frustrated reader rage, I have it.

[bedlamsbard]

Oh my god, authors, what do you have against happy endings? WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST JOY? Like, I was with you up until the point of Chaka dying, at which point I was like, OH GOD NOT THE DOG, and then FRED DIED and I almost threw the book across the room. WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST JOY? You can be a hotshot detective and still be married and have a family! That doesn't make it less interesting, that makes it more interesting (hi, Davis and Lehane! I suspect Hambly might get there eventually, but I'm only three books into the series), and I really dislike it when authors use grief as motivation instead of brains, because brains, MORE INTERESTING. I mean, you can argue that the book has a bittersweet ending because Garland and Lockhart end up getting the big haunted mansion and Sally's pregnant, but to me that kind of feels like a cop-out because I'm still back here spitting at WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST JOY?

Argh argh argh.

This is also like the second time in two weeks where I've read a book where the author spends a lot of time setting up a romance and/or emphasizing how much a couple loves each other, and then by the time I'm fully invested, HA HA SUCKERS NO HAPPILY EVER AFTER FOR YOU. I'm way more invested in the happily ever after (or even happy for now) than I used to be. Also I OTP, and I happen to like it when the happy couple (and they're always a couple!) actually ends up together. I get really frustrated when instead it ends up going, HA HA DEATH or OH MY CALLING, I CANNOT BE WITH YOU. (The other book in question is Malinda Lo's Huntress, where I got to the end and was like, "Wait, that's it? Is my copy missing another two chapters? The hell?" I am pretty sure there was something problematic in that book that was hinted at but not actually touched on, and just, ugh. And I really wanted to love it, too.) I know not everyone likes happily ever afters, or even happily for nows (I think Brave had a happily for now ending, and I'm fine with that! But it didn't have a romance (or if it did, it was Eleanor and...Fergus? The dad), so that's different), but if you're going to get me invested in a pairing, don't do something awful and irreversible to it. Eh, my preference. People differ. Clearly I differ from these authors.

I will have to wait until the outrage fades before I can read The Tiger in the Well.

Comments

[lady_songsmith]

uhm, yes, you should wait a LONG time before you read Tiger. And have wine or something ready when you do. Uhm. Yes.

[bedlamsbard]

Oh no. This doesn't sound good. /alarmed

[lady_songsmith]

It is pretty much "Let's see just how low we can drag Sally" with a side of Tragic!Vengeance

[bedlamsbard]

...this is actually making me not want to read it.

[lotesse]

I love The Tiger in the Well and I'm not gonna spoil but - I always go at least a month between rereading SofN and TinW, because I have to let the grief cool before I'm ready to watch Sally moving on. And. I'm glad she moves on, I really am, but. FRED.

[bedlamsbard]

I will admit I am now feeling some alarm. *worried*

[lotesse]

No, don't! But there is a definite change in tone/trope that can feel a bit disorienting. The first two books are very penny dreadful dramedy, and the third is much more politically serious - instead of Chinese secret societies and stage magic, you get Victorian socialism and anti-Semitism and the very real legal problems that beset an unmarried mother in that time and place. And so the relationships Sally forms are very different.

It's like a sudden shift from, idk, that sort of Stevenson-esque pulp sensibility to something much more like a George Eliot novel. And Fred belongs to the one - but not to the other.

[bedlamsbard]

Interesting! Well, at least I have a different edition of Tiger so there's a visual difference from the first two, too. (I have the American editions of Ruby and Shadow, but the UK edition of Tiger.)