Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (11)

Guilty Pleasures: C.L. Wilson's Tairen Soul quartet
September 5, 2008

My husband is the source of many great ideas, and when I was musing about what to blog about today, he suggested a feature on Guilty Pleasures. I'm not a big fan of that phrase, because I'm not a big fan of feeling guilt or embarrassment around reading material. On the other hand, I've certainly had the experience of exclaiming "I can't believe how [cheesy/trite/predictable] this book is!" and then diving right back into reading it. The key to guilty pleasures is that they're pleasurable. They may be cheesy or trite or predictable, they may contain politics that make you want to grit your teeth, they may cover ground so well-worn that it's got potholes, they may barely bother to file the serial numbers off the source material, but they're still entertaining. I think the idea of entertainment as an aspect that's distinct from prose styling, tight plotting, or 3D characterization is one that deserves closer examination. When people decry The Da Vinci Code or some of the later Harry Potter books, they may be right to scorn the quality of the writing, but for many people, that consideration is completely outweighed by the quality of the entertainment. I would say this is the key element of many literary guilty pleasures. Let's also not forget that there's usually a reason cliches become cliches: they work, and they work even after rapid repetition. They can and do burn out, but it takes a surprisingly long time.

My most recent literary guilty pleasure is C.L. Wilson's Tairen Soul quartet, or rather, the first three books of it; the fourth is due out next summer. From the outside, it looks like a complete cheese-o-rama. There's a fairy princess in disguise as a mere mortal, and she is both tender and strong as well as being morally conflicted and slightly tainted. There's a tortured hero with I-kid-you-not lavender eyes, and he is both noble and full of uncontrollable rage that only his mate can soothe. There's a really villainous villain who lures people with the temptation of soul-killing but super-powerful forbidden magic in what amounts to a defense of the 2nd Amendment. There are... I can't even write this without giggling a little... there are magical flying telepathic shape-shifting fire-breathing singing cats. And once I picked up the first book, I didn't stop reading until I'd blown through the second and third and was wondering when the fourth would be out. They're like candy!

Here's what makes them enough of a pleasure to overcome the immediate eye-rolling. Wilson's prose is really exemplary; her plotting, while not unpredictable, is fairly tight with decent pacing; and the romance between Rain and Ellysetta is surprisingly realistic given that they get around prohibitions on premarital sex by going to a private chatroom with magical telepathic lovemaking. There's still the inescapable soul-bonding, of course--a phrase that always reminds me of Krazy Glue--but Ellysetta makes sure Rain doesn't take her for granted, the completion of the bond (after which I guess they can no longer peel their fingers apart) requires them to achieve genuine emotional closeness rather than just being something fate and/or genetics has inflicted on them, and their arguments are plot-drivers as well as excuses for make-up sex. Best of all, characters get called on their stupid behavior. I love it when this happens. If a character's actions make me wave my arms and exclaim "Why did you do that?!" it's tremendously gratifying to have someone in the book wave their arms and exclaim "Why did you do that?!". It also tells me that the author is actually thinking, and not just trying to keep the plot moving by the very cheap trick of having people do insanely boneheaded things to create drama and tension.

What are your guilty pleasures? What makes you a little embarrassed to be seen with them in public, and what makes them worth reading anyway?

Posted by Rose Fox on September 5, 2008 | Comments (11)