Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

And so, here it is. The new doorstopper of a book by E.L. James, meant to give us insight into Christian Grey’s thoughts. And boy, does it ever do that. Way, way too much. To be more exact, for every sentence of dialogue, plot or exposition, there’s at least two--and more likely, three or four--sentences of inner monologuing and Christian’s every feeling and thought being spelled out for the reader. In this book, E. L. James never shows us what the protagonist feels if she can tell us instead. Say what you like about the way that, in the original trilogy, Ana constantly told the reader about her blushing and lip-biting, but at least there wasn’t this constant stream of consciousness. It’s a pain to try to get through. Every time a character moves a muscle, Christian’s narration offers a comment. It’s as if it’s the Super Bowl finals on TV and a motor-mouthed commentator is doing his best to keep up with the action, except sports commentators tend to be good at what they’re doing. One of the good things about the portrayal of Christian in the original trilogy was the way that you never could feel completely certain about what was going on in the mind of this young entrepeneur. He was an enigma wrapped in a riddle inside an Armani suit. But now that we’ve gotten this insight into his mind, we see that what’s inside isn’t very impressive. For a man who’s supposed to be smart enough to create an enormous business empire at such a relatively young age, he definitely doesn’t give us a very intelligent impression. That's something that James should have kept in mind--if your point-of-view character is supposed to be brilliant in some way, then you need to be able to actually provide him with brilliant things to think and say. Having him use a “sophisticated tone” is not the same thing as actually having anything intelligent to say in that tone. (That reminds me a bit of what I regarded as one of the biggest problems in the original trilogy–Ana was supposed to be an English major, but she never offered any actual insights about the literature she loved. She seemed less like someone who’d analyzed classic novels, and more like somebody who just had read them at some point.) Oh, and one weird detail--you know how Christian quotes Harvey Firestone, saying “The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership" in the original Fifty Shades of Grey? Well, for some reason this bok has cut away the part where he correctly attributes the quote to Firestone, and instead the inner monologue has him incorrectly ascribe it to Andrew Carnegie. I’m not sure how James could make such a mistake, but she did. Another sign of shoddy workmanship is when Ana asks Christian if he’s gay, and he narrates that it’s ironic that Ana asks “the question even my own family will not ask.“ Thing is.... that’s not ironic. That one person asks a question that another person doesn’t ask is not ironic. Absurd? A bit. Unexpected? Sure. Ironic? No, Alanis, it’s not. The book is full of little errors like that--things that don’t make sense if you pause to think about them for just one second. Like when, in the original, Ana narrated that Christian's voice was "husky, like chocolate," even though not even the Swiss have ever made chocolate that's husky. Yet another problem is that since every single one of Christian’s emotions is spelled out, it feels like James regards her readers as idiots. For instance, you know that part where Ana comments that the paintings in Christian’s office are “raising the ordinary to extraordinary?” Here, Christian narrates that “It’s a keen observation.” Then, he adds “Miss Steele is bright,” just in case we didn’t get that from his remark about her observation being keen. Which it wasn’t, by the way. And it doesn’t become keen just because we’re told it is. Not to mention that it’s a bit jarring, the way he says she’s bright in a scene where she doesn't really do or say anything that would give you an impression of intelligence. But the plot dictates that Christian’s supposed to be impressed by Ana's intelligence, so he will be, darn it, regardless of whether he’s got a reason to be or not. Still, you gotta give this book credit for how environmentally friendly it is. It’s full of recycling. Recycled plot, recycled characters, recycled dialogue--James must’ve had a breeze, not having to come up with new things to write. But reading it was no breeze. To be honest, I couldn’t make it longer than about seventy pages or so; Christian’s constant inane commentary was just too exasperating. Sorry, Ms. James, but I’ll sit this one out. Keep the recycling to glass, metal and paper, please. P.S. For some reason, a few people who hear complaints about the reused plot tend to reply "Well, what did you expect? The entire point of the book is to retell the story from Christian's point of view!" I'd like to inform these people that as I started reading, I was fully aware that this book was meant to do that. But what matters isn't whether I expected a re-used plot. What matters is whether a re-used plot is fun to read or not. And since this particular re-used plot wasn't fun to read, I'm obviously not going to give it a good review. It's that simple. Not to mention that you CAN retell a plot without repeating every. darn. line. of. dialogue. (EDIT: And let also add that the parts where we get first-person flashbacks to Christian as a child are written in a completely stilted and unnatural tone. It doesn't sound like a real child at all.)