Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead
Thursday, 8 April 2010 23:56![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lea_hazelI was planning on doing things today and instead I didn't do anything, so have a review instead.
Last week I finished reading Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead and I have mixed feelings about it. I went into this hoping that this might be the One True Urban Fantasy Series that I could fall in love with, and maybe some of my enjoyment was detracted by wanting this to be a book that it just couldn't be. Then again, maybe I cut this book too much slack because I wanted to like it.
First things first: the back cover blurb is terrible. It jumps ahead of itself in terms of one of the romantic plotlines, which I would have preferred to read as it unfolded with no previous knowledge. It oversells the "Sex and the City with agents of hell" angle of the book (as several reviews I read already noted), which is really a fairly small aspect of the book. However, it is quite interesting in the way it unintentionally revealed to me one of the major themes of the book. Now, this might be one of those things where I read way too much into something that the author never intended, but in this case, I rather doubt it.
Georgina Kincaid is a succubus, and she is pathetic. A succubus, she corrects early on, is not a type of demon. In this cosmology, demons, imps, vampires and succubi (and incubi, although they don't appear) are different kinds of servants of hell. Angels and other servants of heaven exist also, and oppose them. Demons and true angels are higher immortals, pre-human beings of Biblical magnitude and power, whereas all the others are lesser immortals, humans who were promoted.
Georgina is a reluctant servant of hell, vis a vis her direct supervisor, a demon who calls himself Jerome (insert quip about how hell invented middle management). She lives in Seattle and is meant to seduce and corrupt mortal men, feed off of their life energy, and further the goals of hell. The thermodynamics are internally consistent; the more pure the person she sleeps with, the more she corrupts him, and the more energy she acquires in the process. It's an exothermic reaction! But Georgina doesn't want to destroy people's lives, so she only sleeps with assholes. You asked why girls only date jerks and not nice guys, well now you have your answer: because they don't want to suck out your soul and take years off of your life.
This is why Georgina is pathetic. Not because she has "great shoes and no afterlife", but because she is stuck, forever, in a job that she hates. She has almost no useful powers, only shapeshifting, charisma and the attractive glow she receives when she feeds. Compared to other immortals, she's seriously underpowered. The powers she does have prevent her from ever having a normal, healthy relationship. Georgina wants to fall in love and start a family, not damn people's souls. She can, ostensibly, have any man she sets her sights on, but he would end up paying a heavy price. She could have a relationship with another immortal, but Georgina's real problem is that she wants to be human again herself.
The plot proceeds much as expected. The identity and central conflict of the main love interest is spoiled on the cover, but the relationship itself is well-written and fairly compelling; Seth is eloquent in writing but socially awkward in person, their relationship proceeds as a comfortable friendship with momentary spikes of lust, up until the climactic battle, where it culminates in an unconscious (heh) declaration of love. This declaration, and Georgina's response to it, were probably my favorite part of the book.
An obligatory competitive love-interest also shows up, and as obligatory, he's the exact opposite of Seth. Roman is suave, charming, well-dressed, etc. etc. and the relationship between Georgina and him is based strongly on lust. He comes across, to me, as a needy, creepy, passive-aggressive guy who's more obsessed with Georgina (randomly, based off of no particular trait of hers that I can discern other than beauty) than in love with her. What he offers Georgina, and the fact that she seriously considers accepting, mainly serve to show how starved for intimacy she is.
The supporting cast is so-so. Because of her role as a diabolical seductress, and her literal and figurative hunger for sexual attention, most of the mortal characters are shown as being at least infatuated with Georgina. Curiously, none of her immortal friends are. Or, maybe it's not curious, insert quip about making sausage. As I think I mentioned before, though, Georgina has no female friends, as in, not one. The only women who appear in the book are very minor, excepting one foil that later becomes a villain. Women show up to make Georgina feel bad about how she can't have kids, or to set up highly annoying Madonna/Whore dichotomies. Meh.
Carter is the most interesting supporting character so far. Initially, Georgina is sort of Jerome's "teacher's pet", they have a friendly, quippy relationship and he's not too hard on her. By contrast, Jerome's obligatory angel best bud, Carter, gets on her nerves for no clear reason. By the end of the book, though, Jerome and Georgina's friendship is totally soured and she comes to see him as cold, whereas Carter becomes a supportive shoulder to cry on. I'm 98% certain he's trying to save her soul.
I find Georgina at least potentially compelling. Her relationships with Seth and with Carter are interesting. The succubus premise is not a very central aspect of her life in this book, but promises to be the opposite in the second book, Succubus on Top. As far as I can tell, the titles have an unusually strong correlation to the actual content of the book. This book's main thesis is, indeed, Georgina's blues. So to speak. My natural skepticism of Christian mythologies in fantasy, the lack of women in the supporting cast, and a certain amount of dubious research* all deter me. All in all, I haven't decided if I'll continue reading this series.
* Seriously. Nephilim is plural. Writing a sentence that starts with "A Nephilim did so and so" makes it look like you did not even think to use a concordance. If your villain is a Nephil (or Naphil), he knows Biblical Hebrew.
Anyway. Yeah.
Last week I finished reading Succubus Blues by Richelle Mead and I have mixed feelings about it. I went into this hoping that this might be the One True Urban Fantasy Series that I could fall in love with, and maybe some of my enjoyment was detracted by wanting this to be a book that it just couldn't be. Then again, maybe I cut this book too much slack because I wanted to like it.
First things first: the back cover blurb is terrible. It jumps ahead of itself in terms of one of the romantic plotlines, which I would have preferred to read as it unfolded with no previous knowledge. It oversells the "Sex and the City with agents of hell" angle of the book (as several reviews I read already noted), which is really a fairly small aspect of the book. However, it is quite interesting in the way it unintentionally revealed to me one of the major themes of the book. Now, this might be one of those things where I read way too much into something that the author never intended, but in this case, I rather doubt it.
Georgina Kincaid is a succubus, and she is pathetic. A succubus, she corrects early on, is not a type of demon. In this cosmology, demons, imps, vampires and succubi (and incubi, although they don't appear) are different kinds of servants of hell. Angels and other servants of heaven exist also, and oppose them. Demons and true angels are higher immortals, pre-human beings of Biblical magnitude and power, whereas all the others are lesser immortals, humans who were promoted.
Georgina is a reluctant servant of hell, vis a vis her direct supervisor, a demon who calls himself Jerome (insert quip about how hell invented middle management). She lives in Seattle and is meant to seduce and corrupt mortal men, feed off of their life energy, and further the goals of hell. The thermodynamics are internally consistent; the more pure the person she sleeps with, the more she corrupts him, and the more energy she acquires in the process. It's an exothermic reaction! But Georgina doesn't want to destroy people's lives, so she only sleeps with assholes. You asked why girls only date jerks and not nice guys, well now you have your answer: because they don't want to suck out your soul and take years off of your life.
This is why Georgina is pathetic. Not because she has "great shoes and no afterlife", but because she is stuck, forever, in a job that she hates. She has almost no useful powers, only shapeshifting, charisma and the attractive glow she receives when she feeds. Compared to other immortals, she's seriously underpowered. The powers she does have prevent her from ever having a normal, healthy relationship. Georgina wants to fall in love and start a family, not damn people's souls. She can, ostensibly, have any man she sets her sights on, but he would end up paying a heavy price. She could have a relationship with another immortal, but Georgina's real problem is that she wants to be human again herself.
The plot proceeds much as expected. The identity and central conflict of the main love interest is spoiled on the cover, but the relationship itself is well-written and fairly compelling; Seth is eloquent in writing but socially awkward in person, their relationship proceeds as a comfortable friendship with momentary spikes of lust, up until the climactic battle, where it culminates in an unconscious (heh) declaration of love. This declaration, and Georgina's response to it, were probably my favorite part of the book.
An obligatory competitive love-interest also shows up, and as obligatory, he's the exact opposite of Seth. Roman is suave, charming, well-dressed, etc. etc. and the relationship between Georgina and him is based strongly on lust. He comes across, to me, as a needy, creepy, passive-aggressive guy who's more obsessed with Georgina (randomly, based off of no particular trait of hers that I can discern other than beauty) than in love with her. What he offers Georgina, and the fact that she seriously considers accepting, mainly serve to show how starved for intimacy she is.
The supporting cast is so-so. Because of her role as a diabolical seductress, and her literal and figurative hunger for sexual attention, most of the mortal characters are shown as being at least infatuated with Georgina. Curiously, none of her immortal friends are. Or, maybe it's not curious, insert quip about making sausage. As I think I mentioned before, though, Georgina has no female friends, as in, not one. The only women who appear in the book are very minor, excepting one foil that later becomes a villain. Women show up to make Georgina feel bad about how she can't have kids, or to set up highly annoying Madonna/Whore dichotomies. Meh.
Carter is the most interesting supporting character so far. Initially, Georgina is sort of Jerome's "teacher's pet", they have a friendly, quippy relationship and he's not too hard on her. By contrast, Jerome's obligatory angel best bud, Carter, gets on her nerves for no clear reason. By the end of the book, though, Jerome and Georgina's friendship is totally soured and she comes to see him as cold, whereas Carter becomes a supportive shoulder to cry on. I'm 98% certain he's trying to save her soul.
I find Georgina at least potentially compelling. Her relationships with Seth and with Carter are interesting. The succubus premise is not a very central aspect of her life in this book, but promises to be the opposite in the second book, Succubus on Top. As far as I can tell, the titles have an unusually strong correlation to the actual content of the book. This book's main thesis is, indeed, Georgina's blues. So to speak. My natural skepticism of Christian mythologies in fantasy, the lack of women in the supporting cast, and a certain amount of dubious research* all deter me. All in all, I haven't decided if I'll continue reading this series.
* Seriously. Nephilim is plural. Writing a sentence that starts with "A Nephilim did so and so" makes it look like you did not even think to use a concordance. If your villain is a Nephil (or Naphil), he knows Biblical Hebrew.
Anyway. Yeah.
