Fairy Tale, by Cyn Balog
Mar. 15th, 2010 05:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coraaFairy Tale, by Cyn Balog
Morgan, a young woman with psychic abilities, has been close to her boyfriend Cam her whole life. But as Cam's sixteenth birthday approaches, odd things start to happen. Cam starts to shrink and sprout wings, and an emissary from Faerie arrives to explain that he's a changeling, and must return to his homeland on the night of his sixteenth birthday. But Morgan desperately doesn't want to lose him... even as she begins to fall for Pip, Cam's human counterpart, who has also returned from Faerie.
First off, what I liked: the idea of the book was a lot of fun, and it was especially nice to see a reversal of the usual trope. Instead of a female character becoming smaller, more ethereal and delicate, with wings and pointy ears, it was a male character (and a football player to boot). The writing style was brisk and lively, and in places very funny; it was an easy and fast read. And I liked the take on the changeling concept, with Pip having to learn how to navigate the human world after a lifetime in Faerie.
The thing that I didn't like, though, was unfortunately pretty big. The main character (who was also the first-person narrator) was, to me, pretty well unlikeable. And in a book like this, that's a real problem.
Now, part of it may just be that this isn't the book for me. I have never been a fan of the Gossip Girl-style book, where the protagonists are deliberately mean and catty to one another... but it's obvious that some people do like that kind of thing very much. It's entirely possible that I'm just not in the book's target audience, because that doesn't appeal to me.
But it really, really doesn't appeal to me. I knew I was in trouble when, in the opening, Morgan's description of her best friend Eden was snide, condescending, and downright cruel. Her best friend. Indeed, basically the only person Morgan isn't nasty about is her boyfriend Cam, because she loves Cam. We're told that a lot, because keeping Cam from leaving her and going to Faerie is her main motivation. But we're not really shown it. I felt a bit bludgeoned with Cam Is Wonderful and Everyone Else Is A Loser, neither of which are sentiments that endear a character to me.
And Morgan is pretty selfish, too. I'll go into more detail under the spoiler cut, but she has to make a major decision that impacts the lives of... let's see, four people, in a huge way. And she realizes from fairly early on that one side of the choice would be horrifying for everyone else but good for her, whereas the other side would be much better for everyone else but inconveniencing for her. To me, the decision, for a character who's sympathetic, is pretty clear: it may be painful and difficult, but it's not hard to see what the right thing to do is. But Morgan waffles on and on and on about it.
Basically, Morgan has two choices: she can allow Cam to go through the gateway to Faerie and reclaim his birthright, or she can ask Pip to go through in his place so she can stay with Cam. The reason she wants the latter is obvious: she's in love with Cam. But if she makes that choice, a) Pip will be tortured by the faeries, probably for the rest of his life; b) Cam's glamour will wear off, revealing him for the four-foot-tall scrawny be-winged creature he is, and taking away from him all his future plans; and c) Dawn, the faerie who's supposed to guide Cam through, will probably be killed by Cam's real father.
And I just... I couldn't sympathize with a character who was so bound and determined to condemn one person to torture, another to life as an outcast and a (self-proclaimed) freak, and a third to probable death just because she couldn't bear to lose her boyfriend. Hurting a lot over the choice, yes. Railing at the unfairness of the world, sure. But she seems perfectly happy to allow results a, b and c to happen right up until the end of the book, just because... what? She can't stand losing Cam?
Selfish, selfish. Enough so that my patience and goodwill toward the character—already strained by her meanness to her ostensible best friend—vanished. I just lost all sympathy. And even though she didn't make that choice, her reason for changing her mind was as much motivated by 'whoah, it turns out Pip is hot!' as 'gee, condemning three people to dreadfully restricted lives would be bad of me.'
If you enjoy reading about characters a la Gossip Girl who are less than nice to their friends—and don't get me wrong, some people do enjoy that, and the books seem to sell well—you might enjoy this. I don't, so I didn't.
Morgan, a young woman with psychic abilities, has been close to her boyfriend Cam her whole life. But as Cam's sixteenth birthday approaches, odd things start to happen. Cam starts to shrink and sprout wings, and an emissary from Faerie arrives to explain that he's a changeling, and must return to his homeland on the night of his sixteenth birthday. But Morgan desperately doesn't want to lose him... even as she begins to fall for Pip, Cam's human counterpart, who has also returned from Faerie.
First off, what I liked: the idea of the book was a lot of fun, and it was especially nice to see a reversal of the usual trope. Instead of a female character becoming smaller, more ethereal and delicate, with wings and pointy ears, it was a male character (and a football player to boot). The writing style was brisk and lively, and in places very funny; it was an easy and fast read. And I liked the take on the changeling concept, with Pip having to learn how to navigate the human world after a lifetime in Faerie.
The thing that I didn't like, though, was unfortunately pretty big. The main character (who was also the first-person narrator) was, to me, pretty well unlikeable. And in a book like this, that's a real problem.
Now, part of it may just be that this isn't the book for me. I have never been a fan of the Gossip Girl-style book, where the protagonists are deliberately mean and catty to one another... but it's obvious that some people do like that kind of thing very much. It's entirely possible that I'm just not in the book's target audience, because that doesn't appeal to me.
But it really, really doesn't appeal to me. I knew I was in trouble when, in the opening, Morgan's description of her best friend Eden was snide, condescending, and downright cruel. Her best friend. Indeed, basically the only person Morgan isn't nasty about is her boyfriend Cam, because she loves Cam. We're told that a lot, because keeping Cam from leaving her and going to Faerie is her main motivation. But we're not really shown it. I felt a bit bludgeoned with Cam Is Wonderful and Everyone Else Is A Loser, neither of which are sentiments that endear a character to me.
And Morgan is pretty selfish, too. I'll go into more detail under the spoiler cut, but she has to make a major decision that impacts the lives of... let's see, four people, in a huge way. And she realizes from fairly early on that one side of the choice would be horrifying for everyone else but good for her, whereas the other side would be much better for everyone else but inconveniencing for her. To me, the decision, for a character who's sympathetic, is pretty clear: it may be painful and difficult, but it's not hard to see what the right thing to do is. But Morgan waffles on and on and on about it.
Basically, Morgan has two choices: she can allow Cam to go through the gateway to Faerie and reclaim his birthright, or she can ask Pip to go through in his place so she can stay with Cam. The reason she wants the latter is obvious: she's in love with Cam. But if she makes that choice, a) Pip will be tortured by the faeries, probably for the rest of his life; b) Cam's glamour will wear off, revealing him for the four-foot-tall scrawny be-winged creature he is, and taking away from him all his future plans; and c) Dawn, the faerie who's supposed to guide Cam through, will probably be killed by Cam's real father.
And I just... I couldn't sympathize with a character who was so bound and determined to condemn one person to torture, another to life as an outcast and a (self-proclaimed) freak, and a third to probable death just because she couldn't bear to lose her boyfriend. Hurting a lot over the choice, yes. Railing at the unfairness of the world, sure. But she seems perfectly happy to allow results a, b and c to happen right up until the end of the book, just because... what? She can't stand losing Cam?
Selfish, selfish. Enough so that my patience and goodwill toward the character—already strained by her meanness to her ostensible best friend—vanished. I just lost all sympathy. And even though she didn't make that choice, her reason for changing her mind was as much motivated by 'whoah, it turns out Pip is hot!' as 'gee, condemning three people to dreadfully restricted lives would be bad of me.'
If you enjoy reading about characters a la Gossip Girl who are less than nice to their friends—and don't get me wrong, some people do enjoy that, and the books seem to sell well—you might enjoy this. I don't, so I didn't.