, including head injuries.

Her rewrite of Kathy's death, complete enough by the time of Kathy's funeral that she defended her version of it and thought Alan's was completely nuts? I don't, honestly, believe in that, in context. That would have to be a serious psychotic break, I think, which would have implications for Izzy that simply don't happen in the story.

I seriously object to the level and speed of rewriting; I think the latter took it beyond what actually happens without additional issues (that we didn't see in Izzy).

And her constant going-back to it made me want to beat her. :P