(no subject)

[skygiants]

I have a weird compulsion to finish books I start, regardless of whether or not I'm actually enjoying them. Like, if I don't finish it, it's like the book has BEATEN me and I DON'T LIKE TO BE BEATEN.

(This is related to my compulsion to read every book I get out of the library before I have to give it back, otherwise THE LIBRARY WINS.)

. . . the reason this is relevant is because Henry VIII: Wolfman came as close as anything has come in the past five or six years to beating me. It didn't, in the end, the compulsion won out, but I wish it hadn't, because seriously, self, LIFE'S TOO SHORT.

You may well ask: "WHY were you reading Henry VIII: Wolfman to begin with?" The answer to this question is threefold:

1. Fatal curiosity
2. In the first place I saw it on sale, they had typoed the title as Henry VII: Wolfman, and THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AMAZING. NOBODY writes Henry VII pastiche! So anyone who would think to write Henry VII werewolf fanfic is someone I feel happy about supporting
3. My roommate literally gave me a dollar to do it

I should have known when I read the first chapter, in which Henry VIII eats his queen. ~but which queen!~ is the mystery you have to read the rest of the book to find the answer to. I should have just stopped there.

Don't worry about spoilers, because YOU SHOULDN'T CARE. YOU SHOULD NOT READ THIS BOOK. But for the equally fatally curious,

- Cardinal Wolsey is in charge of a secret band of demon hunters that includes Thomas More and Strong Female Character Jane Seymour
- Katherine of Aragon actually has a son, but then it gets EATEN BY BABY WEREWOLVES
- one of whom also bites and werewolves Henry VIII
- Secret Demon Hunter Thomas More gets raped by a werewolf lady in the woods and then held prisoner for a while as an accomplice by a . . . Comedy Torturing Feminist Witch Hunter . . . who spends all her time complaining that it's sexist that women can't hold jobs as executioners . . .?
- anyway Strong Female Character Jane Seymour tries to rescue him, but she accidentally rescues the wrong person, and meanwhile Thomas More catches the sweating sickness
- sidebar: the werewolves bring the sweating sickness to England because they're using sweating sickness victims as . . . like . . . projectile werewolf zombies? I DON'T KNOW EITHER
- but then there's basically a zombie contamination zone in the middle of England so there you go
- anyway Comedy Torturing Feminist Witch Hunter and her hapless husband nurse Thomas More back to health and they make weird friends, because all the torture in this book is played for comedy so she's really not all that bad, I guess! ANYWAY SHE'S REALLY GOOD AT KILLING WEREWOLVES AND THAT'S WHAT COUNTS
- back at the ranch, the werewolf lady seduces Anne Boleyn, who also gets turned into a werewolf, and she and Henry go on gleeful eating-people rampages together
- meanwhile Sir William Compton gets the sweating sickness, and his boyfriend gets accidentally Comedy Tortured to Death by Cardinal Wolsey, and then Cardinal Wolsey comes and mercy-kills William Compton by SITTING ON HIS FACE
- then Thomas More comes to tell Henry about the incoming werewolf sweating sickness zombie invasion but accidentally PUNCHES OUT ANNE BOLEYN so he gets sentenced to death
- but he gets rescued by the Comedy Torture Couple and smuggled off to live in the country somewhere so that's all right
- then it turns out that there's a cure for werewolf-ism by killing the leader of the wolf pack or something, I don't know
- but Strong Female Character Jane Seymour accidentally kills the werewolf leader before Henry can get to him
- so it turns out Henry never gets over being a werewolf and the queen he eventually eats is Jane Seymour. Surprise twist ending!

AND NOW YOU KNOW EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THE BOOK, minus several hundred pages of Comedy Torture and extremely graphic depictions of werewolves tearing off people's faces and eating people's guts.

The thing is it's not even that this is the most poorly-written book I've read in five years or anything? I have read many bad books in my life and somewhere deep in my heart I have to one extent or another enjoyed reading most of them, because even terrible things are often entertainingly terrible. But between the constant gross-outs and the expectation that I was supposed to find it all funny, I got pretty much zero pleasure from this book.

So, well done, Henry VIII: Wolfman! YOU ALMOST DEFEATED ME. But you were saved by the fact that I was reading you on Kindle, and therefore I was not able to throw you violently across the room.

Comments

[agonistes]

Yeah -- it's like... the title is so descriptive that you don't feel the need to read the book, but at the same time it's license to be as horrible as possible? SOMETHING.

Why do Great Man histories have to have demon/vampire/werewolf hunting in them? WHY DO WE NEED THAT?

[skygiants]

I DON'T GET IT. Like, the problem I had with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is that it basically took the attitude "this story would be boring without the zombies," and I guess it's the same with people who write these histories, when IN FACT the people you need to write them are the people who are like "This story/history is FASCINATING! And here's another fascinating exploration of it!" But those are not the people getting hired.

[jinian]

Just so we can get a commercially published example of doing it right in this thread: Jo Walton is that person, and Tooth and Claw is that book. It's Trollope's Framley Parsonage, but everyone is dragons, and that fact makes the Victorian tropes make sense. (You must have read this already, though, right?)

[coffeeandink]

Also, there are the vampires and Richard III in John M. Ford's The Dragon Waiting. Though, of course, that also has an entire alternate history of Europe where Christianity never gained prominence (or, possibly, existed), so everyone worships local gods or Roman gods or Romanized versions of local gods.

It is very good, despite the lack of literal dragons.

[skygiants]

I think once you add the actually fully realized alternate history, you can be considered well out of [cardboard cutout classic + x] territory.

Which is to say, thank you for the rec. :D

[skygiants]

I have indeed read and loved it, it was the first Jo Walton book I ever read!

Another example that predates the current trend is Sharon Shinn's Jenna Starborn, Jane Eyre With Cyborgs, which is . . . . still not actually very good, but INFINITELY BETTER than the current crop.

[pedanther]

the problem I had with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is that it basically took the attitude "this story would be boring without the zombies," and I guess it's the same with people who write these histories, when IN FACT the people you need to write them are the people who are like "This story/history is FASCINATING! And here's another fascinating exploration of it!" But those are not the people getting hired.

If Dreamwidth had a Like button, I'd be hitting it so hard right now.

[rymenhild]

Alternately, why do werewolf hunters need to be Great Men?

[skygiants]

Because only Great Men ever do anything! Did you not get the memo?