Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! And Opal in Light did not. It was the whole "find your strength by letting goooooo!" canard. Which is really "ladies who submit to the patriarchy are happier!!" HATE THAT.
I was really, REALLY hoping that Light would be the book about that later Opal from Sky- having a life and career of her own, still coping with her family- I was really hoping that we'd learn how her complicated past with her mother, her siblings, and her power had informed her personality. I could buy that she was messed up by it all and disconnected in self-defense (I think Hoffman has handled this well in previous books) but instead I feel like we got a bad fic, or maybe an AU. We didn't get a 20-something Opal with a career and a personality, we got sort of... teenage quest stuff? Like maybe her publisher wanted the be riding the wave of YA popularity harder? Sadness.
I'm sort of disturbed that I didn't remember the scene you refer to above before being reminded. I see what you mean about how she could have been getting at things like learning important things about yourself and life from people who are otherwise shits, and making huge mistakes and damaging people and damaging yourself and stuff, but yeah, I agree with what you said about how it was just problematic. I didn't really notice it at the time (also disturbing)- maybe because it went by too fast? As strange as it sounds, I think this would have benefited from more text if she really wanted to do this.
In related disappointingness, I reread some Robin McKinley and was saddened in a way I wouldn't have noticed before talking to you about the "older man helping younger woman flower, mawwiage, happy ever after" nonsense. Sigh. (No guilt, though!) (Knot in the Grain.) Also if you were thinking of buying Fire, her latest anthology with her husband, you can have mine, and then you can find another home for it after you fling it across the room. (It wasn't... horrible? I think? Well, one of them was. But she wrote fewer stories than he did, I already know I don't like his stuff that much, and one of her two stories was indistinguishable in tone from his, leaving one story I think I liked out of a hardcover anthology of five. A letdown, especially since I liked Water (at the time I read it). Now I'm more nervous about going back and reading her stuff.)
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Date: 2010-07-22 09:56 am (UTC)Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! And Opal in Light did not. It was the whole "find your strength by letting goooooo!" canard. Which is really "ladies who submit to the patriarchy are happier!!" HATE THAT.
I was really, REALLY hoping that Light would be the book about that later Opal from Sky- having a life and career of her own, still coping with her family- I was really hoping that we'd learn how her complicated past with her mother, her siblings, and her power had informed her personality. I could buy that she was messed up by it all and disconnected in self-defense (I think Hoffman has handled this well in previous books) but instead I feel like we got a bad fic, or maybe an AU. We didn't get a 20-something Opal with a career and a personality, we got sort of... teenage quest stuff? Like maybe her publisher wanted the be riding the wave of YA popularity harder? Sadness.
I'm sort of disturbed that I didn't remember the scene you refer to above before being reminded. I see what you mean about how she could have been getting at things like learning important things about yourself and life from people who are otherwise shits, and making huge mistakes and damaging people and damaging yourself and stuff, but yeah, I agree with what you said about how it was just problematic. I didn't really notice it at the time (also disturbing)- maybe because it went by too fast? As strange as it sounds, I think this would have benefited from more text if she really wanted to do this.
In related disappointingness, I reread some Robin McKinley and was saddened in a way I wouldn't have noticed before talking to you about the "older man helping younger woman flower, mawwiage, happy ever after" nonsense. Sigh. (No guilt, though!) (Knot in the Grain.) Also if you were thinking of buying Fire, her latest anthology with her husband, you can have mine, and then you can find another home for it after you fling it across the room. (It wasn't... horrible? I think? Well, one of them was. But she wrote fewer stories than he did, I already know I don't like his stuff that much, and one of her two stories was indistinguishable in tone from his, leaving one story I think I liked out of a hardcover anthology of five. A letdown, especially since I liked Water (at the time I read it). Now I'm more nervous about going back and reading her stuff.)