I want to like The Far Shore, I really really do, but something stops me every time I have a go at it… Actually several somethings, and while I can quite happily skim over the odd glitch in a piece of writing, when they seem to be as dense as they are here then I really struggle.
I do agree that a lot of the writing is beautiful, and a lot of the images are too. I really liked The back door still stood open, admitting a churchlike solemnity of light." description for example - a beautiful visual - but quite often what's going on through all the description seems to jar so much that I end up not being able to accept either.
The lads that she's written are so damaged that I can't see how they made it into CI5 in the first place, let alone survived everything ep-wise. Granted the author has thrown hideous trauma after hideous trauma at them, but the way she has them coping with that trauma - through tears and fainting spells and nosebleeds - just doesn't make any sense to me. If they didn't have ways of dealing with mental trauma - killing people on a daily basis, seeing the victims of crimes, knowing that they're helpless in so many cases, that they're responsible for such torment in other cases, all of which are canon - other than the physical relief of tears or blacking out or whatever, then they just wouldn't have survived as long as they have… (I struggled with this in All These Years as well actually - her touch seems to have become heavy somehow since her first two fics).
The soap-opera-ness of the plot got to me as well, I'm afraid. Just when it seemed that one trauma (or half a dozen) were resolving themselves, they were suddenly called out to rescue a boat at sea, or to sell Doyle's art (because he is, of course, an incredibly talented artist), or deal with Doyle's impotency, or an old merc mate of Bodie's is taking him away… It read very much to me as well this bit's finished, what can I throw at them next to make the story long enough?, so that in its entirety the fic felt… jerky somehow…
Other bits and pieces:
Modernisms. As bad as Americanisms, for me - "hardarse", "give it up to me", "psychotic episodes", "I'm not dealing with it", "just go with it", - none of these fit eighties slang, to me. (Willing to be told I'm wrong!) On the opposite side, I'd be surprised if supply teachers were hired with no qualifications in a 1980s Scottish state school (and see here (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/06/13113114/31477)) even if it is strange vocational classes he's teaching. Oh and with all the cuts that schools were facing back then, if they didn't need him enough in the first place (told him to take all the time he needed for his surgery) then they're not likely to have splashed out to employ him as a supply teacher - that's just not how it works. You either desperately needed to get supply teachers in, or you didn't. If a school was paying a supply teacher then it was likely paying them on top of the teacher they were replacing - otherwise they'd have hired on short-term contract.
The character McPherson - took me a moment to suss him out, and doing so pulled me right out of the story, which isn't a good thing on the first page! He was a Scottish name, in Scotland, who said "wee" and "bairns", but I eventually realised I was supposed to recognise him as Irish, because of "the reflex his accent stirred in Ray's gut". And there was me thinking at first that it was a bit daft of Doyle to have moved up to Scotland if Cowley's accent upset him that much… *g*
Major Spoiler alert
I do agree that a lot of the writing is beautiful, and a lot of the images are too. I really liked The back door still stood open, admitting a churchlike solemnity of light." description for example - a beautiful visual - but quite often what's going on through all the description seems to jar so much that I end up not being able to accept either.
The lads that she's written are so damaged that I can't see how they made it into CI5 in the first place, let alone survived everything ep-wise. Granted the author has thrown hideous trauma after hideous trauma at them, but the way she has them coping with that trauma - through tears and fainting spells and nosebleeds - just doesn't make any sense to me. If they didn't have ways of dealing with mental trauma - killing people on a daily basis, seeing the victims of crimes, knowing that they're helpless in so many cases, that they're responsible for such torment in other cases, all of which are canon - other than the physical relief of tears or blacking out or whatever, then they just wouldn't have survived as long as they have… (I struggled with this in All These Years as well actually - her touch seems to have become heavy somehow since her first two fics).
The soap-opera-ness of the plot got to me as well, I'm afraid. Just when it seemed that one trauma (or half a dozen) were resolving themselves, they were suddenly called out to rescue a boat at sea, or to sell Doyle's art (because he is, of course, an incredibly talented artist), or deal with Doyle's impotency, or an old merc mate of Bodie's is taking him away… It read very much to me as well this bit's finished, what can I throw at them next to make the story long enough?, so that in its entirety the fic felt… jerky somehow…
Other bits and pieces:
Modernisms. As bad as Americanisms, for me - "hardarse", "give it up to me", "psychotic episodes", "I'm not dealing with it", "just go with it", - none of these fit eighties slang, to me. (Willing to be told I'm wrong!) On the opposite side, I'd be surprised if supply teachers were hired with no qualifications in a 1980s Scottish state school (and see here (http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/06/13113114/31477)) even if it is strange vocational classes he's teaching. Oh and with all the cuts that schools were facing back then, if they didn't need him enough in the first place (told him to take all the time he needed for his surgery) then they're not likely to have splashed out to employ him as a supply teacher - that's just not how it works. You either desperately needed to get supply teachers in, or you didn't. If a school was paying a supply teacher then it was likely paying them on top of the teacher they were replacing - otherwise they'd have hired on short-term contract.
The character McPherson - took me a moment to suss him out, and doing so pulled me right out of the story, which isn't a good thing on the first page! He was a Scottish name, in Scotland, who said "wee" and "bairns", but I eventually realised I was supposed to recognise him as Irish, because of "the reflex his accent stirred in Ray's gut". And there was me thinking at first that it was a bit daft of Doyle to have moved up to Scotland if Cowley's accent upset him that much… *g*