This is a book of wish fulfillment.
And…that’s what it does. Is the main character an ever-longer list of specialness and tragic angst? Of course. Is everyone very, very pretty? Of course. Does the “plot” just serve as a vehicle for the first two? Of course. But that’s exactly what it set out to do.
I’d actually hesitate to call the main character a mary sue, because the book as a whole is the collection of cool stuff to appeal to people, and she doesn’t really stand out much – she’s insanely pretty, but so is her hated ex-boyfriend, the girl her ex-boyfriend cheated on her with, her best friend, her best friend’s new boyfriend, her angel boyfriend, and also her animal monster family involves a snake woman with awesome tits. This is squarely in the subsubsubgenre of urban fantasy where the main character is an artist, lives in a cool environment, and has access to magic that mostly exists to do flashy fun stuff without thinking much about worldbuilding.
The plot even revolves around wishes as currency, which makes me think the author might have been going for a deliberate wink at the whole concept, although given nothing else is that clever, more likely it’s just that if people write wish fulfillment stories, making literal wishes a major component of the worldbuilding was going to happen sooner or later.
I already read a lot of super talented sketch artist hangs out at urban cool kid hangouts at varying levels of wealth and poverty with their snarky and talented friends and sometimes magic, so this didn’t have much to offer me and I ended up feeling frustrated at the author’s refusal to take the characters in any interesting direction or nail down the worldbuilding properly. But if you haven’t read a million of those books and any of that sounded intriguing, this is a totally valid iteration. And it was original enough to make me disappointed that stuff wasn’t developed, which is more than I can say for a lot of this type of book.
For one thing, the wishes. We’re told early on that there’s different denominations of wishes, and you can’t add up a lot of little ones into one big one. That’s pretty clever. Then this whole thing is muddied by the fact it seems you can use a lesser wish on a higher denomination, and that wishes can backfire but in a way totally unrelated to asking too much of a lesser denomination, making it really hard to nail down the actual power of wishes. We’re told one person used the top denomination for eternal life, but without health or youth (unclear if it wasn’t specified or if the wish couldn’t do all three at once), and that can’t be fixed because the top denomination is a one-time thing. But, the grade below that is enough to wish for permanent wingless flight? Yet not (even temporary) good health? And another botched top denomination wish somehow gets a mutilated angel attached to you, and no grade below it can do anything about this, because “hey, gtfo him” is a huge wish?
It does not make much sense, and that’s particularly disappointing because it’s introduced as the magic system, we spend a bit on how the magic system is balanced as well as its potential to backfire, and then it never matters.
Then there’s what generates the wishes, which is teeth, but surprise, actually it’s pain somehow concentrated in teeth, as foreshadowed properly never. Okay, blue haired perfect girl does talk about how everyone who comes into the shop to trade teeth is a scumball, but it’s not explained why when you can take them from corpses and he doesn’t seem to pay any differently. Okay, digging up human teeth is disturbing, but it’s not hurting anybody, and he takes animal teeth as well, which are normally just left. She makes a big deal about how awful it is to be slaughtering wolves, and yeah, it is, but if they’re already getting killed for their pelts, why is it bad to knock some teeth out of the corpses? I’m getting conflicting data for how many animals are killed in shelters, but let’s go with 3,000,000 and cat teeth are 30 and dog teeth 40, we’ll go with 30 to represent how some of them may have lost teeth already, which gives us 90,000,000 teeth of animals that were going to die either way. Similarly, apparently 35,507,500 cows (32 teeth each, 1,136,240,000 total) and 116,558,900 pigs (44 teeth each! 5128591600 total) are killed for food each year. Whether or not that’s ethical as a whole, it’s currently happening and producing 6,264,831,600 waste teeth as a byproduct. And I think you could make a very good case that there’s going to be way more pain concentrated in those pig teeth than a wolf that lived a basically okay life and then got shot. And he also uses shark teeth, and I’m not sure sharks even feel suffering in any meaningful way. They’re basically fleshy murderbots. I mean, if we were talking about fish in general, sure, but sharks? (And it can’t be the pain someone causes others, because he also takes elephant tusks and there’s really no need to fight over the highly prized two teeth of a basically peaceful animal when you could be paid to take 30 teeth each of horrible murderers who enjoying torturing things to death by opening a pet crematorium.)
(Also, the pain thing is supposed to be this wham for why the chimera are disappointed she wastes wishes on dumb and petty things, except you never told her they had any cost whatsoever. If you don’t want her wasting them, you could’ve at least hinted that! Admittedly, she seems to only ever use her wishes negatively, but that has no bearing on wasting wishes and is just a matter of her being kind of a dick.)
Then there’s the characters. She’s being raised by “chimeras”, weird creatures with a mix of human and animal parts. Then we find out they’re secretly warring with angels, who refer to the guy raising her as the devil. Then it turns out they’re not angels and demons, they’re two species fighting over a parallel world for actual reasons that we made into our myths of angels and demons. I guess that’s more original, maybe? But it’s not like it’s the first time ever gods and demons have turned out to be aliens, and it’s never that interesting an idea in the first place. Plus somehow there’s fallen angels anyway? I don’t know.
I think I’m particularly disappointed because I thought he was using the teeth to make new chimeras, specially given we’re told he prizes human teeth above all and human is the one species found in all the chimeras. They’re ultimately involved, in that they’re used to make replacement bodies for the dead, but it just makes no sense – how are people naturally weird combinations of animals that are all found on Earth? And the bodies apparently don’t have to have anything to do with what they originally looked like, so why not just make cat-pig-humans and leave the elephants alone?
Also, the book is way too long, and there’s a long chunk where she remembers who she used to be and it’s just so blah.
Surprisingly, it’s mostly not slutshamy! The main character loses her virginity to a hot boy, and although she then gets really upset when she finds out he’s not The One and is told she should’ve waited for The One and I didn’t get why she couldn’t just keep Not The One But Still Really Hot as a fuckbuddy until The One showed up, there’s no sense she did anything wrong (everyone’s just “oh poor you it’s sad you slept with a narcissistic cheater face, such is the tragic mistake of young love”). It’s a cautionary tale with most of the caution emphasis on knowing who you’re dating and not getting so swept up in infatuation you ignore that actually he’s a sleazeball. And there’s absolutely no issue with her having a sex life with whoever The One turns out to be, as opposed to The One being whoever successfully jumps her for ~ravishing~ and then negotiates permission from one or more of the men around her for the transfer of ownership. She does end up in a relationship with the guy who tries to cut her in half, but it’s only after she’s in a position to better defend herself and he’s made it clear he’s not going to try to kill her again anyway does the relationship actually start.
Mind you, we do still have the fact that in her previous life she was a virgin despite virginity not even being a thing then. But the second chunk of the book is just terrible in general, so who cares.
In the second half, it also has this insistence that “human aspect” (human-faced) is better, because did we ever need fantastic racism that’s never actually addressed, and the main character is of course that and her adopted sister isn’t, and then her sister dies and she’s so proud for remaking exactly her sister’s body while her sister is devastated not to merit a human face. And instead of saying that oh, she’s sorry and promises that if her sister dies again she’ll make sure to give make her a body with the head she wants, she’s just waah she’s upset when I tried hard! Also, come on, did they never talk about what sort of bodies they’d want when death is so common and a huge chunk of their population (most?) have died at least once? We’re even told the sister looked happy and excited upon waking up, so it’s not like the death and rebirth thing was itself horrible and the face would just have been a small consolation. People ought to have the bodies they feel should be theirs, not the bodies you feel should be theirs! But no, naturally her sister is evil because, you know, jealous backstabbing bitches.
Then it ends on a cliffhanger, because, well, YA. Frankly, I’d suggest only reading the bit up until the angel becomes her boyfriend and it starts to drag a bit before hitting the next plot point, because reaching the plot point really adds nothing whatsoever. (The cliffhanger doesn’t even have real impact because we just learned all about how they have an obvious way of undoing it. Whether or not they will is just decided by the author’s whim now.)
“And he also uses shark teeth, and I’m not sure sharks even feel suffering in any meaningful way.”
Also, shark teeth are naturally replaced every few months by their “dental conveyer belt” arrangement. Even assuming sharks feel pain, the average shark tooth is going to have zero pain attached to it.
They seem to only like teeth torn out of the mouth, so possibly the shark teeth are from hooked sharks only. But sharks barely even have brains so much as olfactory processing lumps. How much misery could you possibly wring from them?
In the sequel there’s a mention of insect teeth, except not only do insects not have advanced enough brains to feel pain, they also don’t have anything that could be recognized as teeth. They have different mouthparts depending on the species, but I don’t think you could pierce and string them without destroying the whole part.
“And it can’t be the pain someone causes others, because he also takes elephant tusks and there’s really no need to fight over the highly prized two teeth of a basically peaceful animal when you could be paid to take 30 teeth each of horrible murderers who enjoying torturing things to death by opening a pet crematorium.”
I don’t think you can call cats “murderers”, even if they do enjoy torturing mice. They’re not smart enough to have empathy for prey animals and see a mouse as anything but food or a squeaky toy.
Said something dumb, too holed up in GAD issues to deal, edited it out.
Eh, that’s a little overly judgmental. For some of them, yeah, you read the interviews and it turns out that is absolutely what is going on. But for others, couldn’t they just be trying to write books that they think they would have wanted to read when they were teenagers? There’s nothing wrong with being in touch with your inner child.
Yeah, after I posted I realized it was kind of assy and not really even relevant. Mea culpa.
Couldn’t it be something even simpler? They know it makes money, so they write something that makes them money.
Or any combination of the above.
I’d actually be curious to know what elements of this were publisher dictates. The sudden NO BUT REALLY SHE WAS A VIRGIN IN ANOTHER LIFE FIRST even though no one cares about virginity in that other life she just wasn’t interested hey look behind you what were we talking about anyway? bit makes me wonder if they told her the heroine couldn’t have any sexual experience before finding her soulmate so the author threw it in there where it wouldn’t matter to the rest of the story.
Or possibly she felt she had to use that since it’s a “genre convention” of YA novels? Assuming my cynical reading – “only in it for the money” – is correct, of course.
Not very related to the topic, but I feel I should share.
“For one thing, the wishes.”
Reminds me a bit of Unknown Armies RPG where mages earn charges which they spend to cast spells. The system include a free-form magic restricted only by the domain of a caster.
The charges are divided into denominations, too. The bigger charge can be split into smaller, but smaller cannot be combined into a bigger one.
Major charges are a big deal there. To earn them adepts need to do some difficult things depending on their school: flesh manipulators would need to permanently mutilate themselves (like cutting an arm), risk mages have to gamble their lives and lives of a person they love with a good probability of death and so on.
UA is, in my opinion, one of the best examples of urban fantasy, so you should check it out if you are unfamiliar with the game.
I’ve read the sourcebook! And at least one about story ideas. I thought it seemed like a great magic system, but as usual, I’ve never played.
In an actual play, the system is rather demanding and requires building plots with it in mind.
The game works best either in short one-shot adventures with characters having a few charges which number they are unlikely to increase (so they are treated as limited resources) or the opposite, a campaign that covers a lot of time, so characters have time to attend to their arcane duties.
A middle ground can be reached with providing characters with opportunities to gain charges if they are willing to lose time and potentially fuck up the main objective (or make it harder for them), which does fit the theme, but it’s a hard balance to reach.
I am actually not very fond of UA system in general. Nothing specific, just not my cup of tea. Great fluff, though.
I would recommend you to read the books on organizations if you could find them. The corebook doesn’t provide nearly enough information on them.
I had the impression that different types allow for different rates of charging. Like the guys getting their charges from boozing it up or not sleeping are good for off-the-cuff adventures while the assholes stealing books from each other are super longterm games or NPCs.
That probably interacts badly with people just feeling more interested in one or the other, though.
Yes, I was speaking generally. There are adepts who can charge up pretty quickly, but they are more of an exception than the rule.
In a long campaign various quirks of different adepts balance out, more or less. In one-shot you can either take a classic adept with limited charges or a quick-burner. The latter is typically more risky, though, as they receive various penalties by gaining charges. The booze mages get a flat penalty to all skills except magick, flesh mages lose HP, etc.
It still doesn’t exactly solve the middle ground problem as quick-burners has to deal with the consequences of charging up. You may say that their payment is just delayed.
This seems like an awesome magic system for a novel or something similar, but also terribly difficult to use in a game, for GMs and players alike. Have you ever played an UA game? I”d be curious to know how well it handles in an actual game session.
I’ve outlined how the magic system works two posts below.
Basically, it works fine in one-shots intended to run for one session and long campaigns where you have plenty of empty time. The middle ground is harder.
I strongly suspect that the intention was to force players to choose between working towards their objectives or working on building charges (which potentially help with their objectives, but also require investments of time and resources).
That does fit the theme of the game as magic there comes from obsession and slowly destroy your ability to live a normal life.
As for UA in general, well, the whole failure-based system can be frustrating at times and generally not my cup of tea, but it does what it supposed to do well enough.
I see. Thanks!
This book wasn’t for me, really. Granted, the Hunger Games and Graceling also weren’t for me. So, it should surprise no one that I didn’t like it. The wishfullfilment got me and while irritating, I could overlook it. The fact that the character is described like an anime character, I didn’t mind. However, the usage of two distinctly incompatible Japanese/Okinawan martial arts as the basis for her combat background was the tipping point for me. It was made worse by the fact that one of those martial arts was Aikido aka a very pacifistic and non-aggressive martial arts style focused on restraint. This was paired with a character who had a very active and aggressive fighting style/personality. The character knowing how to use a gun, while going after a poacher/mercenary to steal his wishes was where I finally facepalmed and just couldn’t stomach it anymore. Recreational martial arts being treated as on par with military combat training and real world criminals is admittedly a huge pet peeve of mine. The East/West connotations and the treatment of several very interesting martial arts styles in the novel was just… sad.
I think the Orientalism present in the novel is unintentional on the part of the author, but then again she did at one point in the novel have the character refer to her Chinese martial arts master as “sensei”.
The fact that author dyes her hair is just funny.
Aikido is the go-to for “female” martial arts (it’s also what the female cop in Dresden Files knows), plus it sounds more exotic, so it shows up everywhere now. (Someone probably could use it for a hothead character to show that their parents were trying to teach them restraint, but in practice it’s all twin swords bullshit.)
I can give Butcher a pass on the Dresden Files, because most cops do actually learn Aikido as it, Jujutsu, and Chin Na comprise the (heavily modified) technical basis for modern Police hand to hand. A cop picking up an extra martial art on the side is something that happens in real life. I mean, I shouldn’t give him one because it’s probably not what he was intending when he invoked the style. After all, “soft” styles like Aikido and Tai Chi are often viewed as “girly” by idiots. (They’re idiots.)
DoSB on the other hand… Between Aikido and Ba Gua, the style with the closest association to the Deer Horn Knives/Crescent Moon Blades the main character uses as her weapon in the novel, we should have ended up with a character whose behavior and outlook are like Aang’s. Ba Gua is the real world inspiration for Airbending. (I mean the mixing of styles with varying historical backgrounds alone for her age already puts us in fantasy land.) The character’s combat style in the novel is as incongruous as Korra’s air punching being referred to as mastering airbending.
Both authors may have done zero research and picked the style because it’s currently popular in self-defense circles, the martial arts flavor of the month. We’ll probably be seeing a lot of Krav Maga in the coming years for the same reason. Butcher just managed to luck out.
“I already read a lot of super talented sketch artist hangs out at urban
cool kid hangouts at varying levels of wealth and poverty with their
snarky and talented friends and sometimes magic, so this didn’t have
much to offer me and I ended up feeling frustrated at the author’s
refusal to take the characters in any interesting direction or nail down
the worldbuilding properly.”
Would you give me examples that deal with these topics better, please? I’d love to read some of those!
Basically any fanfiction or pop YA, from my experience.
Thanks! I doubt most fanfictions are better than DoSaB, though. But could you tell me some specific titles of pop YA? Where I live, YA is not marketed as such.
On the contrary, this is about the level of decent fanfic.
Off the top of my head, the House of Night series comes to mind, but basically a google search for “YA urban fantasy” will lead you headlong into this type of thing.