It's not that the plot is bad, per se... the mystery isn't that bad, by itself -- but I felt like it was unnecessary. What is the POINT of doing all this with Mary's past?
I don't know exactly how to articulate my feelings, so please bear with me. But the whole work seemed incredibly sloppy, from the writing, the dialogue, the weird narrative device, the lame cameo characters, to the plot itself. It was like she didn't care to actually TRY something new or interesting to get to character development, so she just manufactured this lame situation to "show" us more about Mary's past. It was too much hard work to actually get Mary to behave in a believable way AND to keep the book long enough, so she just made Mary act ridiculous and wrote it off as nerves and "subconcious desires" so that events could be delayed. She wanted to show what Holems was doing, but instead of working within the confines of her chosen POV, or even of coming up with a really interesting way to show us these details some other way, she comes up with some half-baked explanation that Russell had "crudely" written those sections herself, and then put the different parts together (this is particular I thought was worthy of being a wonky Author's Note on fanfiction.net). Instead of going through the trouble of making up her own private detective character, and thus introducing a degree of unpredictability into the story (is he on Holmes' side? Is he trustworthy, etc) she just grabs an historical personage that she has a literary crush on and sadly abuses him by sticking him in this sorry situation. And the ultra-lame pseudo-philosophical "thoughts" about the nature of fate when Dr. Ming shows up just at the right time. Yee-ikes.
And yet all of that would have been acceptable if the STORY had been worth it, but I simply cannot see why showing us, Hey, Mary didn't actually cause the accident! And her parents really WERE perfect! is a good enough excuse.
I feel like the entire exercise was cheap and tacky and unfair to the characters involved. As well as the readers.
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Date: 2005-09-15 05:40 pm (UTC)I don't know exactly how to articulate my feelings, so please bear with me. But the whole work seemed incredibly sloppy, from the writing, the dialogue, the weird narrative device, the lame cameo characters, to the plot itself. It was like she didn't care to actually TRY something new or interesting to get to character development, so she just manufactured this lame situation to "show" us more about Mary's past. It was too much hard work to actually get Mary to behave in a believable way AND to keep the book long enough, so she just made Mary act ridiculous and wrote it off as nerves and "subconcious desires" so that events could be delayed. She wanted to show what Holems was doing, but instead of working within the confines of her chosen POV, or even of coming up with a really interesting way to show us these details some other way, she comes up with some half-baked explanation that Russell had "crudely" written those sections herself, and then put the different parts together (this is particular I thought was worthy of being a wonky Author's Note on fanfiction.net). Instead of going through the trouble of making up her own private detective character, and thus introducing a degree of unpredictability into the story (is he on Holmes' side? Is he trustworthy, etc) she just grabs an historical personage that she has a literary crush on and sadly abuses him by sticking him in this sorry situation. And the ultra-lame pseudo-philosophical "thoughts" about the nature of fate when Dr. Ming shows up just at the right time. Yee-ikes.
And yet all of that would have been acceptable if the STORY had been worth it, but I simply cannot see why showing us, Hey, Mary didn't actually cause the accident! And her parents really WERE perfect! is a good enough excuse.
I feel like the entire exercise was cheap and tacky and unfair to the characters involved. As well as the readers.