I’ve been watching True Blood (actually haven’t watched it for a while – not sure when I’ll get back to it, busy, busy, busy) and I’ve been trying to puzzle out why I’m not that into Sookie and Bill, whereas Sookie’s brother Jason and bestfriend Tara are becoming more and more fascinating.
I’ve decided the reason comes down to one word – change. I can see Jason and Tara having experiences which are opening their eyes, both to the world and to themselves, and as a result they’re becoming much more interesting people. People with depth, people who are good to watch because you’re not exactly sure what they’ll do next, cause THEY’RE not exactly sure what they’ll do next.
Whereas Sookie and Bill currently aren’t really changing, despite things that are happening (quite fraught in Sookie’s case). There’s no development with either of them, and now that I know them, I’m kinda not that interested in seeing more of them.
I’ve been reading the first Anita Blake Vampire Hunter books (I know, Urban Fantasy overload) and while I’m enjoying them, I’m having a similar problem to True Blood, in that Anita and Jean-Claude as a couple aren’t really working for me. Again, I think it’s the same issue – they aren’t changing. Yes, Anita is learning things about herself, but they don’t seem to be having an impact on her character – she’s still the same person at the end of book three that she was at the beginning of book one.
Now, perhaps if the series had started back when Anita became both an animator and a vampire hunter and so you got to see the development of her character from a reasonably innocent person to who she is now, maybe I’d be so intrigued that I’d well and truly be rooting for her whereas at the moment, I’m interested in the details of how she gets in and out of situations and the world that Hamilton has created rather than being into the characters, and that kinda has me wondering if I’ll keep reading past book four.
I then compare this to one of my favourite books – Pride and Prejudice. The beauty of that book is how Lizzie and Darcy work on each other – as they become more attracted, they find themselves starting to see the world through each other’s eyes and it awakens them to their own pride and prejudices. By the end of the book, they are different people and have as a result actually grown together into a very strong couple.
So I had a mad moment, thinking about my main characters in the trilogy and wondering if they changed, or whether they stayed static and thus could become boring. Within their individual story, there is a lot of change but when they appear in the other books as secondary characters, they stay pretty static. I might need to consider if that needs some work or not.