On my world, it means hope.

This time on Shadow and Bone, stuff happens.

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So I'm trying to do something a little different here. This will be sort of like a book review, except with a focus on the educational aspect and what we can learn on what not to do when writing stories. As someone, I forget who, once said, you can learn a lot by reading bad books.

This summer, I've been thinking a lot about Veronica Roth's Insurgent and Leigh Bardugo's Shadow and Bone. The reason is that both of these books have been very hyped up before their release, they're praised for having strong female protagonists, and both of these books I've found rather disappointing, to say the least. They are similar in some aspects and dissimilar than others, and they've triggered a lot of my pet peeves.

1. "Strong" heroines who aren't actually "strong." No, seriously, how is someone like Alina Starkov a "strong" character? She's crippled by insecurity, pining away for the affections of her flirty, flightly childhood friend, and pretty much has no self-confidence whatsoever. What's worse is that Alina is a character who is very much defined by her relationships to men. When she's first introduced, her predominant characteristic is that she's in love with childhood friend Mal, who apparently doesn't return her affections because he's too busy flirting with others. Ignoring the question of why the protagonist would deeply love someone that superficial, there's literally nothing else to distinguish Alina. She's a cartographer, but apparently not very good at it. She's snarky, but only around Mal or when she's being mean to others. Later on, you could argue that Alina gains a characteristic--her Unique Special Power of Sun Summoning--but again, she is driven to master it in order to aid the Darkling (a dude with an unfortunate name, I should say), not really for herself.

Point #1: Nobody likes to read about incompetent wimps who have no interests or goals and can't accomplish anything, or even feel like they can't accomplish anything. Crippling self-doubt is a valid character flaw, but as with all other flaws, it must be handled well; by itself, it doesn't not automatically make a character "deep," particularly once it veers into angst territory.

Point #2: A protagonist must be able to stand on his/her own as a compelling character. A protagonist who is primarily defined by his/her relationships to other characters is a weakly conceptualized protagonist. I read a few reviews of Shadow and Bone in which people expressed more interest in the Darkling than in Alina. You know you have an issue when people think your villain is more complex, deep, and interesting than your protagonist.

(For the record: I'm talking about female protagonists here because both books feature heroines, but I should add that none of these are excusable in male protagonists, either.)


2. The plot isn't driven by the protagonist. Oftentimes, in both Insurgent and Shadow and Bone, I felt that the protagonists were drifting around aimlessly without any particular goal. In both, to a certain extent, the plot moves the character rather than the other way around.

In Shadow and Bone, the problem is that there is no sense of urgency, and Alina is very much a pawn. She's taken away from her old life to be trained by the Grisha Because The Darkling Said So. She tries to master her power Because The Darkling Said so. The Darkling says that she'll be crucial to eliminating the Fold/Unsea (an unholy, dangerous barrier between the rest of the country and the coast), but for most of the middle Alina sort of meanders through her training without any sense of danger or high stakes. Yeah, maybe the book vaguely hinted that people are dying in the Fold all the time, but who cares when Alina is attending tea parties with her Grisha pals?? The only way the middle finally gets a jumpstart is when another character drops a bombshell, the Big Reveal, on Alina, forcing her to finally do something.

In Insurgent, unlike in S&B, there is a sense of urgency and high stakes--the Erudite are after Tris, people are dying, lots of action, etc. etc. The problem is that all the action feels incoherent because Tris doesn't have a particular goal of her own and her actions aren't triggering the plot, the plot is happening to her. Tris and her band of friends move from place to place seemingly without much reason, or at least not for any significant reason, or at least for not any reason important to her. Tris hardly gets to make any decisions about where they go or what they do; in fact, she deliberately refuses a position of leadership among the Dauntless. Pull at one thread on the tapestry of the plot--what is Tris trying to get out of everything that's happening?--and the entire structure comes apart.

In one, there is no momentum in the plot; in the other, the momentum is unfocused and misdirected.


3. Shoddy, vague worldbuilding and simplistic morality. I don't demand complex morals and explorations of the ambiguities between good and evil from every book I read. I'm fine with books with clearly defined Good and Evil sides, such as in Harry Potter and Rick Riordan's novels. I do, however, ask that a book not insult my intelligence. I don't want to hear that another country is TEH EVULZ just because it opposes the protagonist's country without any other context. If I have to read another book where Light Is Always Good and Dark Is Always Evil, I just might break a window. Explain to me fully the villain's motives and why they are so morally questionable.


4. Flat secondary characters. Minor characters are almost always used to either make life difficult for the protagonist, or to show how Deep and Genuine the protagonist is compared to everyone else.

Let's look at Shadow and Bone. (And apologies in advance if I get the character names wrong, my memory isn't that great.)

- Mikael: Exists just to be a lech and a slimeball, so Alina can bash him (in her thoughts, not out loud).
- Alexei: Exists just to die.*
- Genya: Exists just to make Alina pretty.
- David: Exists just to give Alina stuff and be Genya's (oblivious) love interest.
- Random Grisha girls: Exist just to be gossipy and be Alina's superficial "friends."
- Random Grisha girl (whose name began with Z): Exists just to be Alina's "rival" and to be mean to her.

Do any of these characters have lives outside of Alina? Not really. Do they have their own goals, and do they impact the plot in any significant way? No. Are they memorable? Hell no; they're so flat, they're nearly one-dimensional.

I've learned a lot about making minor characters come alive in my own writing. If you're not quite as gifted as Rick Riordan or JK Rowling, who have a special talent for making minor characters memorable, the easiest way is to simply make sure the minor character has an objective, and then let him/her lose in the plot and see what happens. It's a way to rapidly complicate your plot and add new levels of conflict. The downside, of course, is that if your cast is too big, you may end up with something the length of GRR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire.

But at the very least, don't create characters who only revolve around the protagonist with no life of their own. Or, even worse, don't create characters whose sole purpose is to die.

* [By the way, now that I think about it, Alina is at first traumatized by his death, but later completely forgets about him. Wow, talk about being a terrible friend. It could have been interesting if Alina felt a bit of responsibility for his death, thus spurring her efforts to master her power, but no...maybe the author felt that it would've detracted too much from Alina's "love triangle" with Mal and the Darkling. :/]

I think I really might do a "Let's Read" of this book, it's getting so much on my nerves that I need a distraction.


( Chapter Five )