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The Curse Giver (2013)

by Dora Machado(Favorite Author)

3.84 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Twilight Times Books

review 1: Two and half stars, I'm giving it three because my heartstrings were tugged.I just finished reading The Curse Giver last night at 3:00am. I started reading it hesitant, I ended up absolutely enthralled, but ultimately very disappointed. I will try to keep this as unspoilerish as possible!As a few people have already noted, Machado's style of mixing more conventional, formal "fantasy speak" with modern turns of phrase is a bit jarring, but this is something I quickly got over. Where the author really shines is character development.Lusielle is clever, witty and engaging--if not a bit too perfect, but that's a minor complaint. She actively participates in and drives the story, which is a rare thing. She just doesn't have much of a story arc of her own though, she doesn't cha... morenge, she doesn't grow. (But she does fall prey to an escalating number of convenient plot contrivances, I'll get into later.)Bren is endearing even when he's brooding, he never becomes so glum that he becomes out-and-out Byronic. He's brave and dutiful to a fault, but considerate as well. Good natured, but short tempered. He is respectful of Lusielle and treats her like an equal. (But he does fall prey to an infuriating amount of obfuscation intended to make him more mysterious, I'll get into later.)Together they make a fascinating duo to read about, they have sparkling banter and irritate and amuse each other in equal turns. The first half of the novel, which deals primarily with Lusielle and Bren escaping trouble and traipsing through the wilderness alone, was derivative of works like The Princess Bride and The Last Unicorn, and I can't think of higher praise than that. The supporting characters raged from interesting (Khalia, Severo) to cartoonish (our trio of human villains, and Lusielle's self-appointed guardians**)--but they certainly don't detract from a story which didn't seem to be taking itself too seriously, and indeed took joy in being as comedic as it was swoon-inducing. I loved the first 300 pages (of approx 600 in my version of the ebook) of the novel that seemed to be a character piece about these two, their relationship, and the microcosm of their classist society they represented. I devoured that first 300 pages in a single weekend!Then the novel fell off the rails for me.I'm not sure why Machado switched gears so late in the game, but about 300 pages in is the point at which she seems to have decided that instead of a light sword-and-sorcery story, she wanted to write something (excuse my interwebs speak) moar epic! This book was a classic bait and switch in the worst possible way. There were almost 100 pages of extremely vague and tenuous info dump shoehorned in that didn't really add anything to the story. This usually consists of two characters engaged in a dialogue that sounds like this:"But if A, then B!""How can B?""This convenient macguffin, that's how!""(reveals thing that happened in the past that is now relevant but was never brought up before)""Interesting, (quotes bit of poem that we're supposed to remember from over 100 pages ago that doesn't particularly seem relevant to the subject at hand)""(Thinly veiled metaphor about potion mixing)"...40 more pages of this.It's as if they're speaking in code and I'm supposed to follow along. Worse yet, it feels as though I'm trying to solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery where I've not been given the clues, otherwise trustworthy characters are deliberately withholding information, the stakes aren't plainly laid out and the author is intent on solving a very different mystery from the one the reader and the characters are engaged in. If it sounds like I'm struggling to articulate my frustration, frankly I am--because I equally struggled to understand what was going on and why I should care. It's like if Sherlock were horribly (and very vaguely) cursed and we wanted to know how and why that came to be, but Arthur Conan Doyle just wanted to wax poetic about how great Watson is by telling us all about his childhood for 200 pages first, only revealing anything about the central mystery of the story in the last 50 pages of a 600 page novel. That might be a bit on the nose.We want to undestand Bren and his motivations, but we're simply not allowed to. That makes his sacrifice seem significantly less heroic because we don't understand what the stakes are. That becomes endlessly frustrating as his plight is the central conflict of the book and it is, time and time again, skipped over to dwell on much more boring aspects of the plot. For instance...I don't think giving Lusielle an elaborate back story (inelegantly revealed via pages and pages of telling and not showing) actually makes her character stronger. She was very strong as a person who, despite humble beginnings, proves to be more dedicated, more thoughtful and more witty than anyone is willing to give her credit for. She holds firmly to the idea that her classist society is unfair, but when certain things are revealed about Lusielle's past and parentage you're left with the empty feeling that her specialness has less to do with her and more to do with a series of ever expanding, elaborate, nonsensical plot contrivances and the desire to inject the story with epic lore--at the expense of the social commentary Machado seemed intent on making in the first place. This doesn't enhance the story, it weighs it down. The swashbuckling fun we've been enjoying grinds to a halt. I think 300 pages in is the point at which Machado decided she wanted to write a sequel and that she needed to flesh out her world. Were that the case, the wiser thing to do would be to revise the story from page one to better incorporate the epic elements. That's not what happened here and the story suffers because it's just too overstuffed with plot, and too badly paced to keep us interested.The two main characters (the very thing that kept this book going) are separated for almost 250 pages. This is a terrible thing since their relationship and interactions were the driving force for the story's momentum. Lusielle's mini adventure with Severo is more interesting then Bren's nonadventure with Hato, but I slogged through the last 200 or so pages. We're forced to read, instead of adventure and romance, about politics and ancient history, but neither is interesting enough to force the story forward for such huge portions of the book. It was agonizing. It took two weeks to read less than I had in one weekend. I found myself getting angrier and angrier with how the last act of the book was mishandled. Even Machado's stylistic quirks become more frequent and irksome at this point because these pages are joyless, confusing and boring.By far the most frustrating thing about The Curse Giver (besides the title villain herself who shows up for a grand total of 40 pages and is deeply uninteresting with no clear motive for her villainy--which dilutes the emotional punch of the ending, in which Lusielle actually comes up with a clever and refreshingly positive way to save the day) is that I can see the better book lying right there between the lines. I can see how with better editing and more narrative focus this could have been rollickingly good right to the end. I think Machado has a better book in her yet, and I look forward to reading it.**I found the characters of Elfu and Carfu troubling and problematic. They're described as being dark skinned "monkey men" which, in my opinion, hearkens to nasty racial stereotypes of African Americans. I hated this in particular.
review 2: Not only was this book REALLY long (550 pages), it was also really complex and hard to follow at times. I'm not going to try and give a synopsis, because I'm sure I would just end up confusing you. I'll try to keep this review short and sweet.I really did enjoy this book. It took me a couple of chapters to get hooked, but then once I was, I couldn't put it down. It wasn't that the beginning of the book was boring or anything, it was just a lot of information in a short amount of time, and it was kind of confusing. The whole premise of this book revolves around a mysterious curse that was placed on a man and his sons. To date, the father and three brothers have died from the curse, and the fourth son is currently searching for a way to defeat the curse. The problem is, none of the people involved really know what the curse is, who cast it, what it entails, or how to break it. That being said, if that is the whole plot of the book, I think that it's understandable that the reader is easily as confused as the characters themselves are. The part I did understand was that the current Lord of Laonia, Bren, is constantly searching for women that bear the Goddess' mark somewhere on their body. Apparently somehow Bren and his adviser, Hato, have determined that in order to break the curse they must find this certain woman with this mark. So, they end up following a lead and rescuing Lusielle from being burned on a pyre for witchcraft. She happens to have a mark of butterfly wings on her back. Long story short, Bren is supposed to kill her to satisfy the curse, but he finds himself falling for her, and is unable to go through with it. Luckily for him he allows her to live, because it turns out that she is actually very instrumental in his continued future. I really liked all of the characters. There were a lot of them and they were all very well written and developed. I also really liked the story itself. There were a lot of different plot lines that twisted and turned, and at times I got lost and confused, but I was able to follow enough of the story to enjoy it. I would have given this book a 4 or 5 star rating if it was an easier read, but unfortunately I struggled a little bit too much. I highly recommend this book though if you like books that make you think, and are full of layer upon layer of mystery and intrigue. less

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