Throne of Glass - Deconstruction - Ch23

[rainwaterspark]

Chapter 23

This time on Throne of Glass, torture porn.

Celaena screamed as excruciating pain shot down her back, barely heralded by the crack of the whip. She fell onto the ground, stone slicing into her raw knees.
“Get on your feet,” someone barked.
Tears stung her eyes, and the whip creaked as it rose again. She would be killed this time. She would die from the pain of it.
The whip fell, slicing into bone,

Argh.

For the sake of all that is holy, don’t tell me your story has a strong, badass female protagonist and then constantly describe her brokenness and dwell in loving detail on her pain and suffering. No. Just…no.

I am not against the use or portrayal of torture in fiction; I am against the glossing-over of torture and its use as a cheap plot device. Again, I chalk this up to poor writing. If you can’t show that your protagonist is sympathetic or vulnerable without resorting to torture, you have a problem. If you cannot have your two romantic leads bonding without resorting to one comforting the other with a traumatic past, you have a problem. Now, there’s a difference between writing a story in which that’s the point—a story that focuses on how trauma impacts people and how people recover from it, for example—versus writing a story in which this is not a major part of the narrative and it’s used solely for characterization purposes.

Let’s take Throne of Glass as our example here. Save for the scenes in which she reminisces or this chapter, Celaena does not act at all like someone who has suffered intensely. I’m not saying that all people who undergo hardship have to be permanently broken, but she freely wastes/disregards food (even though she was malnourished and starving while she was in Endovier), she’s obsessed with luxury clothing rather than something like, again, food, or hygiene (since she was so in danger of having her wounds infected at Endovier), she has never even attempted to do anything about slavery, and she easily re-assimilates into civilian—sorry, aristocratic—life, playing the piano and flirting with the crown prince, who practically defines luxury and wealth. And this isn’t even touching the fact that she used to be a street orphan but shows absolutely no trace of it.

Backgrounds with torture or deprivation aren’t just devices that can be added to a character for instant sympathy. Deprivation needs to be handled with realism and common sense; and if you really want to go with torture, you damn well need to prepare yourself for the places it’s going to lead you. And like I said, you don’t need a tormented background to establish a character as sympathetic or vulnerable.

Celaena finally wakes up and sees Chaol by her bedside.

“You were screaming.” He gave her a shaky smile. “I thought you were being murdered.”

Where was Chaol to begin with? If he wasn’t right outside her door or in a nearby room, these walls would have to be paper-thin if he could hear her screaming.

Apparently it’s some holiday today, “Samhuinn.” Google leads me to Wikipedia, which tells me that Samhuinn is another name for Samhain, a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. Considering this name is blatantly Gaelic while nothing else in the kingdom seems to be, it would’ve been slightly more original if the author came up with her own name. (Also, I presume that if we have Samhain, we also have the other Gaelic seasonal festivals, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh.)

They talk about making bonfires, summoning the spirits of the dead, and having a feast, which sounds exactly like Samhain. So the author did research on this one Gaelic holiday but not what a rapier looks like.

Celaena teases Chaol for not believing in the superstitions surrounding Samhain, I mean, Samhuinn, and wow did she recover from her nightmare fast. This is what I mean when I’m blasting the writing here: Celaena’s suffering never affects her in a more than superficial manner, other than giving her love interests an opportunity to pity her as a poor Broken Bird.

Celaena eats breakfast, heaping cream and sugar into her porridge, and I still don’t understand why she’s given the luxury of sugar in her meals. It’s expensive and it’s not going to help her in the competition in terms of nutrition, and while I can understand why she might hurry to take advantage of it if she doesn’t usually get to eat sugar or cream, the passage is written such that sugar and cream seem to be familiar items to her.

Oh, she loved porridge!

This writing, ugh. Thank you, third person POV, we don’t need omniscient comments! with exclamation points! at the end of them! all the time!

This is a rather anachronistic comment. I need to find a source for this, but porridge is a simple mush made from grains and probably would’ve been commonly eaten among farmers. In other words, it’s peasant food. I doubt it would be served in a royal palace unless the royal family has a peasant diet fetish. I’m also pretty sure that adding sugar to porridge is a modern habit.

She made a demented face

And just when I think the writing can’t get any worse, it does. This is practically hilaribad-level bad.

The last Test had been javelin throwing on horseback

DAMN YOU, BOOK, YOU SPEND ENTIRE PARAGRAPHS ON CHARACTERS’ CLOTHES AND USELESS CHAPTERS ON USELESS INFORMATION BUT YOU CAN’T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO PROPERLY DESCRIBE THE COMPETITION THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE THE CENTRAL PREMISE OF THE NOVEL???!!??

I mean literally, that is all we hear about the previous test. Not even who was eliminated, because clearly the only competitors who matter are Celaena, Nox, Cain, and Grave, and clearly those are going to be the ones in the final duel (assuming none of them are killed off by the serial killer first).

Also, why the hell would an assassin know how to throw a javelin on horseback? Would an assassin even know how to ride a horse?? Celaena seems to have spent most of her life in cities, I highly doubt it would’ve ever been necessary for her to learn how to ride a horse. And javelin throwing? Considering longbows and crossbows are used in this world, that means no one would use javelins in an actual battle, meaning it’s probably a freaking SPORT. When would she have been tutored in a SPORT?! (And why would the champions be tested on their performance in a sport? WTF??!)

We make another jump to Dorian’s POV. I really hate it when we’re in his head.

Religion neither convinced nor moved him

Another anachronism. Dorian should’ve been brought up believing this stuff, so there’s no reason for him to be an atheist, especially if religion is tied to the crown (which it often was throughout real life world history). Again, the book wants to tell us how Speshul and Unique Dorian is for not following the crowd, but it makes little sense.

Apparently his mom still can’t stop talking about how he needs to get married, because Reasons.

Conveniently, Dorian almost crashes headlong into Celaena. There isn’t even any attempt at subtlety here.

Also, he notes the color of her dress and the fact that it’s…outdated? I thought Celaena was supposed to be a fashionista.

The folds of fabric—like the flowing waters of a river—were rather attractive.

WE GET IT, DORIAN.

Of course; corsets required assistance to get in and out of—and the dresses were a labyrinth of secret clasps and ties.

I’m really wishing I was a fashion historian right now, but this is coming off as unnecessarily Victorian.

“My apologies, my lord prince,” Celaena said. Her eyes were bright and angry, and a blush rose to her cheek. “I’m truly sorry my clothes don’t suit your taste.”

I almost thought she was just trolling him until I went back and saw the “angry” and “blushing” part. I wished she was just trolling him; it would’ve been much better than Celaena Queen of the Underworld being upset the prince doesn’t like her outfit.

he said quickly, glancing at her feet. They were clad in red shoes

I think this is the second time Celaena is mentioned as wearing red shoes, and I’m starting to wonder whether the author loves red shoes or something. What are these shoes made of, leather? Is it even possible to dye shoes red with the current technology?

Dorian keeps harping about how the dress is old-fashioned, which makes very little sense since we’re not even given a sense of what is considered in fashion.

Perrington, who we all know is the Evil of Evil, apparently wants to crush the Eyllwe rebellion. Obviously Dorian argued against it because Dorian can’t be flawed, ever.

Dorian asks Nehemia if she’s going to the Samhuinn feast. So do Eyllwians (gah these place names are impossible to turn into adjectives) celebrate the same holidays as the Adarlanians? Because they seem to have different cultures.

Dorian wanted to yell, to pull out his hair.

How old is Dorian? Why does he keep acting like a five-year-old? He regrets not being able to see Celaena more often and ARGH THIS ROMANCE, KILL ME NOW.

I’m not sure how much more of this book I can take. Seriously.

Finally, a POV switch. Back to Celaena, who of course is admiring her dress.

And she’s listening to Nehemia chew Chaol out for being a guard, which Nehemia equates to being a soldier, which equates to killing on the order of the king.

Poor, poor soldiers. This is something that crops up a lot in fiction and is extremely problematic: the mooks who are serving the villains are faceless irredeemable minions, while the actual villain him/herself might get an Alas Poor Villain rant or even, at worst, a chance for redemption. Which is terrible. The kind of people who serve as guards and soldiers often aren’t the ideological extremists; they’re people from the lower class who just want a job so they can feed themselves and their families.

And here I thought Nehemia was awesome. To be fair, she’s probably really angry about the whole Eyllwe being occupied by Adarlan thing, angry enough to just be lashing out at everyone whom she thinks is part of the problem. And Chaol is a character we’re meant to be sympathetic to, so for the moment I’m not sure how the narrative intends the reader to react to this.

“You kill on the orders of your king.” Your king. Nehemia might not be fully versed in their language, but she was smart enough to know the power of saying those two words. “Your king,” not hers.

Eh. The book makes a big deal out of this, but it’s really not that clever. When you’re learning a foreign language, one of the first things you learn is possessives, “my” “your” “his” “her” etc. I suppose it is a subtle show of defiance, but it’s nothing openly rebellious.

Celaena decides to break up the conversation before it heads into treasonous territory.

“I think it’s useless arguing with her, Chaol,” Celaena said, nudging the Captain of the Guard with her elbow. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have given Terrin your title. Can you reclaim it? It’d prevent a lot of confusion.”
“How’d you remember my brother’s name?”

Wow this is bad writing. Chaol’s brother has been mentioned not once so far up till now, and introducing him like this is sloppy and confusing. And what title are they talking about? Why does the book go into forensic detail about what the characters are wearing but not important information??

Celaena also has to drop in a mental comment about how handsome Chaol looks today. Ugh. And we have another “witty” exchange between the two of them.

Nehemia wants Celaena to teach her Adarlanese, because her tutors are apparently worthless. She says Celaena is “smarter than most of the people in this castle.” Hahaha no. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the way the novel treats every nobleperson aside from Dorian as a stupid, empty-headed nonentity is very aggravating.

They see Cain doing something in front of the clock tower. Remember how I mentioned in one of the early chapters, when Celaena asks about some strange markings around the clock tower but then shrugs her shoulders? Yeah, apparently Cain was cleaning them up. This reeks of ham-handed foreshadowing. At least this time there’s a bit more information and we learn they’re called Wyrdmarks, but Nehemia is just like “Forget about them!” and Chaol doesn’t even think to ask.

The phrase “by the Wyrd” has popped up a few times already, so I suppose this is a good time to explain that Wyrd in real life is an Anglo-Saxon concept corresponding to fate or personal destiny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrd). Between this and Samhuinn, it seems like the author is giving Christopher Paolini a run for his money in terms of “borrowing” ideas and throwing them together in a pastiche.

Celaena asks Nehemia to teach her Eyllwe in return, and wait didn’t we establish that Celaena is already fluent enough in Eyllwe to be a simultaneous interpreter? The book never mentions Celaena as struggling to say something in Eyllwe, having an accent, or forgetting grammar. At least maintain some semblance of consistency, Book.