Faith No More: a book review of Skinwalker
Nov. 1st, 2009 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serynI finished Skinwalker by Faith Hunter.
I was unhappy with it. Scathing and not very nice comments follow.
To be bitchy, the name's got to be a pseudonym. I have never seen the word "hunt", frequently capitalized, or its nominative form, "hunter", also frequently capitalized; more in any single book, including non-fiction works about shooting prey in the forest. I imagine the penname was taken by word histogram of capitalized words in the book and cherry picking from the top ten.
It was subversively churchy. I didn't see constant in-your-face evidence of the main character insisting that Christianity is the sole redeeming faith, but the briefly appearing eldest vampire is wearing a nun's habit and decrying the "sin" of vampires and praying for God to forgive them using (translated several paragraphs after the fact) Latin from Easter rites. Vampires have no reaction to holy objects from other faiths (and those were laboriously listed and specifically excluded any polytheistic religions).
I understand that vampires and Christianity are deeply tied in modern culture, but I'm afraid I really don't understand it. Christianity has only been around a couple thousand years. If you're talking about 500 year old creatures (which is a completely made up average, but almost all vampire mythos have vampires enduring through multiple lifetimes) unless they were newly created as part of the industrial revolution or something, there's really no reason to assume they would arise solely from Europe. In fact, there's a lot of argument that Europe would be the least common source for modern vampires due to their extreme churchiness (if that cross-reaction idea is valid) and persecutions of any difference of belief. It seems pretty arguable that vampires would be common in Scandinavia, which gotcrucified Christianity much later, there's a lot of darkness in the far North, even if there aren't as many humans for prey.
So, between the push on religion, the really incomprehensible head-hopping between the main character and her alter-ego. The alter-ego's really bizarre communication style which involves "hacking" various emotions. (Not a keyboard or LCD in sight!) Usually this happens within other dialogue scenes or action scenes, making the main character seem fucking crazy to the point of non-functionality. We spend a lot of time watching the main character eat raw meat and oatmeal or being hungry to the point of starvation. I kept thinking, "If you didn't skip 3 meals and then shapeshift, you might not need to eat 15 pounds of meat. Plus a more well-rounded diet might help tremendously in terms of not making you feel sick all the time."
There didn't seem to be any real reason for this to have been set in New Orleans. It always irritates me when books are set somewhere that's frankly a hellhole for no reason. We're told that the main character is staying "in the Quarter"... but she never complains about the noise. The French Quarter in New Orleans sounds like a cross between a rap video with the volume cranked until the bedrock vibrates and a planetary invasion... during a regular Wednesday night half a year from Mardi Gras. The main character drives around on a motorcycle in post-Katrina New Orleans... the streets in New Orleans were pocked and cratered and crumbling before the hurricane, I don't see how that wasn't a concern. Plus the roads through the Garden District weave and turn and dead-end randomly, but the main character who used to live in the middle of nowhere has zero trouble navigating. This could easily have been set in Houston or Little Rock or Raleigh or Kansas City without loss from setting. Why would the author pick this place?
I really might have liked this book, despite all these issues, if the main character had had a clue. In the end she doesn't solve the mystery at all. Other people do. Then the main character kills the ones who solved it without any sort of remorse.
Not worth buying. Spend the $8 bribing me (I'll spend it on fluffy coffee) and I promise to write something coherent where vampires aren't completely fucking stupid and needing of rescuing by idiot bimbos who spend pages describing how much they want to have unprotected sex with strange men because their alter egos want to make babies (really, at least 5 times, sickeningly). Actually I can buy my own coffee. I am pretty sure there's something better to read, unless you're from the South and Christ-ridden and bechilded already, then most of my concerns will seem intolerant and irrelevant. I just don't understand why anyone would go through all the trouble to recreate the modern world in a fantasy image and keep all the dreck. If I wanted to read about the here and now with all the problems it already has, I'd read non-genre books.
I was unhappy with it. Scathing and not very nice comments follow.
To be bitchy, the name's got to be a pseudonym. I have never seen the word "hunt", frequently capitalized, or its nominative form, "hunter", also frequently capitalized; more in any single book, including non-fiction works about shooting prey in the forest. I imagine the penname was taken by word histogram of capitalized words in the book and cherry picking from the top ten.
It was subversively churchy. I didn't see constant in-your-face evidence of the main character insisting that Christianity is the sole redeeming faith, but the briefly appearing eldest vampire is wearing a nun's habit and decrying the "sin" of vampires and praying for God to forgive them using (translated several paragraphs after the fact) Latin from Easter rites. Vampires have no reaction to holy objects from other faiths (and those were laboriously listed and specifically excluded any polytheistic religions).
I understand that vampires and Christianity are deeply tied in modern culture, but I'm afraid I really don't understand it. Christianity has only been around a couple thousand years. If you're talking about 500 year old creatures (which is a completely made up average, but almost all vampire mythos have vampires enduring through multiple lifetimes) unless they were newly created as part of the industrial revolution or something, there's really no reason to assume they would arise solely from Europe. In fact, there's a lot of argument that Europe would be the least common source for modern vampires due to their extreme churchiness (if that cross-reaction idea is valid) and persecutions of any difference of belief. It seems pretty arguable that vampires would be common in Scandinavia, which got
So, between the push on religion, the really incomprehensible head-hopping between the main character and her alter-ego. The alter-ego's really bizarre communication style which involves "hacking" various emotions. (Not a keyboard or LCD in sight!) Usually this happens within other dialogue scenes or action scenes, making the main character seem fucking crazy to the point of non-functionality. We spend a lot of time watching the main character eat raw meat and oatmeal or being hungry to the point of starvation. I kept thinking, "If you didn't skip 3 meals and then shapeshift, you might not need to eat 15 pounds of meat. Plus a more well-rounded diet might help tremendously in terms of not making you feel sick all the time."
There didn't seem to be any real reason for this to have been set in New Orleans. It always irritates me when books are set somewhere that's frankly a hellhole for no reason. We're told that the main character is staying "in the Quarter"... but she never complains about the noise. The French Quarter in New Orleans sounds like a cross between a rap video with the volume cranked until the bedrock vibrates and a planetary invasion... during a regular Wednesday night half a year from Mardi Gras. The main character drives around on a motorcycle in post-Katrina New Orleans... the streets in New Orleans were pocked and cratered and crumbling before the hurricane, I don't see how that wasn't a concern. Plus the roads through the Garden District weave and turn and dead-end randomly, but the main character who used to live in the middle of nowhere has zero trouble navigating. This could easily have been set in Houston or Little Rock or Raleigh or Kansas City without loss from setting. Why would the author pick this place?
I really might have liked this book, despite all these issues, if the main character had had a clue. In the end she doesn't solve the mystery at all. Other people do. Then the main character kills the ones who solved it without any sort of remorse.
Not worth buying. Spend the $8 bribing me (I'll spend it on fluffy coffee) and I promise to write something coherent where vampires aren't completely fucking stupid and needing of rescuing by idiot bimbos who spend pages describing how much they want to have unprotected sex with strange men because their alter egos want to make babies (really, at least 5 times, sickeningly). Actually I can buy my own coffee. I am pretty sure there's something better to read, unless you're from the South and Christ-ridden and bechilded already, then most of my concerns will seem intolerant and irrelevant. I just don't understand why anyone would go through all the trouble to recreate the modern world in a fantasy image and keep all the dreck. If I wanted to read about the here and now with all the problems it already has, I'd read non-genre books.
