I found the treatment of sex and sexuality in the book oddly inconsistent, and an unfortunate step backward from Lifeboats. Lifeboats felt more like teenagers in that we had dick jokes, we had references to characters downloading porn, there was references to tentacle porn ... it felt like this was a story populated by adolescents in their mid to late teens.
Yes! In a metacanonical way I suspect that's because DD wrote Lifeboats after she wrote Games Wizards Play, but as an actual reading experience it does feel like a weird step backwards. There are still moments in GWP where it feels like those teenagers are still the people involved - a couple of the moments when Kit and Nita get overtly turned on by each other; I feel like DD is actually better with this with Kit than with Nita, and one of the things that felt real to me was the moment when Kit is struggling with the fact that Nita's super hot but he's in the habit of avoiding thinking like that about her - but at other times it feels like Kit and Nita really love each other but actually don't want to do sexual things with each other at all. Which would obviously be fine if that was the actual intent, but I don't think it is. (I also didn't like the Special One thing. It seems weirdly dictatorial about the shape of relationships and adulthood in a way that surprises me from DD.)
I thought the Matt/mate thing was straight-up poor editing. I think she decided half-way through the book to make Matt gay and forgot to go back and fix that reference, and her editor didn't pick up on it. Shrug and sigh.
I was kind of disappointed at how Mehrnaz didn't tie into the climax overly much. It felt like she was really only there to justify Dairine being on the Moon to rescue Roshaun, and it made me sad. I felt like her plot with that was dropped by the wayside and left unexplored, and I expected more payoff to Dairine essentially flagging with Irina that Mehrnaz's family are abusing her. Given that Irina read the riot act to Kit and Penn for what was essentially a dick waving contest, why was "emotionally abusive family" not considered important enough to resolve in this book?
These are great observations that didn't occur to me, except for the Mehrnaz's family thing which was just so ... weird, like how are these people wizards? I guess DD felt that Mehrnaz deciding to move out & Irina giving her mother a talking-to are considered resolution for this, but, like you, gosh I feel uncomfortable with the idea that you can get in a fight and Irina will threaten to take your wizardry but decades of emotional abuse are not worth that kind of consequence. It would be one thing if her family weren't wizards; then this would be a story about someone leaving a family they can't change and I would consider it resolved. But because these people are wizards it is troubling that there aren't consequences. I don't need all wizards to be nice; I do think they should all be good.
I didn't care so much about Penn because meh, sexist dude, OK, I nastily don't care about his voyage of discovery but Mehrnaz is so so sweet and I am looking forward to seeing more of her - and AGREED re: the prophecies. Looks like the next book is going to be seeerious. Nita's developing visionary talent has been really fun, although there were moments in this book where I was like ... do we need *all* these identical dreams?
In any event, it was a fun way to spend two hours, but I can't say that it's anything like as good as Deep Wizardry.
I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be as good as, because DW is a perfect book, but it's not even on the planet - and that's frustrating, because I thought Lifeboats was much better. It almost feels reversed, like Games Wizards Play felt like the filler book she wrote between books and didn't get professionally edited/published, and Lifeboats felt like the good one. Except for size.
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Date: 2016-02-03 06:32 pm (UTC)Yes! In a metacanonical way I suspect that's because DD wrote Lifeboats after she wrote Games Wizards Play, but as an actual reading experience it does feel like a weird step backwards. There are still moments in GWP where it feels like those teenagers are still the people involved - a couple of the moments when Kit and Nita get overtly turned on by each other; I feel like DD is actually better with this with Kit than with Nita, and one of the things that felt real to me was the moment when Kit is struggling with the fact that Nita's super hot but he's in the habit of avoiding thinking like that about her - but at other times it feels like Kit and Nita really love each other but actually don't want to do sexual things with each other at all. Which would obviously be fine if that was the actual intent, but I don't think it is. (I also didn't like the Special One thing. It seems weirdly dictatorial about the shape of relationships and adulthood in a way that surprises me from DD.)
I thought the Matt/mate thing was straight-up poor editing. I think she decided half-way through the book to make Matt gay and forgot to go back and fix that reference, and her editor didn't pick up on it. Shrug and sigh.
I was kind of disappointed at how Mehrnaz didn't tie into the climax overly much. It felt like she was really only there to justify Dairine being on the Moon to rescue Roshaun, and it made me sad. I felt like her plot with that was dropped by the wayside and left unexplored, and I expected more payoff to Dairine essentially flagging with Irina that Mehrnaz's family are abusing her. Given that Irina read the riot act to Kit and Penn for what was essentially a dick waving contest, why was "emotionally abusive family" not considered important enough to resolve in this book?
These are great observations that didn't occur to me, except for the Mehrnaz's family thing which was just so ... weird, like how are these people wizards? I guess DD felt that Mehrnaz deciding to move out & Irina giving her mother a talking-to are considered resolution for this, but, like you, gosh I feel uncomfortable with the idea that you can get in a fight and Irina will threaten to take your wizardry but decades of emotional abuse are not worth that kind of consequence. It would be one thing if her family weren't wizards; then this would be a story about someone leaving a family they can't change and I would consider it resolved. But because these people are wizards it is troubling that there aren't consequences. I don't need all wizards to be nice; I do think they should all be good.
I didn't care so much about Penn because meh, sexist dude, OK, I nastily don't care about his voyage of discovery but Mehrnaz is so so sweet and I am looking forward to seeing more of her - and AGREED re: the prophecies. Looks like the next book is going to be seeerious. Nita's developing visionary talent has been really fun, although there were moments in this book where I was like ... do we need *all* these identical dreams?
In any event, it was a fun way to spend two hours, but I can't say that it's anything like as good as Deep Wizardry.
I mean, I wasn't expecting it to be as good as, because DW is a perfect book, but it's not even on the planet - and that's frustrating, because I thought Lifeboats was much better. It almost feels reversed, like Games Wizards Play felt like the filler book she wrote between books and didn't get professionally edited/published, and Lifeboats felt like the good one. Except for size.