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Just finished Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire. And... I think I have come to the conclusion that I am not, generally speaking, much of a fan of Gregory Maguire? Probably?
I read Wicked and liked it well enough... but it didn't, like, totally blow me away or anything. If you only ever read one novel by Gregory Maguire, and only one, it might as well be Wicked. Enough said on that. (Disclaimer: I have not seen the Broadway musical or any other version of the Wicked story that may exist outside of the novel itself, so I cannot comment on any of that stuff, good or bad. I hear that the musical is really good, though. Then again, I also heard that the novel was really good, so...? *shrug*)
I read Son of a Witch and thought the first half was much blander than Wicked and that the protagonist Liir was a much less interesting character than Elphaba, the protagonist of Wicked. Then, after a certain event in the story, I stopped simply not caring about Liir and started to actively hate Liir and considered him to be, essentially, a villain protagonist forever after that point, even into his (blessedly brief) appearances in the later novels, and I didn't really much care whether Son of a Witch ended with him "winning" or getting a "happy" ending or whatever. Mind you, my level of dislike for Liir isn't anything near the levels of my utter loathing for, say, Stephen King's characters Annie Wilkes or Greg Stillson or Big Jim Rennie, but then Liir was meant to be the "good guy," rather than an irredeemable villain like those other characters. This is my least favorite Maguire novel, by far (well, maybe not so far, as we'll see when I get to Mirror, Mirror).
A Lion Among Men was, again, okay, but nothing spectacular. Brrr was okay as protagonist, I guess. Probably ranked third on the list of Maguire's Oz books for me, above Son of a Witch but below the other two.
Out of Oz was almost as good as Wicked, but, yet again, nothing utterly mind-blowing. I liked Rain well enough. She never did anything to make me hate her, the same way her father did in the second book. Fortunate that she had relatively little "on-screen" time in his presence.
More recently, within the past couple of months or so, I've read Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and just last night finished Mirror, Mirror.
Confessions was almost up to Wicked level, in my opinion. Like how Wicked was sort of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but told from the perspective of the Witch, Confessions was the Cinderella story, but told from the perspective of one of the stepsisters. But, same as all the rest, Maguire's (in my opinion) typically wooden writing style didn't exactly wow me or anything. It got the job done, but that's it.
Lost was... I'm not exactly sure what Lost was, to be honest. An original story set in the modern world? A weird retelling of A Christmas Carol? A weird retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? A weird combo Christmas Carol/Alice story with a dash of Peter Pan thrown in? Also Jack the Ripper, but not really? I'm not exactly sure. I didn't completely dislike it, certainly not as much as I disliked Son of a Witch or Mirror, Mirror (getting to that in a bit), but the story was a bit too meandering for my tastes.
And now to Mirror, Mirror. I'll get into some mild-to-moderate spoilers after this point, so be warned.
Mirror, Mirror was the story of Snow White... but told from the perspective of the "evil Queen"? Kind of? Sort of? Except not really? Like, at all? But partially it was? This is because the perspective would shift from chapter to chapter. Who the POV character was would also shift from chapter to chapter. Most of the time it was in third person. But sometimes it would be first person from the perspective of Snow White (in this case a girl named Bianca de Nevada who lived in 1500s Italy, and as far as I recall, the phrase "snow white" was never once used in the book, aside from "Bianca de Nevada" itself sort of meaning that), or sometimes her father, or sometimes one of the dwarves, or, of course, sometimes from the perspective of the "evil Queen." The "evil Queen" in this case is a fictionalized version of the real life Lucrezia Borgia. For... some reason.
This one... I have to say that I disliked this one almost as much as I disliked Son of a Witch, but for different reasons. I didn't hate Bianca at all, in the same way that I hated Liir Thropp. She was just... bland, almost a non-entity. Inoffensive, but not stand-out.
As to the reasons I didn't like this book...
First, the constant shifts in perspective as mentioned above were rather tedious.
Second, I think that setting this in the supposed "real world" and, especially, using "real world" characters like Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, interacting with fictional characters like the de Nevada family was a bad call. (Then again, I liked Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, which did pretty much the same thing, so I guess it's more a matter of it simply not working for me in the case of Mirror, Mirror.)
Third, the only characters I actually "liked" (for some thin, weak meaning of the word "like") were the dwarves themselves, which seemed more like earth spirits or elementals than traditional dwarves. And, perhaps, the side characters of Primavera and Fra Ludovico, both of whom each had more personality to them than either Bianca or her father.
Fourth, aside from the subplot of Bianca's father, Vicente de Nevada, being forced on a seemingly futile quest by Cesare Borgia to obtain a branch of the Biblical Tree of Knowledge (yes, really, that's where the Snow White apple comes from in this story), the overall plot was just a bare-bones retelling of Snow White, with occasional tangents off into some of (Gregory Maguire's interpretation of) the real life stuff involving the Borgia family (though we only ever "see" Lucrezia and Cesare, and the story only ever actually follows Lucrezia) that had little to nothing to do with anything else in the story, except to showcase how evil the Borgias were (in story, at least, as I'm not sure how "true-to-life" any of the stuff in this novel was to the real Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia). It would be like "Here is Lucrezia, off somewhere else, doing such and such things that have little to nothing to do with this retelling of Snow White... and then she randomly decided to return to Montefiore once more, in order to resume her role as the villain of this Snow White story again, for some reason."
I don't dislike Mirror, Mirror quite as much as I disliked Son of a Witch, but it's close. It's definitely my second least favorite Maguire book.
So yeah... in conclusion, I can't say that I'm a fan of Gregory Maguire all that much. I don't hate the dude or his writing. He's not the worst writer I've ever read, to be sure. His stuff is certainly leagues better than, say, Varney the Vampire or whatever. He's just not my cup of tea, mostly. That said, given that I did like at least some of his stuff, I'm not totally opposed to maybe someday reading his books that he wrote after Mirror, Mirror. It's just that I don't have access to any of that right now, nor do I care to make any special effort to acquire it.
Just finished Mirror, Mirror by Gregory Maguire. And... I think I have come to the conclusion that I am not, generally speaking, much of a fan of Gregory Maguire? Probably?
I read Wicked and liked it well enough... but it didn't, like, totally blow me away or anything. If you only ever read one novel by Gregory Maguire, and only one, it might as well be Wicked. Enough said on that. (Disclaimer: I have not seen the Broadway musical or any other version of the Wicked story that may exist outside of the novel itself, so I cannot comment on any of that stuff, good or bad. I hear that the musical is really good, though. Then again, I also heard that the novel was really good, so...? *shrug*)
I read Son of a Witch and thought the first half was much blander than Wicked and that the protagonist Liir was a much less interesting character than Elphaba, the protagonist of Wicked. Then, after a certain event in the story, I stopped simply not caring about Liir and started to actively hate Liir and considered him to be, essentially, a villain protagonist forever after that point, even into his (blessedly brief) appearances in the later novels, and I didn't really much care whether Son of a Witch ended with him "winning" or getting a "happy" ending or whatever. Mind you, my level of dislike for Liir isn't anything near the levels of my utter loathing for, say, Stephen King's characters Annie Wilkes or Greg Stillson or Big Jim Rennie, but then Liir was meant to be the "good guy," rather than an irredeemable villain like those other characters. This is my least favorite Maguire novel, by far (well, maybe not so far, as we'll see when I get to Mirror, Mirror).
A Lion Among Men was, again, okay, but nothing spectacular. Brrr was okay as protagonist, I guess. Probably ranked third on the list of Maguire's Oz books for me, above Son of a Witch but below the other two.
Out of Oz was almost as good as Wicked, but, yet again, nothing utterly mind-blowing. I liked Rain well enough. She never did anything to make me hate her, the same way her father did in the second book. Fortunate that she had relatively little "on-screen" time in his presence.
More recently, within the past couple of months or so, I've read Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Lost, and just last night finished Mirror, Mirror.
Confessions was almost up to Wicked level, in my opinion. Like how Wicked was sort of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but told from the perspective of the Witch, Confessions was the Cinderella story, but told from the perspective of one of the stepsisters. But, same as all the rest, Maguire's (in my opinion) typically wooden writing style didn't exactly wow me or anything. It got the job done, but that's it.
Lost was... I'm not exactly sure what Lost was, to be honest. An original story set in the modern world? A weird retelling of A Christmas Carol? A weird retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland? A weird combo Christmas Carol/Alice story with a dash of Peter Pan thrown in? Also Jack the Ripper, but not really? I'm not exactly sure. I didn't completely dislike it, certainly not as much as I disliked Son of a Witch or Mirror, Mirror (getting to that in a bit), but the story was a bit too meandering for my tastes.
And now to Mirror, Mirror. I'll get into some mild-to-moderate spoilers after this point, so be warned.
Mirror, Mirror was the story of Snow White... but told from the perspective of the "evil Queen"? Kind of? Sort of? Except not really? Like, at all? But partially it was? This is because the perspective would shift from chapter to chapter. Who the POV character was would also shift from chapter to chapter. Most of the time it was in third person. But sometimes it would be first person from the perspective of Snow White (in this case a girl named Bianca de Nevada who lived in 1500s Italy, and as far as I recall, the phrase "snow white" was never once used in the book, aside from "Bianca de Nevada" itself sort of meaning that), or sometimes her father, or sometimes one of the dwarves, or, of course, sometimes from the perspective of the "evil Queen." The "evil Queen" in this case is a fictionalized version of the real life Lucrezia Borgia. For... some reason.
This one... I have to say that I disliked this one almost as much as I disliked Son of a Witch, but for different reasons. I didn't hate Bianca at all, in the same way that I hated Liir Thropp. She was just... bland, almost a non-entity. Inoffensive, but not stand-out.
As to the reasons I didn't like this book...
First, the constant shifts in perspective as mentioned above were rather tedious.
Second, I think that setting this in the supposed "real world" and, especially, using "real world" characters like Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, interacting with fictional characters like the de Nevada family was a bad call. (Then again, I liked Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, which did pretty much the same thing, so I guess it's more a matter of it simply not working for me in the case of Mirror, Mirror.)
Third, the only characters I actually "liked" (for some thin, weak meaning of the word "like") were the dwarves themselves, which seemed more like earth spirits or elementals than traditional dwarves. And, perhaps, the side characters of Primavera and Fra Ludovico, both of whom each had more personality to them than either Bianca or her father.
Fourth, aside from the subplot of Bianca's father, Vicente de Nevada, being forced on a seemingly futile quest by Cesare Borgia to obtain a branch of the Biblical Tree of Knowledge (yes, really, that's where the Snow White apple comes from in this story), the overall plot was just a bare-bones retelling of Snow White, with occasional tangents off into some of (Gregory Maguire's interpretation of) the real life stuff involving the Borgia family (though we only ever "see" Lucrezia and Cesare, and the story only ever actually follows Lucrezia) that had little to nothing to do with anything else in the story, except to showcase how evil the Borgias were (in story, at least, as I'm not sure how "true-to-life" any of the stuff in this novel was to the real Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia). It would be like "Here is Lucrezia, off somewhere else, doing such and such things that have little to nothing to do with this retelling of Snow White... and then she randomly decided to return to Montefiore once more, in order to resume her role as the villain of this Snow White story again, for some reason."
I don't dislike Mirror, Mirror quite as much as I disliked Son of a Witch, but it's close. It's definitely my second least favorite Maguire book.
So yeah... in conclusion, I can't say that I'm a fan of Gregory Maguire all that much. I don't hate the dude or his writing. He's not the worst writer I've ever read, to be sure. His stuff is certainly leagues better than, say, Varney the Vampire or whatever. He's just not my cup of tea, mostly. That said, given that I did like at least some of his stuff, I'm not totally opposed to maybe someday reading his books that he wrote after Mirror, Mirror. It's just that I don't have access to any of that right now, nor do I care to make any special effort to acquire it.
