Ever After by Kim Harrison

[lightreads]

Ever After by Kim Harrison

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This might not be drunk reviewing, but it sure ain't sober reviewing either.

So it turns out this series only has two? Something like that – two books left. Which blows my mind, since I have been reading this off and on since 2005, and thinking back, it's like my relationship with this series encapsulates my relationship with new millennium paranormal fantasy. I was charmed by it; I was frustrated that it wasn't higher quality; I felt strangely guilty for liking it in all its embarrassments and silliness; I felt angry for feeling guilty for liking this explicitly women's literature; I constructed elaborate Doylist feminist theories; I nominated it for Yuletide; I was bored by it; I made scouring, screaming fun of it (extra! Vaginal! Muscles! Ahahaha); I came to associate it with a certain friend, and that tasted a little bitter; I gave up on it; I came back to it carelessly, because giving up meant I could thoughtlessly enjoy; I read it in sickness for comfort, in pain for help, in travel for distraction; I stopped tracking its publication dates and plot convolutions, and merely let the next book fall from the sky into my lap when it would; I began to care again, or to notice caring, like getting back with an ex and finding that all the cynicism has been pounded out of you in their absence; I knew what was going to happen 300 pages before it did, but still waited for it and, in the moment, exhaled softly; I let myself have whatever emotional reactions would come, unjudgingly, because they would come anyway; I heard it is coming to an end and thought, no, but I'm not done with you.



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Comments

[readerjane]

Ha. Your review reminds me of this article:

"...when critics do write negative reviews it’s born out of kind of a lover’s disappointment, because we approach every book wanting to fall in love with it. When the book fails to seduce us we feel that the author didn’t live up to his or her end of the bargain."

...and now I'm chagrined because before I even began to comment I was wondering how I would trim that quote to <140 characters. Oi, Twitter, what have you done to me?

[lightreads]

Thanks for that link. I have been thinking about the project of these reviews recently, what I think I am doing vs. what other people get from it, that sort of thing. There's a bit in that article about telling people what to buy vs. demonstrating a way of thinking about books which gets at some of what I have been thinking about. I am always so surprised when someone tells me they read a book because of something I said. I mean, of course they do, I do the same, but that is so entirely not on my mind when I write that it is generally a surprise. I am generally trying to snapshot some sort of reaction, with the subliminal project of validating this kind of criticism (emotional, autobiographical, deeply contextual) since it usually gets dismissed and that pisses me off. / not sober ramblings.

[applenym]

What a great summation of my own relationship with paranormal fantasy (and this series in particular).

I haven't read the last...two? Maybe three? of this series. Perhaps I'll pick them up again, now that I'm not quite so invested in the story.