Stable the Bull, Free the Muse!

(Click on image to enlarge)

The Girl in the Steel Corset
by Kady Cross

Pub. Date: May 2011
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: Hardback, 473pp
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: The Steampunk Chronicles #1
ISBN-13: 9780373210336

 Synopsis from Amazon.com

In 1897 England, sixteen-year-old Finley Jayne has no one…except the "thing" inside her.

When a young lord tries to take advantage of Finley, she fights back. And wins. But no normal Victorian girl has a darker side that makes her capable of knocking out a full-grown man with one punch....

Only Griffin King sees the magical darkness inside her that says she's special, says she's one of them. The orphaned duke takes her in from the gaslit streets against the wishes of his band of misfits: Emily, who has her own special abilities and an unrequited love for Sam, who is part robot; and Jasper, an American cowboy with a shadowy secret.

Griffin's investigating a criminal called The Machinist, the mastermind behind several recent crimes by automatons. Finley thinks she can help—and finally be a part of something, finally fit in.

But The Machinist wants to tear Griff's little company of strays apart, and it isn't long before trust is tested on all sides. At least Finley knows whose side she's on—even if it seems no one believes her.

Jennifer's Review of The Girl in the Steel Corset

(There are no spoilers in this review.)

There comes a moment when you’re reading a book that you slip your bookmark between the pages and notice that you’ve just passed the halfway point. If it’s a tedious book, you might react with a resigned sigh. (Oh, man. Three hundred more pages of this lunatic chasing a whale.) On the other hand, if it’s a page-turner with interesting and extremely likable characters, and with a storyline that bounces along in a steady and comfortable rhythm, then you might regret that there are less pages awaiting you than there are lying behind you.

The Girl in the Steel Corset, from its beautiful cover to its final pages, is of the latter ilk. Yes, it has its flaws, some fairly irritating ones at that, but they're mostly steamrolled by the absorbing plot and immensely pleasing characters. Still, there’s a wee bit too much blushing going on, and a tad too many eyebrows “arch”. The lone American character at times sounds more British than he ought (or, conversely, like a stereotype of a cowboy). And I have to wonder if Cross is working on the old pulp mag penny-a-word scale: He raised a hand to his nose, and when he saw the blood on his fingers, he made a growling sound in his throat. Indeed. You know, he could have just "growled", and replacing the weak (and trite) phrase with a single, forceful word would have increased rather than sapped the potency of that sentence.

But my biggest complaint is that the author frequently exhibits a sameness in her prose. For example, midway down page 298: ...[Sam] demanded, coming at her like a bull at a red flag. Jump to the top of 299: Sam came at her. And finally, drop to the next paragraph: Sam raged, coming to stand in front of her, a bull ready to charge. Nice analogy the first time, not so much the second. Actually, it's the second and third times, at a minimum. On page 16, there's a different character, but the same verb and the same male bovine: He came at her again, like a bull. Cross tends to recycle her analogies -- an uninspired way to write that, by not challenging the writer, does her craft and her manuscript no favors. A writer's best friend is her Muse; allowing complacency to shut the door on inspiration and creativity is asking for stagnant prose, as is evident here when Sam's movements are described by the words “coming”, “came”, and “coming”. (Now that I think of it, monotonous prose is very pulp mag-ish, too! Just be aware of what you've already written, and if you're tempted to recycle an analogy, for example, force yourself to be a better writer by taking a few extra minutes to create something new.) Then there’s the character on page 309 who’s said to be profoundly glad that his friend was going to recover. A few pages later we are told once more that this character is profoundly relieved that his friend was alive. Clearly, there was some lax editing on the part of the writer and lazy proofreading on the part of both writer and editor. And that brings up what is without doubt the most nettlesome thing about this book: the dozens upon dozens of typos and other printing errors in the text. There are missing commas, commas where there shouldn’t be any punctuation, missing words, extra words inserted, and so on. A truly abysmal publication job, Harlequin Teen.

And yet, how good this book must be to overcome those difficulties and garner such a high rating! Well, actually, I’m not sure that good is the best word. Fun would be a better choice. It’s been a while since I’ve had such a blast reading a book. The romances (this is a Harlequin novel after all) are handled lightly, but are one of the highlights of the tale; there are good characters who struggle with the bad side of their natures, and bad ones you want to believe are better than they seem; and there’s just the right amount of humor to offset the drama. The steampunk elements are believable and enjoyable, and though they are an essential part of the story, the descriptions of machinery, etc., are easygoing and do not intrude on the narrative.

Oh, I could quibble over the muddled and ever so slightly contrived denouement. And I could complain about the author’s habit of adding descriptive sentences or phrases after "he said" that at times undercut the emotion being expressed by a character and/or interrupt the flow of a conversation. To see what I mean, let’s revisit page 299:

“It could have killed her,” Sam raged, coming to stand in front of her, a bull ready to charge. “She wouldn't let me die, but she risked her life for you. You are not worth her life. You're not worth her blood.”

Notice how Sam's anger dips after “raged”. The phrases that follow check the growth of his wrath (which is contrary to the violence about to pour forth from this outburst), as his subsequent statements are disconnected from “raged”. But read that paragraph aloud without the phrases following “Sam raged”. Now his anger, rather than slackening, gains momentum, and his act of violence erupts more naturally from his words. (In fact, removing the first phrase alone accomplishes the task almost as well.) Though such expository phrases are a common and useful tool for writers, Cross inserts an overabundance of them into her dialogue, and as a result some conversations feel choppy and bumpy. (More words, more pennies, I suppose.)

But darn it, reading The Girl in the Steel Corset is like having an uncomfortable seat at a terrific play. You squirm every now and then, and grunt out an “Ouch!” or two, but as the play progresses, your senses become enthralled by what’s happening up on the stage. And when you leave the theater, you do so energized and sporting a giddy smile. That was wonderful! you think, the uncomfortable seats of no consequence (until you get home and write your review of the play).

And if a sadness that the magic is over and the cast is gone tries to creep over you, it may be readily banished by the happy thought that this is only book one in The Steampunk Chronicles!

(A shorter version of this review was published in June 2011, on GoodReads.com.)

It's Fay, Not Fey! (And Please Stop Muttering!)

(Click image to enlarge)

The Iron King
by Julie Kagawa

Pub. Date: February 2010
Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Format: Paperback, 368pp
Age Range: Young Adult
Series: The Iron Fey #1
ISBN-13: 9780373210084

 

Synopsis from Harlequin Teen

Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined…

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school…or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

Jennifer's Review of The Iron King

(There are no spoilers in this review.)

As enjoyable as The Iron King was, it was nonetheless a disappointment, because with a touch more attention by the author, it could have been much better. The plot is interesting and moves along nicely, the characters are engaging, and Kagawa’s storytelling keeps the pages turning. Clearly, she did her research into fairy mythology – motif after motif appears, especially in the first part of the book – and that adds an additional layer of realism and pleasure to the tale. But there are two annoying, recurring problems with her writing: one that could have been avoided with a single peek in the dictionary, and one that could have been eliminated had her rewriting process been more diligent.

The first problem is that Kagawa does not understand that the word fey is an adjective, not a noun. It means “fairylike or magical”, or even, “fated to die”. It is not synonymous, as she believes, with the word fairy. The word she was looking for was fay, or its Old French progenitor, fae, both of which are nouns meaning “fairy or elf”. The mistake is especially surprising since Kagawa regularly employs the term faerie, the archaic form of fairy, and since her research is otherwise solid. It may not seem like a big deal until you realize that the word is used incorrectly over and over and over again, starting with the cover of the book (where the series is called “The Iron Fey”, which at best translates as “The Iron Fairylike”). Occasionally, such as when she writes “the fey boy”, the word nearly works, although it is entirely by accident and contrary to her intentions. (I say nearly because the boy in question is a fairy, not just fairylike.) She is not alone in making this error. Other writers have gotten confused, and I have even seen paintings of the Arthurian enchantress Morgan le Fay mistitled “Morgan le Fey” by artists who should know better. But none of that excuses Kagawa nor eases the pain the reader feels at each instance of the word. It is the first law of writing: Know the words you use!

The other problem that drags The Iron King down is that Kagawa succumbs to the “pet word” blight that hampers so many authors’ prose. Even good writers, if they’re not careful, can develop bad habits through oversight or laziness, but there’s no excuse for any writer using the same descriptive word page after page. In this case, there are two words that Kagawa seems unable to stop using: murmur and mutter. Every character in the book does one or the other, or both, at some time or another. It gives one the impression that people are afraid to raise their voices in Kagawa’s Faeryland. What’s worse, the repeated use of a word to describe a character’s actions or manner eventually evolves into a trait of that character in the reader’s mind. For example, the male lead in The Iron King, supposedly a dark and mighty knight, “mutters” or “murmurs” in nearly every conversation he has, making him seem, by turns, unconfident, indecisive, or mawkish. Our heroine’s strength is likewise sapped by her constant murmuring and muttering. But the disease afflicts everyone in the story, and whenever a new character appears on the scene, the reader holds her breath because sooner or later, that character will murmur and/or mutter. The problem reaches its crescendo on page 277 when, in a short conversation, three different characters murmur. This comes in the midst of a staggering display of murmuring in which seven different characters murmur a total of 19 times in 47 pages. (Mind you, many of those pages contain no dialogue.) During this same span of text, when the characters aren’t murmuring, they’re muttering – 15 times in fact. But the muttering really takes off with chapter twenty-one. In 21 pages, three characters “mutter” 11 times (and “murmur” 8). Nearly every conversation has at least one mutterer, and sometimes characters actually trade off muttering.

I had hoped that Kagawa would have reined in her use of those words in Winter’s Passage, the novella that falls between The Iron King and The Iron Daughter. But no, if anything it’s worse. In 59 pages, many of them devoid of conversation, Kagawa uses murmur 21 times and mutter 12. On page 9, in a half-page span of a very short conversation, she outdoes herself. Our dark fae starts it off: “Hold on,” he murmured. Our heroine has a one sentence reply, and then the fae responds: “I don’t know,” he muttered. A couple lines of conversation and a brief descriptive paragraph follow, and then: “Meghan, wake up,” he murmured. Later, in five pages near the end that contain just a few lines of dialogue, our majestic knight, in four brief opportunities, repeats the sequence, first murmuring, then muttering, then murmuring.

This is lazy writing and even lazier editing. Writing is work; rewriting is hard labor. Hard, hard, hard labor. But to make a book its best, the latter must be done with a conscientious effort made to improve what has been written. There is absolutely no excuse for using the same word in every dialogue. In fact, in the majority of cases in The Iron King, there is no reason for either a murmur or a mutter. The transparent “he said” works fine; no word at all works in several places; and as for the rest, they could be varied by “he said tenderly”, “he said softly”, or “she said under her breath”. Take the thesaurus off the shelf and have the characters grumble, grouse, mumble, or speak in an undertone. English is rich in synonyms, and a writer must take advantage of that fact. As much as anything, good prose is about vocabulary and variety. When I’m writing, I dread the third draft because that’s my “word use/overuse” draft. It is weeks of tedium and drudgery as I use my word processor to search the text for instances of a hundred or so different words – those I’ve found that I tend to repeat when the first draft is flowing out. This gives me a chance to polish and strengthen my prose on a word by word basis, and to be certain that my presence as the author is undetectable to the reader (or to the characters).

They are solitary undertakings, the writing and rewriting of a book. Certainly there are times when getting someone’s feedback might be helpful, but if a writer thinks that’s the equivalent of an authorial review of their work, then they are deluded. The burden of proofreading, in particular, should fall solely on the shoulders of the author. No family member, no writing group, no editor, is going to read every single word in a manuscript aloud, as a writer should and must do multiple times. (It is the only way to catch some problems, and had Kagawa done it, or performed the task more thoroughly, The Iron King would have been a much better novel.) A writer owes it to her characters to tell their story in the best way possible, and certainly she shouldn’t be responsible for sabotaging them through something as easily correctable as misused and overused words. It robs their tale of some of its wonder, and while it’s a shame to lose even a little magic from any work of fiction, it is especially unfortunate in one written about the lives of the fae.

(Review originally published March 24, 2011, on GoodReads.com.)