Back in August Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns came to my attention after this review on Tor.com: “People who like this sort of thing.” Being a review of Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns.
Ah, thought I, yet another shit-brick in the shit-wall of the gritty grimdark feces pyramid. And since I’m on a roll riling up the neckbeards–one of whom, a Grack21, having previously called me a “crazy bitch” absolutely fucking lost his shit in the Westeros.org discussion like so (Kalbear being one of the handful people over there who are reasonable and, y’know, decent human beings):
Hey Kalbear? Fuck you. Fuck you and this fucking horse you rode in on. I don’t know what your goddamn fucking problem is, but I;ve had this discussion about Buffy more times then you probaly ever have, and I could send you fucking books and books of essays on the subject, so shut your goddam fucking mouth. I’m sick of your self righteous bullshit. If this post gets me banned from this goddamn fucking board so be it. Next time I ask for examples, maybe you shouldn’t link to a website that makes wikipedia look like a goddamn master thesis.
I about busted a gut reading that. Oh my. Look at the subhuman little turd utterly flipping out! Truly, my friends, I blog for this. Squeal, privileged piggy, squeal.
So, knowing that Prince of Thorns is another of those iconic neckbeard reads, I felt it only right and proper to give it a walloping what-for. I expected to quote the rapey bits first but, amusingly, this turns out to be the first passage that offends:
Bovid looked up sharp at that, pained and sharp. “H-how old are you, boy?”
Again the “boy.” “Old enough to slit you open like a fat purse,” I said, getting angry now. I don’t like to get angry. It makes me angry. I don’t think he caught even that. I don’t think he even knew it was me that opened him up not half an hour before.
In case you didn’t get it? He’s angry. Why? Because getting angry makes him angry! He is so, so angry and doesn’t like to get angry, as getting angry makes him angry. Angry angry angry.
Keeping in mind that Lawrence has been praised for his beautiful, effective prose. The standards of the genre have never been raised so high.
And because, despite having pirated it and thus having paid nothing for it, I’m not going to waste my time with this book I won’t be reviewing it. Instead I will review this person, a fan of a lot of things written and loved by straight white boys–so much so that he’s defending Mark Lawrence despite professing not to have especially liked the book. I found him after googling up “prince of thorns misogyny”, incidentally, thinking at the time to find other feminist critiques of the book–but of course, the shitstains have had their say too. Unfortunately. What do we know about this individual? Leo Cristea is so white it hurts and identifies as a man.
It follows that he has many strong opinions about misogyny and racism.
Firstly, I’m going to take a stand and let any feminists who won’t appreciate what I’m getting at here take a shot at me and ask: does it matter if a story is misogynistic?
See? Right off to a good start! From the very first this little boy wants you to know that he isn’t a human being, a being with empathy and ability to think beyond the end of his own Aryan nose, no: he is a turd. And an aspiring novelist too, so I think it’s safe to write him off as a future purveyor of grimdark gritty drivel that’s of no worth to anybody except other grimdark gritty drivel-eaters, such as himself.
Well, does it? Note that I am careful with my wording: ‘story’. You know, those things that are entirely made up, magically imagined from inside a writer’s head, and put down on paper in a fashion meant to entertain. Right, glad we’re clear that stories are in fact, made-up, fictional, and not at all a tricky shot at political agenda. If so, then why the hell does it matter if a story exhibits misogyny?
Stories are written in a vacuum and authors exist in a vacuum. Do you see? This little kid knows so much. He’s almost as edgy and obnoxiously know-it-all as the protagonist of Lawrence’s magnum opus.
Perish the thought that a writer might actually not feel pressured by feminist theory into crafting characters to please the feminist masses.
Perish the thought!
My goodness, it’s as though he is waving smelling salts under his nose. Look at that manufactured outrage.
Actually, Katherine’s power over Jorg, albeit subtle, is striking in the story. You notice that Jorg hesitates with her, thinks about her, wants her, and you also notice he does not kill her.
So what if he wants her? So what if she’s pretty? So damn what if he looks at women the way he does? Why should Jorg have to change just because objectifying women has become a taboo? It’s his character. Lawrence is entirely permitted to craft whatever character he desires, without reviewers taking cheap shots at him for misogyny. It’s ludicrous that a writer should have to bear in mind the current political or socio-political landscape, or a truck-load of “-isms”, in order to write his or her book.
This speaks for itself, I should think. A woman’s only power over a man is, of course, sexual. The man should be thought of as downright decent for not wanting to kill her. The rest is pure irony, as Leo Cristea has repeatedly made personal attacks against the original reviewer at Tor.com. Straight white geek boys and their inability to think beyond their own dick, eh?
How are we men supposed to look at women, and how then are we supposed to have our male characters look upon them? Last I checked, there weren’t any rules.
I have no idea how old he is, but however old he might be I think this is a good point where someone should run over and tell any woman he knows in real life that he is a loathsome little creep, and that they should start getting a restraining order or two, if they haven’t already. As for his mother: my condolences, madam. It’s not your fault your son turned out this way, don’t blame yourself.
I don’t care if a character is sexist, racist, homophobic or damn well xenophobic: as long as the character is well-written, well-crafted and well-presented.
Spoken like someone who is never subjected to sexism, racism, homophobia or any other -isms!
In my own work, I like to think I have strong women, vulnerable where needed, but entirely related to their character. [...]
He does call the women around him “woman”, when he’s irked, and he damn well will objectify the love of his life when he first sees her—he would, she’ll take his breath away. Neither am I going to force timid women from my story into tougher shoes that simply don’t fit, just to please the feminist camp. I’m going to write what I write, how I write it, and not be afraid of being called a misogynist.
No problem, boyo. You haven’t even gotten your shit-awful dreck past the slush-pile and I’m already calling you a misogynistic little toad-fucker.
It reminds of me English Literature study, where the tutor was never happy with an interpretation of a story as just that, a story. There had to be ‘feminist’ readings, were we look at the horrific messages conveyed through Dracula, or ‘post-modernist’ readings, were you looked at something equally boring.
This is why I like fantasy: a story can just be a story (of course, the worlds, epic plots, characters, swords and elves are pretty nifty, too).
“I am a barely-literate yet sanctimonious little cock who believes the epitome of literature is gritty grimdark fantasy full of rape, racism and homophobia. Look ma, I am unbelievably edgy! So edgy I slash my own wrists. Am I cool yet? AM I? PLEASE TELL ME I AM, WORLD.”
His best reads of 2011? A list of neckbeard favorites. His feelings toward the Dresden Files? Oh guess.
Maybe, if you believe the Goodreads ladies and their damning reviews, because I’m a guy and I identify with Dresden. Someone called it “misogynistic shit”: baffled as to how Harry is misogynous, however. Not that it matters: Harry is all kinds of cool, the plot is exciting and different enough that no matter the urban fantasy you’ve encountered (I’m thinking TV here, too) you will be surprised by the originality of Butcher’s ideas.
No wonder he hated English lit classes. He has many thoughts on race and culture, by the way, and all of it sound precisely like raging rampant racefail waiting to happen.
Since I probably misled you into thinking I was going to suffer Prince of Thorns so you won’t have to, I will do the decent thing and leave you with at least some randomly-picked quotes from the book so you can determine for yourself whether it is a creepy, creepy sausagefest.
Women
#1 Makin pursed his lips. I never liked his lips, too thick and fleshy, but I forgave him that, for his joking and his deathly work with that flail of his. “Well, you can have the cows, Little Rikey. Me, I’m going to find a farmer’s daughter or three, before the others use them all up.”
They went off then, Rike doing that laugh of his, “hur, hur, hur,” as if he was trying to cough a fishbone out.
#2 I couldn’t argue there. “How old are you?” that fat farmer had wanted to know. Old enough to pay a call on his daughters. The fat girl had a lot to say, just like her father. Screeched like a barn owl: hurt my ears with it. I liked the older one better. She was quiet enough. So quiet you’d give a twist here or there just to check she hadn’t died of fright. Though I don’t suppose either of them was quiet when the fire reached them . . .
#3 I saw it in the frozen moments the lightning gave me. I saw what they did to Mother, and how long it took.
#4 A painted whore, hennaed hair and red-mouthed, backed into Makin’s lap. “Where’s your smile, my handsome?” She had good tits, full and high, pushed into an inviting sandwich in a bodice of lace and whalebone. “I’m sure I could find it.” Her hands vanished into the froth of her skirts where they bunched around Makin’s waist. “Sally will make it all good. My handsome knight doesn’t need no boys to keep him warm.” She flicked a jealous glance my way.#5 She looked at me, eyes silver with the moon. She smiled and I thought for a moment she would forgive me. Then she screamed. She didn’t scream the screams she’d made when the Count’s men raped her. I could have stood that. Maybe. She screamed the screams she made when they killed William. Ugly, hoarse, animal screams, torn from her perfect painted face#6 She gave me a smile that left me wondering if I wanted to slap it off her, or kiss it.
The knife shook. I wondered if she’d cut live meat before.“You . . . you killed her.”The fingers of my right hand closed around something, a heavy smooth something, on the shelf beside my bed.Her eyes dropped to the old woman’s face.I hit her. Not hard, I didn’t have the strength, but hard enough to break the vase I’d found. She collapsed without a murmur.She lay in the sapphire pool of her dress, sprawled across the flagstones. Life flowed in my arms once more. It seemed as if my strength began to return the moment she fell. As if a spell were broken.Kill her and you’ll be free forever. A familiar voice, dry like paper. Mine, or his?Her hair hid her face, auburn on sapphire.She’s your weakness. Cut the heart from her.I knew it to be true.Choke her.I saw my hands, pale on a neck shading into crimson.Have her. The voice of the briar. The hooks slipped beneath my skin, and drew me down to kneel beside her. Have her. Take what might never be given. I knew the creed.Kill her, and you’ll be free.I heard the echo of a distant storm.Katherine’s hair ran like silk between my fingers. “She’s my weakness.” My voice now, my lips. One little step, one more death, and nothing would ever touch me again. One little step and the door on that wild night would close forever. The game would truly be a game. And I would be the player to win it.Choke her. Have her. The voice of the briar. A crackle in the mind. A hollow sound. An emptiness.
He doesn’t actually rape and kill her (or the other way around for that matter). I think we are supposed to think Jorg has grown as a person or something.
Mark Lawrence is a father of four, incidentally. I’d like to think none of them is a daughter, because that is a horrible thought to contemplate.
The black man’s naked chest glistened below the glowing point. Ugly burns marked his ribs, red flesh erupting like new-ploughed furrows. I could smell the sweet stench of roasted meat.
“He’s very black,” I said.“He’s a Nuban is what he is,” Berrec said, scowling.
Other things
“Especially an ‘On Lycurgus’ written in high Latin, not that pidgin-Romano they teach in church.”
aaaaaaaahahahaha
High Latin
pbbbttttthahahaha
Other generic place names (because a lot of people seem to think this is groundbreaking revolutionary fantasy): High City, Triple Gate, Low City, Lectern Courtyard, Castle Red, Lich Road, Arrow. Why, it’s almost as original as Dragon Age 2!
There’s a lich in there somewhere, and going by that and a cursory glance at the whole thing, Prince of Thorns ultimately doesn’t come off as anything more exalted than D&D with extra grimdark. Which makes Leo Cristea’s (and other neckbeards’) fervent defense of its artistic integrity only that much more ludicrous and, of course, despite his plea to women in general and feminists/anti-racists in particular, he ends up coming off as far more defensive, emotional and hysterical than anyone could ever hope to be, spouting pretty much every other fallacy listed here. All while admitting he’s a straight white boy… without recognizing why that makes his perspective especially limited and his opinion on why -isms are okay utterly fucking worthless.
I dread to imagine what kind of cockroach he will turn into when he gets older. If there’s anything I’ve learned about this type it is that, barring a very select few exceptions, they get worse with age, not better. Here’s to hoping he, unlike Mark Lawrence, never taints the gene pool.
Sean Wills (@seanwillsalt)
/ December 20, 2011Hark! Is that a new Requires Only That You Hate post on the horizon? It is, and thus my day is made!
I’ve actually seen Prince of Thorns in a local bookshop on a few occasions. Every time, I think ‘Huh, kind of cool cover, might be worth a try’. Then I remember that I haven’t liked any fantasy release I’ve read in the past five years or so because GRIMDARK.
I think I’ll be giving it a pass.
The “Nuban” doesn’t appear to have a name, by the way, and is referred to solely by his ethnicity throughout and constantly othered through the color of his skin. Awesome, really.
I can guarantee you what’s-his-face would reply to this by saying ‘But, but…it’s the character who’s racist, not meee!’, completely oblivious to the difference between a racist character and a racist text. In this case, we have both!
Gourmet Neurovore
/ December 20, 2011Just to check, because I’m a bit confused – is Leo Cristea Mark Lawrence’s Internet identity, or just an outspoken fan of his? It’s kind of hard to tell from the quotes.
acrackedmoon
/ December 20, 2011Oh, the latter. I’ll clarify.
E F
/ December 20, 2011To quote a dead white guy whose works I love inordinately:
‘He jests at scars that never felt a wound’.
That was William Shakespeare. It’s up to readers and audiences to interpret his plays, not for him to tell us what he meant, what with him being dead hundreds of years and all.
It bugs me when authors feel the need to justify their own texts, because if they were good enough at writing or had any understanding of the global literary culture they’ve been born into, they’d know that it’s not their annotations that people give a fuck about- it’s the work that they’ve gone through the trouble to write, revise (?), publish, and advertise.
Also, if one feels that the story exists entirely within the vacuum between one’s ears, then maybe said story ought to stay there.
I can’t really comment on the race aspect of these posts; I’m not a visible or cultural minority in my country and so I haven’t felt that particular wound of discrimination. I -can- offer my abject apologies on the behalf of those who don’t have the particular social decency to shut up about things they don’t know about.
acrackedmoon
/ December 20, 2011Sorry, my post seems to have been really unclear: the guy I quoted and shredded isn’t the author, it’s a fervent neckbeard who is an aspiring author. But Mark Lawrence, judging from his westeros.org appearances, is pretty defensive of his texts over the misogyny charges too.
E F
/ December 20, 2011I saw that it was a guy with a blog who thinks he’s an author. But one day, appropriate deities forbid, he’ll have to go through the same process as everyone else.
saajanpatel
/ December 20, 2011It is a readable book if you have a few hours to kill. There’s an attempt to say something about child soldiers…maybe?
All that said, let’s face it. There’s Valente’s Folded World and Myths of Origin, and I’ve been led to Kiernan. Heck I never finished Embassytown.
That’s just the tip of the berg.
So in all honesty money is better spent elsewhere.
Ronan Wills
/ December 20, 2011I would like to propose a law requiring summary execution for any author who refers to their books as their “work”.
Also I’ve commented about this here before, but what is this obsession with making female characters “vulnerable”? Why is it always terribly important that even the most bad-ass female warriors have a soft spot deep down inside (accessible only to a man, of course), yet men are allowed to be granite-hearted murderers to the core?
Sweet merciful christ. Between this and the image he has on his website (why in God’s name would anyone ever put up a photo like that?) I’m morbidly curious to see what his own “work” is like.
Taking a closer look, I see from the map that part of his fantasy world is called The White Kingdoms and includes a location called The Whyte Sea. No, seriously.
The central idea of his series- a living deity as the focal point of a war- admittedly seems kind of interesting, but on the other hand the protagonist is called Greyan Rhiarhail so I think we can all see where this is going.
acrackedmoon
/ December 21, 2011Because wimmens are emotional, man. Now that you mention it, I don’t know if you’ve read Abercrombie’s shit but there’s a female torturer in there, right. And at first she comes across as snarky, competent, practical and just as violent as any other torturer–but then we discover she has kids! Whom she’s totally soft toward, natch, and it becomes a weakness Glokta (the guy who arranges the lesbian rape) exploits. Awesome, no? None of the male torturers has this soft spot, you will be pleased to know.
I missed that! Laughing forever.
acrackedmoon
/ December 21, 2011No wait a… have you seen the whole map?
aaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha
nextfriday
/ December 21, 2011I think that ‘getting angry makes me angry’ is pretty hilarious, given that it’s the close third for this piece of dipshit ‘hero’. Quite inline with the rest of characterization. But something tells me that Lawerence wasn’t shooting for the comic effect. Grimdark is a serious business, man!
acrackedmoon
/ December 21, 2011I can’t imagine anyone having written that bit with a straight face, but then grimdark writers are very strange people.
Larry
/ December 21, 2011Is it bad of me to be amused by your review of a fanboy? I looked at his site and I think the part about being a warlock and portraying neo-Paganism as anything other than a melange of sanitized conceptualizations of pre-Christian Celtic religious rites was illuminating in all the wrong ways.
As for the Lawrence book, I decided based on the Tor.com review several weeks ago that it wasn’t for me; the excerpts just confirm it.
acrackedmoon
/ December 21, 2011I saw “So, I’m a Warlock… and it’s Samhain tonight” and for a moment thought he was talking about an RP or something. But nooooo. Oh man. He’s such a bag of lol.
Larry
/ December 21, 2011You might want to read his new post on race, gender, and culture. It’s….I was going to say naive, but that would be too positive of a word. I just am amused that if one wants to create a “world” and be “exotic,” that it has to do with civilizations that were certainly more advanced than European ones for most of human existence. It’s a point that is lost on those who can’t conceive of created cultures outside of European/the misunderstood rest of human societies that exist to highlight the European cultures/traits. One would think such attitudes would have gone out of vogue after the rebellions against European rule in the 1940s-1960s, but I guess not.
Larry
/ December 21, 2011Oh, and I should add that I include the US in that “European” commentary.
acrackedmoon
/ December 21, 2011I saw it and went “hooooo boy” as soon as I read the subject line.
I may make him the next week’s blog chew-toy and shred his fantasy too. “Whyte” lol.
Inverarity Pynchon
/ December 21, 2011I can forgive almost anything but bad writing, but a book where a fourteen-year-old sociopath goes around raping and murdering because his childhood really sucked just… does not interest me.
And everything deserves to be scrutinized and criticized. You know, all these neckbeards you flame would look 90% less stupid if they just stopped being so defensive about liking stuff that occasionally sucks. (I remain unapologetic about liking The Name of the Wind. And The Wise Man’s Fear. Dumbass ninja matriarchy and hundred pages of fairy sex and all.)
As for your new chew-toy, holy crap, what a pretentious wanker. I love how he’s totally trying to rock the Neil Gaiman look.
Protip to Mr. Cristea: Your synopsis is horrible. And needs proofreading. (Hint: “breech the clouds” does not mean what you think it does.)
acrackedmoon
/ December 21, 2011Exactly. With this amount of defensiveness I suspect deep down they realize what they’re reading has problems and/or isn’t that good.
Yes! I thought it was just me.
Alex D MacFarlane (@foxtailedgirl)
/ December 21, 2011I got a fanrage comment when I posted about the rape queue being fucked up, but I don’t think it was this guy. Which means they exist in the plural. AURGH.
neon suntan (@neonsuntan)
/ December 21, 2011Page after page of people on Westeros justifying this scene and berating those who “don’t get it”.
If it had been a vicious graphic assault on a child would they be defending it as much, or at all?
Would they feel confident in having it as a purely fictional part of the grimdark world?
acrackedmoon
/ December 21, 2011Even if it had been that there’d still be metric fucktons of them yelling BUT REALISM AND GRITTY DARKNESS. I promise you that.
neon suntan (@neonsuntan)
/ December 21, 2011Oh and just in case you hadn’t seen this…. Mr Cristeas erudite thoughts on Race….
http://leocristea.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/race-culture-and-belonging-pt1/
linesdrawninred
/ December 21, 2011You’ve brought up most of my problems with the Prince of Thorns but the thing I hate most about it is the way it chooses to portray morality as black and white, in much the same way ‘less realistic’ works do quite often. The main character is a rapist, a murder, and a sociopath but all of this is implied to be because of his status as a pseudo-child soldier. Child soldiers don’t do these things because they are devoid of morals, or essentially bad people. They have no choice and along the way start to see it as normal. Saying that only heartless psychopaths do horrible things is something that has long been a staple of fantasy, and works like these do nothing but enforce that. It’s not gritty it’s idealistic.
As for the fanboy, I am choosing to believe he is lying about his degrees. There is no way he could have graduated with a degree in literature and still be under the impression that ‘kind firmness’ or ‘breech the clouds’ are in any way good sentences.
saajanpatel
/ December 21, 2011Good points. Yeah, I think I was just trying to be nice there. I did think the anime Now and Then, Here and There was a good depiction of child soldiers at the time.
neon suntan (@neonsuntan)
/ December 21, 2011Doh. Just re-read the ‘blog entry and it’s already been linked multiple times.
Seth J Dickinson (@sethjdickinson)
/ December 21, 2011You guys are knocking it out of the park with reviews of things titled ‘Prince’. I’m a Prince of Nothing reader and got clued in to this blog via the ‘R. Scott Bakker: Prince of Misogyny’ review – which was great, and I don’t mean that facetiously, that is a series that requires an uncomfortable helping of male privilege to enjoy.
Nerd culture has a lot of really creepy problems, exacerbated by the nerd persecution complex and a growing love of grim grim darkness, so uh I guess I just wanted to thank you for calling those problems out. And for refusing to be apologetic about it. The comments here are always amazing.
keep rocking
acrackedmoon
/ December 22, 2011Heh, it wasn’t a review of the book so much as a review of Bakker’s interview.
The persecution complex seems to have partly been responsible for this kind of subreddit too.
You’re welcome. :)
rizzrustbolt
/ January 4, 2012Ugh, thanks for putting that page in my browsing history…
acrackedmoon
/ January 4, 2012I laughed.
Kalon Jelen
/ December 22, 2011This is Kalbear, and thanks for the kind words.
I’d be curious to hear what you thought of Abercrombie’s response to this whole thing (in the second thread); I thought that it was a pretty reasonable response, and even if I thought that the scene didn’t work his thoughts on how he could make it work significantly better were interesting to me.
acrackedmoon
/ December 22, 2011I thought it was surprisingly level-headed, and doubly surprising because in 2008 he was right there yelling how non-sexist and unproblematic his text was–even the worst neckbeards can grow up, apparently!
Rizz Rustbolt (@RizzRustbolt)
/ December 22, 2011“I don’t care if a character is sexist, racist, homophobic or damn well xenophobic: as long as the character is well-written, well-crafted and well-presented.”
I think (as do many other people), that those mentioned qualities preclude someone from being presented “well”.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ December 22, 2011Except, presumably, were they to be a well (that is to say, convincingly)-presented antagonist/generally unpleasant person, though there are, of course, a metric tonne of pitfalls associated with that as well.
So, less impossible, more just very, very unlikely.
g2-22745856cc8b56416cc6c344655eb99f
/ December 23, 2011The best example I can think of the latter is Humbert Humbert from Lolita. The character is amazingly well-written and at no point do we think for a second that anything he is doing is okay or right, even though the character has all these personal self-justifications. It’s creepy as fuck-all but that’s sort of the point of the story, and it doesn’t shy away from showing the ways the rape and pedophilia screw over everyone. No one ends up happy.
acrackedmoon
/ December 23, 2011That’s the differentiator between Lolita and the grimdark hordes, I think. Self-awareness. Well, and the literacy, intelligence, and all the rest–but that’s the main distinction in terms of portraying the unpleasant.
Gourmet Neurovore
/ December 23, 2011Thing is, I think that that’s what they genuinely believe they’re trying to do. Well, the mainstream grimdark authors, anyway. Not so much for folks like Leo. It’s just that they don’t have any understanding of the issues they’re trying to tackle and condemn. See also, Stieg Larssen, who attempts to make a Big Important Point about rape culture in Scandinavia by neatly dividing his male characters into two-dimensional ALWAYS RAPING ALL THE TIME monsters and sensitive dudes who totally respect women and would be only to happy to help them out through generous applications of their mighty healing penises.
Wait, hold on, there’s only one guy in that last category. And he’s the author’s self-insert. Of course.
Next Friday
/ December 23, 2011The irresponsible way Stieg Larsson handled his own affairs is telling enough.
VAL. (@versusthesiren)
/ January 5, 2012Your snark at the “high Latin” bit and the terribad place names above makes me wonder – do you know of any fantasy books that DON’T completely fail at languages, or at least naming?
(or: SO is a languages student who’s been trying to search for linguistically consistent fantasy FOREVER and we have had next to no luck finding any, may I ask for halp? ;_;)
mavsynchroid
/ January 20, 2013Getting angry because you’re angry makes perfect sense. A lot of people don’t like being upset. It upsets them to know that they’ve lost control over their emotions. It seemed to go over your head, as you focused on the sentence itself to try and make a joke, rather than it’s actual meaning.
It’s pretty obvious you’re trying to troll this book for the pure pleasure of trolling. I google’d looking for a plot summary for the book, as I read it a while back and want a refresher for the sequel, and this page caught my eye. Turned out to be another disappointing example of trolls on the internet. :/
“I about busted a gut reading that. Oh my. Look at the subhuman little turd utterly flipping out! Truly, my friends, I blog for this. Squeal, privileged piggy, squeal.”
You blog for that?… Pathetic.
Good day, Ma’am.
acrackedmoon
/ January 20, 2013Squeal, piggy, squeal.
jaredharper
/ February 5, 2013I can openly admit that enjoyed the novel. That said, I can accept that it’s no pinnacle of writing, nor even the genre.
It was concise, it was unnecessarily violent and macabre (a characteristic I sheepishly claim as a guilty pleasure) and it was stark in its portrayal of a world filled with the corrupt. These are all aspects which I can appreciate at once and still hold against the novel. While I don’t necessarily seek a ‘grimdark’ setting, as you would put it, I welcome them it more readily than novels which could be described as ‘fluffy’. I’m sure that’s a preference that will slip away as I age.
That said, It lacked many qualities I enjoy, such as thorough characterisation and world-building drawing mainly upon originality. Many of Lawrence’s references to our civilization are enjoyable, but they appear more a crutch than the result of clever design. I didn’t find these flaws to be so large that they dramatically impacted the entertainment offered by Lawrence, however.
I didn’t find the way Lawrence treated the Nuban particularly racist. Many of his characters appear to represent varying degrees of morality, and I think Lawrence used the Nuban in such a manner; he stood apart from the rest of the characters not because of his race, but because he was the a representative of a ‘better man’. It’s a trait of Lawrence’s writing that is fairly easy to spot as you browse Prince of Thorns, and it’s actually one commonly associated with weaker writers. I don’t appreciate it.
All in all, I found it to be a novel worth reading simply because of its length. Had Lawrence chosen to represent his story in the form of an epic, I doubt I would have made it half way through. It’s good, but not great; still, I don’t find it worthy of the vehement words you’ve gifted it. Sure, the novel reads like fanfiction, but there’s certainly worse dredge in the world.
PS: This post got longer than I would have liked very quickly. A nice way to pass the time, though.
Captain Falcon (@psychoxnino)
/ February 6, 2013@jaredharper: Lawrence’s treatment of the Nuban character is suspect because, for one, the character isn’t even given a name. Thing about names is, it’s often possible determine quite a bit from a name, like ethnic background, country of origin, or religious affiliation. Feels like Lawrence took the easy way out and didn’t want to look into all of that. Consider also the fact that many people often end up in Western countries from places like Asia, Africa, South America or the Middle East because they are refugees escaping war or oppression. So if you present to me a character who is comfortable at killing but who also seems to carry some sort of moral code in spite of it, I am immediately thinking about his origins. There’s a quote attributed to Elie Wiesel, “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” That’s the flaw here with this author. It isn’t that Lawrence wrote anything outright hateful or offensive with this particular characters; it’s the fact that he didn’t care about the details that make a person human. This applies also to the Lundist (mystical Asian tutor) and to the few women characters that do show up (and are used for the sole purpose of showing off aspects of the lead male character and who don’t seem to be allowed to be as violent as the males).
The Nuban is not any less human than Jorg, but Jorg is the only one who can be violent and have complexity. Jorg is the one whose violence is analyzed as coming from some higher level; he’s the focus of the question that Lawrence often states in interviews when he says he wanted to write about “what makes us bad.” Jorg is the one who is, essentially, not “supposed” to be violent, but is, and so his downfall is a subject worthy of discussion, dissection, analysis, and potential for redemption. He’s the one we’re supposed to be invested in, even if we don’t like him. He’s the one we’re supposed to wonder whether or not he can be saved.
Is it significant that all this invested interest is reserved for a white male character who commits violence? Well, in real life, you can glance at the headlines in U.S. national news (even if you don’t live in the U.S., have a look, we like to broadcast our dirty laundry all over the place). What type of violent offender makes the headlines, and what type of offender is deemed worthy of psychological analysis? What type of offender is referred to as “troubled” or “described as a good kid”? What type of offender makes people pause and ask “why?” when they could have just written it off as just another act of senseless violence, the way they seem to write off all the other shootings at workplaces, schools, liquor stores, etc.?
Could you fucking imagine a similar story about another violent kid named Jorg, but he’s a “Nuban” this time, with a face “too black to read,” running around on a rampage of murder and rape? Could you imagine a character like that being held up as a complex anti-hero, a charismatic killer who may be worthy of a reader’s sympathy, on any level?
Whether intentionally or not, Lawrence fell on a landmine here. He wrote something that relies on a pre-existing Western racial bias in order to work. If Jorg had been anything else other than white and male, no one would have considered him capable of redemption, or even worthy of sympathy, nor would his crimes against humanity have been deemed as anything to have originated from a mind capable of intelligent thought. Ever think that the Nuban, along with every other Noble Savage, is written as a better man because he has to be? Would a white-dominated readership accept anything else?
saajanpatel
/ February 6, 2013“Could you fucking imagine a similar story about another violent kid named Jorg, but he’s a “Nuban” this time, with a face “too black to read,” running around on a rampage of murder and rape?”
It is interesting (ironic?) to note examinations of these questions were done by African American writers, and while I don’t hate Lawrence one does have to accept it was done far, far, better in the works I’m thinking of. (Beloved, Native Son, Invisible Man)
Captain Falcon (@psychoxnino)
/ February 8, 2013@saajanpatel: Those works were the exact ones I was thinking of when I wrote that comment. I don’t hate Lawrence either, but his reaction to criticism was puzzling, as if he didn’t think that writing a book with violence and rape and a protagonist with anti-social personality would ever get a negative response out of people, whether it’s a deserved response or not. A POC or a female character who does the same things that Jorg does would get a lot more criticism that what Prince of Thorns is getting, and I’d suspect that most POC or women writers who would ever write such characters would probably be expecting it from the very beginning. Not to mention that if you are a POC and you write about a violent POC character, chances are high that you would have to face criticism from your own community. I don’t really see many white writers having to deal with that to any significant degree.
Lawrence appears dismissive of any criticism that voices a moral objection under the argument that the story is in Jorg’s POV and all immorality belongs to the character. I would believe that Jorg is an unreliable narrator who has a high opinion of himself and the narrative is just locked in his head, except for the fact that I don’t see anything thus far, in my reading, of the world ever contradicting or calling into question the view of himself that Jorg offers the reader. If he is young and violent, I would expect the world at large to come down hard on his ass (because that’s how it works in real life). Something inevitably has to rise up and smack him in the face and lay his ass out. It doesn’t have to kill him or change him or even slow his roll, but so far with Jorg winning all his battles, it’s like destiny is on his side. So I can’t blame someone for walking away from this with the idea that the reader is intended to root for Jorg even if they can’t stand him.
In an interview Lawrence stated that he wrote the book for himself when he was going through a tough time. I believe him, but if that’s the case maybe this wasn’t a book that should have been published, at least not in its current form.
@requireshate: Lol, I think you fixed an awkward typo for me. Thanks.
saajanpatel
/ February 8, 2013Oh, I wasn’t trying to say you hate Lawrence either, sorry if that was implied.
I agree with you and was thinking the same thing about PoC writers facing backlash. It rminds me of how you’ll find the power fantasy of the dominant group facing off against empowered and evil versions of the marginalized – Witches and female vampires, dastardly homosexuals, villains – often female- that are disabled or just falling outside accepted aesthetics, minorities with Voodoo-equse powers, etc.
saajanpatel
/ February 8, 2013*Actually “Voodoo” should be in quotes since what is portrayed in media is different than the actual religion. Apologies for that.