Once Upon a Time II – The Serpent Bride
Apr 16th, 2008 by heidi
Something I’ve been considering for a while now is the way that recommendations by other authors and the famed jacket-quotes influence readers. I know that they’re intended to make a book by a new or lesser-known author seem more appealing to people buying into the bestseller phenomenon, but sometimes they backfire. Anything that gets compared to the Da Vinci Code makes me think twice before buying it. On the cover of this particular book (and it’s just as well I didn’t know it was there before requesting it from the library) was a comparison to Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind.
I’m glad to say that The Serpent Bride by Sara Douglass is better than the works by either of those authors. While there is a rather gratuitous rape/torture scene (one of my pet peeves), it’s easily skipped over and the rest of the book makes up for it. Although I got a bit tired of the constant harping on Ishbel’s (female protagonist) doubt that Maximilian (male protagonist) loves her, the story itself isn’t incredibly original (bad vs. good, ancient enemy rises again to be reborn and conquer the world) but holds together.
I’m going to buy this book and the second book in the series when it comes out in paperback – you know, of course, that somehow Ishbel and Maximilian have to end up together and I’m curious to see how the story goes. I did find it fairly clever that Douglass manages to make a cult that specialises in fortune-telling by disembowelling a conscious man the good side – it wasn’t a take on the situation that I was expecting!
A second general fantasy read, then – I still have mythology left to go and will have to search for something to fit in that category!
I have to agree that author quotes can be very influencing. I have picked up many a book because authors I like have a quote on it. Conversely I tend to steer away from books that are compared to big blockbuster novels like Da Vinci Code or Harry Potter, even if I have nothing against those works. I understand why marketing execs make these comparisons, but it tends to throw a negative light on the book in that it makes it sound like the person just copied the other work somehow. I’m glad you enjoyed this one in spite of any comparisons.