I finished the book…and the series! God, I thought it would never end. After the official conclusion, there is, of course, an epilogue in which Ana and Christian gambol about with their son [because the Penis of Doom always generates a first-born son] and coo about their upcoming daughter. The epilogue contains awkwardly inserted flashbacks and serves no purpose whatsoever except to hammer home that Ana and Christian live happily ever after in true love, perfect bliss and harmonious, nurturing parenthood. Yeah, I'm not going to believe that until I read transcripts of their kids' therapy sessions.
And then, after the epilogue, we get a 50 Shades of Christian section, which, I assume, is bonus material supplied for the Vintage republishing. James gives us a first-person report of Christian's first Christmas with his adoptive family, the Greys, which adds nothing to the story because we've already been inside young Christian's head in the prologue when he was telling us about his nightmares. If anything, this section tickles my gag reflex, as James writes the 5-year-old Christian without nuance, realism or complexity. It's just…baby talk for pages and pages.
Just in case you haven't had your fill of redundancy, 50 Shades Freed finally, finally, finally closes out with Meet 50 Shades, an exhaustive recap of Ana and Christian's first two meetings from Christian's point of view.
Insights I gained from Meet 50 Shades:
1. Christian is an asshole.
2. He has the hots for Ana.
3. Even though he has no "subconscious" or "inner goddess," Christian's interior monologue sounds exactly the same as Ana's: repetitive, shallow and unindividualized.
4. Wow, that was a pointless section.
On second thought, scratch that victory lap. Now that I'm done with the 50 Shades trilogy, I'm too exhausted to put forth more effort. I just read 514 [book 1] + 532 [book 2] + 579 [book 3] = 1625 pages of erotic romance over 9 days. It was clearly a feat of endurance for which I should get a prize [preferably in the form of well-written erotic romance]. I understand the commercial impulse behind stringing the story out over 3 books and thereby making $$$ [or, for E.L. James, £££], but oh my God…the trilogy could have been easily cut down to 400 pages by a ruthless and judicious editor without losing any of the traits that make it such a gloriously bad read.
It's victory nap time instead.
4 Comments
Okay, after reading your reviews, I saw this in my inbox and just had to chuckle:
http://www.yourfascinations.com/50shades/
In case you don’t want to visit the link, here’s the lowdown: Fascinations, the local “romance superstore” chain, is hosting a “Fifty Shades of Grey” book club event. I love that one of bullet points they’ll be covering is “Why the trilogy is so popular,” _especially_ after reading your reviews about the quality (or lack thereof) of the writing.
Kind of makes me want to track down Anne Rice’s “Exit To Eden,” which I read eons ago, just to see how I feel about it now.
That’s hilarious! Apparently a “love expert” needs to be on hand to explain “why the trilogy is so popular” and “the appeal of fantasy.” I thought those were kind of self-explanatory. I understand why one might need guidance on “how to share with your partner,” though.
I’m especially curious about seeing “some of the products from the novels.” Does this mean that there will be visual aids in the form of all the snobby wine and expensive cars that Christian throws around? Or should we expect floggers and vibrating butt plugs instead?
I see Fascinations is more of a sex toy store than a “romance superstore.” I was all excited because I thought that a “romance superstore” was a bookstore devoted to nothing but romance novels!
It’s probably the floggers and plugs. It is a sex-toy store, but a classier one compared to the ones you see on the Interstate next to the truck plazas. It’s well-lit and they try to educate you on your purchases (if you pick up a jelly toy, they will tell you why it’s bad, same with things like numbing spray for blow jobs, and they flat-out don’t carry and won’t carry things like Anal-Ease). They used to run lots of free sex-education classes with numerous speakers (their in-house expert was Shanna Katz, who has since left the company, and it seems a lot of the classes disappeared when she did. For a while, they had a class or two a month). They do have a decent book section, though, both “instructional” and erotic fiction. I actually have about $5 in “romance rewards” they keep reminding me to use, but I don’t think they can be used for the admission to this event, and even if they could, I don’t think I’d go.
I didn’t catch which location this was at, or if it was at a separate venue. If it was in Scottsdale, you could possibly see some of those expensive cars just in the parking lot!
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