Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2003-06-28 10:15 am
azurelunatic) wrote2003-06-28 10:15 am
*shudder* OK, I see the point already. (Book disrecommendation for a certain few-to-several)
Back on-List a while ago, someone said that they disliked Mercedes Lackey's writing because of a certain stylistic and themeatic habit. Namely, (paraphrased because I can't remember the exact bit of wit), "I can understand authors who have an axe to grind. She, however, leaves off grinding the axe and begins bashing readers over the head with the blunt end of it."
A profound disrecommendation of The Serpent's Shadow to anyone who's fond of Crowley. I only have a passing acquaintance with his works, and was not disturbed by a bit of axe-grinding in The Fire Rose (it came off as "historical fiction with a physically-distant contemporary in an ideological disagreement thinking he's a crackpot" to me, and Mr. Big Bad Wolf was the exact temperament to have firey grudges), but The Serpent's Shadow is clearly the blunt end of the axe, with vague-in-detail-yet-specific-in-venom references that make me wonder whether she has researched more into the opinions held of him by his contemporaries than I have (I get the vague impression, by reading about him in other places, that at least Muggles thought he was pretty damn bad, but I'm not sure what the wizarding world thought), or is just waving the axe around for effect.
When I thought that Lackey didn't necessarily have a grudge against Crowley, I hadn't read this book yet.
(As a Wizard or a Muggle, I don't know how much credence I would give a contemporary of mine who was in and out of drugs, and it looked, in and out of sanity, who claimed that they were the most wicked person on the planet. Even if they wrote brilliantly, I would still likely take pains to avoid them, because only a Lunatic would hang out amongst dangerous crackpots.)
A profound disrecommendation of The Serpent's Shadow to anyone who's fond of Crowley. I only have a passing acquaintance with his works, and was not disturbed by a bit of axe-grinding in The Fire Rose (it came off as "historical fiction with a physically-distant contemporary in an ideological disagreement thinking he's a crackpot" to me, and Mr. Big Bad Wolf was the exact temperament to have firey grudges), but The Serpent's Shadow is clearly the blunt end of the axe, with vague-in-detail-yet-specific-in-venom references that make me wonder whether she has researched more into the opinions held of him by his contemporaries than I have (I get the vague impression, by reading about him in other places, that at least Muggles thought he was pretty damn bad, but I'm not sure what the wizarding world thought), or is just waving the axe around for effect.
When I thought that Lackey didn't necessarily have a grudge against Crowley, I hadn't read this book yet.
(As a Wizard or a Muggle, I don't know how much credence I would give a contemporary of mine who was in and out of drugs, and it looked, in and out of sanity, who claimed that they were the most wicked person on the planet. Even if they wrote brilliantly, I would still likely take pains to avoid them, because only a Lunatic would hang out amongst dangerous crackpots.)
Crowley isn't her only axe
I have now got the name "Aleister Crowley" mixed up in my head with the song "Officer Krupke", so I'm stopping now. Eep.
Re: Crowley isn't her only axe
It's odd. I've never looked at it this way before, but the books of hers that have people behaving in ways that are morally ambiguous to them are my favorites.