(no subject)
Feb. 9th, 2013 11:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI 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.
(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.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:19 pm (UTC)sometimes I am glad I have a tendency to get distracted and never ever finish like half the books I read, because it means I usually succeed at not subjecting myself to the ENTIRETY of particularly awful books....
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:27 pm (UTC)WHAT.
WHAT.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:36 pm (UTC)I feel this is inadequate to express my feelings but I don't even know where to start.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:37 pm (UTC)That said, I think we can probably blame Henry VIII: Wolfman at least a little on Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:40 pm (UTC)I can't even
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:41 pm (UTC)I...
WUT?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:52 pm (UTC)I'm not sorryNo, I am. But only because I'm about to start singing Sit On My Face, and this is your warning.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:57 pm (UTC)And, I mean, it's not the concept per se that I take offense at! If the concept were regularly done well, I would REJOICE at the trend! What I take offense at really is the fact that I KNOW dozens of people who could have written a great "Henry VIII is a werewolf" story but inevitably what we get, in this and every case, is the most godawful interpretation imaginable.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:01 pm (UTC)Why do Great Man histories have to have demon/vampire/werewolf hunting in them? WHY DO WE NEED THAT?
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:23 pm (UTC)Skimming down my reading page, I thought this was going to be a post about Wolf Hall. /stares in fascination
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:32 pm (UTC)(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.)
OMG I DO THIS TOO! And now my shame is doubled thanks to Goodreads. (I'm not sure which is more shameful, actually - letting a book languish in "currently reading" for aaaaages or making it disappear without ever marking it read.)
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
Best sentence I have ever read.
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.
UGH. I hate that. They should make violent-throw-proof Kindles.
no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-09 07:00 pm (UTC)Violent throwing is the one piece of book functionality that it's very hard for Kindles to duplicate!