Finished "Plum Lovin'"
Jan. 16th, 2008 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mokie_shifuI wasn't keen on the first 'between the numbers' Stephanie Plum novel. I have a serious hatred for Christmas specials in which (gasp!) Santa is real, it bugs me to see a book so obviously written just for money, and there's a convolution in logic in these side-novels that just bugs me.
This one started off on the wrong foot by having extra large text. I remember that trick of padding out short papers back in school, and I resent it in short stories priced as paperbacks. At some point in the story though, some combination of plot and joke and mokiebrain clicked, and it started working for me in a way the Christmas story didn't.
It also brought to mind the Anita Blake books, because where it works is where the Blake books fall short.
Longtime readers of the Anita Blake books resent the hypersexuality of the later books because of Anita's priggishness in earlier books and author Hamilton's pretensions about the nature of sex in her story; it comes off as hypocrisy, denial and Mary Sueism. The general consensus was, "Great, Hamilton's getting laid, now can we get back to the mystery novels?" By comparison, readers accept that the Plum series is a romance/comedy/mystery hybrid and Evanovich is up front about it, and has fun with it.
The Blake series has also been scarred by Hamilton's controlling streak. It manifests in a similar nature in her character, in the constant 'power ups' she throws in so that her heroine always comes out on top, and more humorously, in her interviews. (Seriously, read up about how she swore there'd be no gratuitous sex, made the entire plot revolve around sex, and then refused to admit that she did so and bent over backwards to claim there's been no change. Or just read up about this ardeur thing, and realize that she and diehard fans take it seriously.)
Evanovich lets her character have flaws. Plum screws up, she admits to screwing up, and comes out ahead often by sheer luck and dogged tenacity. She doesn't need superpowers, and she doesn't need a "the world is at stake!" excuse to have sex. (Well, okay, in one book. I still hold that against the series.) She's not afraid to not be Superwoman.
Ironically, the Blake series, with all its sexual hang-ups and contradictions, is far smuttier than the outright romance novels with their unabashedly gleeful lust. Ha!
This one started off on the wrong foot by having extra large text. I remember that trick of padding out short papers back in school, and I resent it in short stories priced as paperbacks. At some point in the story though, some combination of plot and joke and mokiebrain clicked, and it started working for me in a way the Christmas story didn't.
It also brought to mind the Anita Blake books, because where it works is where the Blake books fall short.
Longtime readers of the Anita Blake books resent the hypersexuality of the later books because of Anita's priggishness in earlier books and author Hamilton's pretensions about the nature of sex in her story; it comes off as hypocrisy, denial and Mary Sueism. The general consensus was, "Great, Hamilton's getting laid, now can we get back to the mystery novels?" By comparison, readers accept that the Plum series is a romance/comedy/mystery hybrid and Evanovich is up front about it, and has fun with it.
The Blake series has also been scarred by Hamilton's controlling streak. It manifests in a similar nature in her character, in the constant 'power ups' she throws in so that her heroine always comes out on top, and more humorously, in her interviews. (Seriously, read up about how she swore there'd be no gratuitous sex, made the entire plot revolve around sex, and then refused to admit that she did so and bent over backwards to claim there's been no change. Or just read up about this ardeur thing, and realize that she and diehard fans take it seriously.)
Evanovich lets her character have flaws. Plum screws up, she admits to screwing up, and comes out ahead often by sheer luck and dogged tenacity. She doesn't need superpowers, and she doesn't need a "the world is at stake!" excuse to have sex. (Well, okay, in one book. I still hold that against the series.) She's not afraid to not be Superwoman.
Ironically, the Blake series, with all its sexual hang-ups and contradictions, is far smuttier than the outright romance novels with their unabashedly gleeful lust. Ha!
