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a_sporking_rat) wrote2013-02-05 01:41 pm
a_sporking_rat) wrote2013-02-05 01:41 pm
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My Problem With Moon Called
As promised, here is a post on Moon Called, the first installment of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. The protagonist, Mercedes “Mercy” Thompson, is a coyote shifter who was raised in a werewolf pack. Besides werewolves and other types of shifters, her world contains vampires, witches, and various types of fae. Only the fae, however, have been publicly revealed. The worldbuilding and plot is decent to good, and while her versions of supernatural beings are not, just from what I can tell from the first book, the most original takes on them, there are still some unique enough aspects to them. There was sufficient action, the villain did terrible things but for a very understandable reason (both of which I count as good things for a bad guy), and Mercy’s involvement was a choice, she didn’t just get thrown/forced into it, which is also something I always prefer (I mean, she was sort of thrown into it with the body being tossed on her doorstep, but she still chose to get involved in finding the culprit). As far as the romance goes…well, romance is always the part of books I enjoy least just because it interests me the least, but I feel like it’s not just that putting me off the love interests in this novel. I really think they both do suck, both for her and in general. Overall though, it was alright and I found it worth my time to read. There's only one big thing I had a problem with, and, this LJ being the type it is, I am going to wax on that one problem extensively. This is a snark LJ, folks, not a praise LJ. Good things may get mentioned, but only bad things warrant their own posts.
The one thing I really have a problem is the women. It’s not Anita Blake levels of bad, but it’s enough that I noticed and got tired of it. Probably the best part to start is that female werewolves are really rare because far fewer females than males survive the Change and become “moon called”. No reason is ever given for this, and it’s something that I think really needs a reason that isn’t It Just Is. If a reason is given later in the series, I really hope that it isn’t because men are generally physically stronger, as that actually wouldn’t make sense for a lot of reason, both in-universe and in-general. Women who are werewolves cannot have babies; they miscarry due to shape shifting, and human women who are pregnant by a werewolf will miscarry half the time as well because their baby is either a human like them or a werewolf like the father and they can only carry the former. This is why all the women in the pack that Mercy was raised in, both the ones who are werewolves themselves and the ones who are married to the male werewolves, hate Mercy. Yes, all of them, according to her. Every single one. And we don’t meet one who proves her wrong in this. Because Mercy isn’t a werewolf, she’s a walker, so she could successfully carry a baby, even one fathered by a werewolf.
The pack she was raised in is a huge community. There’s SEVENTY werewolves plus their families. Are you seriously telling me that every single woman decided to despise Mercy since childhood because she can have babies and they can’t. I could buy that from one. Maybe even a few. But all of them? ALL OF THEM? Including the human wives, who make up the bulk of the women in the pack, who can have kids they just miscarry half the time? Well, not “just” miscarriage, there’s nothing “just” about a miscarriage, but you know what I mean. They’re hostile to the point that one of them tries to physically hurt her in wolf form just because there’s an opportunity to do so, and it’s implied she’d kill Mercy if she could get away with it. All over her reproductive ability being better than theirs. Do I really need to spell out what’s offensive about that?
No werewolf and/or pack women are important in any way either. None add anything to the story, and none get much more than a moment onscreen, usually in the context of being hostile to Mercy. This holds true for women in general in the book; they’re not all hostile, but they’re all only onscreen once each (except for one, Jesse, and I’ll get to her shortly) and most are either forgettable and inconsequential, or, if important and powerful like the vampire leader or Eliveta the witch, don’t ever actually do anything important or powerful on-screen, we’re just TOLD that they’re big cheeses with major magical mojo, but we never see them in action, and the vampire lady actually ends up being entirely ineffective and is driven off by Mercy’s holy item easily enough.
While she has female enemies, Mercy doesn’t seem to have female friends, unless you count Jesse, but she’s a teenager, not a peer. We get to meet FIVE male friends of Mercy (Stefan, Zee, Warren, Kyle, Tony) as well as her father figure (Bran) and two love interests (Adam and Samuel). After the plot gets rolling, at least one of four men (Adam, Samuel, Stefan, Zee) are always onscreen alongside Mercy and in important roles. The only other female who appears more than once and could truly be called important to the plot is Jesse, Adam’s human fifteen year old daughter from his previous marriage, and that’s because she gets kidnapped. Yup, Jesse shows up long enough for her to have a face and personality for the reader, then spends the rest of the book kidnapped until at the end when Mercy rescues her. There’s even a bunch of creepy sexual vibes towards the helpless tied-up Jesse from the men guarding her that Mercy observes while spying on her captors, because no UF novel is complete without at least the threat of rape.
And I just downright sighed and rolled my eyes when we find out in the wrap-up that apparently Adam’s ex-wife is this terrible woman who hurts him on purpose and tries to make him feel like an animal and guilts him with her miscarriages that she suffered from carrying werewolf babies, and also she’s an awful mother to Jesse because she left her all alone at home one time to go to Vegas without telling her where she was going and one of her boyfriends tried to climb into Jesse’s bed with her when she was twelve…which is somehow the ex-wife’s fault, because, as we know, child molesters always announce to a woman on the first date what they are and that their motive for going out with her is to get at her kid. I really, really hate the ‘ex of the love interest is a horrible harpy’ trope, okay?
This, however, is really the only big flaw of the novel for me and is the only thing that really bothered me that wasn’t some small nitpicky thing that was isolated to one page. If you can enjoy the book in spite of this and you liked the basic concept of the Anita Blake books (supernaturals are real, protagonist with supernatural abilities that is still low on the food chain in the supernatural world, mystery and action) I would definitely recommend picking it up. I admittedly don’t plan to read the rest of the series, not because of the gender issues but because Mercy and her world just didn’t engage me enough (I really like what we saw of the vampires, though, they were creepy). However, if you give them a try, you may well find a chord struck with you that didn’t hit for me.
The one thing I really have a problem is the women. It’s not Anita Blake levels of bad, but it’s enough that I noticed and got tired of it. Probably the best part to start is that female werewolves are really rare because far fewer females than males survive the Change and become “moon called”. No reason is ever given for this, and it’s something that I think really needs a reason that isn’t It Just Is. If a reason is given later in the series, I really hope that it isn’t because men are generally physically stronger, as that actually wouldn’t make sense for a lot of reason, both in-universe and in-general. Women who are werewolves cannot have babies; they miscarry due to shape shifting, and human women who are pregnant by a werewolf will miscarry half the time as well because their baby is either a human like them or a werewolf like the father and they can only carry the former. This is why all the women in the pack that Mercy was raised in, both the ones who are werewolves themselves and the ones who are married to the male werewolves, hate Mercy. Yes, all of them, according to her. Every single one. And we don’t meet one who proves her wrong in this. Because Mercy isn’t a werewolf, she’s a walker, so she could successfully carry a baby, even one fathered by a werewolf.
The pack she was raised in is a huge community. There’s SEVENTY werewolves plus their families. Are you seriously telling me that every single woman decided to despise Mercy since childhood because she can have babies and they can’t. I could buy that from one. Maybe even a few. But all of them? ALL OF THEM? Including the human wives, who make up the bulk of the women in the pack, who can have kids they just miscarry half the time? Well, not “just” miscarriage, there’s nothing “just” about a miscarriage, but you know what I mean. They’re hostile to the point that one of them tries to physically hurt her in wolf form just because there’s an opportunity to do so, and it’s implied she’d kill Mercy if she could get away with it. All over her reproductive ability being better than theirs. Do I really need to spell out what’s offensive about that?
No werewolf and/or pack women are important in any way either. None add anything to the story, and none get much more than a moment onscreen, usually in the context of being hostile to Mercy. This holds true for women in general in the book; they’re not all hostile, but they’re all only onscreen once each (except for one, Jesse, and I’ll get to her shortly) and most are either forgettable and inconsequential, or, if important and powerful like the vampire leader or Eliveta the witch, don’t ever actually do anything important or powerful on-screen, we’re just TOLD that they’re big cheeses with major magical mojo, but we never see them in action, and the vampire lady actually ends up being entirely ineffective and is driven off by Mercy’s holy item easily enough.
While she has female enemies, Mercy doesn’t seem to have female friends, unless you count Jesse, but she’s a teenager, not a peer. We get to meet FIVE male friends of Mercy (Stefan, Zee, Warren, Kyle, Tony) as well as her father figure (Bran) and two love interests (Adam and Samuel). After the plot gets rolling, at least one of four men (Adam, Samuel, Stefan, Zee) are always onscreen alongside Mercy and in important roles. The only other female who appears more than once and could truly be called important to the plot is Jesse, Adam’s human fifteen year old daughter from his previous marriage, and that’s because she gets kidnapped. Yup, Jesse shows up long enough for her to have a face and personality for the reader, then spends the rest of the book kidnapped until at the end when Mercy rescues her. There’s even a bunch of creepy sexual vibes towards the helpless tied-up Jesse from the men guarding her that Mercy observes while spying on her captors, because no UF novel is complete without at least the threat of rape.
And I just downright sighed and rolled my eyes when we find out in the wrap-up that apparently Adam’s ex-wife is this terrible woman who hurts him on purpose and tries to make him feel like an animal and guilts him with her miscarriages that she suffered from carrying werewolf babies, and also she’s an awful mother to Jesse because she left her all alone at home one time to go to Vegas without telling her where she was going and one of her boyfriends tried to climb into Jesse’s bed with her when she was twelve…which is somehow the ex-wife’s fault, because, as we know, child molesters always announce to a woman on the first date what they are and that their motive for going out with her is to get at her kid. I really, really hate the ‘ex of the love interest is a horrible harpy’ trope, okay?
This, however, is really the only big flaw of the novel for me and is the only thing that really bothered me that wasn’t some small nitpicky thing that was isolated to one page. If you can enjoy the book in spite of this and you liked the basic concept of the Anita Blake books (supernaturals are real, protagonist with supernatural abilities that is still low on the food chain in the supernatural world, mystery and action) I would definitely recommend picking it up. I admittedly don’t plan to read the rest of the series, not because of the gender issues but because Mercy and her world just didn’t engage me enough (I really like what we saw of the vampires, though, they were creepy). However, if you give them a try, you may well find a chord struck with you that didn’t hit for me.
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That seems to imply that women lack the mental/spiritual/emotional fortitude to deal with being a werewolf and thus go crazy and have to be killed. Like if ten men and ten women are infected and four of each gender survive, the narrative's rules postulate that the four men are more likely to survive the, uh, meshing period because women generally don't have the capacity. I could be misunderstanding the rules you've posted but, if I'm correct in my understanding, it's offensive.
6.) And a lot of werewolf men are just hesitant to change women anyway because of the lack of being able to have children, and most women don't want that anyway. So it just doesn't happen often.
So, here's the thing. Being a werewolf in this 'verse seems to come with a form of immortality. And who wouldn't want their loved ones to live with them forever and ever?
And, issues of antiquated chivalry aside, it makes no sense for werewolf women to be less fertile than human women. Both you and aratfanatic seem to agree that human women have a lot of miscarriages because they can't carry a changing werewolf baby to term. Human women = human babies carried to term. So why wouldn't werewolf women be able to carry changing werewolf babies to term? It's the same concept, but in reverse. Werewolf women = werewolf babies carried to term. Therefore, regardless of whether or not you're a human woman or a werewolf woman, your chances of carrying a child to term should be roughly equal. (This assumes that neither the humans or the werewolves are mating with their own kind. That would obviously drastically increase the chances of a successful pregnancy.)
So women are theoretically being denied the opportunity to become werewolves and live practically forever because it would inhibit their ability to procreate. (Again with the state of a woman's fertility being all important.) But, logically, becoming a werewolf-woman should improve their chances of carrying a werewolf man's child to term or, if they're married to a human man, at least not reduce them beyond the chances of a human woman carrying a werewolf man's child to term.
So not turning women, letting them wither and die, seems like a cheap source of angst for the eternal youthful (and presumably somewhat handsome) men and an easy way to make Mercy Super Special... on biological grounds, rather than personal ones.
/alternate Devil's Advocate
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Yeah, I reacted to that too. How does it make it any better than if it was all about physical strength? At least the fact that women are, on average, physically weaker than men is a simple fact - the idea that they would be mentally weaker sounds more like all-out prejudice.
So women are theoretically being denied the opportunity to become werewolves and live practically forever because it would inhibit their ability to procreate. (Again with the state of a woman's fertility being all important.)
That too. I can imagine some people (not just women) willingly giving up personal immortality in return for being able to physically reproduce, but not damn many of them. We might talk ponderously about being only a link in the chain of generations and how the Miracle of Birth makes mortality all worth it, but that's because we don't really have a choice - if someone was actually handing out immortality at the price of fertility, I think most people would be all "screw having babies, I DON'T WANNA DIE!!!" :P
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As I have noted in other comments, I have not read this series yet, but from my understanding, the werewolves are immortal? If that is the case, why is being able to procreate so damn important anyway?
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When I read the book from the series - and yeah, I've only read one - I assumed that it was meant to be some ridiculous hold-over from their human days or the author's personal bias peeking through. But take that with a grain of salt since I'm nowhere near an expert on the series.
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I thought that they meant "No, it turns out it's not a physical strength thing, it's physical/mental, which wouldn't work against women the way strictly physical might. But they just picked so few women in the first place that even fewer survived the Change, just like most of the men died but there were so many men chosen it still left a lot."
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ALSO: Wow, I, uh, did not think of that at all. I feel kind of dumb now.
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If you want an idea carried off and abused to the full extent possible, I'm you're sounding board. (Although, I'm told that it makes bouncing novel ideas off of me intimidating because I WILL ask about that one thing you don't want readers to notice.)
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The Change takes place first when a werewolf attack almost kills the person. Then the person has to survive that (and the body's adaptation to being a werewolf) and heal enough after to deal with the two-souls-at-war-for-one-body thing. But werewolves are so old, that it became practice back in the days when medicine couldn't help, to not change women at all. They just didn't want to risk losing their mate, because werewolves mourn really hard (decades long) over their loved ones. (There's a werewolf in the books who is still mourning after centuries over the loss of his mate.) It has nothing to do with the mental/spiritual/emotional fortitude. The men just didn't want to change women and risk it.
...werewolf females having children...
Okay. The whole reason werewolf women can't carry a baby to term is because they lose the fetus after the first full moon when it forces the Change. Their changes aren't smooth and easy, they're violent and painful. The trauma forces a miscarriage.
A human woman can't carry a werewolf fetus because they're not human. Much like when a woman of type A blood tries to carry a baby of type B blood, and the body tries to attack the foreign blood source because it's "wrong" and needs to be gotten rid of. Only, unlike with human babies and normal blood types, werewolves don't have blood types, so they can't just get injections. Therefore, the human woman's body miscarries. No more werewolf baby.
Werewolf immortality.
Yes, werewolves in this series are essentially immortal (except for severe trauma (beheading, disembowling), silver, fire, and drowning). However, the longer a werewolf lives, the more at odds the two souls become. It's like the two souls being in one body wears on the harmony they build together in the beginning, and eventually the oldest werewolves go "rogue"/insane and end up needing to be put down. Bran is basically a ticking time bomb, so Samuel and Charles are always nearby watching him.
Some women do willingly give up their fertility (or after a child or two, or a miscarriage or two) to attempt the Change. It's usually up to the pack leader and her mate whether it happens. Again, the toll on the werewolf if she dies has to be taken into account as well, because that can very easily drive the werewolf left behind into a kind of fugue-state of grief, or worse, drive him into that "rogue" insanity. It's all a gamble and some men would rather not risk it.
(There is a mated couple in the book where a werewolf watches his wife age and grow elderly, and it does deal with the heartbreak of them adjusting to the world seeing him as her son and not her husband anymore.)
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