Switched

I’m not going to lie. I am absolutely fascinated by the idea of changelings (No, I’m not talking about the Angelina Jolie movie. I think. I haven’t seen it, because her face creeps me out.), so when I saw the description of Switched by Amanda Hocking on LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers, I jumped at the chance to win an advance reader.

The book is being published by St. Martin’s Griffin in trade paperback next week, but it was originally self-published as an e-book. E-book self-publishing is a brilliant plan (with caveats like mostly illiterate idiots), a great way for aspiring authors to test the waters of publishing, and in Ms Hocking’s case, she hit the jackpot- e-books successful enough to warrant the attention of a major publisher. Thing is, it wasn’t popular because it’s a great story- it’s popular because it cashes in on the Twilight-kindled fad of supernatural, fawning hotties.

It starts out interesting enough. Six-year-old Wendy has a temper tantrum at her birthday party. Her mother got a chocolate cake, and Wendy hates chocolate. This is the breaking point for her mother, who goes insane, insisting that Wendy isn’t her real daughter and killed her son. She attacks Wendy with the cake knife, leaving the little girl in need of 60 stitches. Her older brother intervenes and saves her life, and her mother is locked away in a psych ward.

Then we skip forward eleven years. Wendy is sullen, unfriendly, and ungrateful for the constant affection and support showered on her by her brother Matt and her aunt. They’ve moved repeatedly, putting Wendy in school after school as she continues to get kicked out due to her behavior. She has next to no impulse control, a bad temper, and is generally anti-social. Recently she’s discovered that if she thinks very hard at a person, they will do what she wants. In her new school, a last-ditch effort at getting her graduated, she uses this power to avoid getting detentions for falling asleep in class. How noble.

After using her powers on a teacher, she realizes another new student- Finn-  has been staring at her. A lot. She handles her outrage predictably, and tells him off but good. He agrees to stop staring, asks that she stop using her powers on people, and then the subsequent lack of staring bothers her. Wendy doesn’t make sense, and most people excuse this as “being a teenage girl.” Granted, I no longer socialize with a great many teenagers, but even when I did (and when I was a teenage girl), that’s… stupid. You don’t have the right to be upset at someone for doing exactly what you told them to do, particularly when the activity ceased was one that the requester felt was creepy.

So, for reasons utterly baffling to me, Wendy opts to attend a school dance. There, she sees Finn, who dances with her, and then gets awkward and weird, rebuffing her painful attempts at flirting, which enrages her. She uses her power to convince a poor, hapless boy to drive her home, where her protective and loving older brother gets mad at a boy who would fluster her so much. (Seriously, her older brother is the bomb. He cares about his family, he’s a hard worker, and he’s willing to put most of his life aside to help his sister get through her issues with their mother trying to kill her.)

Instead of doing the smart thing and staying away, Finn gets Wendy to let him into her room while she sits up there and mopes. Then he tells her that her family is not her family, and that she’s a troll.

Oh, sorry. Not a troll doll, a troll.

But wait!

That’s not right, either. They call themselves Trylle, and are sexy beasts. The author doesn’t just take the part of the Wikipedia entry that says trolls can look like humans to heart, she runs away with it, cackling madly. I can handle good-looking vampires (they have to attract prey somehow), and what’s Glamour for, if not to make the Fey Folk beautiful? Angels and Demons can be attractive, I suppose, based on folklore. But even looking like humans doesn’t mean that they should all automatically be gorgeous. Oh, no. I mean foxy, as that’s the word the author uses time and time again.

From Ms Hocking’s Goodreads profile: “I also wrote the Trylle Trilogy, which is a paranormal romance without vampires, shifters, mermaids, fae, angels, dragons, ghosts, or ninjas. “

Psst, honey. If they’re all supernaturally beautiful and all have the same magical powers, it doesn’t matter if you call them trolls instead of whatever else has sold well strikes your fancy.

Aaaaaaanyway.

Having talked his way into the bedroom of a teenage girl using the ol’ “You’re special, not like everyone else,” line, Finn (who admits to being 20 years old) explains that her power of getting everything she wants is more proof that she’s a troll. So are her picky eating habits! Also her curly hair that tangles even more than regular curly hair! And some trolls (but not her) have skin of a shade that makes them look permanently seasick! Except they are otherwise gorgeous.

And with all that proof, he wants her to come with him to meet her biological mother and live with the Trylle. Wendy initially refuses, because she doesn’t want to disappoint her brother and aunt (though this is not the first time she says she doesn’t want to hurt them, this is the first time she tries to do something about it). After an attack of plot-moving proportions, Wendy decides to abandon the family that loves her and go with this stranger who tells her crazy things.

My readers who were once fantasy-loving teenage girls have probably figured out where this is going.

Wendy is not just any Trylle changeling.

She’s the daughter of the queen, and heir to the massive fortune and tiny kingdom.

And it would seem to be quite the fortune, as the lands and palace are expansive and expensive, as we are frequently reminded. Note to Ms Hocking: “expensive” and “designer” and “high-fashion” do not actually tell your readers what something looks like.

And all this cash? Comes from changelings. That’s right, the Trylle are basically massive con artists, placing their cuckoos in the nest eggs of wealthy families, who raise, educate, and leave giant inheritances to children, all unsuspecting. One would think that the governments and revenue services of the various countries that house these troll children would eventually catch on to the fact that all this money keeps going to a tiny place in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota along with these children. There’s this thing where governments like money, and that seems like a pattern they wouldn’t just miss.

Wendy’s bio-mother is cold and demanding, insisting that, since Wendy is a princess, she should behave like one, despite being a sullen teenager who had someone try to kill her as a child. A debutante ball is scheduled for a few weeks later, and a huge chunk of the book is then Wendy trying to learn how to be a princess and whining incessantly about it. The boy whose place in human society she replaced lives in the house, and she alternates between flirting with him and Finn, complaining about how Finn doesn’t act in ways she approves of, and dissing the entire society that she gave up a loving family for.

She also snoops in a locked room, and finds a painting of herself, dressed in an elegant silver gown, a look of abject horror on her face, injured, and surrounded by broken glass. Turns out the queen has a talent for painting the future. Wendy dwells on this painting a lot in the following weeks, but apparently not enough.

At one point she and Rhys (human half of the changeling swap) sit down to watch Lord of the Rings, and he tells her that it’s so much funnier when you know real trolls. Really? Because there’s only a cave troll in the first one,  a few in the siege of Gondor, and a pair open the Black Gate. In the extended edition you get a quick glimpse of the trolls that turned to stone in The Hobbit, but the only time anything is ever called a troll in those movies is the cave troll.  Boromir’s resigned, “They have a cave troll,” and then fighting. I hatehatehate it when an author tries to make a cutesy nerd reference while knowing nothing at all about what they just said.

And does anyone else find it creepy that she’s flirting with the biological brother of the man she thought was her brother for 17 years? Because EW.

Sometime in all this entirely boring talk about preparation for her ball, Wendy realizes she’s in love with Finn, and badgers a confession of the same feeling from him because he promised to never lie to her. But! Oh, dear heavens! A princess isn’t allowed to be “caught” with a Tracker or a human! She’ll be banished from the Trylle kingdom!

Right then, the only things she likes about the Trylle kingdom are Finn, Rhys, and the abundant money. Who cares if she gets banished? So she goes back to live with her loving family? Sounds dreadful!

But, because he loves her and he believes it would be best for the kingdom if she inherited, Finn chooses to leave. Sound familiar? Wendy falls into a stupor, needing to be physically guided through the morning of the ball, completely non-functional without her man. Also familiar?

During the designing and fitting of her ball gown, Wendy somehow entirely fails to notice that it’s the exact dress in the prophetic painting. At least her mother has the excuse of not having seen the dress at all during the process.

There is an awkward ball, interrupted by the second convenient attack of plot movement! We’re never given an actual explanation for why these people want to kidnap Wendy, but I assume it’s because of her princess-ness and probably super-powers that have yet to manifest. Nameless people die! Rhys is injured trying to protect Wendy! Newfound friends fight! Finn reappears to romantically save Wendy because she can’t protect herself with her magical powers of persuading people to do what she wants! Finn fights off the bad guys, Wendy goes… Oh, crap. I’ve finally realized this is the scene from the painting, and Finn and the bad guy go over the side of a cliff!

Don’t worry, Finn gets rescued by the guy who seems to only exist to be telekinetic. He’s rewarded with a chaste night of cuddling, and then the queen sends him away For Good. Enraged by the loss of The One True Love of Her Life, Wendy decides that now is the time to run away. She uses her persuasion on Rhys and they motorcycle away.

But they can’t use the gate, because the guards are on high alert after the attack. Rhys remembers a hole in the fence that other humans had used to run away, and they go out that way, noting that the hole had been enlarged. They assume that this was how the bad guys got in, and go on their merry way, back to the human family. It never occurs to them to mention this breech to anyone who might want to do something about it, and Rhys never recalled it before, despite there being a threat of attack from the moment Wendy arrived. The end.

I gather there are two more books in this series. I’m not going to read them. Why would I? Given the way these things work, chances are that there will be at least one more romantic interest introduced, endless pages of adolescent angst will ensue, and it will end happily ever after. I could instead spend my time on books that are well written. Or on writing.

Actually, I’m pretty sure Facebook is a better use of my time.

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