The Conundrum of Spoilers
or {Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: Last to
Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling
by Karen S. Wiesner
Several criteria guide
book-buying strategies, which is something I've spoken of at length in articles
as well as in my book Writing Blurbs That
Sizzle--And Sell! (Fiction Fundamentals, Book 7). Personalizing those
standards, here's what guides my decisions on whether or not to commit to
purchasing a book to read:
First and foremost, for me, is
the author. If it's one I've loved his or her past offerings, that may be all
that's necessary for me to sweep up every new release and get to the checkout
ASAP. If it's an author who I inconsistently enjoy their work or a brand-new
writer for me, I may waffle about buying. The format, price, genre, and subject
matter would all have to come into play for me to cross the threshold of firm
decision in whether to buy something from them.
Second, whether the book is
available as a paperback almost always plays a significant role in my choice.
There are almost no authors I would automatically buy a hardcover book for. In
my opinion, hardcovers are too expensive, unless you can get them on sale. I
only buy ebooks if there are no other formats available--because I spend far
too many hours every single day looking at screens, it's hard for me to choose
electronic reading material for pleasure, given the strain on my eyes and
brain. Inevitably, I wait until the paperback edition is available before
buying, period, even for my most favorite authors. However, I do occasionally
make exceptions.
The third factor for me is the
genre. If I'm sold on the previous two criteria and it's a horror story, it's a
done deal--as in, I can't get to the cash register fast enough. My second
favorite genre is (sigh!) all other genres. Science fiction, fantasy, mystery,
Regency romance, thriller…you name it. I wish I could choose between them, but
they're all in constant competition with each other and my interest at a
particular moment.
Back cover blurbs tend to be the
tie-breaker for all the previous directives, and it's the make-it-or-break-it
point of whatever came before. If the back cover blurb doesn't sell me, that's
it. It's either hello, or sorry thanks
for coming goodbye. Most importantly, a blurb can't be too short. I need to
know who the characters are, what they're facing, and what the stakes are. I
want details up until the point of spoilers but never beyond. If I don't get the
information I need in a blurb, little can convince me to move forward since the
risk of buying something that doesn't have enough persuasive evidence to
warrant spending money and time on is too great for me. Though back cover
blurbs are the fourth and last factor in whether or not I may a book purchase,
it's the one that plays the most significant role in my decision.
Note: Cover art and reviews--bad
or good--aren't considerations in my book-buying choices even one iota. I would
buy a book with a cover that doesn't appeal to me if it meets my four crucial
requirements. As for reviews, I don't read them at all until the book has been
purchased and I'm just about to start reading it. I absolutely hate it when a
back cover blurb is little more than a publisher thrusting a fistful of reviews
or accolades at me in place of the blurb, like most book distributors (Amazon!!!)
do these days, as if any of that matters to me in the least.
Last to Leave the Room
by Caitlin Starling has had many genres attached to it. I think psychological
horror sums it up best. Some reviews mentioned science fiction as a potential
genre, but I don't really see how that fits after having read it. (Too much of
a stretch in my mind to classify this title that way.) Techno-thriller could
also fit because there is a lot of technical information given about physics,
technology, computers, engineering, etc. In any case, the horror aspects were
what appealed most to me for this story.
I was eagerly awaiting Starling's
next release, given how much I enjoyed two of her previous books. See my
reviews for them here:
The Luminous Dead: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/06/karen-wiesner-book-review-luminous-dead.html
and
The Death of Jane Lawrence: https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2023/07/book-review-death-of-jane-lawrence-by.html
The basic idea of this story is
that a brilliant scientist with almost no moral boundaries embarks on
ground-breaking research that leads to the city she's living in sinking. She's
funded by an equally immoral corporation--though it's respectable on the
surface--that retains a "bully" who makes sure none of the
prone-to-lunacy scientists goes too far off the edge of the world. The
scientist's own private research is actually the cause of what's happening to
the city and that makes the consequences not only diabolically personal but
universally dangerous.
The hardcover and ebook editions
came out October 10, 2023. I held out until November 11, 2023, hoping to
see the paperback release become imminent in that time. For reasons involving
reaching a low point in my TBR pile and the additional motivation of Christmas
only a month away, but mainly because I was very eager to read this author's
next book (the genre and blurb utterly sold me), I decided to splurge and get
the hardcover.
After I held the hardback with the wraparound paper cover art in my
hands, I studied the cover for a long time. It was an interesting design,
showing eight women who all looked identical. One of the women, the one in the
spotlight, sat at the bottom of a staircase and was the central focus of the
design. The others were obviously listening to her and giving her their
attention. The fact that they so closely resembled each other intrigued me.
Having read the back cover blurb earlier, before my purchase of the book, I
started to form clear ideas about what the book's central themes were.
Next, I re-read the back cover blurb that was printed on the inner leaf
of the slipcover. From there, I had a very strong concept of the plot. This was
followed by reading the back cover of the book, which had no fewer than nine
reviews put forth from other authors of the genre, I assume (I'd never heard of
any of them, though some accolades were included for most of them). The reviews
stunned me a little bit because they gave away what felt like crucial elements
of the story conflict that I wasn't sure should have been leaked prematurely.
Let me inject here that I've never understood what people consider
spoilers. An article on Wikipedia states that, "A spoiler is an element of
a disseminated summary or description of a media narrative that reveals significant
plot elements, with the implication that the experience of discovering the plot
naturally, as the creator intended it, has been robbed of its full
effect." On the sitcom Big Bang
Theory, Sheldon calls a spoiler anything revealed that
"pre-blows" the mind; as in, the only place the mind can and should
be blown is where the writer intended shock and awe to dazzle like fireworks
within the viewer's individual brain.
The only part I've ever been sure of when it comes to spoilers is that
I'm apparently guilty of giving crucial information away too often. I've lost
count of how many people have screamed out in the middle of an active
discussion "Spoiler!", as if I committed a murder or worse. I know
people who won't read a synopsis of a book, movie, or videogame in advance
because those handful of words might wreck something for them. How do they know
if it's something they'll like without reading even that much? I don't get it. Even
after being called on it, I can't fathom why the perfectly innocuous thing I'd
said is being viewed as an illegal revelation of vital plot elements that would
have otherwise been an awestruck surprise to the one who hadn't yet read the
story, seen the film, or played the videogame.
To so many people, spoilers are a serious miscarriage of justice. In the
past, for me, I've actually enjoyed spoilers. I'm the type of person who reads
as much as possible about a story (whether it's a book, a movie, or a
videogame) in advance of submerging in it. For videogames in particular, I prefer
not to have big surprises hit me while
I'm immersed. I always read in-depth walkthroughs in their entirety before
undertaking any game I'm interested in. I don't want to miss anything vital to
gaining the best possible ending just because I didn't realize I had to say
something specific that isn't obvious to anyone but the game developers. It's
possible to miss or lose so much in videogames if you're not aware in advance
of the event that causes potentially disastrous consequences. I once played a
game that took about 25 minutes from start to finish. I solved all the
extremely challenging puzzles, made the correct choices, and did literally
everything right. I had a single misstep. I said something I didn't realize was
even a bad thing to say; at the time, it seemed like the best choice of the few
options I was given. The ramifications of that decision led to an ending that
didn't seem fair. Though it was a short game, it was an exhausting one that I
didn't want to ever repeat. I rue now that I didn't read a walkthrough first so
I could avoid the seemingly fatal mistake of not reading the developer's minds.
I haven't made that mistake since.
In any case, for books and movies, I need to read the back cover blurbs,
any reviews I come across, and if I happen to hear too much detail in advance
on social media or elsewhere, I don't mind. For mysteries or psychological
thrillers, I generally guess the finer details almost immediately after
starting the story. As a writer, I love the reverse engineer process of that.
It doesn't ruin anything for me. If anything, it makes it more exciting for me
as a writer. Yes, a twist is always welcome in any type of story, but, up until Last to Leave the Room, I'd have to say
I've never minded spoilers at all, no matter how explicit and thorough. Ultimately,
I'd say I've had a major blind spot where spoilers are concerned.
With Last to Leave the Room, something
happened to me that I'm not sure has ever occurred before except in the case of
most of M. Night Shyamalan's films, where the big reveal will forever change
the story for me as I initially knew it. While most of Shyamalan's movies are
still really good once I know the core element, that big twist in the story is
the point of it for me. I don't want that ruined in advance. His promoters are
good at telling the fringe edges of the story in the blurb and previews so
nothing crucial is ever given away thereby wrecking the shocking twist to come.
After viewing the cover for this particular Starling tale, followed by
reading the blurb and reviews slipcover, I felt like I went into starting the
story with far too much information--revealed with too on-point cover art and
reviews that sabotaged the jolt I'd been looking forward to getting while
reading the story. I guess without really realizing it, I'd allowed this author
to be the one I wanted to give me a horrifying shock or several in the course
of reading her books, the same way I feel about Shyamalan movies. For the first
time, I really understood why people got mad at me for, in essence, telling the
punch line of a joke before giving the lead-up.
For those who don't mind spoilers, I'll include details below in very
small writing about what it was that was "spoiled" or given away
before I started reading Last to Leave
the Room. If you don't want spoilers, don't read it and don't look at the
book cover or reviews too closely.
The cover of the
book shows nine identical women, eight of whom are circled around the central
figure in the light, who's obviously the leader, almost looking like she's
teaching them. Given that the back cover blurb speaks of the main character
Tamsin finding a door in her basement that wasn't there before the distorting
dimensions leading to accelerated subsidence affecting the entire city of San
Siroco, and that an exact physical copy of Tamsin emerges from that door, it
was easy to deduce that whatever this phenomenon destroying the city is, it
creates doppelgängers--possibly many of them. In fact, Tamsin's cat also gains
its own doppelgänger early in the story, after Tamsin's copy emerges. So I went
into the story aware this would be the focus of the story. Reviews on the back
cover talk about other focuses and conflicts, like gender, identity, and memory
being central in the story premise. All of the things in this paragraph led to
further deductions on my part, which were borne out almost exactly how I
imagined they would be in reading the actual story.
I read through the first part of
the book (titled "The City", comprising the first 28 pages), the
second "The Door" (40 pages), and the third "The Double"
(136 pages) with almost no surprises revealed that I hadn't already figured out
before I ever started reading the book. I'll also add that on page 96, I felt
compelled to re-read the back cover blurb and realized that the blurb contained
information that was either highly inaccurate or wildly misleading. Again, so I
can't be criticized for spoilers, here's what that is below, in tiny print that
you'll really have to strain to read if you want to know:
The back cover blurb
states emphatically that, at the bottom of the stairs, Tamsin "finds a
door that didn't exist before--and one night, it opens to reveal an exact
physical copy of her." Point of fact, the door never actually opened in
the story at the point before the doppelgänger appeared. If it did, it happened
off-screen. Which is to say, it didn't happen at all, or the author was trying
to trick the reader--blatant cheating when it comes to giving readers
foundational facts. The opening of that door is a pivotal conflict in the story!
In fact, the opening of the door is almost shown to be impossible throughout the story until the end. So telling the
reader in so blasé a fashion in the blurb
that the door opened (when it won't and can't and seems unlikely to within the story) and Tamsin's copy came
out of it when the reader would find out soon enough that that event happened
off-screen was beyond toleration for me. As a reader, I was denied seeing that
take place within the story. I see this as a gross error on the part of the
author or the publisher, or blatant cheating. Either that part of the blurb was
accidentally or deliberately wrong, or it's wildly misleading, and, as such, in
my opinion, is completely unfair.
Readers have to be given
certain, foundational facts in the setup of a story. On the face of it, those
foundations have to be valid from start to finish, or there have to be at least
two very different perspectives that are equally true in order to justify the
setup. Any alteration has to feel natural and be properly built-in from the
beginning. In this case, I don't believe it was. I feel this inaccuracy
unfairly altered and colored my perceptions pre-read. At the very least, I
believe the word "presumably" should have been added to the blurb (in
the area I spoke of in my last spoiler paragraph) in order to allow it to stand
where it does as a foundational fact. Providing that one little word would have
allowed me to feel satisfied on this point. I would have accepted everything as
is with its inclusion. Without it, I couldn't help feeling that I'd been
unreasonably deceived from the off by the author. This eroded some of my trust
in the author-reader contract. I believe I will be wary about the next book she
offers and worried she won't play fair again.
By way of review, Last to Leave the Room is certainly one
of the slowest moving stories I've ever read. That's not a criticism per se
because I genuinely enjoyed the story, but, given that I basically knew
everything foundational about the story before I started reading it, 205 pages
of developing the characters, themes, and conflicts did seem a little excessive
in the process of reading them--despite how well-written and compelling those
pages were.
Additionally, I was put off by the present tense perspective the story
was told in. On her website, the author said the reason she wrote the book this
way was "in an attempt to capture that transitory feeling, of existing
only in that moment in the narrative with no promise of a future, and an at
times fast-receding glimpse of the past." Regardless, I lost track of how
many times I had to read and re-read sentences because the present tense didn't
sound quite right and I had to figure out where I was getting confused before
continuing. In all cases, the present tense was the reason for why I became
tripped up.
My final bit of criticism before I get into the good stuff is that
Starling almost seems incapable of writing a protagonist that I as a reader can
feel the slightest bit of sympathy for. She sets up a thoroughly unlikeable cast
that, instead of growing, and maturing, and learning from mistakes,
disintegrates page by page and frequently becomes an outright villain by the
end. [It's this very reason I didn't enjoy Starling's novella "Yellow
Jessamine". Absolutely nothing was redeemable by the end of that twisted
little tale.] These are the kinds of characters you come to hate and secretly
wish for the worst to happen to them instead of the best. As a writer myself, I
don't understand that mentality in developing characters. I want readers to
come to love, empathize with, and root for my characters. Could authors who
create utterly despicable main characters actually want readers to root for their character's demise, pumping their fists in victory when the consequences of bad
behavior inevitably come a-knockin'? I can't begin to fathom this. Regardless,
I still find this author's stories utterly compelling, if for no other reason
than that you simply can't walk away from these train wrecks without seeing how
they resolve, satisfactorily if not happily.
On the plus side, the fourth and
last section of the book gave me everything I was looking for in a Caitlin
Starling novel. There was shock, disgust, horror, awe, unexpected developments,
validation of several theories I'd been playing with throughout, and the answer
that was pretty close to what I'd predicted before actually starting the book
felt justified and captivating. I especially loved the explanation of the
title. In fact, it may be what I loved most about the book. I apologize to
those of you who don't care about spoilers having to read the next tiny
paragraph, but in an effort not to be shouted at for revealing a spoiler,
though I can't see how, here's how the title fits in with the story (and
matches the cover art):
Tamsin reads endless
theories, arguments, psychoanalytic reviews, and stories about doubles. In most
of them, the doppelgänger causes destruction. The original usually tries to
kill the double and is harmed in the process. Sometimes it disappears, other
times it's the last one standing. Ultimately, the original always loses. In one
particular yarn, the devil teaches black magic to seven students. The last one
to leave each night forfeits his or her soul. In the case of a doppelgänger,
that "shadow" is always the last to leave the room, so that's what
the devil takes as payment.
While it took me two weeks to
read Parts 1-3 of Last to Leave
the Room, I read Part 4 in about two days, actually getting up at one a.m.
one night to read more as the noose tightened. Ultimately, I found this story
worth the price I paid for the hardcover. Starling never fails to deliver an
impactful story with an explosive ending.
That said, I'm left with conundrums I've rarely had before about whether
front-loading a story with what could easily be considered spoilers (even with
my previous, blasé tolerance of them) can or will adversely influence the
reading experience. About the closest I can come to an accurate response is
that any spoilers, some spoilers, a lot of spoilers--it's all subjective. In
the case of this novel, I was put off by what I felt was too much pivotal
information being given in advance of reading a single word of it--almost to
the point of fury. To add to my confusion, after finishing the book and just
before writing this review, I went to the author's website. I found two
essay/articles there concerning this particular story, and both gave away so
much information about the plot that I was certain had I read either of them in
advance, I wouldn't have enjoyed the book at all. They left little or nothing
for me to discover on my own in the process of reading.
This experience leaves me with uncertainty about something that, in the
past, before reading this particular title, I would have responded to very
differently: At what point is a surfeit of information given in advance about
the plot of a story overkill or buzz-kill, so that there's almost no point to
reading the book since you can already guess the core elements? I simply don't
know. Anyone else want to give it a try?
Karen Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books and see her art
here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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