Edited to add: I corrected the links. My bad, y’all. Sorry.
An anonymous tipster has turned my gaze to M.A. Bechaz’s review of Evangelynn Stratton’s Lady Blue. This review is so scathing, so incredibly detailed in its ire, and so damn awesome I was sure for a minute Candy was masquerading online as this author. Holy crap, Batman.
Seems Lady Blue is a grammatical accident crossed with a pile of historical anachronisms. To hear Bechaz tell it:
[T]here are so many historical flaws in this book that most of the time all the reader will learn is utter balderdash. I mean, the book is supposed to be set in the late medieval era, but many of the props, places and plot twists in it could not have existed in medieval times—most are from the Regency through to Victorian eras. I’m sorry, but you can’t fob off a Regency novel as a Medieval one; it’s like painting stripes on a dog and calling it a zebra—no matter what you tell people it is, it’s still a dog. And so is this book!
Read the rest of the review. Go on, I’ll wait. It’s marvelous. The image of the heroine dragging her coins through town is enough to set me in a giggle for a good half hour. I’m the last person to get nit-picky about historical bits of misinformation, but to see Bechaz tell it, this book would have left a dent in my wall, too.
But the tempest-y parts are the name-calling reviewers that counter Bechaz’s by stating she’s a “bitter hagâ€, and Bechaz’s response that clearly, the dissenting reviewers who disagree with her are an effort to defend a friend. They give the book a five-star rank “just to offset the cruel attack by M.A.Bechaz.†Would you like a side of honesty with that panty twist?
As usual, those who rally to the defense of the author accuse Bechaz of personally attacking the author. There’s a desperate call for a proof reader and a copy editor, and there’s a scolding of the author for language anachronisms and faulty historical details, but I don’t see her attack the author personally, unless I missed a word. So if you write a scathing review of a book that should have been edited, proofread, and attended to properly, you’re attacking the author? Not so, says this Smart Bitch. But that’s an argument we’ve heard before round these parts. Just envision the Cassie Edwards fan hate mail.
What a pity that Bechaz loses her cool and responds in somewhat ire-ful fashion to those who call her names. Her comments are erudite but also shrill, and really, you have a lot more ground to stand on if you keep your chill along with your Bitchy. However, a review that says in detail specifically why a book disappointed a reader, and what could have been done to fix it? Well played, Bechaz, well played.
I read fiction novels to get a good ride, not lessons, in history or another subject. Yeah, yeah, settle down the history buffs, I’m getting to my point (and I’m French, so it takes us a while). That being said, sometimes, I’ll read a historical novel and come across something *I* think is wrong and turn to my husband with that “I-know-that-shit-ain’t-right†expression and have some snooty comment to make about the author’s research. It’s good clean fun. But really, you can pick and poke at Google and Wiki and your local library all you want, belong to clubs and dedicate your life to a subject and still get stuff wrong. That’s why there’s a spot at the beginning of a book where you can tell your readers that a) nobody who was alive in those times is around to tell us how it really was (plus that’d just be this one person’s opinion and life story and b) it’s a work of *fiction*.
It’s not the end of the world if an author takes liberties with history, as long as they warn the readers, and if the ride is fun, I don’t care if a Regency lady admires a lord’s butt, or calf, or eyebrow. I pay 10 dollars for fiction novels to be entertained. Period.
But those reviewers who, as Wry Hag said, felt the need to pat “there-there†the author’s back…? That’s just too sad for words.
Hey, what’s that end word thing everyone’s talking about? Fact64, etc. I don’t have a word! How come I don’t have a word?!!
I read the review, and that book seems unbelievably absurd. Of course an author of fiction could take liberties (for example the liberty of not drowning in research), but what I don’t get is why write about the middle ages if you know not one iota about it and your heart is obviously in, say, regency romances? Why not just write an absurdly inaccurate regency romance which is at least recognizable as regency from the common regency clues? I just don’t get how she can get such huge, major setting, plot and character issues so completely wrong in the days of google and wikipedia…
It’s like Ebay sellers trying to get rid of any old junk as “antique”, meaning “second hand” instead of “at least 100 years old” which is the correct description.
Pardon me for saying this, but sometimes it feels pretty American to consider anything older than the birth of the USA as “same old waaay old cool stuff”. Not that there are not historically ignorant Europeans of course, but at least (relics of) a longer history is still present around us here.
Minor inconsistencies don’t bother me (assuming I notice them), but the magnitude of the anachronisms cited in this book just boggles the mind.
What a writing disaster. And how incredible that the author is being defended so fiercely.
…but what I don’t get is why write about the middle ages if you know not one iota about it and your heart is obviously in, say, regency romances?
Exactly.
In this case, I suspect the author didn’t know the difference.
If Jennifer Macaire can plug her awesome book (and she is fantastic!), can I plug mine? The Black Dragon (Triskelion Publishing), set in early 13th century Wales?
Allright—I feel like I have to weigh in a bit here because I am, in actuality, a medievalist. My specialization also happens to be Chaucer and the late Middle Ages, so when I read this review, I wanted to cry. Well, the reviewer’s comment about the heroine lugging a bag of coins around the streets of a non-existent, busy metroplis had me rolling with laughter. I kept picturing her dressed up like some sort of insane Santa Clause, with her bag ‘o coins slung over her shoulder, wandering the alleys while screaming, “Michaelangelo! Heeeeere, boy!” at the top of her lungs. (yikes!)
But, back to my original point—what disturbed me more than the author’s blatantly fallacious use of medieval history (no matter what her claims to knowledge or love) are the other reviews that seem to treat Bechez’s respect for historical accuracy with flippant disregard. I’m not saying that every medieval novel I read has to to be scrupulously accurate because I don’t even think I could do that—I’m not a person living in the Middle Ages, and I am fully aware of this fact. However, this reminds me of one of my students who, while we were reading Wordsworth, dismissed Wordsworth’s poetry because (and I quote verbatim), “That old English he wrote in is just too hard to read.” It’s o.k.—I had to pick myself up off of the floor after that one too. It was as if my lecture at the beginning of the semester about when Old English, Middle English, and Modern English begin and end went into one ear and out the other! But more than this, the idea that something has no value because it is “too hard” or that one has to translate history into something unrecognizable to its time in order to make it appropriate to our own is really tragic. It’s about as tragic as the time I was reading the translation of Lysistrata in the Longman Anthology of World Literature, and the chorus acutally yells, “You go, girl!” as Lysistrata rallies her “troops.” Such blatant disregard for ancient vernacular hurts my soul. I’m not trying to say that we must transliterate the ancient or medieval worlds every time we write about them, but for the love of all that is good an holy, we at least need to make what we do translate is, at the very least, probable—since we cannot be sure, in a modern world, that what we write or know about the past is 100% accurate. These sort of conjectures I can accept, but what has apparently happened in Lady Blue and elsewhere is inexcusable.
And I’m so not EVEN going to start on the grammatical issues—although, as hard as those made me laugh, I might be able to overlook all of the other glaring problems and treat this book as the utter farce it seems to be!
Michaelangelo Heeeeeeere Boy! I love that was hilarious Joanna. I know Bechaz did not mention the dog, but that was the point where I said, nope I will not buy this book.