![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
When good authors go stupid.
Jun. 18th, 2010 12:49 pmI finished reading James Rollins's Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow, which is a young adult-oriented adventure novel that tries to balance history, archaeology, anthropology, and paleontology with a fantasy twist. In other words, should be the kind of thing that's right up kids' alleys, right?
And you'd be right... if you ignore the fact that females get shafted badly and that Rollins seems to be trying to be J K Rowling for only boys... and failing at it.
I wrote my review of it on my bookblog, but feel compelled to spread the word a little about the treatment of female characters in this novel. I really do wonder what was going through Rollins's head when he wrote this. If I'm feeling generous, I can say that he honestly thought that females would have absolutely no interest in reading adventure stories and so decided to pander to the opinions that preteen boys tend to have towards their female acquaintances.
At worst, Rollins is rather stupid and has a very low opinion of women.
There are some cases where I think that people complain for the sake of complaining, especially when it comes to the treatment of women in fantasy or fantasy-type novels. A lot of them admittedly do have women holding a lower station than men, which in most cases doesn't bother me because a lot of high fantasy is based on our own medieval period, which, surprise, had women hold lower stations than men. There are moments where this goes too far, but for the most part I don't have a big problem with that, and sometimes I think the people who kick up a stink about it are only seeing what they want to see.
Before anyone bites my head off about that statement, I want to say that it doesn't hold true in all cases. Some complaints are perfectly justified. But when I see people complain because [insert fantasy culture here] has people that worship a goddess and whose religion states that women are superior to men and where the women are strong and independant... but the complaint is that they're not protrayed as real women because they're not "womanly" enough (and by womanly, I mean caring about appearance and raising a happy family, and yes, I've actually seen this complaint before), then I call foul.
Anyway, back to my bitching.
In Skull King's Shadow, there's Kady, who is the main character's older sister. Kady, who is a cheerleader and a temperamental airhead who cares more about looking pretty for cameras than about her parents' legacy, who is pretty and cares about dating her school's star football player. She's compared with her brother, who is dedicated and picked on by bullies and is tortured by the disappearance of his parents, who is so intelligent that he even dazzles his teachers by giving long and detailed reports and proving their math theories wrong in class. Boy Wonder versus the Airheaded Twit.
They get transported to a strange world where, after being chased by a vengeful t-rex, Kady gets huffy that Jake can't do something to call off the dinosaur. She actually turns her back on him in a huff, and Jake rolls his eyes and says that's just typical of her, pretending a thing doesn't exist by not looking at it. Hello, you're being attacked by a fucking t-rex!
She gets taken in by some Viking warrior women, where she proceeds to awe them all with her amazing fancy swordwork, which is a display that her brother realises he's seen before in Kady's cheerleading baton routine. Because a baton is totally the same as a sword, as we all know very well. Kady also starts fashion trends among the Viking warrior women, because that's just what women do. They do fashion stuff that boys get to roll their eyes at because it's stupid and irrelevent to the terrible situation at hand.
Later, Kady teaches all those warrior women to do a cheerleading routine, all for the purpose of providing a distraction so that Jake can sneak away and do all the important stuff that heroes need to do. All of these Viking girls have French-braided their hair to match Kady's, because again, I guess that's what all girls do. Cheerlead and braid their hair.
Sure, there's another female around that gets to take part in the main adventure. Marika gets to do stuff... because she's got an obvious crush on jake and follows him around. But aside from being pretty and making his heart flutter with her wonderful emerald-green eyes, she doesn't have much personality, and seems to be there for the sole purpose of having a crush on Jake and occasionally filing him in on some cultural stuff.
There's a little Neanderthal servant boy named Bach'uuk, who has a more fleshed-out personality than any female, and who, aside from Marika, gets more feature time than any other female. Feel sorry for the little overlooked boy, who comes from a race that people use for slave-labour and are thought to be stupid. Poor little boy. Yes, feel sorry for him and all his trouble. Pay not attention to the vacuous airhead sister or the 2-D personality love interest. They aren't worthy of your attention. They don't need to have layers. After all, they're just there to serve the purposes of getting Jake to where he needs to be in order to figure out the riddles and be the awesome preteen hero.
This book wasn't written with the intention that anyone without a penis would read it.
It's pretty sad. I've heard so much about this guy's adult novels, heard that he's great at writing and weaving a story. I was even willing to give his other books a try in spite of the fact that the one I actually picked up a while back sounded like it was trying to go one step beyond The DaVinci Code in terms of complexity and conspiratorial mayhem. But now, I don't want to give this guy my time or my money.
I think the complaints are well-deserved in this case. I also think I may be the only one to see this, as just about every review I've read for this book praises the author and his writing, and doesn't seem to mind that females get shafted at every available opportunity.
And you'd be right... if you ignore the fact that females get shafted badly and that Rollins seems to be trying to be J K Rowling for only boys... and failing at it.
I wrote my review of it on my bookblog, but feel compelled to spread the word a little about the treatment of female characters in this novel. I really do wonder what was going through Rollins's head when he wrote this. If I'm feeling generous, I can say that he honestly thought that females would have absolutely no interest in reading adventure stories and so decided to pander to the opinions that preteen boys tend to have towards their female acquaintances.
At worst, Rollins is rather stupid and has a very low opinion of women.
There are some cases where I think that people complain for the sake of complaining, especially when it comes to the treatment of women in fantasy or fantasy-type novels. A lot of them admittedly do have women holding a lower station than men, which in most cases doesn't bother me because a lot of high fantasy is based on our own medieval period, which, surprise, had women hold lower stations than men. There are moments where this goes too far, but for the most part I don't have a big problem with that, and sometimes I think the people who kick up a stink about it are only seeing what they want to see.
Before anyone bites my head off about that statement, I want to say that it doesn't hold true in all cases. Some complaints are perfectly justified. But when I see people complain because [insert fantasy culture here] has people that worship a goddess and whose religion states that women are superior to men and where the women are strong and independant... but the complaint is that they're not protrayed as real women because they're not "womanly" enough (and by womanly, I mean caring about appearance and raising a happy family, and yes, I've actually seen this complaint before), then I call foul.
Anyway, back to my bitching.
In Skull King's Shadow, there's Kady, who is the main character's older sister. Kady, who is a cheerleader and a temperamental airhead who cares more about looking pretty for cameras than about her parents' legacy, who is pretty and cares about dating her school's star football player. She's compared with her brother, who is dedicated and picked on by bullies and is tortured by the disappearance of his parents, who is so intelligent that he even dazzles his teachers by giving long and detailed reports and proving their math theories wrong in class. Boy Wonder versus the Airheaded Twit.
They get transported to a strange world where, after being chased by a vengeful t-rex, Kady gets huffy that Jake can't do something to call off the dinosaur. She actually turns her back on him in a huff, and Jake rolls his eyes and says that's just typical of her, pretending a thing doesn't exist by not looking at it. Hello, you're being attacked by a fucking t-rex!
She gets taken in by some Viking warrior women, where she proceeds to awe them all with her amazing fancy swordwork, which is a display that her brother realises he's seen before in Kady's cheerleading baton routine. Because a baton is totally the same as a sword, as we all know very well. Kady also starts fashion trends among the Viking warrior women, because that's just what women do. They do fashion stuff that boys get to roll their eyes at because it's stupid and irrelevent to the terrible situation at hand.
Later, Kady teaches all those warrior women to do a cheerleading routine, all for the purpose of providing a distraction so that Jake can sneak away and do all the important stuff that heroes need to do. All of these Viking girls have French-braided their hair to match Kady's, because again, I guess that's what all girls do. Cheerlead and braid their hair.
Sure, there's another female around that gets to take part in the main adventure. Marika gets to do stuff... because she's got an obvious crush on jake and follows him around. But aside from being pretty and making his heart flutter with her wonderful emerald-green eyes, she doesn't have much personality, and seems to be there for the sole purpose of having a crush on Jake and occasionally filing him in on some cultural stuff.
There's a little Neanderthal servant boy named Bach'uuk, who has a more fleshed-out personality than any female, and who, aside from Marika, gets more feature time than any other female. Feel sorry for the little overlooked boy, who comes from a race that people use for slave-labour and are thought to be stupid. Poor little boy. Yes, feel sorry for him and all his trouble. Pay not attention to the vacuous airhead sister or the 2-D personality love interest. They aren't worthy of your attention. They don't need to have layers. After all, they're just there to serve the purposes of getting Jake to where he needs to be in order to figure out the riddles and be the awesome preteen hero.
This book wasn't written with the intention that anyone without a penis would read it.
It's pretty sad. I've heard so much about this guy's adult novels, heard that he's great at writing and weaving a story. I was even willing to give his other books a try in spite of the fact that the one I actually picked up a while back sounded like it was trying to go one step beyond The DaVinci Code in terms of complexity and conspiratorial mayhem. But now, I don't want to give this guy my time or my money.
I think the complaints are well-deserved in this case. I also think I may be the only one to see this, as just about every review I've read for this book praises the author and his writing, and doesn't seem to mind that females get shafted at every available opportunity.
