My Problem With Moon Called
Feb. 5th, 2013 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_sporking_ratAs 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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no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 08:52 am (UTC)I HATED, LOATHED, and VEHEMENTLY DISLIKED the love interest and the way significant others were treated, especially the aggressive blonde one. (She was an alpha who had 'mated' (*pause while I hate on that term so, so much*) an omega werewolf and, because apparently all women are merely extensions of their men-folk, she was reduced not only to omega status, no she also had to obey her weak, weak husband without question or volition of her own for reasons. Reasons that were never, ever given save for BECAUSE IT IS SO! FEEL THE AUTHORIAL FIAT!)
Also, she hated Mercy. Mercy felt that was unjust. I felt that Mercy was being smug and unpleasant and really, really enjoying the blonde's suffering as a forced-to-be-obedient-to-everyone-omega, especially her husband. I felt that Mercy deserved the blonde werewolf's loathing.
Also, Mercy's boyfriend was all 'I must treat you like I am an abusive abuser' and 'You are my love interest! Also! My property!' and 'Once I start I cannot stop! Even though that is a myth, it is ALL TRUE for my werewolf instincts!' And Mercy, of course, was all 'He is sooo big and strong and hot! And being owned property, not as a kink thing but as a warning flag to a future abusive relationship, is so ridiculously hot.'
...and then I vomited in my mouth and skipped ahead a few pages.
Also, returning to the point at hand...
The author probably doesn't mean to do it, but it seems to me that Mercy is objectified by her author which strikes me as strange. I mean, it's unpleasant when it happens to second and tertiary characters and, yeah, I've read books where the authorial gaze was icky *II am looking at you George R.R. Martin and Piers Anthony. Also, I'm judging you.* but I've rarely read books where the main character is objectified by her same gender author. Points in fact:
1.) You said that EVERY woman in that pack hated Mercy for her ability to bear children... Thus reducing Mercys worth in teh narrative/that pack to her ability to successfully procreate.That's it. They don't hate her for being a clever, prank-puller. They don't hate her for her agency or for being the leader's bratty kid. They don't hate her for being an outsider accorded the status of the pack-master's kid. They hate her for being a (potentially) better breeder than they are. She is literally reduced to the usefulness of her uterus.
...that's a very empowered lens. And quite modern.
...Also, I have just read that you noted that in your sporking. So, uh, yeah! What you said!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 12:49 pm (UTC)I was able to stomach this (and many other, similar things) by justifying it away as an issue of perspective.
"Okay, lady werewolves aren't REALLY inherently less than the male ones, that's just the pack applying their b.s. human social rules that are made even worse by the elders who come from a history with worse views of women AND have the strength to back up whatever the hell they want"
"Okay, Mercy only thinks she's an up-starter and troublemaker despite actually being really subservient to everyone because that's been drilled into her head since childhood."
"Okay, the book isn't glorifying abusive relationships, Mercy just thinks this way because of her upbringing"
"Wait, what? Female werewolves are expected to be raped if they don't have a mate? Even the children?... Maybe that's just Honey's experience"
I could do that until the author just came out and said in the book (the equivalent of) "LOL, NOPE! THIS IS THE WAY!" with the B.S. *magical obedience* thing that Adam could do from out of no where.
I'm not even going to BEGIN to get into the race relations of EVERY WEREWOLF being stronger and more dominant than the pesky Native shapechanger.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 03:06 pm (UTC)Yeah, that's how my thinking went. I figured 'well, since the pack is majority males, they get to make the rules, I'm sure the women would fight back if they had the numbers'....but then one has to wonder about WHY it is women werewolves are so few and WHY the author would want it that way :/
"Wait, what? Female werewolves are expected to be raped if they don't have a mate? Even the children?... Maybe that's just Honey's experience"
WHAT
B.S. *magical obedience* thing that Adam could do from out of no where.
WHAAAT
I'm not even going to BEGIN to get into the race relations of EVERY WEREWOLF being stronger and more dominant than the pesky Native shapechanger.
I didn't think of that, but yeah. Apparently vampires wiped out a lot of the American supernatural species, including walkers like Mercy, and while I guess that's supposed to be the monster version of colonialism...you get the same problem of 'how did vampires manage to take out all the Native American monsters' because it's not quite the same as having two sets of humans and one side having guns, diseases, etc. There are some FIERCE creatures in Native American mythos and I don't know if vampires would be up to taking them all on. Of course, I don't know much about the Mercyverse vampires and I don't know what types of Native American monsters besides walkers were in the Mercyverse America.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 10:54 pm (UTC)"Okay, lady werewolves aren't REALLY inherently less than the male ones, that's just the pack applying their b.s. human social rules that are made even worse by the elders who come from a history with worse views of women AND have the strength to back up whatever the hell they want"
I get what you're saying and this isn't a criticism of you so much as authors who Did Not Do The Research. Yeah, in a lot of ancient (and even modern) societies, women were property and treated appallingly BUT there were exceptions. Sparta, Ancient Egypt, and Emperor Justinian all come to mind as counter examples. While I dislike the idea of All Vampires Ever being modern and enlightened, I also hate the idea of All Old Guys Being Sexist Jerks. Where someone comes from, what values they were inculcated with as a child, should matter.
"Wait, what? Female werewolves are expected to be raped if they don't have a mate? Even the children?... Maybe that's just Honey's experience"
I could do that until the author just came out and said in the book (the equivalent of) "LOL, NOPE! THIS IS THE WAY!" with the B.S. *magical obedience* thing that Adam could do from out of no where.
WAIT! SERIOUSLY? FEEL THE HEAT OF MY HATEFUL HATE!
...not towards you, personally. Obviously. I just wanted to make sure that was noted.
...How did this get published? WHERE is the Sane Editor who says, "No. Just, no. Do it again." Maybe we should band together and form our own publishing company. One where only decent books get published.
I'm not even going to BEGIN to get into the race relations of EVERY WEREWOLF being stronger and more dominant than the pesky Native shapechanger.
WAIT! was Mercy supposed to be a Native American shapechanger? Because I have to admit, I didn't get that from the novel I read. Her culture made ZERO impact on her internal narrative. I assumed that she was so far removed from her ancestors' origins that she didn't count herself among them... or was counted as a member of the tribe by her ancestors' tribe. I seriously thought that she may have had genetic connections to the Native Americans but no social/emotional/mental/cultural connections to any given tribe. I honestly thought that Mercy was white by way of the melting pot.
...Which is a different sort of race fail, I suppose, but one that does happen fairly frequently in modern life.
But if Mercy was genuinely Native American, why didn't she go back to the tribe, which presumably would have methods of teaching her to harness her gifts, instead of moving to live with the werewolves?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 12:20 am (UTC)...And Mercy/her mom still could've gone back to the tribe for help. Presumably that man had parents/siblings/cousins/whatever. And she would be close enough, blood-wise, to count on their rosters. There's still no reason for her to have gone to the werewolves.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 04:23 am (UTC)I actually did know about the exceptions to the rules regarding the treatment of females in ancient history (I'm a bit of a history buff, particularly in terms of women's issues), but I didn't want to make too many addendums to my point since I have a tendency to trail off and explain everything.
BUT how cool would it be to have a Spartan female werewolf who is so confused about today's gender and sex roles? You can add some fluff about the founders of Rome not being raised by wolves, but werewolves themselves, and have a historical rivalry.
If my UF wasn't strictly "No Vampires, No Werewolves, No exceptions", I'd do this.
And, uh, my female protagonist is super feminine, but is a bit of a bitch (which is actually very important to the plot and she gets better! (a bit))
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 03:08 pm (UTC)Her past with Samuel was CREEPY. He was actually like 90 or something when she was fourteen and necking with him in the woods. I don’t care if he didn’t look that old, I don’t care if she swears he doesn’t act that old, that is MESSED UP. And her present with Adam isn’t much better. She finds out that he claimed her as his mate before his pack…and never asked her permission on this, nor told her about it later. Apparently he ‘had’ to do it because otherwise the werewolves would kill her for being a coyote in their territory, but that doesn’t excuse not TALKING to her about it. And at the end, when they’re on a date, he orders her dessert for her and she says normally she’d hate that but it’s okay because it’s something she likes. Uh, yeah. Normally the desert thing would seem petty to mention but considering how he spends the rest of the novel not giving a shit about her input, it’s telling to me.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-06 11:04 pm (UTC)UGH! Listen, Angel/Buffy on Buffy the Vampire Slayer CREEPED ME THE HELL OUT as a teenager. This thing with Samuel, now that I have full details, hits all of the same BURN IT WITH FIRE buttons.
I find it interesting that the only way X is assured safety among the werewolves is via SEX, when there are perfectly reasonable, non-abusive and/or rape-tastic ways to get to the same end. I know for a fact, again from watching episodes of Nature, that real wolves MIGHT kill a coyote for trying to steal from the edges of a kill. But, they MIGHT also just ignore the coyote(s) and let them have their scraps. It all depends on the individual wolves involved.
Considering the fact that I like to have/eat different things, I'd not take someone dictating my dessert choices well. Conferring with me and then streamlining the process is one thing. But, laid out with the facts you described, here it smacks of a man telling a woman 'Don't worry about your weight. You let ME worry about it."
Ugh. Just ugh.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-07 10:42 pm (UTC)Why is that so common in urban fantasy books with werewolves? Okay, animals are driven by the instinctual desire to procreate, but *humans aren’t.* Humans can *choose* to not have children. And werewolves are *not* completely animal, they’re human too. That’s one of the things that have been so compelling about werewolves: their struggle to maintain their humanity alongside their animal nature. And if werewolves are living in the 21st century with all that that entails (technology, rights, etc.), why are they still behaving as if it’s the Middle Ages when it comes to women? What, so they can vote and drive, but reproductive rights are conveniently not on their radar? Instead of a pack being a family (you know, like it is with *real* wolves) or even just a beneficial social group, why does it always have to be a cult that determines the heroine’s worth by her fertility? Whether it’s because werewolves are rare, male werewolves grossly outnumber female werewolves, or any other number of excuses used to justify this worship of reproduction.
I mean, give vampires some credit, at least most of the time in fiction, *they* don’t care about having kids. Yes, usually it’s because they can’t have them, but at least in that scenario, a woman’s worth isn’t bound to her uterus.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-08 03:52 am (UTC)