"The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell," by Chris Colfer

Our Protagonists: Connor and Alex Bailey. After their loving, storytelling father dies in a car accident, they have a hard time seeing the magic in everyday life - until their grandmother's mysterious book of stories sucks them into a world where fairy tales are real.
The Rub: The trouble is, now they can't go back - unless they go to each of the kingdoms and find the ingredients to create the Wishing Spell, the only magic powerful enough to send them home.

Secondary Cast:

Froggy: A frog (surprise surprise!) who's under a curse because of his vanity. Fond of lily pad tea.

Goldilocks: An infamous outlaw who's had to live her life on the run ever since she was unjustly accused of burglary.

Red Riding Hood: Queen of the Red Riding Hood Kingdom (who'd have guessed?) - a queen who'd prefer to wear pretty dresses and pose for portraits than run her kingdom (her granny does most of the work).

The Evil Queen: Snow White's stepmother. Recently escaped from prison, she also seeks the Wishing Spell to further her life's ambition.

The Huntress: The mute daughter of the Evil Queen's Huntsman who's racing to get the pieces of the Wishing Spell before the Bailey twins do. 

Middle Grade Fantasy Convention Checklist

• 1 Saintly Deceased Parent
• 1 Magical-Object-Turned-Interdimensional-Portal
• Several Nasty Wolves
• 1 Awkward Love Triangle
• 1 Kick-Ass Female Bandit
• 1 Physics-Defying Arrow (it bounces of a sword, then off a wall, then hits a villain in the back and kills him)
• 1 Well-Aimed Cannon Ball

LiveTweeted It? Yes - my better reactions are Storify'd here.

The Word: I had to admit I was a little nervous when Chris Colfer (the actor who plays "Kurt" on Glee) announced he was working on a novel - but then he gave the speech at BEA's Children's Book and Author Breakfast (where I coincidentally received an ARC of this book). He made his novel sound like a real labour of love for him, and I love fairy tales, so I was eager to give this novel a shot.

Unfortunately, The Land of Stories did not measure up - mainly because it didn't seem ready. It read like the first draft of a very young, promising, but untutored writer: the book's not missing for creativity or wit, but the writing style is amateurish, the narrative is disorganized and contrived, the tone is patronizing, and the ham-handed messages the story tries to force down the readers' throats are either vague, unhelpful, cliched, or wrongheaded.

Alex and Connor Bailey are twin siblings who are struggling to move on after the death of their father. Their mom has to work double shifts to make ends meet and they're not doing much better at school - Alex is an overachieving know-it-all who is ostracized by her classmates, and Connor is forever failing tests and falling asleep in class.

Things are so stressful they almost forget the arrival of their twelfth birthday, which their mother has to work through, but thankfully their beloved grandmother arrives in the nick of time with her bright blue car and her book full of stories. They have a lovely birthday, and while their grandmother has to leave the next day, she leaves them her copy of The Land of Stories.

As expected in a fantasy middle grade novel, the book starts glowing and humming and a few pages later the twins end up falling into the book and landing in The Land of Stories, where all the famous fairy tale characters are real. However, it's a world of dangers as well as of wonders, and they  discover the only way they can get home is to summon the Wishing Spell - a powerful magic that will require an object from every major fairy tale. Unfortunately, the notorious Evil Queen (Snow White's stepmother) has escaped from prison and is also looking for the Wishing Spell, and she'll stop at nothing to get it.

Now, this is a decent enough set-up, but The Land of Stories is hobbled right out of the gate thanks to an incredibly distracting reliance on passive language. What is passive language, you ask? Passive language is a writing style that over-relies on the verbs "to be" and "to have." Example: "Connor's eyes were bulging out of his head." The primary verb in that sentence is were, a passive verb, when it could have so easily been bulge, an active verb (as in, "Connor's eyes bulged out of his head").

Long story short, passive language is horrible and annoying because it is literally "telling instead of showing." It keeps the reader at a distance instead of placing her in the middle of the action. The whole book is written like this - the reader is simply told "this magical thing was gorgeous" or "the castle was enormous" or "this character looked sad" instead of being shown these things with description.

This, of course, leads me to my second problem with the novel: its tone. I don't know if the author has read very much Middle Grade, but there is a definite sense in this novel of "talking down" to readers. Thanks to oversimplified, passive language as well as the "moral lessons" (more on that in a bit), the novel often comes across as patronizing. I don't know about you, but kids don't like being told what to do, what to think, or what to notice - they like to discover.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot to discover here. The world building for The Land of Stories is colourful, but disappointingly undefined and convenient. The minute the twins mope that they'll never find that one thing they're looking for - that one thing or the one person who could produce that one thing miraculously turns up and hands it to them.

My last problem was with the book's "moral lessons." Now, normally I'd let such things lie, because everything about literature is pretty much open to interpretation, but The Land of Stories proves the exception because the use of fairy tales to teach social lessons is a major theme of the novel. And some of those "lessons" that are unsubtly hammered home are so uninformed and naive as to be ridiculous, but because I want this blog post to end at some point, I will focus on one.

Snow White's Evil Stepmother is the central antagonist of the book, but in the prologue, where she's sitting in prison being interrogated by Snow White herself, she quips, "What the world fails to realize is that a villain is simply a victim whose story hasn't been told." Wait, what? For most of the book, as the story keeps dropping hints about the Evil Queen's mysterious past, I hoped that this sentence would simply prove to be a woefully poor choice of words. Unfortunately, the rest of this review require spoilers, so you have been warned.

*****SPOILERS*****

By the end of the book, we learn that the Evil Queen was once an innocent woman in love who was kidnapped by an Enchantress, who then cursed her true love into a magic mirror. The Evil Queen's subsequent actions were all fueled by her desperate search to get her lover out of the mirror before he lost his identity. Now, that's an interesting story and provides a deeper motivation for the Queen's actions than simple vanity - however...

HOWEVER - the novel treats her tragic quest for love as justification for the terrible things she did. As in, the fact that she did it for love (cue singing birds) makes it okay. Her loyal Huntsman calls her a saint. All the other princesses cry when they hear the Queen's story and gush about how it was all for love (cue dancing mice) and how cruel the world was for senselessly hating her, and how nobody would give her compassion and understanding.

Yeah, how dare the world hate her - for neglecting, imprisoning, and MURDERING her subjects (including Snow White's parents!). Couldn't they offer her a little compassion and understanding when she was busy poisoning apples and ordering the Huntsman to cut out a teenage girl's heart, because it was all for LOVE (cue showers of rose petals)? Even Snow Freakin' White says the Evil Queen's "broken heart" was punishment enough for her actions - um, you mean, like HER PREMEDITATED MURDER OF YOUR PARENTS? 

And of course, this all culminates in the twins realizing that most villains are "villainized by circumstance."

How about NO. NO NO NO a million times NO. There is a difference between humanizing a character and justifying their actions. The Evil Queen's backstory does an excellent job of revealing her human motivations and frailty - does it make her a deeper, more interesting character? Sure! Does that make her a morally good character? NO. She was not villainized by circumstance, she became a villain by choice. No one forced her at dagger point to poison Snow White's parents. No one forced her to try to feed a bunch of people to wolves. She made a conscious choice to do those things and I cannot BELIEVE that such a naive, irresponsible message of the ends justifying the means would be one of the MAJOR MORALS OF THE NOVEL.

Especially since, as I recall, quite a few fairy tale heroines were dealt crappy hands by fate but nevertheless managed to avoid MURDERING PEOPLE WITH COMBS. Here endeth the rant!

*****END OF SPOILERS*****

As it is, despite a few poignant scenes and, admittedly, quite a few hilarious lines of dialogue from Connor, The Land of Stories is a profound disappointment. Its worldbuilding is inconsistent and trite, its pacing is all over the map, its writing is clumsy and immature, and it doesn't reveal as many original things about fairy tale characters as the back cover blurb would have you believe. I wish Chris Colfer all kinds of success in his acting and screenwriting career, but I won't be visiting The Land of Stories again.
D+

The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell is available for purchase July 17th. You can pre-order it here.

"Whitney, My Love," by Judith McNaught

The Chick: Whitney Stone. She's in love with her neighbour, Paul Sevarin, and will do anything in her power to get him.
The Rub: Too bad there's a guy out there willing to do anything in his power to get her - and because he's got boyparts, his stalking is far more effective and romantic.Dream Casting: Ashley Rickards.

The Hero: Clayton Westmoreland, Duke of Westmoreland. He gets what he wants.
The Rub: ...But he doesn't always want what he gets.Dream Casting: Rufus Sewel. Or the Devil. Whichever.

The Plot:

Clayton: One way, or another, I'm gonna find ya,
I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha.
One way, or another, I'm gonna buy ya,
I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha.

One way, or another, I'm gonna wed ya,
I'm gonna wed ya, wed ya, wed ya, wed ya.
One day, maybe next week,
I'm gonna own ya. I'll own ya! I'll own ya!

But I'll suspect you're a whore,
So I can mistreat you some more.
What are apologies for?

One way, or another, I'm gonna deflower ya,
I'm gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha.
Then I'll discover I'm wrong,
And then I'll woo ya. I'll woo ya! I'll woo ya!

One way, or another, you will forgive me,
You will forgive me, give me, give me, give me.
And then, I'll re-suspect you,
I'll re-mistreat ya. Mistreat ya! Mistreat ya!

Whitney: Wow, you're a total jerkface.
Who wants to keep me in my place.
I should spray you with mace.

Clayton: WHO SAID YOU GOT YOUR OWN VERSE?

Whitney: I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I just love it when you get all shouty!

Clayton: Love you. Now go make me a sandwich.

Whitney: HOORAY!

Romance Convention Checklist:

1 Evil Misogynist Wrathful Abusive Bastard Hero

1 Hoydenish Doormat Self-Blaming Deserves Better Heroine

2 Sexual Assaults

1 Rape Forceful Deflowering

Several Enabling and Victim-Blaming Relatives

1 Wimpy Romantic Rival

1 Less Wimpy But Still Ineffective Romantic Rival

1 Bitchy McBitchFace
The Word: How does one begin to review the most offensive, frightening, repulsive book one has ever read?

Well, I suppose I could begin with an apology to Fern Michaels, who previously held that esteemed title on on this blog. I may have hated your writing, Ms. Michaels, but the worst you ever did was inaccurately use the English language and include too many dogs.

And before you get all up in arms, I read the sanitized re-issue of Whitney, My Love, where the hero almost whips and almost rapes Whitney. How almost romantic.

But this really isn't a romance. This is a dark, psychological horror story of how a mentally-unhinged stalker and psychotic mastermind emotionally, physically, and sexually abuses a teenage girl into loving him. And he wins in the end. Hooray.

But maybe I should back up, and talk about Clayton's victim sexual obsession romantic interest: Whitney Stone. She starts out the novel as a pretty hateful little hellion with a budding stalker career of her own: she's determined to pursue and catch her hot gentleman neighbour, Paul Sevarin, with or without his consent. Her antics have already resulted in considerable damage to Sevarin's pride, personal property, as well as his person when one of her more brilliant attempts leaves him with a broken leg.

The entire neighbourhood kind of hates her because she takes her Angst and Daddy Issues out on other people in the form of "harmless" but actually quite dreadful and humiliating pranks. Finally, Dear Old Daddy has had enough of Whitney's crazy and decides to pack her off to France with her kinder and more tolerant uncle and aunt. There, Whitney comes to her senses and decides to clean up her act and win over Sevarin the old-fashioned (consensual) way.

Unfortunately, in France, she comes under the gaze of Clayton Westmoreland, who, after three years of silently watching her and one conversation during a masked ball, decides he must possess her. Despite the fact that he doesn't love her because he doesn't believe love exists.

Our Totally Rational Hero then hands Whitney's debt-ridden father a crisp cheque for one hundred thousand pounds in return for Whitney's hand in marriage, under the condition that Daddy Dearest keep Clayton's betrothal and true identity a secret so that Clayton may have a chance to court Whitney and give her the pretense of having a choice.

However, while Clayton has no problem putting a hundred thousand pounds towards new servants, dresses, and jewels for Whitney - he's not paying for backtalk. When they first meet, Whitney takes an immediate dislike to him, since he spends a great deal of their first conversation talking to her boobs. When they meet again at a ball, Clayton tries to get handsy and Whitney tells him off. Clayton responds by sexually assaulting her for the first time, on page 137:

It happened so quickly, there was no time to react. A hand like a vice shot out and seized her wrist, spinning her around back into the shadows, and jerking her into his arms. "I think," he enunciated in an awful voice, "that your problem is purely a matter of inexperienced teachers."

His mouth crushed down on hers, mercilessly bruising her lips, forcing them to part from sheer pressure.

Whitney writhed futilely in his iron embrace while tears of impotent rage raced down her cheeks. The more she struggled, the more insolent and punishing his mouth became, until she finally grew still, defeated and trembling in his arms.

Clayton really knows how to put the sensual in non-consensual. This sort of behaviour continues for much of the first half of the novel - he continues to spar with an increasingly-irate Whitney until his store of Amused Tolerance for Feminine Defiance runs dry (which doesn't take that long), after which he swiftly resorts to force, manipulation, or outright violence.

As I mentioned in my article over at Heroes and Heartbreakers about "How Alpha is Too Alpha?", an overly-aggressive hero is only tolerable if the heroine is capable of taking care of herself, and if the power in their relationship is evenly divided. The lack of this is exactly this novel's main problem. Through the entire novel, Clayton has all the power in their relationship. He's bought and paid for Whitney, and he's a hugely powerful and influential Duke. Whitney never wins a single argument or confrontation with Clayton, because Clayton has no qualms with crossing the line and using force once the argument doesn't turn his way.

What's worse, and what made this novel tear at the insides of my heart and brain, is how Whitney - and every other "good" character - slowly comes over to Clayton's side of things through copious amounts of victim-blaming. The worse he gets, the worse Whitney blames herself. Oh, if only she could control her fiery temper, then she wouldn't try poor Clayton's patience so badly he tried to beat her with a riding crop! Oh, if only she hadn't hurt Clayton's feelings, he wouldn't have sexually assaulted her for a second time! Oh, if only she'd put a stop to other people's gossip, than she wouldn't have embarrassed Clayton into trying to rape her! Oh, if only she hadn't been so stubborn and just capitulated to Clayton's advances, Clayton would never have had to get angry and force himself on her.

Woe is Whitney, her uncontrollable uppityness just keeps getting her into scrapes! GOOD THING SHE FOUND A MAN STRONG ENOUGH TO KEEP HER IN HAND.

Book - meet wall. Literally.

But enough about violence against women - let's talk about how this book fails as an actual book. For a novel that really is all about Clayton Westmoreland, we get little to no backstory or character development for him. He just shows up as a Big Dark Duke and we're supposed to go, "Oh, that's cool. Don't bother telling us any more about your life and personal interests and foibles and fears. You're hot and rich, which is clearly all that we care about when it comes to romantic heroes. No personality necessary."

In later books, Judith McNaught at least tries to give her asshat heroes some sort of backstory or motivation for why they're total assholes about and around women - like a slutty mum or a slutty ex-lover or several slutty mistresses (seeing a pattern here?). Clayton has none of that. He's the product of a love match and he has a fond, positive relationship with his mother. His ex-mistress is not only not a Raving Psychotic Bitch, but she's actually kind of awesome and nice. There's absolutely no development or reason given for why he's so incredibly suspicious and cruel towards Whitney. None.

And this book needs a reason - because the primary source of drama in this novel is Clayton's Mindbogglingly Irrational Ignorance and Distrust of All Things Whitney. Clayton's mind follows a pretty simple pattern:

1. Clayton loves Whitney totally and utterly, until,
2. Clayton comes across a scrap of iffy circumstantial evidence,
3. Clayton jumps to the absolute worst of conclusions (Occam's Razor? What's that? Whitney totally cheated on me with zebras! Not horses!)
4. Clayton knocks Whitney around and acts like a jackhole
5. Clayton finds out that whoops, he was totally wrong
6. Clayton apologizes and is quickly forgiven, and is totally in love with her again, until,
7. See #2.

The biggie, of course, is when he overhears gossip of Whitney and Paul's engagement (that Whitney had been unable to quell) - and he immediately assumes that Whitney has been cheating on him and by the time he tracks her down he's also convinced she banged a hella lot of other dudes, including stableboys. This, of course, precedes the scene where he drags her off to his estate, literally rips her clothes off, and takes out his trust issues on her hymen, consent-optional. He then apologizes by showing up at a wedding she's attending and looking sadly and soulfully at her until she feels sorry for him.

Whitney, My Love would have been slightly more palatable if this had been the worst and last thing Clayton did. But no.

At that same wedding reception, Whitney's rude to him while they dance - and he then assumes she's an uncontrollable slut again and dumps her again and starts dating some nasty bitchy rival and has to be dragged back, kicking and screaming, by his brother and Whitney herself to see fucking reason. Yes. Whitney, sixty pages after being pretty much raped by Clayton, has to go and BEG Clayton to take her back.

You'd think that would be end. You'd think that discovering he stole his soulmate's virginity for the wrong reason (because there is a right reason?) would make a guy a little more careful about interpreting ambiguous signals, BUT NO.

After he wrongfully accused Whitney of Ho'ing it up and was proven wrong ON TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS, after they're married and Whitney's preggers, he comes across a scrap of a letter Whitney had written about possibly being pregnant months ago and a) assumes Whitney's kid ain't his, b) decides Whitney's a dirty, dirty whore who never loved him and c) conveniently forgets THE FIRST TWO FUCKING TIMES HE CAME TO THE SAME CONCLUSION AND TURNED OUT TO BE TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY WRONG.

And by this point, Whitney won't even let him apologize - the book implies it's because she wuvs him too much let this proud glorious manly man debase himself by admitting he could be wrong about anything, but I like to think it's because even Whitney doesn't want to stretch the story out any longer.

Again - there's no character development, backstory, or motivation given for why someone like Clayton would jump to all these heinous conclusions about Whitney. His actions also beg the obvious question of why Clayton would bother paying 100,000 pounds for a woman he's clearly afraid to leave alone with a vibrating showerhead. But whatever.

This book - ugh. I've never felt so angry reading a book. I also wrote an article about it over at Heroes and Heartbreakers - but even now, I still feel so full of words and emotions about how terrible, how hurtful this book was. It said so many wrong things about men (particularly, how men who are respectful and take "no" for an answer are weak and simply don't "want" it enough) and incredibly, offensively wrong things about women (particularly a scene where a secondary female character finally uses her "natural feminine wiles" - to lie in order to manipulate her man into proposing marriage. Wonder why all McNaught's heroes suspect women are lying, conniving, sluts?).

ROMANCE: YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG.
F-