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Throne of Glass: mini-update & chatter
Nov. 8th, 2014 12:09 pmThere were a couple of things I missed and decided to go back to talk about, so if anyone's curious, the edited deconstructed chapters are:
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 27
.
I mentioned previously that I wanted to do a hypothetical rewrite of Throne of Glass, but failed because the plot is so scattered that I have no idea what it's really about and I think the fundamental premise of the book is flawed at its core. Actually, several fundamental premises of the book are flawed at their core, and here's the (not exhaustive) list:
1. Celaena shouldn't be an assassin.
Honestly...she doesn't even assassinate a single person in this book, which makes it really pointless, and the author seems to think "assassin" just means "super awesome badass." Which is so far off the mark.
Here's a very good post about how to write assassins.
Aside from the fact that Celaena never does any actual assassinating, she never thinks like an assassin, either, except a few times in the beginning where she talks about splattering people's blood on the walls and her cringe-worthy "makeshift weapons." (Although the urge to splatter blood is not really the hallmark of an assassin; it's more how a sociopath or Psycho For Hire would think.)
I wanted to pull out one quote from the post I linked above:
"Assassins are going to be deeply screwed up individuals, their understanding of normal is nowhere near the standard cultural baseline."
(emphases mine)
Obviously, there's a sliding scale as to how "screwed up" any assassin character will be, but for the love of God, the author of ToG seems to forget (or handwave) the fact that "assassin" means professional murderer. Assassins are people whose lives revolve around planning and then executing those plans to kill people for money. They are not going to be empathetic bleeding hearts or passionate ideologues. They may well be paranoid. In any case, they are not going to have the same concerns or thought patterns as your average person on the street...let alone an aristocrat.
If the author needed Celaena to be an assassin just so she could participate in the competition...well, she didn't have to be an assassin. She could be a soldier, or even a mercenary (which, in fantasy, often translates to "edgier than a soldier, but not as extreme as an assassin"). This would also give her a better basis for knowing swordfighting etiquette...although there's no reason that she'd know wall-climbing or poison identification.
If the author really really wanted Celaena to be an assassin...okay, but her entire character would need to be rewritten from the ground up, starting from the question of how and why she became an assassin, and what impact that has on her day-to-day worries. While it's frighteningly easy to condition people to violence, most people have a strong aversion to killing if they don't have a personal stake in it (personal stake being things like revenge or self-defense), and there has to be a reason for how Celaena would overcome that to become an assassin. There has to be a reason why Celaena could not turn to any other option for earning a living other than by killing people. (And poverty/desperation is not going to cut it alone.)
The post I linked to talks about the "Forced Prodigy" cliché, which Celaena somewhat falls into. It's the idea of an assassin character who never wanted to be an assassin, but was forced into it, and became good. The thing is, as the post points out, you can't get good at something you honestly don't want to do. Celaena's slightly different in that, while she never asked to be an assassin, she seems to be...more or less okay with it. But then again, the book pretends that she only killed people "who deserved it," which is a really cheap way to say "I want to write about an assassin! But I don't actually want to write about an assassin doing something morally objectionable," even though an assassin is by definition a criminal.
2. What the hell is the point of the competition?
Does the king need a bodyguard? He can hire those a dime a dozen. Does he need a sort of assassin who will do dirty work for the royal family? Again, he can hire or even train his own. Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy is about a royal bastard who gets brought up as the king's personal assassin. And really, if a monarch wants their own personal assassin, they're much better off training their own. They'd want someone who is completely, 100% loyal to them and can't be bought out by a potential rival, and any independent assassin is just not going to make the grade. I mean, in the case of ToG, it's moronic. The king's Champion is this notorious assassin who hates his guts. A monarch is NOT going to employ someone like that to guard their interests.
So seriously, what is the point of this competition?
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 27
.
I mentioned previously that I wanted to do a hypothetical rewrite of Throne of Glass, but failed because the plot is so scattered that I have no idea what it's really about and I think the fundamental premise of the book is flawed at its core. Actually, several fundamental premises of the book are flawed at their core, and here's the (not exhaustive) list:
1. Celaena shouldn't be an assassin.
Honestly...she doesn't even assassinate a single person in this book, which makes it really pointless, and the author seems to think "assassin" just means "super awesome badass." Which is so far off the mark.
Here's a very good post about how to write assassins.
Aside from the fact that Celaena never does any actual assassinating, she never thinks like an assassin, either, except a few times in the beginning where she talks about splattering people's blood on the walls and her cringe-worthy "makeshift weapons." (Although the urge to splatter blood is not really the hallmark of an assassin; it's more how a sociopath or Psycho For Hire would think.)
I wanted to pull out one quote from the post I linked above:
"Assassins are going to be deeply screwed up individuals, their understanding of normal is nowhere near the standard cultural baseline."
(emphases mine)
Obviously, there's a sliding scale as to how "screwed up" any assassin character will be, but for the love of God, the author of ToG seems to forget (or handwave) the fact that "assassin" means professional murderer. Assassins are people whose lives revolve around planning and then executing those plans to kill people for money. They are not going to be empathetic bleeding hearts or passionate ideologues. They may well be paranoid. In any case, they are not going to have the same concerns or thought patterns as your average person on the street...let alone an aristocrat.
If the author needed Celaena to be an assassin just so she could participate in the competition...well, she didn't have to be an assassin. She could be a soldier, or even a mercenary (which, in fantasy, often translates to "edgier than a soldier, but not as extreme as an assassin"). This would also give her a better basis for knowing swordfighting etiquette...although there's no reason that she'd know wall-climbing or poison identification.
If the author really really wanted Celaena to be an assassin...okay, but her entire character would need to be rewritten from the ground up, starting from the question of how and why she became an assassin, and what impact that has on her day-to-day worries. While it's frighteningly easy to condition people to violence, most people have a strong aversion to killing if they don't have a personal stake in it (personal stake being things like revenge or self-defense), and there has to be a reason for how Celaena would overcome that to become an assassin. There has to be a reason why Celaena could not turn to any other option for earning a living other than by killing people. (And poverty/desperation is not going to cut it alone.)
The post I linked to talks about the "Forced Prodigy" cliché, which Celaena somewhat falls into. It's the idea of an assassin character who never wanted to be an assassin, but was forced into it, and became good. The thing is, as the post points out, you can't get good at something you honestly don't want to do. Celaena's slightly different in that, while she never asked to be an assassin, she seems to be...more or less okay with it. But then again, the book pretends that she only killed people "who deserved it," which is a really cheap way to say "I want to write about an assassin! But I don't actually want to write about an assassin doing something morally objectionable," even though an assassin is by definition a criminal.
2. What the hell is the point of the competition?
Does the king need a bodyguard? He can hire those a dime a dozen. Does he need a sort of assassin who will do dirty work for the royal family? Again, he can hire or even train his own. Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy is about a royal bastard who gets brought up as the king's personal assassin. And really, if a monarch wants their own personal assassin, they're much better off training their own. They'd want someone who is completely, 100% loyal to them and can't be bought out by a potential rival, and any independent assassin is just not going to make the grade. I mean, in the case of ToG, it's moronic. The king's Champion is this notorious assassin who hates his guts. A monarch is NOT going to employ someone like that to guard their interests.
So seriously, what is the point of this competition?
