Reckless vs Book of Lost Things

vs.

The Book of Lost Things had a lot of hype, but, as is the way with hyped up things, was somewhat disappointing.  For one thing, I kept comparing it with another book I read recently—Reckless.  The two are similar in that they’re both very dark fairytales.  They both feature a boy who has lost one of his parents and finds his way into another, more savage, world, where he has all sorts of exciting, near-death experiences.

But there the similarities end.  The Book of Lost Things prefers gore to mere darkness.  There’s a difference between gore and dark.  Dark is mysterious and transfixing and beautiful.  It draws you in, and you feel drunk with fascination.  Dark has you in its thrall.  Reckless is Dark.  Gore, however, is gross.  Gore is sometimes necessary, but only in moderation.  Too much gore is simply gratuitous. The Book of Lost Things was full of gratuitous gore. And after a while, I just got bored and skipped over the descriptions of people being torn to screaming pieces by wolf-men.

            

It wasn’t just Dark vs. Gore that made me prefer the world of Reckless.  The world of The Book of Lost Things was more like a traditional fairy tale.  Things just happened and didn’t make a whole lot of sense.  All the secondary characters were there for the express purpose of helping the main character out, and then they disappeared.  The whole world was breaking off at the edges, and it seemed more dream than reality.  Insubstantial.  It was like the author didn’t know enough about the world when he wrote the book.  The mirrorworld in Reckless was very well thought-out. Things may not be going very well in the mirrorworld, but at least there’s a discernible reason for the problem, not some nebulous nonsense about it being a manifestation of the king’s mind.  Bah.

            

The endings remain for me to complain about.  Endings make all the difference.  I’ve responded warmly to quite horrible books if they had good endings.  The reverse is true as well.  And in music, the last note, if played well, can redeem a botched song.  Endings are the most important element.  The lame ending is the cause of my distaste with The Book of Lost Things.  First, the author committed the sin of deus ex machina, and brought back a character that was clearly dead.  Then, he pulled the “was it all a dream?” and had the boy wake up in a hospital, where he’s been in a coma for days. This device is unoriginal and disappointing. It should be drawn and quartered and sentenced to the lowest level of hell.  I have never understood why writers make their characters return to their depressing real lives after having magical adventures and making lots of loyal friends and finally doing something worthwhile, and then not being able to talk about it because it may or may not have been real. Connolly’s final fuck-up was to stick in this awkward, semi-religious, all-in-your-head comment.  When the main character asks if he’ll ever come back to the magical land, the enigmatic Woodsman answers, “Most people come back here in the end.”  And then of course he does, after a depressing life of unproductiveness, and all the readers are wondering if it’s supposed to be heaven, and the Woodsman is Jesus or something.

            

Again, Cornelia Funke bests John Connolly in her ending, like flicking a Connolly fly off her Author-Goddess arm.  Her ending is the good kind of awful.  The kind of awful when you’re devastated the book is over, and you don’t know what to do with yourself, so you just sit there and hyperventilate.  Although, in the case of Reckless, there may be a sequel.  I’m hoping. She can’t just leave us like that!

            

Moral of the story: don’t compare things to Cornelia Funke; they will be found lacking.

The Mortal Instruments

I was avoiding this series for so long, because it looked so cheesy and Twilight-esque.  But you know, it wasn’t nearly so bad as I thought it was going to be.  I quite enjoyed them.  The Mortal Instruments was similar to the Twilight series in teen angst and the mythical creatures, but that’s where the similarities ended. 

I pondered for a long time, and I think the difference lies in the characters.  The protagonists, certainly.  Jace may be somewhat Edwardish, in his tortured seductiveness, but Clary is no Bella.  She doesn’t just lie down and take it.  She feels every bit as despairing as Bella, but does she curl up in a ball in the middle of a forest and wait to die? No!  She goes and kills demons!

The secondary characters, I discovered, are just as important.  In Twilight, the only people that matter are Bella, the Cullens, and Jacob.  All of Bella’s human friends fade into scenery because Bella and Edward don’t have time for anyone else.  They are the only two people in the books, and frankly, it terrifies me.  It’s like living in a world populated by characterless cardboard cut-outs, and the only two real live people on the planet are so consumed with each other they don’t even notice.  In The Mortal Instruments, there are plenty of secondary characters who actually have personalities and care about the protagonists, and the protagonists care about them.  And there are tertiary characters with personalities as well, and whatever one calls fourth characters, and whole hosts of characters after that.  This world is populated.