Murder of Crows picks up a couple of days after Written in Red. The Lakeside courtyard is still dealing with the fallout from the whole Asia Crane incident and the resulting storm that could have killed all the humans in the city, but didn’t thanks to our heroine Meg’s calming influence. Now, the problem that only slightly showed itself in book one, the two drugs Gone Over Wolf and Feel Good, are becoming more of an issue, as is the Humans First and Last movement, where idiot humans insist on antagonizing the Others and believing somehow they won’t be killed for doing so. And then there’s the effect Meg is having not just on Simon, but on all the Others and humans who live in Lakeside.
I’m sort of befuddled by how into this series I am right now. This second book has some pretty big red flags, things that usually mean I’ll get disinterested at best, frustrated at worst, if they’re not rectified or stopped. And yet somehow I’m still really into it. It is unholy magic.
Things that usually annoy me in books but somehow I don’t care:
*The minutia focused writing. I would say about half of the words in this book are not based around the plot, but around characters doing fiddly day to day things like taking notes, shelving books, buying groceries and supplies, delivering packages, ordering cookies, talking about ordering cookies, bathing, changing clothes, watching movies, taking walks, and having a lot of logistical conversations, etc. You get the idea, the kind of stuff most authors skip. This was evident in the last book to a certain extent, but it made sense to me in that one because Meg was raised cut off from society and was experiencing everything for the first time. Here, she’s getting the hang of everything and coming into her own, and the writing is still focused on those things, and now Simon is more of a POV character, and Monty the cop, and the writing is still like that when they’re steering the ship, too. It’s just Bishop’s style, I guess, and for some reason it doesn’t annoy me, although I feel like it should.
*An innocent heroine who everyone loves, and everyone goes out of their way to help and protect her. Bishop actually takes this one to a new level, and maybe that’s what makes it okay. At first the Others treat her like a curiosity, and some of them are hostile, but she won everyone over last book, and by this book, they all love her and feel protective of her to various degrees. Some think of her like a pet, some a friend . . . and some aren’t sure (coughcoughSimoncough). Logistically speaking, Meg is dependent on them due to her inexperience, wanted status, and addiction to the euphoria that comes with prophecy.
*Repetition of images and phrases. Pretty self explanatory, really.
*The ending was abrupt, felt like it was lacking a real climax/conflict. The whole book leads up to (view spoiler)[Simon and the others finding the Controller at last, defeating him, and setting his blood prophets free. (hide spoiler)] The amount of story space this takes up is almost negligible. The actual scene was over unbelievably fast and in such a way that the characters seemed to have it easy. I wish there had been more of it, although once the fight was over, I did enjoy the way the fallout was handled. It leaves open avenues of conflict for future books, and doesn’t quite solve their problems.
I had zero problems with the way the Simon/Meg relationship was handled. I liked the way he had no idea what was going on with them, and while others have read Meg’s reaction to sex as infantilizing, I saw her reaction to the prospect of sex as an understandable result of her captivity, and not just that she had no experience with it, but that sex for her is associated with prophecy and trauma. SPOILERS I don’t believe the text wants us to think that Meg was raped by the Controller’s customers or employees after a prophecy (she was maybe too valuable to him?), but there’s always the possibility, since other girls definitely were END SPOILERS.
I’m going into the next book pretty soon so I don’t forget anything, and this time in hard copy, so we’ll see if I still have similar issues in a different format, and if I’m still into it anyway, despite those issues.