Book Review: "Shadows" by Robin McKinley

Shadows by Robin McKinley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Rated PG-13.

Well, that was confusing.

But not as confusing as Franz Kafka (whose short story The Metamorphosis I read earlier this evening as well).

And kudos to the math book and origami. Those were the best things ever. I love origami, although I am not very good at it. Algebra is also pretty good (although I understand why some people hate it), and the thing with the shadows was inspired. Spot-on fabulous!

All the same, this is, sadly, not one of McKinley's best. I love parts of it, and I was absolutely enthralled with some of the worldbuilding...but only the magical part. I was not at all happy about the proliferation of ridiculous lingo, some of which has...bad connotations in real life. I know McKinley is aware that the term "f-word" has a distinctly nasty connotation in English, so using that term to mean something along the lines of "foretelling" should be a no-no. Her editor should have vetoed that. McKinley should have vetoed that--because it has no place in this novel. None whatsoever.

Lingo rant aside...actually, never mind. I need to rant about the lingo some more.

Just for the record, I hate books like Feed, which rely almost exclusively on profanity and made-up terminology, especially for worldbuilding. Granted, I may be being slightly unfair there...but I still feel that too much linguistic modification detracts from rather than enhances a story. As far as I'm concerned, one hallmark of good writing is usually that the words disappear to make room for the story. When the words take center stage, the world vanishes to make room for the words. Sometimes this can be okay to create setting, but, on the whole, new lingo should be used very sparingly indeed. I love long, complicated words as much as any other linguaphile, but they have a time and a place, and such words are created for specific purposes. Words such as "bugsucking" and "dreeping" and the like are just distracting.

And by using so much new terminology, Robin McKinley seems to me to be regressing. It makes me so sad! So very, very sad! I love, love, LOVE The Blue Sword. It is my #1 top read book. There are some made-up words like kelar and dalgut and things like that, but they are very fitting. They are subtly inserted. They make sense and they enhance the story.

On the other hand, words like bugsucking don't enhance anything. I really hate having to figure out an array of new expletives. If you're going to make up words, make them worthwhile. Please. PLEASE.

Also, if you insist upon creating a huge list of new words specifically for a single novel, please have the decency to add regular footnotes or at least a glossary. Or explain them more than once, because if you use the term "f-word" repeatedly but only explain it once, guess what your audience is going to think every time you use that word without explanation? Yes. It practically takes mental gymnastics to follow that particular train of thought. That said, that was the general idea that McKinley was getting at, but I knew it meant something else and I really, really wanted to remember what it meant in the story, but I read it SO MANY TIMES before I remembered the meaning!

Dear writers, your job is to make it feasible for your readers to follow your story [fairly] easily. At the very least, don't make the language so complex that it's difficult to figure out what the story is. And if the story itself is complex--no. Just--please. Have mercy on your readers.

Because if you elect to obfuscate certain aspects of the work of art to which you have presumably contributed and perchance are assumed to have created for the purpose of appreciation and enjoyment, then you may experience some confusion and disappointment as a result of your deliberate density.

Also, this book felt way too much like a typical teenage novel. It just kills me. My favorite books by McKinley are The Blue Sword and Beauty, and I used to like The Outlaws of Sherwood a lot, too. I also really like Chalice, for some reason. None of those books are really the stereotypical teenage fare, but somehow, this one felt like that. Let me count the ways:

1. Whiney teenage girl as narrator
2. Love triangle (um, sort of. That doesn't really get cleared up all that well). Also, this love triangle involves a hot werewolf and a hot white magician from another country. Meet Jacob and Edward, except Jacob wins in this universe.
3. "Evil" stepdad (not really, but that's the first impression)
4. Werewolves

Well, there aren't 25 sin counts, necessarily, but four is still far too many, because these are big ones. Come on, McKinley! You can do better than Twilight! (Can't you?)

Finally, I need to mention one more thing. I don't like the foggy writing technique very much. Robin McKinley does it really well, I will admit, but I prefer the clear writing technique. What is foggy writing, you ask? Foggy writing is when you have entire sections in which everything is described in such a way as to obfuscate stuff. So when the main character repeatedly sees sparkles and then shadows and patches of nothingness, and then she folds worlds so that "up is down and down is nothing," that is disorienting. Perhaps purposefully disorienting, but disorienting. So I guess that that is good writing--to make the readers feel like the main characters are feeling--but if you don't like that sort of thing, most of Robin McKinley's books aren't for you. I include in that list Sunshine, Deerskin, Dragonhaven, and Spindle's End.

And is this or is this not supposed to have a sequel? Because I sincerely hope it won't. That said, McKinley has, for some unknown reason, ceased to create definite singletons and has started writing first books of series which never come to fruition.

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