Cinderella Is Dead - Kaylnn Bayron
Feb. 21st, 2022 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverflight8An awful book I read for book club. I say this upfront because I am pretty sure I would never have picked up this book in the first place - I hate fairytale retellings, I last enjoyed a YA book in 2011, it was not fated to be - but also if I had, I'd have dropped it immediately, within the first two pages. Not angrily, like throwing it against the wall. Just the first few pages would have hit me, and then I'd have thought "well I think that's enough for now" and never picked it back up again.
However.
I had to read it, I hated it, I dissected it for book club, I still hate it.
I think the main problem with this book is it that it is just not very well done. Just mechanically, the author can't pull it off. She doesn't seem to know how to construct the story in a way that makes you feel for the protagonist, she doesn't know how to make setting that's interesting or well thought out, her writing on the prose level is tedious to read because she won't stop demonstrating and then re-telling what she wrote. The book has a high concept premise and then utterly fails to execute because the author doesn't have the chops. All my problems with it came down to this.
The plot basically boils down to a kingdom where girls, once they turn sixteen, are mandated to go to a ball where the men choose them as brides. This ball is in celebration of the first Cinderella, who existed, and who met Prince Charming at the ball. Sophia doesn't want to do any of this, she's in love with her friend Erin. But none of them have a choice. She goes to the ball but flees in the middle of it, meets an outlaw girl who is descended from the stepsisters, and they flee into the woods and meet a witch. They come up with a plan to kill Prince Charming.
The book is incredibly heavy-handed. It's honestly just short of closing every chapter with "Moral Lesson: a government that kills anyone who is arrested is Bad". Everything is ludicrously overdone. No one speaks - everyone opens their mouths and monologues fall out. I had to start skimming the dialogue because it bothered me so much. Furthermore it's clear that people also say things because the plot requires it. There's no sense that the dialogue is something that the character would say because that's the sort of person they are. Things happen because the plot would require it; startling things help the plot along because, well, they just do, all right? The stepsisters in the Disney version of Cinderella are portrayed as horrible and scheming; they are here, too, in the Palace Approved Version of the Text, but it is revealed later that actually, they were freedom fighters and extremely Good. Cinderella's mother was killed defying Prince Charming! I like that the stepsisters aren't evil - the latent undercurrent of misogyny is not subtle in their depiction - but it's not possible that they were ordinary people who were good and bad, or mostly good and a little impatient, or something. No, they have to be extra special perfect good people - quite literally martyrs, except no one knows them, but dying for their cause nonetheless to inspire Sophia later.
I also struggled to find something to enjoy about the book. Sometimes you read books for the plot, or you fall in love with the characters, or the romance is super fun to read. There are a variety of things one can enjoy about a book. I just couldn't find any. It also made me mad from a romance viewpoint. Sophia starts out the book in love with Erin, we are told this many times. But Erin is afraid and does not want to live with the consequences of defying the laws of the culture she's grown up with - the punishment for defiance is death, and their friend gets killed the night of the ball just like that. Sophia runs off without her, and promptly - like within a few days - falls in love with the outlaw girl. This is not a very satisfying book from a romance standpoint. Within a few days, Sophia goes from being in love with Erin for years, to being totally heads over heels for Constance.
There is much reference to the original tale of Cinderella. In this kingdom, it's practically a holy text. Every household has one, it's regularly read from and quoted, Sophia has much of it memorized. Part of the plot involves Sophia and Constance reading a non-"Palace approved" version of the book, which Constance is carrying around. The illustrations are different...for just this one story. This is part of the catalyst for them to realize that the story isn't right. I have so many objections this that I'm actually struggling to put them down. This whole book is just this multifaceted mess of incompetent, it's hard to convey. My biggest objection boils down to why is this necessary? This book was obviously written with an eye to the social justice aspect, to the high concept idea of Cinderella except what if she did not get married and had her own agency and was gay and black, and overthrew an oppressive regime? In that light, ow is it satisfying to have your protagonist realize the truth and be motivated to overthrow the evil king by realizing the palace's copy of the book is a distortion? Does it really matter so much that the palace is lying to you, so much as all the many (MANY) ways that Sophia's life is curtailed and . Why isn't the desire to overthrow him coming from somewhere internal? It just feels like such a weak way to do this.
Also, I know this is because this book does not operate on worldbuilding logic, but that's not how book illustrations work! Unless you think that all the books that everyone owns in this vaguely-medieval society are all hand-illustrated, and Constance just has an extra special copy. But everyone has a copy even though it's an illustration-heavy book and even today, would be expensive. There are so many weirdnesses like this, because Bayron either wants to draw clearer inferences to modern society, or didn't bother thinking about worldbuilding details, or just plain sloppiness. If you think about what's going on for more than a second, it doesn't make sense logistically or emotionally.
On the ideological note, I keep harping on this because that's clearly what Bayron built the book around. But some of the plot undercuts the message. They go for help to a witch in the woods, so in the end it's Constance, Sophia and Amina against Prince Charming. But then, shockingly! Amina is also evil! In fact, Prince Charming is evil because Amina was evil, and Amina is his mother. So the root of the evil is still....women. He's literally her son. I think you could certainly spin this in a way that would be a nuanced take - it's hard to exist in a patriarchal society and no one escapes it - but this is never really addressed, and it's galling that a book so devoted to and exclusively about The Moral Message is failing to deliver that, because Bayron didn't think through any of the implications. What also disappoints me is that Amina was initially depicted as someone who admitted that she made a huge mistake, and was angry and afraid and hiding (two hundred years later). But instead it just turns out she was evil and in league with Prince Charming all along.
The book ends with the monarchy being overthrown and a People's Approved Text of the Cinderella story published. I'm sure Bayron doesn't realize how much this screams Communist wording, and I feel quite confident about saying she did not intend this reading in the least - it's just sloppy. Also, the monarchy is overthrown, and now the kingdom Lille is overseen by another monarchy, with Constance at the head with "a council [of] six individuals, handpicked by [Constance]". Why Constance? Because she's the nearest kin. So yes, a government that passes power down to people via blood descent. Also Constance has been vocal about treating men the way women have been treated (no need to describe - just imagine a supremely heavy-handed misogynistic society, it's everything you imagine). The next words in the People's Approved Text are "They care only for the safety and well-being of Mersailles’s people." I know that this is not the intended reading, and I don't think I am overly cynical when I say that this wording feels extra fake and precisely the kind of propaganda-speak you might expect. And I'm not just nitpicking text that is in the book but not in-universe. This is text from the new Cinderella text, in-universe!
The book felt like it needed another major round of editing, to take out all the repetitions. It felt like a draft of the story, where you sit down and just try to get all the words out, so you repeat things, you have the characters demonstrate and then reiterate what they said or felt, just the raw brain-dump. This is tedious to read. I don't need someone to spoonfeed me the knowledge that "Sophia is frustrated" in the narration when she's just angrily told someone exactly why she's upset. This should have been cut!
While I hate to harp on this, I also did think that the protagonist was not particularly well-suited for her role. She kept talking loudly about how much she hated everything. This is a society where dissent is usually punished with immediate death! She, the most powerless person, is openly and loudly talking while at the palace about how she hates it and they should run away! Erin shushes her, but come on. The world warps around the protagonist because it needs to. Some modicum of bravery, or cunning, would be useful for a protagonist who has to go up against impossible odds and comes from a very repressive society, surely?
Finally, there's such a leadenness to the entire book because it's so unoriginal. It's a story of overthrowing the evil monarchy and there are so many recycled elements, both from a plot point and from the magical worldbuilding part. The revelation that Prince Charming is sucking the life out of the people he arrests - that's why young people arrested and killed have corpses that appear super old - was something I saw coming from the beginning of the book; the author goes on to drop other super cryptic hints about how there's a big flash of light when this happens, and so on.
AHHHH
1/10
However.
I had to read it, I hated it, I dissected it for book club, I still hate it.
I think the main problem with this book is it that it is just not very well done. Just mechanically, the author can't pull it off. She doesn't seem to know how to construct the story in a way that makes you feel for the protagonist, she doesn't know how to make setting that's interesting or well thought out, her writing on the prose level is tedious to read because she won't stop demonstrating and then re-telling what she wrote. The book has a high concept premise and then utterly fails to execute because the author doesn't have the chops. All my problems with it came down to this.
The plot basically boils down to a kingdom where girls, once they turn sixteen, are mandated to go to a ball where the men choose them as brides. This ball is in celebration of the first Cinderella, who existed, and who met Prince Charming at the ball. Sophia doesn't want to do any of this, she's in love with her friend Erin. But none of them have a choice. She goes to the ball but flees in the middle of it, meets an outlaw girl who is descended from the stepsisters, and they flee into the woods and meet a witch. They come up with a plan to kill Prince Charming.
The book is incredibly heavy-handed. It's honestly just short of closing every chapter with "Moral Lesson: a government that kills anyone who is arrested is Bad". Everything is ludicrously overdone. No one speaks - everyone opens their mouths and monologues fall out. I had to start skimming the dialogue because it bothered me so much. Furthermore it's clear that people also say things because the plot requires it. There's no sense that the dialogue is something that the character would say because that's the sort of person they are. Things happen because the plot would require it; startling things help the plot along because, well, they just do, all right? The stepsisters in the Disney version of Cinderella are portrayed as horrible and scheming; they are here, too, in the Palace Approved Version of the Text, but it is revealed later that actually, they were freedom fighters and extremely Good. Cinderella's mother was killed defying Prince Charming! I like that the stepsisters aren't evil - the latent undercurrent of misogyny is not subtle in their depiction - but it's not possible that they were ordinary people who were good and bad, or mostly good and a little impatient, or something. No, they have to be extra special perfect good people - quite literally martyrs, except no one knows them, but dying for their cause nonetheless to inspire Sophia later.
I also struggled to find something to enjoy about the book. Sometimes you read books for the plot, or you fall in love with the characters, or the romance is super fun to read. There are a variety of things one can enjoy about a book. I just couldn't find any. It also made me mad from a romance viewpoint. Sophia starts out the book in love with Erin, we are told this many times. But Erin is afraid and does not want to live with the consequences of defying the laws of the culture she's grown up with - the punishment for defiance is death, and their friend gets killed the night of the ball just like that. Sophia runs off without her, and promptly - like within a few days - falls in love with the outlaw girl. This is not a very satisfying book from a romance standpoint. Within a few days, Sophia goes from being in love with Erin for years, to being totally heads over heels for Constance.
There is much reference to the original tale of Cinderella. In this kingdom, it's practically a holy text. Every household has one, it's regularly read from and quoted, Sophia has much of it memorized. Part of the plot involves Sophia and Constance reading a non-"Palace approved" version of the book, which Constance is carrying around. The illustrations are different...for just this one story. This is part of the catalyst for them to realize that the story isn't right. I have so many objections this that I'm actually struggling to put them down. This whole book is just this multifaceted mess of incompetent, it's hard to convey. My biggest objection boils down to why is this necessary? This book was obviously written with an eye to the social justice aspect, to the high concept idea of Cinderella except what if she did not get married and had her own agency and was gay and black, and overthrew an oppressive regime? In that light, ow is it satisfying to have your protagonist realize the truth and be motivated to overthrow the evil king by realizing the palace's copy of the book is a distortion? Does it really matter so much that the palace is lying to you, so much as all the many (MANY) ways that Sophia's life is curtailed and . Why isn't the desire to overthrow him coming from somewhere internal? It just feels like such a weak way to do this.
Also, I know this is because this book does not operate on worldbuilding logic, but that's not how book illustrations work! Unless you think that all the books that everyone owns in this vaguely-medieval society are all hand-illustrated, and Constance just has an extra special copy. But everyone has a copy even though it's an illustration-heavy book and even today, would be expensive. There are so many weirdnesses like this, because Bayron either wants to draw clearer inferences to modern society, or didn't bother thinking about worldbuilding details, or just plain sloppiness. If you think about what's going on for more than a second, it doesn't make sense logistically or emotionally.
On the ideological note, I keep harping on this because that's clearly what Bayron built the book around. But some of the plot undercuts the message. They go for help to a witch in the woods, so in the end it's Constance, Sophia and Amina against Prince Charming. But then, shockingly! Amina is also evil! In fact, Prince Charming is evil because Amina was evil, and Amina is his mother. So the root of the evil is still....women. He's literally her son. I think you could certainly spin this in a way that would be a nuanced take - it's hard to exist in a patriarchal society and no one escapes it - but this is never really addressed, and it's galling that a book so devoted to and exclusively about The Moral Message is failing to deliver that, because Bayron didn't think through any of the implications. What also disappoints me is that Amina was initially depicted as someone who admitted that she made a huge mistake, and was angry and afraid and hiding (two hundred years later). But instead it just turns out she was evil and in league with Prince Charming all along.
The book ends with the monarchy being overthrown and a People's Approved Text of the Cinderella story published. I'm sure Bayron doesn't realize how much this screams Communist wording, and I feel quite confident about saying she did not intend this reading in the least - it's just sloppy. Also, the monarchy is overthrown, and now the kingdom Lille is overseen by another monarchy, with Constance at the head with "a council [of] six individuals, handpicked by [Constance]". Why Constance? Because she's the nearest kin. So yes, a government that passes power down to people via blood descent. Also Constance has been vocal about treating men the way women have been treated (no need to describe - just imagine a supremely heavy-handed misogynistic society, it's everything you imagine). The next words in the People's Approved Text are "They care only for the safety and well-being of Mersailles’s people." I know that this is not the intended reading, and I don't think I am overly cynical when I say that this wording feels extra fake and precisely the kind of propaganda-speak you might expect. And I'm not just nitpicking text that is in the book but not in-universe. This is text from the new Cinderella text, in-universe!
The book felt like it needed another major round of editing, to take out all the repetitions. It felt like a draft of the story, where you sit down and just try to get all the words out, so you repeat things, you have the characters demonstrate and then reiterate what they said or felt, just the raw brain-dump. This is tedious to read. I don't need someone to spoonfeed me the knowledge that "Sophia is frustrated" in the narration when she's just angrily told someone exactly why she's upset. This should have been cut!
While I hate to harp on this, I also did think that the protagonist was not particularly well-suited for her role. She kept talking loudly about how much she hated everything. This is a society where dissent is usually punished with immediate death! She, the most powerless person, is openly and loudly talking while at the palace about how she hates it and they should run away! Erin shushes her, but come on. The world warps around the protagonist because it needs to. Some modicum of bravery, or cunning, would be useful for a protagonist who has to go up against impossible odds and comes from a very repressive society, surely?
Finally, there's such a leadenness to the entire book because it's so unoriginal. It's a story of overthrowing the evil monarchy and there are so many recycled elements, both from a plot point and from the magical worldbuilding part. The revelation that Prince Charming is sucking the life out of the people he arrests - that's why young people arrested and killed have corpses that appear super old - was something I saw coming from the beginning of the book; the author goes on to drop other super cryptic hints about how there's a big flash of light when this happens, and so on.
AHHHH
1/10
no subject
Date: Feb. 23rd, 2022 02:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 23rd, 2022 02:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 23rd, 2022 03:15 am (UTC)But it is always fun to read a good book rant, so I enjoyed your writeup of this!
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Date: Feb. 23rd, 2022 03:53 am (UTC)Hahaha I'll extract enjoyment out of books one way or the other!!
no subject
Date: Feb. 23rd, 2022 07:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 23rd, 2022 05:28 pm (UTC)