My first non-review post here. Oooooo.
But then again, I suppose, in a way, it is a review. I recently read Alice Borchardt’s The Dragon Queen. The first book in the Tales of Guinevere. As you can guess from the title it is an Arthurian legend retelling, from the point of view of Guinevere. Borchardt also throws in Maenial, the were-wolf from her other books.
I’m going to be brutally honest here…. I’ve read and enjoyed some of Borchardt’s books! Shocking though this may seem, The Silver Wolf and The Night of the Wolf were okay, enjoyable reads. The Wolf King on the other hand was a piece of disjointed, mixed up writing that never made sense. So why on earth did I pick up anything else by Borchardt?
And more than that, why did I keep reading it, despite not enoying it. Despite thinking that the characters were pretty two dimensional, actually strike that because this book didn’t have characters. It had stand-ins.
There is no development, Guinevere may be “coming of age” but she herself doesn’t grow or change at all. At 14 she is as self-possessed, smart, dangerous, powerful and beautiful as anything on earth. Excuse me while I try to suspend my disbelief!
I could excuse that if the rest of the book was well-written. If the story itself was entertaining. If the prose was engaging. But nope. So I ask again, why on earth did I finish the book?
And why did I start the second one?
Now I’ve read books I know aren’t great works of literature. Jilly Cooper’s for example. I’ve read books where the characters have been really beyond belief, eg Anita Blake’s transformation into a Mary-Sue.[1] But this book has all those terrible things and yet is terribly dull and boring at the same time.
But the point of this post doesn’t really have anything to do with the book itself. It has to do with me and the fact that I spent time reading this book. Not only that, but once I’d finished it and knew I didn’t like it what did I do? Picked up the second one The Raven Warrior. Am I insane? I mean, I know Borchardt may be, for turning her Merlin character into a baddie, and making Guinevere a descendent of Boudecia[2] and I also think she is going to turn Black Leg into the Lancelot character, but I’m not reading on, so I don’t know. But can anyone explain why I was able to toss The Da Vinci Code so quickly yet kept on with this one? Anyone?
Why, oh why did I waste my time?
Tags:
Alice Borchardt,
Anita Blake series,
crap,
Mary-Sue,
The Dragon Queen
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