Bear, Elizabeth - Scardown

[oyceter]

I liked Hammered, mostly due to the strong female characters and the AI. I think Scardown doesn't quite live up to it, or else I just really wasn't expecting the type of book it turned out to be. As stated before, Hammered drew me in because it was very much about personal struggles, despite the larger scope of the things, and the bits I liked best were Jenny's conflicts with herself and with her own life, the backstory between her and her sisters, and the sense of a past. The problem I had with Scardown was that the plot for the world sort of takes over the plots for the characters, so much so that I don't really come out thinking that any of them have an arc.

I don't quite know what it was -- there were so many POVs that I was never quite sure who to focus on, and even though Jenny was the protagonist of Hammered and I assume the protagonist of Scardown, due to her lone first persson POV, I never quite emotionally connected with her. Ditto with my favorite characters from the previous book, Richard and Elspeth.

I did rather like how Bear kept the romantic triangle an actual romantic triangle, although I did get the occasional squidge at times. I think mostly that was because of my deep and rabid dislike of romantic triangles, as opposed to how it was actually carried out. Mostly, I'm just very nidgy around situations where women get possessive over a guy and start being jealous about other women.

Anyhow, I'm not sure if I will end up picking up the third book in the trilogy, largely because I'm personally not all that interested in the issues that have been raised in this book.

Comments

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I rather thought Jenny and Elspeth were getting to be rather good friends, myself, but such is life.

Thank you for your comments!

[oyceter]

Wah, I felt rather bad about posting the review =(. It's sort of odd having seen your POV not specifically on this book, but just on the writing side, and reading your LJ, and reading this book as something completely separate from all that, yet not.

And I just realized that the statement about women getting possessive could be read as Jenny and Elspeth getting possessive, which is not what I meant! I forget that people can't magically read my mind sometimes and figure out that the point of the sentence was the unstated "luckily, Bear doesn't have Jenny and Elspeth fight over Gabe"! Go fig ;).

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Hey! There is no rule that says you have to like everything I write. *g* You are very much entitled to your opinions.

Hee. You know, that whole thing was totally unplanned. I figured Jenny would keep pushing Gabe off, being as damaged as she is, but no, that didn't happen, quite, and meanwhile he sort of hooked up with Ellie--

--I have no control over these people. They just do whatever they were going to do anyway.

I am *sorry* you didn't like this one much, mind you.

Especially as it's sekritly my favorite of the lot, because of Jenny's arc--she changes more in this book than either of the other two, in my head anyway, as this is the place where she takes the first steps toward dealing with what happened to Nell and what she did to Bernard, which is growth she has to make to handle the choices presented her in the third book--but I think it has too many girl germs for a lot of the reviewers.... and, obviously, not enough girl germs for you.

Which is totally fair. *g* I didn't think there was *anything* wrong with your review. Or with your posting it!

[oyceter]

Yay living characters! I very much like the Jenny-Ellie friendship, and was sad they didn't get to interact more =(. Though I suspect I wanted lots and lots of girly bits, compared to most people! I very much like girl germs, apprently ;).

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

The Jenny-Ellie friendship is one of my favorite ongoing bits. I especially like the quiet way Elspeth has of saving the day without anybody noticing.

She's my favorite character. *g*

[oyceter]

Yay! Me too ^_^.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

it's *always* the quiet ones.