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A review by crystalstarrlight
Gabriel's Inferno by Sylvain Reynard
Did not finish book. Stopped at 50%.
DNF at 50% in.
Don't Judge a Book by its Cover
Don't Judge a Book by its Cover
Julianne is going to University of Toronto to pursue a master’s program, studying Dante’s Inferno. While she is there, she discovers that the embittered Professor of Italian Studies is none other than Gabriel Emerson, the older, adopted brother of her best friend, Rachel. When Julianne was a young teen, Gabriel had captivated her and wooed her with words from Dante’s Inferno. Now an adult, Julianne still harbors love for him but carries a dark burden. Can Gabriel cease being a jerk long enough to love Julianne?
I tried to avoid this book. I tried to look the other way as the book lusted after me. I tried to ignore it as it flaunted its cover at me. I picked this book up at so many stores only to put it down – until I finally succumbed to curiosity and actually bought it.
Why the hesitation? I heard this was yet another Twilight fan fiction made into an “original fiction”. I heard how it was being touted as the new Fifty Shades of Grey. I had read reviews saying it was “meh” to “awful”. Romance and erotica aren’t really my genres of choice.
So why did I succumb? To explain, I’ll have to get a wee bit more personal than I’m sure many of you would like but is critical to understanding why I tried to give this book a chance.
Although I read a lot of fantasy, scifi, and such, I like romantic books. I like romantic pairings that have older men coupling with younger women. I like the idea of a wealthy older man taking care of a brilliant, innocent young woman (I know this probably says weird, horrible things about my psyche, but I’ll live with it). And I do like it when the couple has to fight with each other a bit before they can break past their internal barriers and fall in love.
Minus the wealthy part, Teacher-Student romances are the best places to find this. You have the older, wiser, respected man, who’s seen the world and probably has his own jaded opinions about it, meeting up with his student, a brilliant young woman, relatively new to the outsider world that thinks optimistically and positively about everything. Toss in some sexual tension, some real trials and I’m hooked.
THAT was the book I was expecting, no WANTING to read when I picked up Gabriel’s Inferno. I wanted to read about a tortured teacher being naughty with his student. I wanted to read about two people being changed by meeting each other. I wanted some bite in the relationship that morphed into passionate love.
Instead, I have this long, dry tale about this timid girl (whom other people nickname “Rabbit” withOUT her approval) who is nearly constantly picked on by her friend’s brother (who SOMEHOW doesn’t remember her), who is SOMEHOW the best professor of Dante while only being 33, in between long, heavy-handed odes to and Cliff Note recitations of Dante’s Inferno.
NOTE: I have never had the opportunity nor the desire to read Dante’s Inferno. Because of this fact and , I am not going to judge this book based on the accuracy of the information on Dante’s Inferno nor am I going to compare the themes the book may use from Dante’s Inferno with the source material. So if that is what you are looking for, you will need to search out a different review.
NOTE: I’m going to be bringing up this book’s title a lot and because I am lazy, I will be specifying Gabriel’s Inferno as just Inferno. If I mean to reference Dante’s Inferno, I will do so by its entire name and not shorten it.
There is a lot of ground to cover here, so let’s start diving in.
The Twilight Fan Fiction Phenomenon
I tried to avoid this book. I tried to look the other way as the book lusted after me. I tried to ignore it as it flaunted its cover at me. I picked this book up at so many stores only to put it down – until I finally succumbed to curiosity and actually bought it.
Why the hesitation? I heard this was yet another Twilight fan fiction made into an “original fiction”. I heard how it was being touted as the new Fifty Shades of Grey. I had read reviews saying it was “meh” to “awful”. Romance and erotica aren’t really my genres of choice.
So why did I succumb? To explain, I’ll have to get a wee bit more personal than I’m sure many of you would like but is critical to understanding why I tried to give this book a chance.
Although I read a lot of fantasy, scifi, and such, I like romantic books. I like romantic pairings that have older men coupling with younger women. I like the idea of a wealthy older man taking care of a brilliant, innocent young woman (I know this probably says weird, horrible things about my psyche, but I’ll live with it). And I do like it when the couple has to fight with each other a bit before they can break past their internal barriers and fall in love.
Minus the wealthy part, Teacher-Student romances are the best places to find this. You have the older, wiser, respected man, who’s seen the world and probably has his own jaded opinions about it, meeting up with his student, a brilliant young woman, relatively new to the outsider world that thinks optimistically and positively about everything. Toss in some sexual tension, some real trials and I’m hooked.
THAT was the book I was expecting, no WANTING to read when I picked up Gabriel’s Inferno. I wanted to read about a tortured teacher being naughty with his student. I wanted to read about two people being changed by meeting each other. I wanted some bite in the relationship that morphed into passionate love.
Instead, I have this long, dry tale about this timid girl (whom other people nickname “Rabbit” withOUT her approval) who is nearly constantly picked on by her friend’s brother (who SOMEHOW doesn’t remember her), who is SOMEHOW the best professor of Dante while only being 33, in between long, heavy-handed odes to and Cliff Note recitations of Dante’s Inferno.
NOTE: I have never had the opportunity nor the desire to read Dante’s Inferno. Because of this fact and , I am not going to judge this book based on the accuracy of the information on Dante’s Inferno nor am I going to compare the themes the book may use from Dante’s Inferno with the source material. So if that is what you are looking for, you will need to search out a different review.
NOTE: I’m going to be bringing up this book’s title a lot and because I am lazy, I will be specifying Gabriel’s Inferno as just Inferno. If I mean to reference Dante’s Inferno, I will do so by its entire name and not shorten it.
There is a lot of ground to cover here, so let’s start diving in.
The Twilight Fan Fiction Phenomenon
Once upon a time, a person would get so excited about a franchise (Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, House, anything you can think of) that they couldn’t help but want to write more stories set in that world. We all know how those stories turned out – a few were great, most were Mary Sue/author self-insert fanfics (Mary Sue the descriptor for a character that is perfect in every way, author self-insert being pretty much exactly what you would think). More than a few at this stage in the Internet Era have used the experience to start writing their own work, if they were willing to admit it. Even at this stage, there is a bit of a stigma about having your start in fanfiction.
That is great. I applaud people being so on fire that they want to make their own stories. I applaud people using the fanfiction process to develop their own style and to play around with character development, pacing, setting, etc. I applaud people being creative and trying new things, even when society tries to tell you that you are a freak.
But fanfiction, traditionally, has not been the place for people to beta test their story before putting it out on sale for the world. An author is borrowing another person’s ideas and characters for their own story, typically fleshing it out and showing new dynamics. It can be a great starting point, but some of the problem of fanfiction is that an author isn't inventing new characters wholesale - they are borrowing them. They borrow the characters, the world, the environment. To those who read the fanfiction, they know the essence of the story, so an author doesn't have to delve into the deep work of how this world, this story functions. They can rely on their readers' knowledge of the source material.
What happens when you write fanfiction from a very popular franchise (Harry Potter, Twilight, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) and then change the names and a few details to make it fit into the new setting? You get a mish-mash of ideas - look at Eragon, Fifty Shades and Mortal Instruments. Some of it works, but the characters are ever so slightly off. The worlds feel like dejavu copies of ones you've read before - only there's a glitch in the Matrix. In general, it's hard to completely remove the essence of what you've borrowed, no matter the veneer you place on it to publish it. And we cannot neglect how ever so sneakily we are toeing that line to plagiarism. Many a work has been inspired by the past greats, but when an author is starting to use whole chunks from other's works with different names? Well, you might have a different opinion, but for me, that is just morally ambiguous.
Twilight's Copycat Baby Sister
That is great. I applaud people being so on fire that they want to make their own stories. I applaud people using the fanfiction process to develop their own style and to play around with character development, pacing, setting, etc. I applaud people being creative and trying new things, even when society tries to tell you that you are a freak.
But fanfiction, traditionally, has not been the place for people to beta test their story before putting it out on sale for the world. An author is borrowing another person’s ideas and characters for their own story, typically fleshing it out and showing new dynamics. It can be a great starting point, but some of the problem of fanfiction is that an author isn't inventing new characters wholesale - they are borrowing them. They borrow the characters, the world, the environment. To those who read the fanfiction, they know the essence of the story, so an author doesn't have to delve into the deep work of how this world, this story functions. They can rely on their readers' knowledge of the source material.
What happens when you write fanfiction from a very popular franchise (Harry Potter, Twilight, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings) and then change the names and a few details to make it fit into the new setting? You get a mish-mash of ideas - look at Eragon, Fifty Shades and Mortal Instruments. Some of it works, but the characters are ever so slightly off. The worlds feel like dejavu copies of ones you've read before - only there's a glitch in the Matrix. In general, it's hard to completely remove the essence of what you've borrowed, no matter the veneer you place on it to publish it. And we cannot neglect how ever so sneakily we are toeing that line to plagiarism. Many a work has been inspired by the past greats, but when an author is starting to use whole chunks from other's works with different names? Well, you might have a different opinion, but for me, that is just morally ambiguous.
Twilight's Copycat Baby Sister
Because Gabriel’s Inferno was once a Twilight fanfiction, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to compare the two of them.
One of the biggest changes that I found was the point of view. Twilight uses the first person present. We only get Bella’s opinions, thoughts, feelings. Everything else is filtered through her eyes. The POV has its faults, but in Twilight, it works reasonably well.
Inferno is going more for a third person omniscient. We hop from Julianne to Gabriel to Julianne to Paul to Gabriel to Julianne to Rachel and all over again. I’m not sure if this format worked. Half the time, I felt I was being hot-potatoed from one head to the other. Part of the time, I wondered if I really needed to see what Paul or Gabriel or Rachel were feeling in X situation. And part of the time, I found that “the inner voices” of the characters just weren’t different enough to distinguish.
You can see hints of the cast of Twilight in Inferno. Gabriel’s mood swings make him reminiscent of Edward; it’s obvious that Rachel is supposed to be Alice, Grace is Esme, and Rachel’s fiancé is Jasper. I’d lay money that Paul is supposed to be Jacob and Christa is supposed to be Rosalie. But while I can find some similarities between Bella and Julianne (liking to read, not being “hip”, having distant parents, being frugal, being clumsy), I ultimately think Julianne is more likeable. But I’ll get into that later.
Even the story itself is remarkably similar. Gabriel must “struggle” against his womanizing, promiscuous ways, lusting after a woman who is so pure and beyond his grasp. Sound a little like Edward, who must “struggle” against his vampiric desire to drink Bella’s blood, the most wonderful smell he’s ever inhaled?
Of course there are tons of things that are different. Edward was never Bella’s teacher; Bella was a teenager when her story happened; the events of Twilight occurred primarily in Forks, Washington, USA. But these are just details; if you were to change Inferno to Gabriel being a wealthy newspaper editor in New York City when Julianne was 35, the trajectory of the story would be nearly the exact same.
Characters and How I Like Julianne More than Bella
One of the biggest changes that I found was the point of view. Twilight uses the first person present. We only get Bella’s opinions, thoughts, feelings. Everything else is filtered through her eyes. The POV has its faults, but in Twilight, it works reasonably well.
Inferno is going more for a third person omniscient. We hop from Julianne to Gabriel to Julianne to Paul to Gabriel to Julianne to Rachel and all over again. I’m not sure if this format worked. Half the time, I felt I was being hot-potatoed from one head to the other. Part of the time, I wondered if I really needed to see what Paul or Gabriel or Rachel were feeling in X situation. And part of the time, I found that “the inner voices” of the characters just weren’t different enough to distinguish.
You can see hints of the cast of Twilight in Inferno. Gabriel’s mood swings make him reminiscent of Edward; it’s obvious that Rachel is supposed to be Alice, Grace is Esme, and Rachel’s fiancé is Jasper. I’d lay money that Paul is supposed to be Jacob and Christa is supposed to be Rosalie. But while I can find some similarities between Bella and Julianne (liking to read, not being “hip”, having distant parents, being frugal, being clumsy), I ultimately think Julianne is more likeable. But I’ll get into that later.
Even the story itself is remarkably similar. Gabriel must “struggle” against his womanizing, promiscuous ways, lusting after a woman who is so pure and beyond his grasp. Sound a little like Edward, who must “struggle” against his vampiric desire to drink Bella’s blood, the most wonderful smell he’s ever inhaled?
Of course there are tons of things that are different. Edward was never Bella’s teacher; Bella was a teenager when her story happened; the events of Twilight occurred primarily in Forks, Washington, USA. But these are just details; if you were to change Inferno to Gabriel being a wealthy newspaper editor in New York City when Julianne was 35, the trajectory of the story would be nearly the exact same.
Characters and How I Like Julianne More than Bella
No matter what other complaints I give this book (and you will see there are a lot), I think Julianne is a better written character than Bella Swan.
Bella Swan was a whiny, depressed, selfish teenager (later young woman). She supposedly liked to read, but only read books that Meyer used as inspiration for the book she was writing. She kept secrets from people she supposedly loved, she refused to communicate her desires and wants to other people, she didn’t have common sense, she let her boyfriend dictate her choices, she was codependent, she was conveniently clumsy, and she had no dreams or desires beyond becoming a vampire and making sweet, sweet love with Edward.
Julianne is a shy but kind person, trying to “make up” for the emotional distance her parents gave her by being friendly to everyone. She likes to drink coffee and tea, to listen to classical music, and to read books other than Dante’s Inferno. She is a good student and knows what she wants to do other than get a man (she wants to be a Dante specialist herself, which is admirable even if her desire stemmed from Gabriel). She is legitimately clumsy, doing things like dropping keys and spilling tampons and not just to be Cute and Quirky for her Love Interest. She doesn’t always keep Paul and Rachel in the dark about her life, nor does she always keep silent about how Gabriel is p!ssing her off.
Sure, Julianne still has tons of problems. The drama with the former boyfriend (which feels a bit much given the situation, but what do I know?). The overwhelming obsession with virginity (I'm sure some is a rather heavy-handed allusion to Dante’s Inferno). How long she is a doormat before she wakes up and grows a backbone. The way she obsesses over Gabriel is particularly problematic, especially given that when they first met (and kissed) he was drunk and in college and she was 13. But even with these problems, I found myself relating more to Julianne than I ever did to Bella.
Reynard desperately tried to make Gabriel alluring. Gabriel was supposed to be that smexy professor that wears a bow tie and square glasses that are begging to be removed by tender student hands. But honestly, I wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t buying that a 33 year old man could possibly have gotten his doctorate and somehow had enough experience to become the top specialist in his field. I wasn't buying the “sexually deviant” side of Gabriel. I wasn't buying that a man this much a callous Casanova would so quickly switch to being the best boyfriend. And I wasn't buying his backstory, which so heavily smarts of its Twilight fanfiction origins and attempts at explaining how a 33-year old Dante professor could be this ridiculously wealthy.
This is what I mean when I said earlier that there are issues when converting a fanfiction into an “original fiction”; the author has had to go to great and silly extents to rework this to take out the copyrighted characters and events. Only, what is left is a hodge-podge of ideas that makes absolutely no sense and only accentuates how badly this story works outside of the Twilight universe.
There are a few other background characters – Paul, Rachel, Christa, etc., but let’s face it, they aren’t as important as Julianne and Gabriel, and it shows. They have some character – Paul being the White Knight type, Rachel the friend who has too much going on – but mostly, they are there for other characters to talk about either Julianne or Gabriel. Paul really isn’t a guy who is interested in Julianne and a dedicated student; he’s a foil to Gabriel. Rachel really isn’t a woman mourning her mother; she’s there to make sure Gabriel and Julianne “kiss and make up”. And Christa is the worst – Reynard doesn’t even TRY to hide that all she is a dirty, nasty slut that is Julianne’s foil, the Whore to Julianne’s Madonna, whom Gabriel has absolutely no respect for and constantly humiliates. It’s so bad, I almost feel sorry for her.
Adding More Pages Does Not a Story Make
Gabriel’s Inferno clocks in at 562 pages. (By comparison, the first Twilight book in paperback has 544 pages.) There is absolutely no issue with big books. I like books that take time to get some meat on their bones. But I’ve read a lot of books that were quite “big”, and they didn’t have to meat to back up their weighty count (Breaking Dawn is a great example). So although I try to give the benefit of the doubt to a book, when I see a book this long, a few questions pass through my head:
1) Is this a fantasy novel?
2) Is this part of a series? Is it the first novel in a series?
3) Is this a novel by a first-time author?
4) Does the book synopsis give an indication that this is going to be a unique, in-depth story?
(BTW, for Inferno, the answers are “no”, “yes”/”yes”, “yes”, and “HAHAHAHAHAHA”.)
There are some books that NEED those extra pages. Justin Cronin’s The Passage, J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, and Stephen King’s Under the Dome come to mind. They had to build a world and a HUGE cast of characters before setting in motion the events to come.
But (and here’s where I finally make my point) Gabriel’s Inferno isn’t that book. It doesn’t need to waste 562 pages of the reader’s life on the day-to-day workings of Gabriel and Julianne, each and every “fight” they get into, each and every time they think of the other, while trying not to swoon. There isn’t a huge cast of characters to develop; only Julianne and Gabriel. The events aren’t so hugely complicated and detailed that the author HAD to spend a lot of time explaining them; the story boils down to your basic love story, the one that has been told for eons. And the writing isn’t so compelling that you are eagerly awaiting the next event. I’ve had my problems with Twilight, but one thing I’ve always given the series credit for was that it kept my attention almost the entire time, even when several hundred pages should have been cut out.
There is another problem with the way that Inferno was written, one that boils down to the medium it originated (Twilight fanfiction). Many of the events in Inferno are episodic, which you would expect from someone writing a serial story. Online, it’s typical for an author to spend a few hours to write the next chapter in her story; for a published novel (that isn’t like a literature novel, whose point is the episodic portrayal of life), you need to streamline your events, focus your reader’s attention to the final outcome.
If I am tuning in daily (weekly, monthly) to an online story, it’s okay if the chapter is another “fight” between Gabriel and Julianne. I probably haven’t read the whole thing in one sitting; I may not have read any of the story for some time. I probably want something that is quick and complete in one chunk and not terribly strung out. For an online story, these bite-sized episodes are okay.
But if I have just bought a full priced paperback, I don’t want to read the same basic encounter over and over again. Having three scenes in a row of Gabriel and Julianne fighting and bickering is overkill. While online I may read an entry once in a long while, in paperback I am likely to read an entire chapter or two in one sitting. That means reading several near-identical scenes. And that means me, the reader, getting bored and having my attention wander.
Ultimately, my point is this: just because your book is 1,000+ pages long doesn’t make it a better book. It just makes it a bigger book. And bigger does NOT mean better in the book writing world.
Why Does This World Hate Women So Much?
Bella Swan was a whiny, depressed, selfish teenager (later young woman). She supposedly liked to read, but only read books that Meyer used as inspiration for the book she was writing. She kept secrets from people she supposedly loved, she refused to communicate her desires and wants to other people, she didn’t have common sense, she let her boyfriend dictate her choices, she was codependent, she was conveniently clumsy, and she had no dreams or desires beyond becoming a vampire and making sweet, sweet love with Edward.
Julianne is a shy but kind person, trying to “make up” for the emotional distance her parents gave her by being friendly to everyone. She likes to drink coffee and tea, to listen to classical music, and to read books other than Dante’s Inferno. She is a good student and knows what she wants to do other than get a man (she wants to be a Dante specialist herself, which is admirable even if her desire stemmed from Gabriel). She is legitimately clumsy, doing things like dropping keys and spilling tampons and not just to be Cute and Quirky for her Love Interest. She doesn’t always keep Paul and Rachel in the dark about her life, nor does she always keep silent about how Gabriel is p!ssing her off.
Sure, Julianne still has tons of problems. The drama with the former boyfriend (which feels a bit much given the situation, but what do I know?). The overwhelming obsession with virginity (I'm sure some is a rather heavy-handed allusion to Dante’s Inferno). How long she is a doormat before she wakes up and grows a backbone. The way she obsesses over Gabriel is particularly problematic, especially given that when they first met (and kissed) he was drunk and in college and she was 13. But even with these problems, I found myself relating more to Julianne than I ever did to Bella.
Reynard desperately tried to make Gabriel alluring. Gabriel was supposed to be that smexy professor that wears a bow tie and square glasses that are begging to be removed by tender student hands. But honestly, I wasn’t buying it. I wasn’t buying that a 33 year old man could possibly have gotten his doctorate and somehow had enough experience to become the top specialist in his field. I wasn't buying the “sexually deviant” side of Gabriel. I wasn't buying that a man this much a callous Casanova would so quickly switch to being the best boyfriend. And I wasn't buying his backstory, which so heavily smarts of its Twilight fanfiction origins and attempts at explaining how a 33-year old Dante professor could be this ridiculously wealthy.
This is what I mean when I said earlier that there are issues when converting a fanfiction into an “original fiction”; the author has had to go to great and silly extents to rework this to take out the copyrighted characters and events. Only, what is left is a hodge-podge of ideas that makes absolutely no sense and only accentuates how badly this story works outside of the Twilight universe.
There are a few other background characters – Paul, Rachel, Christa, etc., but let’s face it, they aren’t as important as Julianne and Gabriel, and it shows. They have some character – Paul being the White Knight type, Rachel the friend who has too much going on – but mostly, they are there for other characters to talk about either Julianne or Gabriel. Paul really isn’t a guy who is interested in Julianne and a dedicated student; he’s a foil to Gabriel. Rachel really isn’t a woman mourning her mother; she’s there to make sure Gabriel and Julianne “kiss and make up”. And Christa is the worst – Reynard doesn’t even TRY to hide that all she is a dirty, nasty slut that is Julianne’s foil, the Whore to Julianne’s Madonna, whom Gabriel has absolutely no respect for and constantly humiliates. It’s so bad, I almost feel sorry for her.
Adding More Pages Does Not a Story Make
Gabriel’s Inferno clocks in at 562 pages. (By comparison, the first Twilight book in paperback has 544 pages.) There is absolutely no issue with big books. I like books that take time to get some meat on their bones. But I’ve read a lot of books that were quite “big”, and they didn’t have to meat to back up their weighty count (Breaking Dawn is a great example). So although I try to give the benefit of the doubt to a book, when I see a book this long, a few questions pass through my head:
1) Is this a fantasy novel?
2) Is this part of a series? Is it the first novel in a series?
3) Is this a novel by a first-time author?
4) Does the book synopsis give an indication that this is going to be a unique, in-depth story?
(BTW, for Inferno, the answers are “no”, “yes”/”yes”, “yes”, and “HAHAHAHAHAHA”.)
There are some books that NEED those extra pages. Justin Cronin’s The Passage, J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, and Stephen King’s Under the Dome come to mind. They had to build a world and a HUGE cast of characters before setting in motion the events to come.
But (and here’s where I finally make my point) Gabriel’s Inferno isn’t that book. It doesn’t need to waste 562 pages of the reader’s life on the day-to-day workings of Gabriel and Julianne, each and every “fight” they get into, each and every time they think of the other, while trying not to swoon. There isn’t a huge cast of characters to develop; only Julianne and Gabriel. The events aren’t so hugely complicated and detailed that the author HAD to spend a lot of time explaining them; the story boils down to your basic love story, the one that has been told for eons. And the writing isn’t so compelling that you are eagerly awaiting the next event. I’ve had my problems with Twilight, but one thing I’ve always given the series credit for was that it kept my attention almost the entire time, even when several hundred pages should have been cut out.
There is another problem with the way that Inferno was written, one that boils down to the medium it originated (Twilight fanfiction). Many of the events in Inferno are episodic, which you would expect from someone writing a serial story. Online, it’s typical for an author to spend a few hours to write the next chapter in her story; for a published novel (that isn’t like a literature novel, whose point is the episodic portrayal of life), you need to streamline your events, focus your reader’s attention to the final outcome.
If I am tuning in daily (weekly, monthly) to an online story, it’s okay if the chapter is another “fight” between Gabriel and Julianne. I probably haven’t read the whole thing in one sitting; I may not have read any of the story for some time. I probably want something that is quick and complete in one chunk and not terribly strung out. For an online story, these bite-sized episodes are okay.
But if I have just bought a full priced paperback, I don’t want to read the same basic encounter over and over again. Having three scenes in a row of Gabriel and Julianne fighting and bickering is overkill. While online I may read an entry once in a long while, in paperback I am likely to read an entire chapter or two in one sitting. That means reading several near-identical scenes. And that means me, the reader, getting bored and having my attention wander.
Ultimately, my point is this: just because your book is 1,000+ pages long doesn’t make it a better book. It just makes it a bigger book. And bigger does NOT mean better in the book writing world.
Why Does This World Hate Women So Much?
As you’ve been reading this review, you’ve noticed I’ve brought up the concept of the Madonna/Whore, the stereotypical character of females, the men’s misogynistic opinions, etc. in this review, but I want to spend a bit more time really truly exploring these themes, as I think they are important to A) how readers view women and B) how society views women.
I would like to propose that most (90+%) of this book’s story is centered around the Madonna/Whore vision of women, i.e. women are either Madonnas, blameless and sexually pure, or whores, sexually promiscuous and tainted. Some examples of this coming to light:
I would like to propose that most (90+%) of this book’s story is centered around the Madonna/Whore vision of women, i.e. women are either Madonnas, blameless and sexually pure, or whores, sexually promiscuous and tainted. Some examples of this coming to light:
- Julianne is the ultimate Madonna. She is a virgin; she doesn’t actively pursue sexual relationships; she seems to be afraid of initiating any sort of physical contact with men (though some of this is based off a bad experience with an ex-boyfriend). Gabriel dotes upon her as if she is a small child.
- Rachel is another Madonna figure. Sure, she has a fiancé, but it is not clear if she and her boyfriend are sexually active. Furthermore, she has had the same boyfriend since high school, which makes it seem as if she has not done very much sexual experimentation. Gabriel is kind to her, letting her tell him what to do and making an effort to listen to her.
- Grace is the last Madonna figure. She, like the Virgin Mary, is the “savior” of Gabriel, who adopts the boy when he is destitute, provides for him, and always loves him. Even though Gabriel fought with his mother (mostly with his brother and father, though), he cries at her death (Gabriel rarely, if ever, cries, as we see with all “manly men”) and is otherwise very distraught.
- Gabriel’s biological mother is a Whore Figure. She is a drug-addict and abandoned her son. Gabriel has no kind words for her; in fact, he calls her a “whore” on one occasion.
- Christa is a Whore Figure. She has large breasts, dresses provocatively, and has no problems flirting with Gabriel. She also is taking the Dante Studies just to become the Mrs. Emerson. Gabriel treats her poorly, humiliating her at every turn, and making her cry on more than one occasion.
- Paulina is a Whore Figure. She is Gabriel's (fairly) long-time mistress and quite possibly a prostitute. Gabriel treats her badly and allows Julianne to do the same.
This does not include the many other, often nameless, women who appear, provocatively dressed, openly sexual, licking their lips in desire for Gabriel, only to be rudely tossed aside as if they were bad eggs. And every single time, it is not Gabriel who looks bad for being unable to treat these women as human beings; it is the women themselves who are bad because they were so sexualized.
But Gabriel isn’t the only man to be subjected to such a misogynistic turn. Paul too is misogynistic in his own way. Without consulting Julianne, he nicknames her “Rabbit”. He talks about how she would “blossom” if only the right man came along to love her and pities how “damaged” and “sensitive” she is. He desires to be the man that “sets her right”. And the entire way Paul treats Julianne is no different than Gabriel: Julianne is a little child, who needs a grown-up’s hand to hold as she walks across the streets of life.
What do these portrayals of women and the men they allow to behave this way say about the readers and the society in which these readers are a part of? Well, this is a romance novel (sorta), and, in the past, the romance genre has this stereotypical image of the big, strong male to save the virginal female. Maybe it is their fault that we keep seeing this misogynistic portrayal. But that excuse fails to ring true. A lot of romance readers are savvy and discerning. They are more aware of the tropes than I am, having read numerous books with them. Some of them are openly disgusted with the practices and voice their thoughts in places like “Smart Bitches, Trashy Books”. They didn't go to the publishers and beg them to publish Twilight fanfiction.
Perhaps it is the Twilight fans who are encouraging this. That would seem to be the case, as a lot of recent fiction in Young Adult and Urban Fantasy, which has been marketed as "The Next Twilight", has glorified the old-time feminine roles and the restraints with them. And while you are at it, you could also probably blame the fanfiction readers, who don’t know better but to love this. I mean, it's a “well-known internet fact” that fanfiction writers are just 13 year old girls who haven't ever known and talked to a boy much less had sex with one (or a girl for that matter!). And of course, we can't forget the Fifty Shades crowd who made Twilight fanfiction profitable in the first place and publishers everywhere prowl the fanfiction websites for more fodder.
ASIDE: By the way, have you ever really met a person who openly admitted to liking Fifty Shades of Grey? The only person I met who admitted to reading and LIKING the series also admitted she didn't like to read much in the first place. A coincidence??? A trend???
Whether it was Twilight’s fault for opening the door to the medieval treatment of women or Fifty Shades for popularizing misogynistic stereotypes disguised as kinky sex or publishers trying to get fat off the recent fads in the hopes of finding the next Twilight or Harry Potter, one thing is certain: our society certainly hasn't helped things. Even with all the steady steps we’ve made to make things an equitable playing field across the gender boundaries, society still glorifies the Madonna and vilifies the Whore. There is no room for the sexually experienced, brilliant, funny, attractive woman that a man wants and desires, not just for her body, but for her mind. She cannot be judged by her character or the opinions like the man she will fall in love with; instead, society, as if hundreds of years of women's rights haven't occurred, still judge her merits by whether or not she's had sex. And when society continues to promote such a view of women, that women come in two types, white and red, based on how much sex they have, how can we expect our novels and authors to write anything but that?
Conclusion: Learning to Trust Your Instincts
Some people are blessed with being able to look at a book’s cover, read the title, read the cover blurb and immediately know whether or not they will love the book. To people like that: I envy you greatly! I have read many books that I thought I would love and hated or thought I would hate and loved. There are a few times where I’m lucky enough to avoid a book where every sign indicates I would hate it, but most of the time, I’m one of those people who has to read a book before I can give a decent opinion.
This is one of those cases where all the signs were telling me that I should turn around now and run. I knew that Gabriel’s Inferno was Twilight fanfiction; I was just hoping that Reynard had done it well, had brought something new to the table. I gathered that this book would have stereotypical portrayals of men and women; I was just hoping that I was wrong, that maybe the men would respect the women, regardless of how frequently and what kind of sex they had.
Although I didn’t enjoy this book very much (at this point, I am on page 254 and I don't know if I can honestly read another word), I can say that it has been a learning experience. I have learned that my gut instinct is a lot more accurate than I give it credit. I have learned that I need to trust my friends’ reviews of a book. And I learned that it takes a whole lot more polishing and effort to take a Twilight fanfiction and make it a great novel.
This is one of those cases where all the signs were telling me that I should turn around now and run. I knew that Gabriel’s Inferno was Twilight fanfiction; I was just hoping that Reynard had done it well, had brought something new to the table. I gathered that this book would have stereotypical portrayals of men and women; I was just hoping that I was wrong, that maybe the men would respect the women, regardless of how frequently and what kind of sex they had.
Although I didn’t enjoy this book very much (at this point, I am on page 254 and I don't know if I can honestly read another word), I can say that it has been a learning experience. I have learned that my gut instinct is a lot more accurate than I give it credit. I have learned that I need to trust my friends’ reviews of a book. And I learned that it takes a whole lot more polishing and effort to take a Twilight fanfiction and make it a great novel.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Sexual assault