If You Ran It Through a Wood Chipper

My third and final blind date with a book was with The Goddesses by Swan (really, Swan?) Huntley, which I finished. Which I'm not sure if I'm regretting yet or not. I'm not sure about 99.9% of this experience. I'm not even on a fence. I'm just confused, pissed off, offended, and a little headachey here.

What I liked about this blind date: technically speaking the writing is actually very good, very readable, which is probably why I stuck with it. The author obviously went to college for writing but it didn't ruin her natural ability. Or maybe she skipped college a lot.

What I didn't like about this blind date: Oh, boy. This is going to be a laundry list of epic proportions. Let me say upfront that if you write well I'll forgive a lot, but despite the talent there was a lot of unforgiveable crap in this book. At the number one position, the mysogyny that runs through it like an icy river. All of the female characters in this book are uniformly crafted to be repulsive. All of them, even the dead ones. Usually you have a range, but not here. As a dedicated character creator I know this was deliberate, ruthless construction, too. "Author has a serious problem with her own gender" should come as a warning label on the front cover.

The rest of the list: a motley crew of secondary characters that only resemble human beings (on what bizarre planet did she find them?) The dialogue that might have been 90% housekeeping if it wasn't written so well (and that no humans would ever speak anyway.) Most of the plot. No, all of the plot. Costco and Red Vines mentioned in practically every other freaking sentence (what, did they pay her to write this novel as promo for their stores and their licorice, respectively?) The yoga used as, ah, something (what the hell . . . I have no idea.) The completely unrealistic and kind of scary depiction of the twisted friendship between the two lead female characters. The whole marriage between the one lead female character and her dingbat husband. Hawaii used as an blunt object with which the author bludgeons the reader (maybe it was the Hawaii from that planet where she found the characters.) Finally, the truly vile confession right before the ending, at which point I threw up my hands in utter confusion, exasperation, aggravation, and no small amount of horror.

Is that everything? Well, the chapter lengths being all over the place; that made me feel like I was in the presence of the literati. The rest of time I have no idea where I was. Maybe on Mars. And there was no point to this story, really. It wasn't even a look-at-how-good-I'm-writing-Mommy story. Maybe the author was settling scores with Mommy and an unhappy past. On Mars.

I don't like romances between two or more women who are friends and nothing more (aka womances), and maybe this was supposed to be a womance. It actually reminded me a little of inspirational chicklit, if you ran it through a New Age wood chipper and then had Picasso reassemble the story. While Picasso was drunk. I knew what was going to happen from almost the very beginning, and then we went into the funhouse of this book and things just got weird. It wasn't even interesting weird. It was stupid weird. Why I kept reading, I don't know. Maybe the author wrote it in the same mood as people who like to rubberneck at the scene of a really bad car accident. Whenever I see that I'm so appalled by what they're doing that I have no words. This experience was like that. Only on Mars.

This book actually messed with my head, so I feel like I need an apology here. I want to apologize for reading this book. Sorry, life, that was a week of you that I definitely wasted. At the same time, the writing is actually really good, technically speaking, and the author is talented. So I don't know what else to say, other than maybe don't read it. Unless you're drunk and on Mars. Maybe it would make sense then. And this is another reason for me not to ever drink or climb on a space ship.