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leightaylorwrites · 6 years

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Leigh Dissects YA fiction: Fallen Kingdoms (Chapter Seven- Chapter Ten)

Chapter Seven - Auranos

Sigh… I thought we’d at least get a break from Cleo by heading back to Magnus but I guess that was foolish of me to hope.

No one knew why, but Cleo guessed her sister had fallen in love with someone else.

The gender-neutral “someone” makes me hope for a single lesbian in this story. It’s another foolish hope.

Emilia had never so much as cast a flirtatious glance at any of the men in the palace [...]

LET EMILIA BE GAY 2K18

His parents didn’t approve of smoking inside the house. Aron might be arrogant and confident, but he was still seventeen and had to abide by his parents' rules until his next birthday-unless he wanted to move out ahead of schedule. And Cleo knew without a doubt that he didn’t want that sort of responsibility, financial or otherwise.

I’m sorry when did I leave this YA high fantasy and enter a teen drama on the CW? This entire part is a mess of modern-ness and should have been cut.

Aron: [I’m not sorry for killing him lol I kind of liked it too]

Cleo: How can you sound so calm about this?

Aron: Would you rather I lie and say I have nightmares too? Would that ease your own guilt?

Cleo: I want the truth.

Aron: And that’s what I’ve given you.

I get that Aron is a horrible creepy killer, but he has a point. He IS honest. When the villain makes more sense than your heroine, there’s an issue.

When he smiled, the look was equally menacing and enticing. “I will find you.”

YA authors stop writing scary love interests challenge.

Chapter Eight - Limeros

“Naughty girl.”

She ignored the flush that immediately heated her cheeks.She wasn’t being naughty; she was being inquisitive.

And I’m being disgusted. So not only does Magnus have the hots for his adoptive sister, Lucia blushes when he calls her “naughty.” Clace are BOTH unemployed.

“Cleiona’s also the name of the youngest Auranian princess,” Magnus mused. “Never really thought about it before. Same age as you are, right? Nearly to the day?”

I have… questions. First, how does he know Cleo’s exact birthday? Two, it’s likely going to come into play later that they are at most a few days apart but how does that work with Lucia? How does Magnus know her day of birth? We find out later Sabina (the lady from the prologue) brought Lucia to the palace as an infant but it wasn’t the day she was born so how would Sabina know her birthday? Even if she had a vision on the baby’s day of birth or something like that, how did Lucia survive without being breastfed? I need answers.

Magnus: One of grace and beauty, my sister, with a multitude of suitors at her beck and call. Forced to be siblings with a scarred monster like me.

Lucia: As if that scar makes you a monster. You can’t be blind to how girls look at you-I even see maids here in the castle wistfully watch you pass, even if you never notice them. They all think you’re devastatingly handsome. And your scar only makes you more… intriguing.

If you think plain hetero splooging is bad, just wait until you see plain hetero incest splooging!

“[Tomas] was cut down as a spoiled lord tried to show off in front of a princess - Princess Cleiona [...] The two watched Tomas Agallon’s young life bleed from him in front of his own family.They didn’t feel sorry for the pain they caused that family and all Paelsia.”

I mean… it’s true. Too bad the evil king is saying this and therefore the reader is supposed to disagree with him and know that Cleo the Super Special White Girl can’t do anything wrong ever but still. He’s right.

The words were acid on his tongue as jealousy flashed through him like a bolt of lightning. “But [Lucia] isn’t interested in walks around the palace grounds. Not with, well… not with you.”

The boy’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

Magnus forced a tense look on his face as if he’d said too much and now felt guilty. “It’s really none of my business.”

[...]

“It’s just that she’s mentioned you to me [...] And she made it clear that if you ever stopped by, you should not be encouraged any further. She means no offense, of course. But… her interests in a potential suitor lie elsewhere.”

In case incest splooging wasn’t enough to make me hate this character, he’s entered Rowboat’s, well, boat. Territorial pricks are not cute @ YA authors.

Magnus had no patience for anyone who would be manipulated so easily. If the boy was truly interested in Lucia, he should be able to stand up to any adversity, including an overprotective older brother.

But you literally just told this kid Lucia SAID she doesn’t want him. If he’s taking your word as truth, that’s not him being manipulated, it’s him believing you because why would a prince lie to him about this? He’s not doing anything wrong by respecting what he believes are Lucia’s wishes??? He has more respect for her than you do?? Why do people like Magnus??

“I wouldn’t hesitate to say you were lying.” He took her arm in his and squeezed it until she flinched. A flicker of fear went through her pale eyes. “Who do you think the king would believe? His son and heir? Or a kitchen maid?”

Amia swallowed hard. “I apologize, my prince. I would never say such a thing.”

“Smart girl.”

So… Magnus is literally physically abusing and threatening his casual hookup and people stan??

There was no Limerian law that stated that pure royal blood was necessary for the position. Even the son of a whore could become king.

Magnus is being all emo over the fact that Tobias could be king someday, a problem which is easily solved by Magnus killing Tobias. This doesn’t happen, but I think I’ve found the problem with all these series that try so hard to be the YA version of Game of Thrones/ASOIAF: nobody has the balls to write how these conflicts would actually play out in a real political setting. YA does have to be toned down in comparison to adult fiction but when you tone things down so much that they make no sense, it doesn’t work at all.

Blood sacrifice? How deeply savage.

Can’t tell if I’m tired of the word savage being used in this book (it’s used at least 20 times in reference to Paelsia) or if I’m tired of it in general (thanks stan twitter).

The king swiftly moved behind the boy, pulled his head back, and slashed the blade across his throat. Tobias’s eyes went wide and his hands came up automatically to his neck. Blood squirted out from between his fingers. He collapsed to the ground.

I’m DONE. We got half a page about Tobias being a threat to the throne for Magnus and instead of seeing them battle it out, or Tobias team up with an enemy later on, or anything that might give some payoff to the fact that Magnus has a secret half-brother, he’s sacrificed a few pages after his main introduction. Do you see what I mean now about YA fantasy writers holding back?

Chapter Nine - Auranos

I DON’T CARE, WHERE IS JONAS

“It’s unfortunate about Princess Emilia, though. So, so sad she isn’t well enough to attend.”

We get it. She’s dying. You’ve reminded us like four times already.

[...] Emilia’s most recently finished painting, a study of the night sky.

Subtle foreshadowing isn’t subtle enough for me.

That [her marriage] was solely a political choice sounded so cold, so analytical.

Does Cleo… not know what politics are? Does she not understand that royal arranged marriages happen all the time? Does she not realize she’s a princess? Why is she so dumb??

“You do know [Nic] is madly in love with you, right?”

Dammit. We came so close to having that platonic relationship but we can’t have a young man in this series not want to splooge over Cleo. It’s the first book and Cleo already has three love interests for this series. Alien Trashryver is worried.

Emilia: “I fell in love with someone else [...] I’ve never felt such love as I felt for him.”

DOUBLE DAMMIT.

Despite being named for the goddess, Cleo wasn’t invested in religion [.]

Isn’t being named after a religious deity frowned upon? I know in some religions you can be named after a minor figure - such as Christians with the archangels. But you can’t name your child God. Cleo being named after the primary person in the religion seems wrong.

But how else would we know she’s a Super Special Magical White Girl if she didn’t have a name far beyond what she deserves?

Her sister had been in love with a guard who’d died two months ago. “It was Theon’s father, wasn’t it?”

Isn’t he like… old??

Her sister had been in love with the king’s bodyguard who’d been thrown from his horse to his death. A tragedy.

That is verbatim from the book and I can’t stop laughing. This bitch said “a tragedy,” I’m CRYING.

Emilia was always the rock - comforting Cleo when she was upset over [some petty stuff] or the loss of her innocence to Aron.

“You’re the same as you were yesterday and the day before,” she’d soothed. “Nothing has changed. Not really. Forget what troubles you. Regret nothing, but learn from any mistakes you make. Tomorrow will be a brighter day, I promise.”

If you think things are cool because HEY we’ve got a YA heroine who isn’t a virgin, we later find out Cleo was drunk when this happened and therefore is an assault victim. The book never acknowledges the later, but instead has Emilia tell Cleo to learn from her mistakes and that nothing has changed. Feminist YA at its peak, y’all.

“You can’t. You’re to be the queen one day. If you die, that means it’ll be me. Trust me, Emilia, that would be a very bad thing. I would make a terrible queen.”

I mean, yeah I agree that Cleo would be a shitty queen but I’m more annoyed at how these five sentences are written.

Emilia: “There’s no one out there spying on us through the eyes of birds, hoping for clues of where to find the Kindred.”

Cleo: “I’ve never believed in such nonsense.”

Btw, Cleo said earlier she thought the birds were watching her. Consistency is hard, I guess.

[Theon] shook his head. “I knew my father cared about someone, but he wouldn’t say who it was. I figured he was involved with a married woman. Now I know.”

So Cleo’s boyfriend is her sister’s dead husband’s son… Cleo’s love interest is her nephew. He’s her step-nephew, but her nephew nonetheless.

Chapter Ten - Limeros (this time with the bird dude)

[...] to see his bird friend, Phaedra, perched on the branch next to him.

Now, I could give this book points if the whole point was that the western world was meant to be Greece, while Mystica is a mix of Italy and Spain. But the existence of Paelsia with its North African/Asian/Roman setting messes it all up.

All [Lucia] would see when she looked at him was a golden hawk. For some reason, this realization pained him.

So we can’t have lgbt+ romances or poc romances but Cleo the Super Special Magical White Girl can get three+ love interests and Lucia can get two love interests - her adoptive brother and a dude who can turn into a bird. White authors, man. White authors…

One thing I do like about this Ioannes dude is that his chapters are short, leaving little room for bullshit. However, they make me go back to Magnus and Cleo sooner than I want.

#leigh reads it #leigh dissects ya #falling kingdoms review

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fyeahbatcat · 7 years

Note

Not batcat related but what did you think about the Wonder Woman movie? I love your blog btw!

Thank you!!! I haven’t seen Wonder Woman yet. I have tickets for tonight :)

Edit 6/30/17

Sorry I meant to give you an update right after I saw themovie but then the proposal happened the next day and it shifted my focus for awhile. Anyways, last year I was kind of asked about my thoughts on the thenupcoming Wonder Woman movie and I outlined my concerns about the potential forlightweight feminism, portrayals of violence, and the representation of theAmazons and everyone I am happy to say that I could not have been more wrong(for the most part). I’ve been begging the powers that be at WB for a WonderWoman for years and I fully intended to catch an advanced screening since itwas announced in 2014, but I was away on vacation that week so it didn’t happenand I had to do some extreme internet acrobatics to avoid spoilers. Between that,the letdown that was Suicide Squad,and the pressure of having the first *real* superhero movie starring a woman I thoughtthere was no way it would live up to my expectations.

That said: I am a changed person having now seen Diana ofThemyscira grace a giant plasma screen in her own movie. Watching Wonder Woman was a spiritual experience.In response to my own concerns about:

1. The trailer looking too violent

It’s not that I expected there to be no fighting or violencein a multi-million dollar action movie I meant more along the lines of WonderWoman was created as a foil for violent hyper-masculinity and a symbol ofpeace. A lot of these themes have become very muted over the last severaldecades by mostly male writers who interpret Wonder Woman’s strength as coincidingwith traditionally masculine ideals when William Moulton Marston created WonderWoman as a symbol of feminine power. Because it was very clear that PattyJenkins and the DCEU is taking the recent New 52 daughter of Zeus origin story Ithought that they would mostly be relying on more recent versions of WonderWoman which, in my opinion, strayed too far from Wonder Woman’s importantlarger themes (until Greg Rucka, God bless him, came back to the series).

The ending completely shattered my expectations and I amhappy to report that I was wrong. The movie was all about Diana’s destiny andhow she became the hero that she is. By the end she decides that she wants tobe a hero that believes in the power of love. That’s exactly who Wonder Womanis. This was a feminist movie through and through.

2. The diversity of the Amazons

You can read about what I had to say about the initial promoshots of the Amazons in my previous post: but what it came down to is the factthat diversity among the Amazons isn’t just a meaningless gesture of diverserepresentation or just for optics. It’s essential to Wonder Woman’s characterbecause she stands for equality among all women and intersectional feminism.People expressed concerns over how the first images of the Amazons were of allwhite faces and Patty Jenkins said was just Diana’s “immediate family” and the restof the Amazons would be diverse. It was a pretty unsatisfactory placation, buton that end Jenkins did hold up her promise. My exact words last year were:

So diverse like WOC will be playing actually namedcharacters who contribute to the plot and/or Diana’s development? Or diverselike they’ll all be in the background swinging swords, thrown a few tokenlines, and will be credited as “Amazon” #4? Because those are two verydifferent ideas of diversity?

Spoiler alert: it was the second one (though I think some ofthem had names, not that you would’ve known). It’s hard for me to criticize thedecision to cast Robin Wright as Antiope because my goodness she was born toplay that part. It was so thrilling to see an actress in her fifties in actionsequences and woman fighting as warriors free from the male gaze, but it justas well could’ve been Phillipus that also had a hand in training Diana. Evenafter viewing the movie Jenkins reasoning strikes me as defense for casting allwhite actresses in the most prominent roles for the Amazons, which is prettyexpected by Hollywood standards. There wasn’t even any need for Diana to havean “immediate family” as it didn’t contribute to the plot in any way.

Stray thoughts:

Okay I anticipated the “twist” but that didn’tstop me from thinking “If they make her the daughter of Zeus Patty Jenkins isgonna catch these hands” the entire time. I’m willing to overlook it but thatdoesn’t mean that I liked it.

Omg Diana’s characterization was so friggingood. A lot of writers make Wonder Woman too severe and serious, but Diana wasa character that was full of joy and humor. One of my favorite moments in theentire movie was when Diana swoons over the baby (“A BABY!!!!!!”) which wasadorable because they don’t have babies of Themyscira so it’s something thatshe didn’t take for granted. Also I loved it when she tells the ice cream manthat “you should be very proud.” It was just little moments like that you gotto see Diana’s human side and that she was a joyful, loving person.Also the scene in NML when Diana is socompelled by human suffering to cross the trenches and put an end to theviolence once and for all. This is the moment that she becomes Wonder Woman.I also think that they did a really greatjob of conveying what it’s like to be in a foreign place. Some of the mostinsulting stereotypes in media are that foreigners are just stupid and don’tunderstand anything (see Starfire). Dianacan speak dead languages and knows about literature. Diana wasn’t dumb by anymeans, but she didn’t quite know all of the cultural cues. Like when she didn’tknow why her and Steve couldn’t “sleep” together which Steve assumes this meansthat she doesn’t know what sex is and Diana matter-of-factly informs him that she’s“read all twelve volumes of Cleo’s treatises on body and pleasures.” And whenshe tries to hold Steve’s hand because “they’re together.” Cultural norms areregion specific so of course anytime you venture to a place unknown you, youdon’t know everything about there is to know about how to socialize with the peoplethere. The film did it in a way that was funny and honest without beingcondescending.

Gal Gadot and Chris Pine had some of the bestchemistry I’ve ever seen on screen. They were both so charming and funny. Evenmy mom liked them and she hates superhero movies.

“I wish we had more time.” I’ve never sobbed somuch from one line before.

Best universal human theme since The Dark Knight. Wonder Woman was allabout Diana’s journey of self-discovery. When she first leaves the island shenaively believes that all of the violence and evil in the world is a result ofAres’ influence and once she destroys him it will magically end. Before sheleaves she asks Steve if he’s typical representation of mankind. Sure Steve Trevor was a genuinely good guyand that probably got her expectations a little too high, but he points outthat even he’s not a saint. No one is. When she first kills who she thought wasAres and nothing changed she became immediately disillusioned by mankind andrealizes that people are pretty shitty and it wasn’t just because of Ares. It’sSteve that brings her to this realization that: yeah we suck, but that doesn’t meanthat we’re not worth saving.

Steve got hella fridged. Well sort of. Steve’sdeath is really what motivated Diana to destroy Ares and continue to mentor theworld through love, so it’s a rare example of a male character’s death beingused as motivation for a female character. However, Steve was given much moreagency in his death than a female character would’ve been given. Steve died onhis own terms in a way that was really, really heroic and sacrificial. It’s almostthe way Batman went out in The Dark Knight Rises and how Steve Rogers “dies” inCaptain America. Compare that to GwenStacy’s death in Amazing Spiderman 2 whoseneck snapped in the last ten minutes just to make Peter all sad and angsty. Ithink that writers still have more expectations for male characters to beactive and think that it’s more acceptable for female characters to be passiveso in terms of gender representation in Hollywood there’s still a long way togo but hey it’s a start.

Scene that had me laughing even days later:

Diana, who has neverseen a man before standing in front of a bare ass naked Steve: What’s that?

Steve:

Steve: This is awatch.

Bottom line: I loved this movie. I LOVE THIS MOVIE. I’mgoing to go see it again this weekend.

#ask #anonymous #not batcat related #personal note #wonder woman spoilers

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