Christine Feehan - Dark Prince

This is first book I’ve finished in 2019 and hopefully the first of many. It took me a while to get through this one mainly because it’s a hard book for me to get into. The text was small and frankly, I found most of the book boring.

As a side note, I was reading through some of my older reviews and it seems that I’ve decided to be more PC of late. I’m not sure why, maybe I’m afraid of offending people by having an extreme opinion that may differ from theirs and on that subject, Dark Prince could be a very dangerous book for me to review, especially with what’s about to follow. So here goes.

Dark Prince is the first in a long series of books about a race of creatures known as Carpathians. These creatures are somewhere between human and vampire and need to from a connection with a life mate in order to not be fully consumed by the beast inside. This story follows the Carpathian male, Mikhail who finds his life mate, Raven and the whole experience is essentially a study on how not to date women.

I won’t go too much into the detail of the story but essentially Raven has psychic abilities and can use these to communicate with Mikhail with just her mind. Upon the first contact with Mikhail, he gets annoyed when she tries to read his mind and in response… he mentally breaks into her bedroom and plays with her vagina. There is a lot of back and forth from then on mostly involving Raven continually claiming that she is going to leave him, is a totally independent woman who doesn’t need Mikhail and can look after herself… but then does the exact opposite of what she says.

The other thing I don’t like about Raven is the fact that she is portrayed as a barbie doll. Blonde hair, massive tits, tiny waist. In a book released in 2006 when I thought we were past objectifying women, even in a book as smutty as this. I also don’t think I’m the intended audience for this book so I find it even more surprising that Raven is portrayed in this way.

Raven appears to be totally submissive towards Mikhail and despite continually saying that she wants to be a strong, confident, independent woman, continually lets him dominate her. There is nothing in narrative that suggests this is a slowly changing character trait and the whole ‘love’ between the two is more of an author’s ‘because I said so’ approach to character development.

In terms of the writing itself, it’s horribly put together. Perspectives change at a whim which makes it hard to tell who’s narrating and from what perspective. This happens all the time and is made worse on page 32 where one of the character names is actually wrong.

The worst thing about the book however is that… nothing really happens. It does that, what I’m finding to be, typical thing of being 308 pages long and only having anything happen in the last ten pages. Okay, I’m overexaggerating here but even if you count the smut as things happening there’s still 150 pages of nothing – just more gesturing by Raven and Mikhail being angry that she was breathing without permission.

The last section of the book sees the arrival of Andre the vampire, a character who has had no visibility in the story whatsoever and shows up as if from nowhere to piss on everyone’s parade. The way he’s dealt with is just terrible too. I cannot believe that there were two run-ins with Andre before the final show down, during both of which he could have been killed… but I’m guessing for plot reasons he wasn’t?

Dark Prince is the first in a very long Carpathian series of which I’ve been informed, they get better. But it’s going to be a while before I test that theory.

Dark Prince by Christine Feehan was published by Piatkus books in 2006. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveller’s Wife

This one was an optional university set text and a highly acclaimed/much talked about book. I couldn’t help but see what the fuss was about. Also the concept of time travel has always fascinated me and I’m always interested to see how different authors go about obeying the rules and, most of time, breaking them.

However, being ground-breaking in crossing genre’s doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good book. In fact, despite all its dressing up, it is essentially still Chick Lit, the story of how much a girl loves a guy and cries all the time. The main difference between this book and most of other Chick Lit is that nine times out of ten, the guy is actually doing something massively stupid in order to upset his female counterpart. So when Clare starts getting angry with Henry, I really sympathised with him; and also thought Clare was a massive twat. Granted, it is hard having a relationship with someone who is away a lot, but it’s the whole ‘not appreciating how amazing the situation is and treating it like it’s normal’ that I can’t never accept from characters (more on this in the next review), and Clare epitomises this throughout the novel.

Also, it feels like an absolute waste to use an original concept of a man constantly travelling through time on something as mundane as getting married and having a relationship. Concepts are only original once and to use time travel to effectively commit paedophilia and sleep with your wife behind your own back seems wasteful.

I also find that with these novels based in the real world, there is always a get around with money. In this instance, money being a problem is removed from the equation by Henry being able to win the lottery at a whim. At least the story makes this viable where as in Jules Hardy’s Altered Land is was by pure chance that one of the main characters invested in Microsoft and could afford to be an alcoholic.

However apart from that, there is something else that made me switch off completely and the same thing happened with Byatt’s The Children’s Book and Vikram Seth’s An Equal Music. Niffenegger spends a lot of time talking about art. Incidentally, she herself is an artist. It’s this sort of stuff which really grinds my gears. Authors writing about stuff they want to write about, going into huge amounts of unnecessary detail which don’t add to the story at all. It’s only there for the author’s benefit, not the readers. Clare could have been anything as a character, but because Niffenegger is an artist, Clare’s an artist too! It would be the same as me writing about working in an office, going into vast details of what I do from day to day, which would be really fucking dull. And no one cares.

I’m being a tad unfair by lumping Seth and Byatt in with this as they actually researched their subject matter whereas as Niffeneger has copied and pasted something she already knew a lot about.

That said, the book is still good, just not great as it could have been with a little more stuff going on that just chasing a girl through time. Who was it chasing time through a girl, I’m not quite sure.

The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger was published by Jonathan Cape in 2004. RRP £7.99 (Paperback)

Vikram Seth - An Equal Music

I hold my hands up, I know next to nothing about An Equal Music’s main subject matter - classical music. My only experience with instruments of any kind is playing Guitar Hero on the Xbox360, and although I can grind out most songs on expert, it’s not real music. I know that.

My lack of intellectual credibility towards classical music was made even more apparent when I read a piece of the narrative that stated a viola was bigger than a violin. I consulted the internet to check because, I swear when I was studying music in year eight, I was taught that the viola was the smallest of the string instruments. Maybe that’s why I didn’t take GSCE music. And why I can’t play guitar.

After my idiotic period, I took a little time to find out if Vikram Seth is a musician of some kind. He is not, so, for me, that makes An Equal Music an expertly researched and beautifully written novel. The amount of detail he goes into when describing the musical sections of novel show an in depth understanding of not only the mechanics of the instruments, but also the bonds formed between the musicians themselves.

The dialogue is brilliant throughout. In places, Seth has four characters talking at the same time without it getting confusing. There are also some really funny bits, especially near the end when Michael, the main character and narrative voice, gets a call from a wrong number.

Right, that’s the praise out of the way. Now for the problems, of which I had two and they are big ones. The narrative grated on me severely. In the middle section of the book, Michael and Julia and in Vienna and Venice. There is a lot, and I mean a lot, of self involved narrative about the scenery and Michael’s feelings. It seems like a cross between verse and prose and whereas it is good writing, it’s in the wrong place and totally destroys the pace of the novel. I felt I was wading through loads of unnecessary details to get to the good stuff.

My biggest issue, however, is with the relationship between Michael and Julia. I don’t think anything I’m about to say has anything to do with bad writing. He could have intended the following reaction.

Michael is a self-absorbed, selfish asshole. I accepted most of the issues he had throughout the story, his suffering over long lost love Julia, and I did feel sorry for him… Until I found out why he left Julia in the first place.

Michael fell out with his music tutor, Carl, in Vienna where he met, and fell ‘in love’ with Julia. He ups and leaves without even leaving a note for her. Ten years pass and he meets Julia again in London. She is now married, but they have an affair. Julia brings an end to the affair with a letter. Michael says, and I quote, ‘How could you say all that in a letter?’ Well Michael, let me take you back ten years when you left her without saying a word. And you’re calling her the cruel one? Fuckwit.

I’m not defending Julia though. She started the affair and only ends it because she thinks her husband finds out. The whole issue of love between the two characters is one I didn’t believe in. At times, it seemed that Michael only loved Julia’s music. This was hit home by his reaction to Julia saying she wasn’t going to play with other people again. Michael acted like she had torn his heart out.

Whether it was Seth’s intention to create this image of musical elitism with these two characters or not, I don’t know, but one thing is for certain: An Equal Music is quite obviously a brilliant novel. It worked me up so much, I think I need to have my blood pressure checked.

I would recommend this book to fans of classical music and avid readers alike. In fact I’ve already recommended it to a friend. At 484 pages, it’s a nice manageable length despite some of the unnecessary prose. (Vikram Seth is also the author of A Suitable Boy, the longest book written in the English language.)

An Equal Music by Vikram Seth was published Phoenix House in 1999 (Same year in a row. How random!) RRP £6.99 (Paperback)

An Unequal Music - My Face Making Music... Kind Of