City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare

[lightreads]

City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
My actual thought, three-quarters through this book: But I don’t even like this book. So why do I kind of like it?

That about sums it up. This book is better than the prequel – tighter, better structure, more tension – but there still isn’t . . . Okay, here’s the thing. I think it is cheap and easy to target formerly fannish authors with the derivative police. Everyone’s fiction is derivative, but authors who started out writing fanfic have to endure this finite scrutiny to prove they’re original enough, or they’ve “outgrown it,” with exactly the snide hostility I’m implying (including from people who should really know better). Needless to say, I’m not interested in picking this series apart and arguing about which bits look too much like Harry Potter and Buffy and whatever.

What I am interested in is the overall effect. There are transformative works – fannish and traditionally published – that are fantastic and intertextual and simultaneously freestanding and awesome and, you know, transformative. And there are transformative works – fanfic and traditionally published – that just make you want to go and read the source texts that are a few links back up the creative chain, because that would be more satisfying. This series is the second. I would frankly rather watch Buffy. But that’s not because Cassie used to write fanfic, that’s just because Cassie writes like Cassie, and I’ve never been able to work up much of a damn about her stuff.

Anyway. My point was that I still don’t actually care about any of these people, and the “witty banter” is still painful, and the epigraphs are still pretentious (Latin? really?), but there is just enough something going on to keep me reading. Dunno what, but I suspect this is empty calorie reading hitting me exactly right just before exams.

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Comments

[readerjane]

(Everyone’s fiction is derivative, but authors who started out writing fanfic have to endure this finite scrutiny to prove they’re original enough, or they’ve “outgrown it,” with exactly the snide hostility I’m implying (including from people who should really know better))

And then you have John Scalzi's deliberately derivative reboot of Little Fuzzy by Beam Piper's, a book I adored in junior high and took a lot of ribbing for adoring.

I'll probably read Fuzzy Nation when it eventually comes out. I don't remember enough about the original to be able to compare the reboot to it, and probably won't take the time to re-read the original to compare. But I like the chutzpah of the whole undertaking. "It's in the public domain; I love it; I wanted to try my hand at derivative fiction; I did it."

I suspect that an author who'd got their start in fanfic could not get away with this. Scalzi, as far as I know, started out in journalism and has never written fanfic. He doesn't have to fight that sort of ghettoization.

Have you ever read Spider Robinson's Melancholy Elephants? It's a nice meditation on the dangers of dissing the derivative too strongly.

[lightreads]

Yeah, I saw the Scalzi thing. The general feeling I got from discussion outside of his blog was annoyance, because he was approaching it as if he had invented this great idea -- he could write a book based on a book! And he literally said no one had done it before, ignoring the fact that, you know, many people have, and in particular a female scifi author had already transformed that very book. He apologized later . . . sort of. And he did take some static for the whole thing from people who generally don't get fanfic, but you're right, it's nothing to what a lot of female newly profic authors have to take if they're writing something not so purposefully derivative but they have fannish roots.

[treewishes]

I'm with you on the "not much of a damn" aspect, first off. Again, you're not convincing me to go read this. (Which is why I like your reviews!)