How to learn from what you dislike: an analysis of Alex Grecian's "Red Rabbit"

Sometimes there is just as much to learn from a book you don't like as there is from the one's you love.

Reading has played just as an important part in my development as a writer as writing itself. This is probably obvious, but writers often recommend different ways of reading to enhance one’s writing. When I first wanted to start writing fantasy, I consumed many of the “greats” that were toted about by other writers as an unofficial canon, necessary to be read before once can claim to be a fantasy writer. Others would say to read the classics, but also advise reading contemporaries as well. Some might even say to read outside your genre to get a better idea of what the potentials of your writing can be. Some would say to take notes, others to not touch a notebook until you finished the book. The list goes on as to the myriad of “right” ways to read.

Not many times have I seen there be a wrong way to read. However, there are some that don’t always come off as very intuitive. Which is why I’d like to share with you one of the counterintuitive methods of reading that I use to enhance my writing. Not only do I study the classics, analyzing them meticulously, like I have with Assassin’s Apprentice, A Conspiracy of Truths, and Taran Wanderer, but I also study the books I hate. Books that land somewhere on the scale between OK and downright dreadful have helped me just as much of the classics have.

I bring this up because I wanted to share with you my thoughts on a book I just finished reading that left me feeling very sad. Not sad, as if that was the intention of the book, but rather because I had high hopes for it and was left feeling incredibly disappointed.

So, lets begin our study:

An analysis for me starts at the end.

I was out in my hammock on a Sunday evening. It was very warm— in the high eighties— and had sweated through all my clothes. The atmosphere was gentle, though, with the sun slowly growing more orange as afternoon passed into evening. My mood was docile. I was engaged in the book and had decided to stay in the hammock until I was through with it, no matter how long it took.

The last fifty pages of the book were in sight. There went the climax (a bit short if you ask me. Did they really have to die?) Then the falling action (really? Is that what they would’ve done?) Then the epilogue (oh, cute, but I could think of some better ways to wrap this up). I noted all the ways the character arcs were ending and what mood the author was going to leave us on.

Before I knew it, the book was over. I closed the book and did an initial gut check.

Gut check said: disappointed.

Okay then, Jeffrey. Why?

This can be the foundation of where our analysis begins. Since we are left feeling let down by the book, we need to understand why we feel let down. I start by thinking of some of the basic elements of the book that didn’t satisfy me: The characters didn’t work for me, the plot felt meaningless, and the books narrative style didn’t work for me.

Great. Now we have the core ideas we get to analyze:

1. Character

2. Plot

3. Prose

The next part of our analysis is where the learning happens. Its great that we have these feelings or general vibes about things in the book, but it will only benefit us to understand how the writing lead us to feel this way about the stories. Think about how many times a friend has given a critique about a movie or television show but couldn’t point to any concrete thing about it to explain why it is they felt that way. It feels cheap and meaningless, especially if you happen to like that movie or TV show. So do my thoughts on Red Rabbit, the book we’re going to be looking at today. One might argue that since we might never share these thoughts with anyone, then we shouldn’t feel the need to justify our feelings. We may simply feel.

‘Nay, I say! If anything, that is the most important reason to understand. It is not so others may understand us, but so we may understand ourselves.

It is time to explore our initial gut check about the characters, plot, and style by going back to the text and find evidence to support our feelings. In doing this, we can understand what to do or not do in our own writing. And to better understand how and why writing elicits certain responses from us.

Character

Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian has a very large cast of characters. It is said often in the book that seven is a good amount of people to have in a group. While this many characters isn’t too large of a cast, the book includes many more groups of seven. Again, this normally wouldn’t be an issue, but we spend a disproportionate amount of time with meaningless, secondary and tertiary characters than as we do with the main characters. This leaves little time for our main characters to feel fleshed out and developed, which leaves us not really caring about what happens to them (ya know, like the plot). The main characters are ALL static, leaving for no dynamism in the main cast. Their motivations are so loosely bound that there are many points in the story that at any moment they could all decide, “ya know what? Fuck this,” leave, and face no consequences whatsoever for doing so.

So, I made a few claims in that last paragraph, so now its time to back it all up.

Characters

One issue I raised was that there were too many characters, and that it made it difficult for us to get to know the main characters. And one concrete thing I can point to support this claim is how many different characters we got a point of view from. I went through and looked at all the chapters to see who the main POVs for them were from. I counted 109 chapters in the book. Then, I noted how many chapters had the main POV coming from one of the main characters versus non-main characters (this was also complicated, because by the end, I wasn’t entirely sure who the main characters were). By my count, 47% of the chapters in the book were from a point of view that was NOT a main character. That leaves 53% of the book devoted to our main character’s personal, first hand experiences. My copy of the book was 453 pages. So, by some crude math, that means 213 of the pages were from characters who didn’t do much for the story other than attempt to support the main plot (which often did not work).

Now, had all the non-main character POV chapters came from characters who had some influence over the plot or gave us some insight to the main characters, then sure, these numbers would be fine. Or if they were a character we only saw once, then never saw again. But the experience of starting a chapter to be reintroduced to a character from the beginning of the novel that I pegged as a throwaway, tertiary character was extremely jarring. This told the attentive reader in my brain, “pay attention to this character. Surely I misjudged his importance in the story.” Then, I would finish the book and realize the character had very little impact on the story.

In fact, it was the introduction and exploration of so many of these characters that dampened the impact of the plot for me.

The Plot

One point that the story really falls apart for me is its attempt at playing with the reader’s expectation of the witch. We might come into this book believing witches are evil, only to be shown that the witch is actually a good person. This trope of normal, non-magical folk painting a witch as evil only because they fear her is one that has been played out before. I honestly like this trope, but it isn’t executed with much finesse.

The book opens with a bunch of cowboys getting together to decide to put a bounty on Sadie Grace’s head (Sadie is the witch). The men claim that she killed their women and ruined their crops. They make it out to seem like she has doomed the town. So, we pretty solidly establish that Sadie is evil.

However, after a few chapters, we get a chapter from the perspective of Sadie herself. We learn that she is indeed a witch, but not necessarily a bad one. In fact, we actually come to learn that she just wants to be left alone. People often come to her for her help when they are desperate. Sadie is not the sort of witch who twists peoples words into forming misleading pacts with her. She is very blunt and honest about how the rules of magic are very specific and often have unforeseen consequences. Regardless, she helps the townspeople, often at her own expense. So, we then see that Sadie is being wrongfully pursued by those chasing the bounty. It feels unfair and unjust.

Now our expectations have been subverted: Sadie is really just a misunderstood witch who wants to mind her own business. In fact, it seems like the only people in town who hate her are the cowboys who put up the bounty. Hell, most of the townspeople want to protect her for doing good onto them. Do they fear her? Sure. Do they want her dead? Absolutely not.

Leaving the development like this would be fine. This whole unjust bounty could just be chalked up to the lawlessness of the wild west. From a feminist perspective, this could be seen at how a man’s claim will always over power the woman’s.

In the posse of main characters, everyone has loose associations to the witch hunt. Of the seven, only one is actively pursuing the bounty: a witch-master named Tom. Everyone else has incredibly weak reasons for being in the posse: there are two cowboys who seem to have nothing better to do than to follow the group, there is a mexican fugitive who is running from the law (even though he takes no precautions to hide himself in anyway after joining the group), there is a recently widowed woman who randomly feels the need to protect the last member of the group, a little girl who’s motives are unknown. So, by only one character having strong motivations to chase the bounty, everyone else is by association. This isn’t your fellowship of the ring, or anything like that. It would almost be like if Frodo had to take the ring to Mordor and everyone else joined him because they had nothing else better to do.

Weakness of the motivations aside, Tom (the only one pursuing the bounty) dies half way through the book. And since he was the only one who cared about the bounty, now everyone else has no reason to go and find the witch. There is even a scene when they all look at one another and contemplate if they should all just disperse. Honestly, that would’ve felt like a more honest telling of the story, because what happens instead is that everyone summons these random reasons to continue on their journey. One needs to get a telegram from their mother. Another needs to go see family that is just beyond the town. Its weak.

After Tom dies, the uneasiness of doubting that any of these folks actually need to be pursuing the witch is intensified. It feels all for naught. This is where the book started to lose me, but to my dismay, there is a later event that makes this feeling worse.

After having done away with several of the people who wanted to kill her, Sadie kidnaps one of the men who put out her bounty to try and convince him to take down the bounty. In this conversation, we learn about the true exchange that happened between Sadie and this man that made him claim “she killed my daughter” in the opening scene of the book.

We learn that the man’s wife had taken ill with the pox and there was little hope for her to get better. So, the man asked Sadie if she could protect him from the illness. So, Sadie gave the man a powder to consume that would keep him from getting the pox. Then, his daughter got the pox and died as well.

Now, surely this is because this was the price to pay for protecting himself, right? The witch needed to claim another life to save the man’s? No, actually, not at all. In fact, the witch claims that there was no price that had to be paid and it was just the course of nature.

The man retorts that she could’ve thought to protect her daughter. Sadie rebuts with noting that the man never gave his daughter any of the powder to consume, thus having just as much responsibility in his daughter’s death as he claimed Sadie to be.

There was no consequences of magic that started this feud and this bounty crisis. Never did Sadie do anything to crops or anything either. The conflict was just built off the stupidity and idiocy of a few men. It would almost feel more dramatic if the rest of the town felt similarly, but it all felt like everyone knew these cowboys were idiots and that Sadie was the good guy.

Not only is the bounty stupid and avoidable, but it also makes the journey that the main cast goes on also meaningless. They don’t learn anything from this whole misunderstanding or anything else either. They don’t feel changed. Sadie sorta changes. And there are two others who I could make an argument for, but it feels like a stretch. I think when you get to a certain point of trying to make exceptions to paint a book in a better light, it just goes to show how many flaws it has.

What I took away from all this are the importance of character motivations and establishing backstories. I could see the attempts from the author to make the decisions characters made justifiable by their past, but it all felt so deflated. Characters with strong convictions were few and far between. Especially characters who were truly at conflict with each other, creating a clear protagonist versus antagonist dynamic. If we are going to do a witch hunt, lets not half ass it. Lets get more than one character a good enough reason to be on this mission. And lets not make the conflict teeter on the back of some no-name, random, idiotic men who share a view of a woman that no one else does. I mean, there is even a scene towards the book’s end that really tanked the book for me by showing how absolutely no one cared about the man and his bounty.

In this scene, the witch and the surviving main cast are all hopping on a train to Philadelphia while the last remaining cowboy is going to stay in the west. The man who placed the bounty rides up to Sadie and attempts to shoot her. Using magic, she stops the bullet. Then, the cowboy executes the man in front the entire town that had gathered to see the witch off. Not a single person flinches when the cowboy kills the man. No one screams in terror. No one weeps. They all just watch the witch board the train and the cowboy ride out of town, then all disperse to their respective homes, leaving the man’s body in the sun to rot.

If that doesn’t make you question why any of the book’s events happened at all, then I don’t know what does. Because that ending didn’t teach me anything. All it really did was solidify how weak the characters in the stories felt. They were all flat. They didn’t gain anything from the journey. No new perspectives.

After being able to write down all about the journeys of the cast of characters, it became evident for me why I felt like the story didn’t amount to anything. Its because it didn’t. Without your characters growing, there is no sort of change or growth the reader themself can go through.

The same goes for the conflict. If there are weak reasons for characters to actually be at conflict with another, their society, or an aspect of their environment, then the reader is not going to believe the conflict even needs to happen. They are smart and can recognize when it is all avoidable. If the conflict is going to seem avoidable to the reader, then you must go great lengths to justify why those involved in the conflict believe it needs to happen.

These are the sort of lessons I’ve been able to extract from my analysis of the characters and plot in conjunction with one another. Being able to identify exactly when and where in the reading experience these things fall apart for me, I will be more likely to be able to identify similar scenarios in my own writing.

Prose and style

Talking about characters and plot elements are things that are easier to talk broadly about and study, because much of the time it is subjective and one can stretch ideas and evidence. But things get a more ambiguous and meticulous when critiquing a books prose and style.

The prose and style of a writer is typically where authors are given the most leeway to experiment with a voice that comes naturally to them. However, sometimes their voice can conflict with a reader’s preferences of the type of prose they like to read. This is a book that I struggled with both the author’s prose and style because the distance the narrator kept from the characters felt inconsistent.

In the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King, the authors talk about different ways to approach writing a third-person narrator. One guideline they suggest is to keep the perspective tied to one character per chapter: “…decide which character’s viewpoint you are going to use, get into that character’s head, and stay there until the scene is over.”

This is not a hard and fast commandment of writing in the third person, but I believe Grecian’s writing creates the jarring effects that Brown and King describe if their rule is broken. Take this passage straight from Red Rabbit for example:

Moses hauled himself up onto the driver’s seat. Benito made a last threatening gesture with the pistol, then ran to the coach and clambered up onto the seat next to him. Moses snapped the reins, and the horses moved out.

The sea of townspeople parted for the red coach. It bumped down off the grass onto the packed dirt of the road, and rolled away from the Bender house. Benito turned to watch but no one chased them. Moses kept the horses moving as they passed the funeral parlor, the mercantile, and the train station. Clyde rolled out onto the porch of the general store and watched them go.

When the coach reached the railroad tracks, Ned opened his eyes and struggled to sit up.

“Just lie still,” Rose said. “We’re all right now.”

“Help me up,” he said, and she did.

He leaned his shoulder against the cushioned wall and gazed out the window. The coach rocked from side to side as it bounced over the tracks, and Ned smiled and waved, but when Rose looked out the window, she saw nobody. She put a hand on his forehead.

A passage like this would be difficult for me to read. This comes at the end of a chapter, where the initial point of view character was Benito. The POV seems to shift back towards Moses when it describes him driving the coach. When we get the detail about Benito turning to watch, this feels more like we are in his head. The following sentence then switches back to Moses. Then, there is the moment when Ned wakes up and talks with Rose and moves about the coach. This brings us to a total of three different perspectives we view things. Jumping from head to head like this is jarring for me and the exact kind of thing Browne and King warned against. There are instances in the book where this head-jumping works, but the vast majority of these instances made it difficult for me to follow scenes and get to know any of the characters more on a deeper level.

Conclusion

Have you ever tried to have an opinion about something? It can be exhausting. Having to dig up references or provide evidence to show why you feel a certain way can be difficult work. Especially if the opinions you hold are not completely objective.

When I write pieces like this, I often get scared about how to articulate the way I feel about things. Like books, in this case. I read recently an essay by Susan Sontag about why we as people feel compelled to review or analyze art. To brutally paraphrase her graceful words, the act of analysis is more in service to one’s self than for anyone else. By understanding how something resonates with yourself gives you an incredible amount of insight into your soul. Taking that a step further, understanding how something resonated with you is just as important.

That’s how I like to write these reflections on the books I read. They are less about trying convince someone else that a book is bad or not, but rather to apply my critical thinking skills to understand why something rubbed me the wrong way or not, and furthermore, what it is about the book that elicited that certain feeling.

For the many critiques I had for Red Rabbit, it made for a stimulating reading experience. Sadie Green’s scenes were a great mix of eerily cheerful, capturing the mood set by the misunderstood witch perfectly. The narrator’s distance worked great for her scenes, just not others. If you are someone who is all about cowboys and witches, this book could make it in to your TBR if you have nothing else better. Don’t be fooled by that book’s back cover as I was.