Showing posts with label Colleen Gleason. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Colleen Gleason. Show all posts

Sunday, November 1, 2020

The Rest Falls Away by Colleen Gleason

Rating: WARTY!

This was the last of those seven stories in the Seven Against the Dark introductory first chapter collection I've been reviewing. I ended up not liking a single one of them although the first and the last both captured my imagination for a short time.

The first was about shifters, this last was about vampires. Neither of those are my favorite fictional topics, so it was a long shot anyway, but I really thought this last one might make it until it turned into a pathetic little YA love triangle. This things are so overdone, so tedious, so unimaginative and soooo boring that it almost makes me physically ill when I encounter one of them.

The problem is that all a love triangle like this does is to render the leading female into a spineless and vasillating flibbertigibbet who has no real mind of her own, cares nothing for either guy, in that she's quite happy to keep both of them on a string, or alternately and equally unsavory, she's merely a pawn in the hands of not one, but two men. I can't stand female characters like that and I am no fan of female authors who create such an appaling waste of a female character.

Set in London in the Regency period, which was very roughly the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, the book description has it that "vampires have always lived among them, quietly attacking unsuspecting debutantes and dandified lords as well as hackney drivers and Bond Street milliners. If not for the vampire slayers of the Gardella family, these immortal creatures would have long taken over the world." Really? The world? There are no other vampire slayers on planet Earth, and the secret has been so well-kept that there's not a single person outside of the family and their closest confidants who's aware of the problem, let alone doing something about it? I'm sorry but that is as pathetic as it is irresponsible, and it assumes everybody is stupid.

It's like Trump knowing full-well how dangerous Coronavirus was and doing nothing about it not even when literally hundreds of thousands of people have died. It's also a losing proposition given - from the 60% of this that I read - that vampires are positively rampaging across London. They would need droves of full-time vampire slayers to keep this infestation under control, not one YA chick. None of the premise made any sense.

So anyway, Victoria Gardella Grantworth is the new Buffy. The author freely acknowledges the inspiration, but unfortunately she picks the most idiotic parts of the Buffy story to lay upon her new hero. Although she starts out in fine style and there was even a bit of choice humor (but not enough), the story quickly devolved into every YA cliché imaginable and started going downhill for me. The worst part was when Victoria meets the bad boy, Sebastian Vioget.

This guy is a complete jerk, and a pervert, and yet Victoria lets him get away with pawing her and doing whatever he wants. He has more hypnotic control over her than do the vampires and yet she sees nothing wrong with his constant pawing of her, his demand to see her belly-button, his uninvited touching of her and his stealing one of her gloves. The first time the two encountered each other, I was about ready to ditch this story because I could see exactly where it was going, but foolishly, I decided to give the author a fair chance and I read on only to have my worst fears confirmed.

The second encounter between these two was even mnore ridiculous than the first. This is Victoria, supposedly the champion, and a woman who is raised to interact with the highest of society and behave properly at all times, but who for reason unexplained allows herself to be alone with this stranger, and takes zero offense as this asshole of a letch essentially feels her up? She's a trained vampire slayer who gets an icy chill on her neck when a vampire is close, and has no compunction and very little ineptitude in killiong them, yet she countenances this jerk and his boorish behavior, a man who is the sleazy manager of a club that openly accommodates vampires over which he has no control? It made zero sense.

There was a discrepancy between the freebie version of this book which was offered as part of the 7 volume introductory book that I began reading, and the first volume of this individual novel which I picked up (it's a freebie) when I had thought initially that I might be desatined to enjoy it. In the standalone novel, I read (or more accurately, tried to read!) the following:

"Why do you think it was a vampire attack?" Melly qíììH rniiino hpr pvp<¿ "T nrH Tmsrntt likely got too familiar with Miss Colton"
What it should have read was:
"Why do you think it was a vampire attack?" Melly said, rolling her eyes. "Lord Truscott likely got too familiar with Miss Colton."
The reason I know that is that the compendium version had been corrected whereas the standalone has not.

But I gave up on this in disappointment over the cheesy triangle and the appalling lack of self-respect Victoria has. I thought she was someone I could grow to appreciate as a strong female character, but she is certainly not. She's nothing more than yet another weak and limp YA female produced by yet another female author who should be ashamed of herself for doing this to women. This is garbage, period.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

The Clockwork Scarab by Colleen Gleason


Title: The Clockwork Scarab
Author: Colleen Gleason
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Rating: WARTY!

Note: this is not to be confused with The Clockwork Scarab by David Lantz (which I have not read).

Some opening issues to ponder: is drassy really a word! Maybe dressy! Not drassy. But that's a minor issue compared with this conundrum: Should the phrase be "There is a limited number" or should it be "There are a limited number"? I go with the first, but there are people who argue for the second, so I'm not going to get into this. I'll leave it for you guys to fight over!

I gave this novel the old college try, but I didn't like it. It's a YA novel but it felt to me like it was written at middle grade level with adult word choices! Hmm! The novel presents as a steam-punk wannabe (it's set in London in 1889), but it's really a paranormal romance.

It's also the increasingly inevitable first in the increasingly inevitable series. I mean why write one novel when you can rework the same story over and over, and get a whole series, instead of having to do the work of coming up with something brand new each time? Seriously, if you can find suckers who will buy it, where's the incentive to give more or do better? What it translates to, in effect, is that this whole novel was nothing more than a massive prologue. I don't do prologues. Nothing happens, nothing is resolved. What's the point?

So, Evaline Stoker and Alvermina Holmes, the nieces or whatever, of Bram Stoker and Sherlock Holmes. Yeah, bin there dun that. The problem here is that neither character is remotely likable. Stoker could have been - had she not been so ready to get jiggy with a disrespectful guy she just met and knew nothing about. Holmes is - how did Professor Snape put it? Oh yes: an insufferable know-it-all. Nothing to like here. Both characters sounded pretty much the same in each of their own chapters.

I knew I was going to be punished for wanting to like this steam-punk novel the minute I read that one character had amber flecks in his eyes. This was a guy about whom the author was sharply rapping us on the head to make sure we got the telegraph that Alvermina had the hots for him. The trope is gold flecks, so I don't know if the author thought there was something new, or fresh, or original in going for amber, or if she had read so little YA that she didn't know what a massive and very tired cliché that is.

I was hoping this didn't signal a down-turn in the novel to match the down-turn in my mouth, but I was robbed of that hope very shortly afterwards, when the other main female character, Evaline (sounds like a brand of motor oil doesn't it?) was literally man-handled by a character and didn't even whisper a complaint. She was too busy swooning. Be still my fluttering heart! Oh how my delicate skin is flushed! Oh how moist is my valley!

Of course the standard cliché male was strong and broad-chested, had a stalker's knowledge of her, and had no idea what the term 'personal space' means. Of course he gave every indication that he was lower class, but gave every other indication that there was more to him than met the eye. And suddenly, you're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of stomach and churn, but of gag; a journey into a nauseous land whose boundaries are that of a complete lack of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead; your next stop: the Promethazone.

Why do authors do this to readers? Especially: why do female authors do this to their female characters? Here we have two characters who hold the promise of being strong, engaging, significant female characters, and who are already fighting against stereotyping in a Victorian era, and what does the author do to them? Rapes them. Forcibly stereotypes them. Demeans them. Belittles them. Makes them dependent upon a man even as we're told - not shown, but told - how strong, independent, and smart they're supposed to be.

I actively dis-recommend this cynical and exploitative excuse for a story.