ACOTAR: Chapter 1

[atualamadeus]

I am hate reading ACOTAR. If you love ACOTAR and me disliking it is an issue, utilize the block button! Don't take my dislike of the book as a slight against you. I don't know you!

Going to make a post about this, chapter by chapter. I'll upload my annotations and cite them, so we all know what I'm talking about here.



Structure is mostly [quote] [in-book annotation] [page number] [extended thoughts]

1. God Help Me (pg. 1) - I am aromantic, usually romance repulsed when it comes to romance in media (very few exceptions), I dislike plots that revolve around relationships. I am also very picky with my fantasy. So ACOTAR is just a bunch of things I dislike in one book. So yes, God Help Me.

 

2. "...my vantage point in the crook of a tree branch" #notlikeothergirls (pg. 1) - Immediate Katniss Everdeen syndrome over here. And I hate using Katniss as the name for this trope. Love Katniss. But it is a trope, none the less.

 

3. "...where no mortals would dare go, not unless they had a death wish." I <3 blatant exposition (pg. 1) - I just think there are many better ways to give your reader information to very pertinent, important setting details without saying them. I generally dislike exposition that is just.... a train of thought. Especially when that train of thought is not a natural one, it's very specifically constructed to be exposition. It usually blends very poorly with the narrators actual voice.

 

4. "especially from my position up in the tree" girl we get it (pg. 2) -Pretty much #2 again.

 

5. "...could count a good number of my ribs" she's so hot and SKINNY! (pg. 2) - I know that she is skinny because she is starving. However, assertions of just how easily you can see her ribs is hard to remove from general skinny culture. I wouldn't have a massive issue with this if other traits of malnutrition/starvation were present. Why is she not fatigued? Dizzy? Why is thinness the only trait of hunger being shown here. When I don't eat well for a while my legs cramp up. Actually, constant full-body aches and hair loss happen to me before I ever start losing weight. But no, she's just sooooo skinny.

 

6. "I knew the expression that would be on my two elder sisters' faces..." I just dislike exposition like this (pg. 2) - Same as #3. The specification of Two Older Sisters is jarring, especially when we're in her head. I think at this moment, direct names would be more fitting. We should be able to tell what their specific relationship is through their interaction. Otherwise we're just being given information and we have nothing to do with it.

 

7. "...it was only me and Father" why capitalized (pg. 3) - Could be stylistic, but it just made me pause. The last book I read was "Name of the Rose". I see a capitalized F in father and I go "God.....?" Ultimately not a massive deal.

 

8. "Once it had been second nature.....bothered to notice anything lovely or interesting" This is all fluff, filler. We get it, life is too hard for beauty (pg. 3) - I understand the need for exposition and to develop character, but this very much felt like the "if you don't know what to write about, just go into detail about a part of the environment!" advice that I got in middle school. I can feel a lull in the action, a moment that might have been an awkward transition, and these two paragraphs were, along with a bit more exposition, stuff in. It happens, but this is definitely an awkward transition that you can really feel.

 

9. "Stolen hours in a a decrepit bard with Isaac Hale didn't count..." Either tell us or don't. Ugh. (pg. 3) - Same issue as #6. I think the name here should be voided and replaced with their relationship. The details here and in the quote at #6 should be swapped. This is supposed to be mysterious, a bit of foreshadowing. Who is this man, and why is he important? Giving us his full name is too immediately gratifying, I feel like we know more than we should about him at this point. As opposed to her sisters, who I would assume would be familiar and close enough to the narrator to warrant proper names. And no, I will not be touching the "those times were hungry and empty and sometimes cruel, but never lovely". I would be drawing a sentence diagram with that and others have already done that better than I would.

 

10. "My mouth watered" and a few paragraphs later, "...my mouth turned bone dry" Weird but this moment works (pg. 4) - I am not enough of a hater to not include moments I liked. I think that the placement of "my moth watered" is a bit strange, I would have put it up above the paragraph break, so that it is directly next to "A deer like that could feed my family for a week" and not in front of "Quiet as the wind hissing through dead leaves..." The current placement makes me think that her mouth watering is directly connected to her taking aim when it is not. It is connected to the thought of food. I think a paragraph break before the description of her taking aim would be better. It would correctly pair her watering mouth to the mention of the food and give the reader a moment of interesting quiet as we transition to the next moment of action. Anyway, her mouth turning dry only a few paragraphs later is a good moment. It's a very good physical, almost tactile, way to emphasize that sudden mood change. Going from one extreme to the other very much gives a dropping stomach without having having to mention a dropping stomach at all. Delightful surprise."

 

11. "I glanced from the doe to the wolf...... Most of the time" She is making bad decisions and she is aware of it. Annoying. (pg. 6) I can feel that our narrator, who we still do not have a name for, or perhaps even the author, is having a hard moment with the logic here. A decision is being made and there isn't really any strong consideration for the worst possible outcomes. No lingering on the possibility of death (not explicitly, at least), but acknowledging that this is a huge risk. And then doing it anyway. Is our narrator not a strong enough character for her to Pick A Side? I'm not sure how well I am articulating my thought with this. But this is not the character moment I think the author intended. This is a very weak moment.

 

12. "The arrow found its mark in his side" Clearly being done because the author couldn't think of any other way for The Event to happen (pg. 6) - A bit of an elaboration of #11. This is a weak character moment. I have no real idea why she is shooting at the wolf outside of a few sprinklings of halfway valid reasons. Obviously this is the inciting event for the rest of the plot, but it is being done with such little set up or emotional context behind it. "The faeries are terrorizing villages.... this might be a faerie.... if it is I'm dead. I'll kill it anyway with my Magic Faerie Killing Arrow that might be fake". In order for this moment to have any impact going forward, we have to endure a lot of almost random exposition that never directly interacts with our narrator. It's just such a weak character moment and it irritates me. Who is this girl. Why should I care? I have not been given a reason to care for her.

 

13. "Though it wasted precious minutes...I skinned him and cleaned my arrows best I could" MINUTES??? TO SKIN A WOLF??? GIRL. (pg. 8) I skin deer pretty frequently and I use knives and saws and also a skinning rack, it takes me 30 minuets at least if I'm alone. Maybe less if I have help. How the fuck do you skin a whole ass pony-sized wolf in minutes. I'd accept an hour. Also, isn't she starving? Moving and rolling that wolf around while starving would be hard as shit. This might be a pedantic thing, but it really did take me out of it. Skinning a rabbit takes minutes. Not this.

Final thoughts on Chapter 1: It was enjoyable, I guess. But not good. I've been reading so many heavy things that something like this is incredibly easy to absorb. It's simple and fun. But really just holds up poorly when I put anything more than surface level thought into it. I know that main characters like this are really supposed to be blank slates for the reader to project themselves onto, but I can't stand a weak or boring narrator. If a character doesn't have oomph, I don't care about them. And so far I've gotten so little oomph from this girl that I don't even know her name.

There were many moments that I could have complained more about exposition drops or rough transitions. But that would be more akin to a close reading where I pick apart everything, and none of us have time for that, especially my girlfriend, who is annoyed at me for taking so long to write this instead of sitting down and watching an episode of Twin Peaks (I assume it will be Twin Peaks) with them.