Dawn Cook's Truth series
Dec. 26th, 2010 12:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI've now read, despite my initial reluctance, all four books in Dawn Cook's Truth series. This is one of those series everyone loves to hate:the centerpiece character is Alissa, a simple farmgirl who is loved by her mother and was by her dead father, but is hated by everyone else because she's a "half-breed:" her father may have been from the farmlands, but her mother was from the darker-skinned desert dwellers who, once she is forced out of the farmlands into the mountains, discovers (a) everyone not familiar with the farmland/desertfolk prejudices not just likes her but many fall in love with her, to the point where several sacrifice their life on her behalf, (b) she's a secret wizard with almost supernatural talent for manipulating matter and energy, and (c) she carries with her secrets that will change the world as we know it. The only thing that doesn't happen is that she doesn't have end up with a telepathic dragon who is loyal to her unto death. There are dragons, there's a reason she doesn't get one, and it isn't any better than a Pern rip-off anyway.
Cook has a good sense of plot. Not great, though; at least two characters are shuffled offstage in too quick a fashion. Still, each chapter does a good job of scaring one character up a tree, throwing rocks at her, setting the tree on fire, and setting wolves around, etc. etc. Like many writers of modest skill, Cook can't keep a POV to save her life, shifting from one to the other in a poor-man's semi-omniscience.
Cook has set up a moral conflict all her own: the magic users are a distinctly different race, with physical characteristics that set them apart from the rest of humanity, and some of them would use the rest of humanity as breeding material, "guiding" and "culling" reproduction among the different races to control the rate of magic-user emergence; this forms a core conflict in her story. At the same time, however, the price some characters pay are so wildly out of proportion for their sins that I had to wonder where Cook was coming from. The futher away the character is from the center of the story, the more likely they're to be casually killed off to futher the script. There's a spear-carrier mentality at work that bothers me.
The third book in the series commits a grevious sin: it's a time travel novel. I hate those things; they're almost inevitably poorly thought-out, and sure enough, so is the case here. The resolution of the implications of this new technology (and it is technology; the wizards are shown as avid and methodical researchers, who use modern terminology to describe what they do: they work with "molecules," they're controlling "allele expression" in the human population) is so out-one's-arse it deserved a facepalm.
Another major complaint: these are teenagers without any hormones whatsoever. All sorts of characters come within Alissa's sphere of influence, and every single one of them wants to marry her and be honorable. Only one of the two villains (yes, there are only two in the entire series) ever thinks of her as a sexual being. These are the sorts of chaste characters that only happen in archaic fantasy.
I ripped through all 1300 pages-- they're very quick reads. Dawn Cook's Truth series: First Truth, Hidden Truth, Forgotten Truth, and Lost Truth-- is fluff for lonely girls, and that's about it. Her Princess series was much better.
postscript:
Oh my ghods, aren't these the most horrible covers? The ones I got from the used bookstore were prettier.)
Oh ghods, part 2: Dawn Cook is Kim Harrison, the contemporary supernatural writer. That's fitting; Harrison's readers often complain that there's not enough sex in the Hollows series for the genre she's writing in.
Cook has a good sense of plot. Not great, though; at least two characters are shuffled offstage in too quick a fashion. Still, each chapter does a good job of scaring one character up a tree, throwing rocks at her, setting the tree on fire, and setting wolves around, etc. etc. Like many writers of modest skill, Cook can't keep a POV to save her life, shifting from one to the other in a poor-man's semi-omniscience.
Cook has set up a moral conflict all her own: the magic users are a distinctly different race, with physical characteristics that set them apart from the rest of humanity, and some of them would use the rest of humanity as breeding material, "guiding" and "culling" reproduction among the different races to control the rate of magic-user emergence; this forms a core conflict in her story. At the same time, however, the price some characters pay are so wildly out of proportion for their sins that I had to wonder where Cook was coming from. The futher away the character is from the center of the story, the more likely they're to be casually killed off to futher the script. There's a spear-carrier mentality at work that bothers me.
The third book in the series commits a grevious sin: it's a time travel novel. I hate those things; they're almost inevitably poorly thought-out, and sure enough, so is the case here. The resolution of the implications of this new technology (and it is technology; the wizards are shown as avid and methodical researchers, who use modern terminology to describe what they do: they work with "molecules," they're controlling "allele expression" in the human population) is so out-one's-arse it deserved a facepalm.
Another major complaint: these are teenagers without any hormones whatsoever. All sorts of characters come within Alissa's sphere of influence, and every single one of them wants to marry her and be honorable. Only one of the two villains (yes, there are only two in the entire series) ever thinks of her as a sexual being. These are the sorts of chaste characters that only happen in archaic fantasy.
I ripped through all 1300 pages-- they're very quick reads. Dawn Cook's Truth series: First Truth, Hidden Truth, Forgotten Truth, and Lost Truth-- is fluff for lonely girls, and that's about it. Her Princess series was much better.
postscript:
Oh my ghods, aren't these the most horrible covers? The ones I got from the used bookstore were prettier.)
Oh ghods, part 2: Dawn Cook is Kim Harrison, the contemporary supernatural writer. That's fitting; Harrison's readers often complain that there's not enough sex in the Hollows series for the genre she's writing in.
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Re: "Oh my ghods, aren't these the most horrible covers?"
Date: 2010-12-26 09:05 pm (UTC)Evidently, in her magical world, magical ability is bestowed by being part poodle.
Re: "Oh my ghods, aren't these the most horrible covers?"
Date: 2010-12-27 02:56 pm (UTC)Funny, the hair: in books one and two, Alissa has very short hair, the kind that doesn't get in the way while one tends a farm. And while it is blonde, it wasn't poodle.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-27 02:07 am (UTC)...thanks for saving me the time. :-)