First, I would like to point out that I love the works of all of these authors, despite the scrutiny I am about to give.
Okay! These will all be sort of intertwined, but I'll try to stay organized. Alphabetical order!
Anne Bishop: Her books (most notably Black Jewels Trilogy, but also Ephemera books) feature wonderfully fantastical worlds and characters. Her magic systems are quite unique, at least in my opinion, and she uses a combination of darker elements tinted with humor to keep the reader hooked and going.
And yet. These are not books you can read a second time, at least, not with some degree of shame and face palming. In fact, I couldn't even get through Pillars of the World the first time, because that book featured some incredibly unlikable characters, and I couldn't wait for character development to take hold, especially not Bishop character development. Her characters are almost painfully flat upon further inspection, and the only character development I have seen is to the negative. Case in point: Daemon Sadi. Where is the Sadist? I never once saw him being as badass as the title implies. Even his last Sadist moment, which was a CMoA the first time around, became quite dissatisfying a second time. This is not to say her characters can't be interesting; they can. Lucivar and Saetan and Surreal were amazing the first read, but still, their characters are comparatively flat. To add to this, the women, while powerful, are often whiny and unlikable. Really, while they lack the trap of trying to act masculine to be strong, they also depend on the males to an almost pathetic degree. Until Jaenelle's final attack, she differs to the males in order to get everything done. The males are also flat. They all turn into mushy little servants when Jaenelle shows up.
My next point is the almost Disney-like quality of the villains. After a certain point, it's just ridiculous. During the first read, Hekatah, Dorothea, and Sebastian's father in that book, were all such great villains because of their evilness. Honestly, the Mahrkagir of Kushiel's Avatar is more compelling, in that, despite his horribly heinous ways, he's sort of distantly relatable. Not so for Bishop's villains. They also employ the most classicly 'evil' traits to make you dislike them. They're abusive of their children, they rape people, little girls and main characters alike, they kill people for the funsies, and they want power. It's like Dragon Ball Z with sex instead of fights, I swear.
Which brings me to my next point. All of the conflict is so...tacky almost. The heroes stop the bad people within mere chapters of the evil plot being revealed. The only time this is not so is when the Ultimate Showdown is near. And all of the evil plots are so over-the-top bad, that it almost leaves me laughing. That is not to say that it isn't compelling the first time around.
Then there are her settings. As beautifully dark as they are, they almost seem to be a particularly imaginative teenager's idea of Dark and Edgy. Many of them are wonderful nonetheless, but really, after a certain point it is almost eye-roll inducing.
Now the positive. I truly love Anne Bishop's books the first time I read them. They are fantasy and escapism, if they lack a bit of depth. They're fast paced adventure with some stronger women, notably Surreal and Belladonna, and they have fantastic moments of heartwarming and funny and awesome. Truly. I don't even grudge the $21 I slapped down for the Trilogy, as there was at least that value of entertainment in them. The things I noted above are the products of critical rereading and thinking, things that you do for school work and not for the fun of it, typically.
And you can see how much I enjoyed the Black Jewels Trilogy in the Book Discussion thread. I freaking love those books, if only I can just think of the first read through.
Jacqueline Carey: Okay, I have relatively little negative to say about her, I am still infatuated.
The one thing that I have to say is that Joscelin and Phedre are almost too heroic, although they have enough depth that rereading multiple times is still a joy, and I can pick up on things I missed the first time around.
There is also the emerging pattern in her books. The character will spend the first part of the book in one place, figuring out what they must do. The next part is spent somewhere else, usually with a conflict, which leads them to the last place, which has the final conflict and resolution. Despite this, Carey makes all of the books unique enough, and messes with the formula enough to make them compelling enough that I can read all seven without regret.
There is also the Imriel trilogy. In Avatar, Imriel was pretty cool. In Scion, he was a whiny weeny, and I just wanted to slap him. The books lacked the drive of Phedre's, Imriel was a less likable character, and his thing with his cousin was a bit squicky at first. I had to set the book down and chant 'They're distant-ish cousins. They're royalty. It happens.' a few times. But really, half-way through Justice, the series picks up and is more enjoyable.
Naamah's Kiss is almost shockingly good, and feels that while the first trilogy had a feeling of wonder that the second lacked, Jacqueline Carey grew as a writer. I've read the book roughly four times, and I still love it.
There is also Santa Olivia, which showed us that Carey can write a beautiful third-person, as well as sci-fi-almost realism. While the portrayal of the U.S army is somewhat negative, each soldier as an individual is quite likable. The characters aren't all explicitly beautiful, and no one is really evil. The dynamic between Miguel and Loup was amazing. Carey is a queen of character relationships.
Her worlds are fantastically rich and original, even if they do play off of normal world history a lot. While this may be slightly off putting to some, I feel it grounds her wildly unique worlds so that a reader can connect.
Jacqueline Carey also features incredibly feminine heroines, and still makes them strong. Phedre's 'that which yields is not weak' and Moirin's wonderfully fickle girlishness and sensuality make them more compelling than the 2D character of Bishop's Surreal, the prostitute assassin, and make them more inspiring than Tamora Pierce's more masculine heroines. More on that later.
Another thing, that is bothersome to some readers, is the relatively slow pace of Phedre's books. This doesn't bother me, because I love watching the amazing chess game between Melisande and Phedre, but the amount of time that it takes Phedre to figure out the entirety of the plots and foil them is off putting to many readers switching from YA to adult fiction.
Yeah, I need distance from Jacqueline Carey before I can pick out all of her flaws. But such an awed view of an author is nice sometimes.
Tamora Pierce: Okay, it's hard for me to be critical of her. I learned to read on The Song of the Lioness, skipping from picture books, to Little Bear, to Alanna. It was the first real novel I read, and I still fondly remember staying up into the wee hours of the morning and my first grade teacher being mildly annoyed by tiredness and inattentiveness.
My one true complaint is this: Pierce makes her heroines masculine to make them strong. Alanna and Keladry especially so. The girls are knights, so it makes sense, but even so. It's also YA, so yeah. Pierce has pretty much fixed this, what with Beka Cooper and Aly Cooper. A policewoman and a spymistress. Both of them are very feminine, especially Aly, while still being exceptionally powerful women. Pierce is growing as an author, I feel.
Pierce writes YA, so her worlds are less detailed than Carey's or Bishops. Her plots are superior to Bishop's, in my opinion, and slightly inferior to Carey's, but I doubt a YA author could write something with so many convolutions as Carey does and get away with it.
I buy pretty much everything that comes out by Pierce, although I forgot to mention examples from the Circle of Magic ;) . Pierce is also re-readable. While her plots are relatively straight-forward, her characters are so enjoyable that I can read them multiple times and not get bored or annoyed.
Okay, yeah, done for now.
