I was hard on Nancy Pettengill's Journey of the Mask, the last self-published novel I read. I said some unkind things about it. I believe it squeaked in at a final grade of C- by the skin of its teeth. This book makes that book look like the pinnacle of self-published literary achievement.

 

Progeny by Becky L. Meadows, 2001

Grade: D-

 

Most of my thoughts here can really be summed up as follows:

 

What the hell is going on in this book?

 

I am already concerned by the dedication, which is showing dangerous signs of D'Arcy-level crazy when the first credit is to "my Angel of Writing, the spirit of Erik, who guided me through every word of every chapter in my labor of love and to whom I have given part of my soul through this work." Oh, dear. My fears in this case, at least, were unrealized, because there were no actual astral shenanigans in the book itself. The dedication, which rambles on a bit, makes it clear that this book is more than likely primarily based on the Webber musical, considering her thanking of said musical-composer for seeing Leroux's novel in its "true light". That also made me leery, because the last book that said something along those lines made me want to host a bonfire, but I can't go around punishing everyone for Forsyth's mistakes, so I let it go.

 

John, who read the first half of this trainwreck with me out of horrified fascination, found it very funny that the author's husband and children made the list of dedications in sixth and seventh place, respectively, after Sarah Brightman, Michael Crawford, Andrew Lloyd Webber, "all who believe", and the fictional Erik. Leroux does not make the dedication, though he is mentioned in passing when Webber's name comes up. Sorry, old man... still no love for you.

 

In thanking the volunteer editor for the book, it is revealed that there was, in fact, an editor. This mostly serves to point out how very, very badly most writers need professional editors in order to make their work readable. I am literally unable to imagine what this must have looked like before it was edited, even by a volunteer editor.

 

Prologue: Christine

 

And the ellipsis abuse has begun. It's like a signpost, pointing to my eventual collapse. THE MISERABLE REMNANTS OF ANNE'S LOVE OF PUNCTUATION, 2 MI.

 

This little prologue doesn't include much action; Christine is looking for her son, Christian, in the garden, and the child seems to be running around chasing an "angel". His mother does a dramatic half-swoon when he repeats this to her (stay tuned, sports-fans... this is just a warm-up swoon for the rest of the novel), and then rhapsodizes ecstatically in her internal monologue on how much this reminds her of Erik, god rest his soul (yes, we are in a sequel, so one would assume he is dead... except that, you know, he's apparently playing patty-cake with Christine's kid in the garden), and how deep her love is, and how much she wishes their souls were intertwined, etc. Ooookay. I'm not yet sure how this works, considering that so far Christine appears to be married to Raoul and raising a family with him after having escaped Erik's clutches, but I'm unfortunately sure that I'm going to find out.

 

Christine's inability to put two and two together when it comes to her kid playing with a mysterious black shape that he calls an "angel" is but the first incident in a titanic series of ostensibly normally mentally-equipped people being totally unable to figure out obvious basic truths. The fun has only just begun.

 

It's worth noting that the name Christian, while not particularly original, is still a good choice for Christine's son; it emphasizes not only his link to her, but also suggests him as a second Christ figure, which is good because Christine completely drops the ball on that in this novel.

 

Book 1: Christian

 

Chapter 1:

 

The novel is divided into several books, a not entirely uncommon convention in longer pieces of fiction. It appears, based on the fact that Meadows will begin shamelessly stealing material from Susan Kay's 1990 novel later, that the idea also comes from that book, which featured several smaller "books" from the points of view of different characters. Unfortunately, Meadows' books have only one purpose: they are there so she can switch points of view from character to character, and while this is not the laziest possible way to switch between characters, it is definitely also not the best when there is no particularly plot-compelling reason to change perspectives at that specific point. Even worse, I almost can't see why she bothered, because each different character's point of view is written in exactly the same voice, style, and vocabulary, to the point that I sometimes forgot whose point of view a scene was supposed to be from because the voices of Christian, Christine, Erik, and Madeleine all sounded exactly the same. It did not make the journey through the book easier, and it certainly didn't add any depth to characters that desperately needed some.

 

Also, there are too many damn books-within-the-book. Not counting the prologue and epilogue, which are also from the perspectives of two different characters, there are six of them, and none of them seem long enough to me to warrant the "book" title (they're about three chapters apiece). It's possible that that's just me being cranky, but that's never stopped me before.

 

Our first scene involves the young Christian, apparently a vocal and piano-playing prodigy, chasing a mysterious masked man into the cellars after he catches him lingering about his dressing room after a performance. My initial theory that this was a Webber-based Phantom is completely borne out by the fact that he apparently has no physical negatives whatsoever except for the face under the mask; his appearance is so handsome as to be jaw-dropping, and he is often described with hilarious adjectives such as "robust". A very far cry from Leroux's skeletal, dank-smelling monster, but Meadows does at least include some vivid description, and her obvious desire to present the Phantom as a kingly figure plays into the idea of his rulership of the underground well.

 

And now for one of many things that made me want to hire a zeppelin to putt about over potential authors' homes with informative corrections on its massive sides: the character's name is Raoul de Chagny. He is from a long line of de Chagnys. His last name, unsurprisingly enough, is therefore "de Chagny" as well. It is not, however, simply "Chagny". You see the difference? Meadows apparently does not, because Frenchmen--often French aristocrats, who would know better more than anybody else--are prone to leaving off the first half of the name whenever the whim takes them. Worse, it's inconsistent; every now and then a character would tease me by saying the entire name correctly, but then everyone would be back to just plain old "Chagny" again. Were this but a passing annoyance, I would have waved it off, but unfortunately it's THE NAME OF ONE OF THE MAIN CHARACTERS, and is said frequently. With varying degrees of accuracy.

 

I'm unsure as to whether married ladies kept their previous names in this particular time period and culture, so I'm not sure if "Christine Daae de Chagny" is correct. My gut says it is not, but my gut's in a bad mood by now and might not be entirely trustworthy. But what I do know about the time period is that the fact that Raoul and Christine have gotten married and now live right outside of Paris in an idyllic happyland should involve some kind of repercussions or social stigma or even disowning. But apparently everyone is okay with the vicomte (wait, sorry; he's a viscount in this... except sometimes, when he's a vicomte instead. Argh) marrying the performing slattern, and they still get invited to all the right parties. Well, yay for them, eh?

 

Christian apparently has eyes that are "deep brown but mixed with flecks of gold that sparkled..." You'll excuse me while I go try not to asphyxiate laughing at the boy with the glitter-eyes. Yeah, that's totally found in nature. I know why Meadows is doing it because I am not an idiot (but it's a SECRET, so no one will reveal it for TEN THOUSAND MORE CHAPTERS), but that doesn't make it make any more sense. Speaking of said secret, Christian likes to stare into the mirror and wonder why he doesn't look like daddy. He doesn't even really look like mommy. Who does he look like? The audience already knows unless they have all the collective acumen of a dead halibut, but Christian does not, and his mother just keels over in a dead faint when he asks her, followed by telling him nothing reassuring, so it continues to be a question (by the way, what kind of fifteen-year-old asks his mother, "Who do I look like?" What a bizarre question). A question that, despite him not seeming overly concerned and the fact that the drama quotient of the scene is not nearly that high, apparently "raged in [his] mind and left smoldering embers in [his] soul." Again, this is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to completely ridiculous, over-the-top description (so over-the-top in some passages that it would make pretty good parody).

 

The fun continues when Christian goes back to boarding school, and, after seeing a bully abusing a stray dog, succumbs to some kind of blackout rage in which he beats the boy to within an inch of his life and then completely fails to remember the incident afterward. I can get behind the episode as being inherited from OhWaitI'mNotSupposedToKnowWhoYet, but Christian's internal monologue in regards to it is wildly inconsistent; he veers from being shocked and appalled at having hurt someone so badly, even indulging in some compulsive hand-washing to get the blood off, to feeling persecuted that the school's headmaster isn't publishing the half-dead boy like he's being punished (hello? You broke all his ribs. Dude is officially punished), to smiling with unholy glee or some shit at his own power over life and death. There's intended to be a contrast between Christian's good nature and the evil he's inherited, or something, but it doesn't really work, and leaves him very unsympathetic for the reader (the justification that it was okay to almost kill the dog-kicking kid doesn't fly with me, either--yeah, dog-kicking = bad, but animal abuse to create a throwaway villain = lazy-ass author).

 

At any rate, Christian is kicked out of boarding school for almost killing a fellow student (and because he couldn't be spending this book running around opera houses and sewers if he were learning, could he?), and Raoul has to come get his son and take him off to a doctor to see what's wrong with him. Said doctor, despite the very shaky science of genetics in the 1800s, informs Raoul that such blackout rages are known to be hereditary. Le gasp! Le shock! Christian can't figure out why his father suddenly looks kind of depressed, but I bet I and every other reader above the age of four can.

 

There is also much ado about the fact that Christian has black hair, which doesn't match either Christine's brown curls (well, hello there, Ms. Brightman) or Raoul's blonde locks. I feel compelled to point out that genetics teaches us that it's entirely possible for this to happen, but let's not rain on Meadows' parade too much yet. We have so very far to go.

 

The writing and grammar carousel is now boarding for passengers, and I rode it, dizzy, nauseous, scowling angrily at incorrect tenses and prepositions, for the vast majority of the book. Extra periods leer from the pages, disrupting perfectly good sentences; things are "leveled on" people rather than leveled at them; ellipses march behind my eyelids in a neverending procession. Random, mid-sentence line breaks make paragraphs where no extra paragraphs should be. The homophones are the worst issue. At no point can I take a book seriously in which someone's face turns "beat red", unless the author is trying to communicate that the character's face is red because someone has just punched him in the nose. Similarly, when someone is sporting a "rye smile", I doubt very much that Meadows wanted me to be envisioning the character with a gigantic piece of brown bread plastered butter-side-down to his face. And there's bonus redundancy, too, when people are wearing the "black leg of the trousers of my black evening suit". No. I'm sorry. This book is having its license revoked. It will be returned after a period of probation and demonstrated success at the English language.

 

Chapter 2:

 

Christian's quest to find out the Great Mystery of his origin continues apace, though sadly not apace enough to speed up some painful navel-gazing. My question is this: if the incident in Leroux's book (and in Webber's musical, too) was so frightening to the Parisian public, and if Christian is actually regularly performing and hanging out at the opera house, how can he not have yet heard about what happened to his mother and father? Both versions of the story play up the idea that performers are notorious gossips, and even if they weren't, how can this kid have gotten to age seventeen without EVER hearing even a WHIMPER of that whole mom-being-kidnapped-by-a-psychopath and dad-almost-dying-in-her-defense thing? People died! Shows were disrupted! It was a big deal!

 

In case anyone was concerned that the prose was going to veer back out of bizarre territory, someone is now crying "a stream of rainbow tears". That someone is not, despite appearances, a unicorn.

 

I've already bitched about homophones, but here's a personal pet peeve homophone that Meadows uses with gleeful abandon: Christian does not "crumble to the ground". He crumples to the ground. See, because "crumple" means to collapse or fold up, whereas "crumble" means to disintegrate into tiny pieces, and we are not lucky enough for any of the characters in this book to start spontaneously disintegrating. I see this constantly, not only in bad books I'm reading for academic success, and it drives me absolutely bonkers. CRUMPLE. CRUMPLE CRUMPLE CRUMPLE.

 

But there is a positive here in that Meadows uses some of that good old Greek mythology imagery here, referring to Erik with a Hades metaphor. This is one of the classic metaphors used to refer to the Phantom, who represents a ruling force in a dark, shadowy realm (and, in his original death's-headed murdering psychopath form, has more than a passing relation to the concept of death) and who abducts a beautiful young representative of sunshine and growth (Christine, standing in for Persephone) to be his wife. It's nice to see it represented here, especially since it's been quite a while since I've seen any Phantom-related literature tackle the Greek archetypes so prevalent in the original novel.

 

But enough praise. Now Christine is wandering the shore of the lake beneath the opera house, alone, at night, in the dark without any kind of extra light source, shouting forlornly about how much she misses Erik and wants to see his ghost. Unfortunately for us, she somehow fails to fall in and drown or otherwise meet her end in this ridiculous endeavor, so we're stuck with her for another 375 pages. Her son is understandably confused and wondering what the hell she's doing, but since he's also skulking around the underground for no particularly good reason, he can't exactly go call her on it.

 

Instead of confronting his mother, Christian gets to listen to a conversation between Erik (a mysterious man about whom he has no idea, despite the fact that, hello, Phantom of the Opera, how could he never have heard about this?) and the daroga, who has apparently arrived to stop him from going after the desolate and brain-damaged Christine. I noted that the relationship between Erik and the daroga seems fairly well-drawn, even if it is touched on only briefly; the idea of the Persian as the Phantom's opposite number, providing reasonable and responsible counterarguments to Erik's impassioned demands, is very much present. In fact, several lines, most notably ones in which Erik refers to the Persian as his conscience, are forcefully reminiscent of Susan Kay's 1990 novel, which made the Persian a significantly more central figure than he was in Leroux's book.

 

Christian, despite not having the brains to figure out anything about the world in which he lives, and despite being a sheltered performer from an aristocratic French family, somehow still knows how to identify the seal of the Persian national police, on the fly, in the dark. It's easier than having him talk to the man and learn who he is through character interaction, I suppose.

 

The great retcon of the end of Webber's musical--not Leroux's novel as I previously thought, since that whole daroga and death and newspaper thing apparently didn't happen--is revealed here (and not for the last time, because characters are going to go on and on and on about it like you wouldn't believe): at the end of the previous story, after letting Raoul go, Christine instead chose to remain with Erik because she loves him long time (initially, she says this was because, a la Leroux, she had to promise to be his wife to save Raoul, but then she realized that she totally wanted to stay anyway so it's all cool). They "married", by which I mean that they declared they were married (applicable in many cultures and time periods, but not in 19th-century France when the participants are Catholic), and then for some reason Erik decided that Christine would be better off without him, so he fakes his own death with the aid of a Rome & Juliet-style drug and sends her home with Raoul (who, incidentally, he's been keeping locked up in a dungeon all the while). While it's a convoluted change to the story, it does still arrive at Erik's redemption when he decides he can't force Christine to live in the darkness with him; it just also tweaks events so that Meadows can establish that Christine loved him muy mucho and that Erik got to have The Sex at least once before she took off. Unfortunately, while I would have gone with this as a change to the idea of redemption that didn't destroy it, Erik's current behavior, which involves ranting, wailing, and threatening physical violence against the Persian if he won't let him go steal Christine away again, suggests that it is a reversible redemption (even after almost eighteen years).

 

By the way, are you confused about Christian's age? So am I. He is twelve near the beginning of the book, when he's asking about his face and beating up boys at boarding school, but then "time passes" and no clear age is set for a while. I can't find the passage that got it into my head that he was fifteen for a while, but the next time we get a solid age for him is three-quarters of the way through the book, when he's seventeen. To further complicate matters, the back cover copy claims him to be nineteen, despite no textual evidence to support this.

 

But, anyway, don't let me bore you with basic facts about the main characters. Not when there's deathless prose like page 32's "Ever since our first encounter, I had never doubted the deep, dark force that surrounded his essence" to be enjoying.

 

By far my favorite part of this early-in-the-book muddle is the interlude in which Christian attempts to cross the lake to Erik's house via boat, and falls victim to the siren. The description of the attack mirrors the one given by the Persian in Leroux's book, and Erik's later flippant explanation is just as ambiguous as the original's, keeping the scene mysterious. Unfortunately, the characters continue to be boneheads; it is a shining moment when, seconds from passing out from near-drowning asphyxiation, Christian reflects that he finds the presence of the attacker "strangely comforting". Yes, I'm sure his completely unknown biological connection is enough to cancel any discomfort he might be feeling from having been attacked and almost murdered by said relative.

 

A very distressing trend begins on page 30, in which Erik apparently has a "mound of sorrow" in his soul. Throughout the book, Meadows will frequently and repeatedly refer to mounds of emotion, as though the characters sweep all their feelings into piles and then wallow in them like pigs. I can't even figure out the literary effect that she's trying to achieve; what IS a "mound of sorrow", and how does one arrive at the conclusion that it is the best choice when describing a character's sadness? A mound of sorrow? What?

 

Chapter 3:

 

While not strictly mythological, the Greeks come back in for a rally later when Erik demonstrates "the speed of Achilles", referring, of course, to Zeno's famous paradox. Considering the nature of the paradox, the use is a little bit ironic, but hey, she's trying.

 

It is in this chapter that I begin keeping track of the number of times specific words are used, because Meadows apparently has a very limited vocabulary of words from which to draw when describing emotions. "Agony", "ecstasy", and "sorrow", in particular, are used with such reckless abandon that they cease to have any meaning. I begin to get the impression that they're being used for every vaguely applicable situation, and have no difficulty imagining a scenario in which Erik's agony and sorrow over having barked his shin on the organ is soothed by the ecstasy of a bandaid.

 

Naturally, when Christian wakes up in Erik's house and the disfigured composer is playing at his organ, he determines that the thing to do is clearly to unmask him. Obviously, we're trying to draw a parallel between him and his mother, but she was an innocent young girl who wanted to see the face of her mysterious yet alluring benefactor, while he is a kid who's almost just been killed and is completely at this man's mercy (they've had conversation by this point; he is aware). It seems less than wise, but I suppose natural curiosity happens. He fails to unmask him, but his attempt does enrage Erik to the point that "his golden eyes had turned scarlet". Really? I mean, yes, I am aware that yellow eyes don't really occur in nature and that Leroux employed the device in order to cast doubt on his character's status as mortal or supernatural, but there is literally no other inkling of supernatural ability, behavior, or ambiguity in this entire book. The Erik of Meadows' novel is completely, unequivocably human, and while I can tolerate his yellow eyes as a nod to the original novel and as a part of his character image, I can't get behind them randomly turning into glowing coals like the Saturday cartoon villain-of-the-week.

 

Christian goes home and has a teenage hissy fit rant at his mother, who immediately caves in and promises to tell him the whole story, despite her previous convictions that he must be protected by never knowing. It is far from the last time that she will totally fail at being a responsible mother (by her own standards, I should note; she frequently does exactly the opposite of what she has stated she wants to do for Christian's benefit).

 

Book 2:

 

Chapter 1:

 

The entire first half of this chapter illustrates that Christine is, apparently, one big fat failure at being Catholic. I don't demand that the characters be monks and nuns--after all, they're people, and people do things against the dictates of their religions all the time--but this is a woman devout enough to actually believe that she was being visited by an angel. Her convoluted discussion of Erik's past sins and how okay they are is vastly touchy even for non-Catholics, just on the basis of general social mores. He's murdered people, but that's okay because people are mean to him? He's going to go to Heaven despite being a murderer who gives God the middle finger whenever possible, because it wouldn't be "fair" if he had to live in darkness after death, too, since he already does in life? Lady, that is not how mortal sins work. The entire time she's reflecting on this as she believes he's dying next to her on his bed, I wanted to slap her. If she'd really loved him, she'd have gotten a goddamn priest down here some way so he could be shriven before shuffling off his mortal coil, but apparently she's hoping that the rules of her religion don't apply to him for some reason. Again, I'd really love for some version of the story to explore Christine's views on religion in-depth--was she originally that devout, or merely clinging to the idea of the angel out of grief over her father? If she was, how did finding out that the angel was a fraud affect her faith, and how did that in turn affect her later actions?--but this book doesn't even try to pretend that it's doing that. It's an application of very modern, very subjective morality to a character that needs a lot of justification to have it, and the result is tooth-grinding. The crowning moment is her assertion on page 50 that "No, it was God who had put this burden on Erik, and it was God who would have to apologize." Yeah! Who the hell do you think you are, God?!

 

I almost missed the extended pondering of Erik's blamelessness, because it was followed by four pages of recap from Leroux's novel. There was not nearly enough new material to make it interesting. It's a tricky thing to rewrite the ending of a piece in order to make a sequel work; there's a very fine line that has to be walked between not explaining enough for the reader to get it and explaining too much and boring the reader silly, and, sadly, this book came down hard on the latter side.

 

I've whined about it before, too, but why the hell do so many authors insist on Christine referring to Erik as her "angel" after the big reveal, when she knows he's just a mortal? Since Christine is not exactly doing a great job at her Catholicism right now, we can assume that the idea of being blasphemous is also not coming into play here, but there's just no compelling reason to have her use the nickname anywhere to be found. She never refers to him as an angel again after she learns the truth in Leroux's novel, instead calling him Erik until the end; even in Webber's musical, she uses it only once at the climax of the final piece, and it's not used in an affectionate way but rather in order to remind him of his previous kindness to her and wail against his current violent coercion. Why use a name that would just constantly remind her of a betrayal that, in Leroux's novel at least, was devastating? Why use a name that doesn't apply to the character at all outside of that deception? It's romanticism run rampant and a desire to use the name to help superimpose a positive image over Erik's mixed bag of sympathetic and unsympathetic behavior, and it's not only saccharine but now also turning into a cliche.

 

This version of Erik uses chloroform to drug Christine and make her more tractable, which I believe I noticed for the first time in Pettengill's novel. It's a bit tenuous to really posit a connection between the two, since they were likely being written around the same time and chloroform isn't exactly an exotic solution for kidnappers, but with two uses, it's now a trend. It's also worth noting that the use of chloroform to subdue Christine is a very concrete, human choice, and, as noted above, Meadows' Erik is extremely human.

 

Meadows uses a lot of turns of phrase that are at best baffling, at worst sort of counter to the effect she is intending. I understand the intent when Christine says that Erik's and her mutual love "welded our souls together", but the result is that I just think, as a reader, that that sounds extremely unpleasant. The hyper-dramatic presentation of every sentence is not aided by these strange word choices: witness the amazing occurrences on page 54, in which Erik's "body erupted with the mound of sorrow that had collected in his soul," (mound of emotion again!), after which Christine's "heart ruptured with the force of his agony". These people are exploding.

 

Taking a leaf straight out of the 1991 Stuart novel, Erik's and Christine's souls remain "bonded" indefinitely after they declare their love for one another, which leads to a ridiculous convention wherein every time they touch one another they have some sort of empathic link that allows them to feel one anothers' emotions. This is always literally described as feeling the other person's emotions crash into them or sweep over them, etc. While I almost found the hilarity of this enough to justify its ridiculousness in Stuart's novel, it's adding to a long list of storytelling sins in Meadows' that make it hard to enjoy it. Again, this is an extremely down-to-earth, non-magical telling of the story, and while I like the romantic idea of soulmates as much as the next person, I have a very low tolerance for poorly-written prose detailing its spontaneous qualities in order to avoid actual character development (you know, people can learn to read one anothers' emotions by talking to each other and learning one anothers' moods, too). The text makes it clear that the author is not considering this any form of magic or supernatural occurrence; no, they just have that much lurve.

 

A great debate rages over the correct past tense of the verb "to shine", which is traditionally irregular ("shone") but, as it is being argued in many circles, can also be correct in modern usage as "shined". I'm not here to argue about that today, but even the people that do want to use the verb "shined" as a past tense do so primarily transitively, not intransitively. So a sentence like page 56's "His eyes shined with complete rapture" is not getting a pass from me, even on the grounds of an evolving language. It's not the only time this past tense grates on my nerves, but in this novel I simply don't have the time to complain about every word or phrase that pings the Crank-o-Meter. I have to move on to the next paragraph, with its incorrect subject-verb-agreement issues.

 

Interestingly enoug h, Philippe is apparently alive and well, which explains why Raoul is still hanging out as the viscount, I suppose. I'll add his survival to the list of changes made to the end of Leroux's novel, and point out that Meadows has removed his murder in order to further humanize and sympathize the Phantom. Philippe himself barely gets more than a cameo as a passing mention, in which someone notes that he "almost disowned" Raoul for marrying Christine (well, I'll be damned! Meadows did look at the social stigma! ...except not really, but at least she acknowledged its existence) but then changed his mind. Bye-bye, Philippe. Good to see you in a later retelling.

 

Since we're looking at these chronologically, we can note that this is not the first spin-off of the Phantom story in which Christine "marries" Erik; the end of the 1990 Kay novel was almost exactly the same as the story Christine is relating here (though that book didn't claim the relationship to be a literal marriage, just a metaphorical one), and the 2002 Pettengill book featured an actual church wedding for the two characters. I think, again, that much of the motivation for this convention comes from the idea of Erik's "entitlement" to Christine--that is, he's suffered and deserves a happy ending because of it, regardless of what actions he might have taken, and therefore Christine gets offered up as a wife on a silver platter because she is the physical representation of the things he wants (social acceptance and personal validation being foremost). Again, this idea seriously undermines Christine's ability to function as an independent character, and Meadows' decision to turn her into a blithering, love-struck moron without the slightest shred of believable interest in anyone except for Erik and Christian (Erik II) underlines that very obviously. It was disheartening for me to see that Meadows does address Christine's more independent actions in Leroux's story, but describes them from a point of view of Christine's helplessness and devotion rather than her personal strength (the most obvious example of this, for me, was in the scene wherein Christine attempts to kill herself by slamming her head into the stone wall; where, in Leroux's novel, it was an act of surprising strength and independence as she refused to allow herself to be a passive victim of Erik's actions and demands, here Meadows describes Christine as reacting "like a trapped animal" who is too weak to face the reality of the situation and wants to kill herself to avoid having to say no to either of the men involved. Both interpretations are valid, but when combined with the complete undermining of Christine's character, it was very hard for me to swallow her as a compelling protagonist).

 

For those keeping score at home, Meadows is indeed attempting to set up a situation in which Raoul and Christine aren't really married because Christine was already married to Erik first. All of the characters will absolutely accept this as the truth and defend this marriage to the death later in the novel... with the exception of Raoul, who will point out that his wedding to Christine involved vows and a priest, whereas her "marriage" to Erik did not, but everyone will ignore him because he's just a big mean jerk who wants to stand in the way of true soul-welded love. Had Meadows found some way to actually make them a married couple--bring in a priest! Hell, have us suddenly find out that the Persian is a Muslim imam!--I would have been annoyed by the contrivance but theoretically on the characters' sides, but, as it is, I think everyone is being irresponsible at the very least.

 

But, wait! All that hasn't happened yet. Rewind to Erik's and Christine's "wedding night", which actually happens some time later than the "wedding" because Erik doesn't want to freak Christine out, which is laudable on his part. I had a long conversation with John here (his feedback: "You're going to get lynched if you talk about this on your website.") about Erik and sex--more specifically, about Erik as a sexual symbol versus Erik as an actual sexual being. We've seen both in the literature to date: Leroux's novel, Webber's musical, and Kisner's short story all present the Phantom as representative of sexuality, while a number of other versions, including Pettengill's novel, Allen's novel, and the 1998 Argento/Sands film present him as a literally sexual man. Now, my personal theory (and it is just a theory, so no one is forced to agree with it) has always been that Erik, as written in the original novel, probably doesn't have a functioning penis, or at least not one that functions the way we would consider that one is supposed to. There are a number of factors that contribute to this idea for me, including the health issues of living underground, his age, and the fact that he has serious physical defects that probably aren't nice enough to stop just above the belt. While Leroux is intentionally ambiguous about the exact source or cause behind Erik's deformity, preferring instead to let the reader's imagination come up with the gory details, a lot of medical conditions that usually include skin degradation and the loss of soft tissue such as the nose or ears (leprosy or porphyria, for example, though Leroux does not name either as a cause of Erik's condition) are not confined to the face, and the male reproductive organ is a classic target for soft tissue degeneration. In Leroux's novel, Erik is unequivocally intended to represent sexuality for Christine; he is the unknown, the dangerous, the compelling, all of which combine with a definite aura of genitive creativity to make him a sort of forbidden fruit for her. However, his desire for her, in return, never seemed particularly sexual to me, being more about his insecurities and his driving need to prove himself to the world, God, and his own fears by having a wife and becoming a member of society, thus forcing everyone to acknowledge that he is, indeed, a man and not a beast. Of course, the idea that Erik's love for Christine is in part motivated by his desire to prove himself to be human is not very romantic, but that's part of what makes his eventual epiphany and redemption when he finally lets her go and acts in her best interests so poignant (i.e., he has stopped acting selfishly and begun to love unselfishly). It's interesting to ponder the idea, especially since our modern perceptions of the story have, by the late 1980s in my timeline, begun to skew so markedly toward the romantic interpretations of the Phantom rather than the horrific ones; early versions still retained a certain amount of sexual symbolism for the Phantom, but in a more negative context, such as in the 1925 Julian/Chaney film (it's not just Erik killing Christine that Raoul is so worried about), where that sexuality is used as a violent threat rather than as an attractive force. Much as I personally tend to stray away from a literal interpretation of the Phantom's sexual connotations, I am always interested when an author tackles one, because it says a lot about how much our perception of sex and its implications (love, passion, and excitement, with far fewer of the traditional negative ideas such as sin, violence, and power) have changed radically in the century since the original novel was written. At this point in time, I wonder if a modern author would find it palatable or even possible for the Phantom character to be written as sexually representative but not actually sexual (though there are one or two versions, such as Charnas' 1996 short story, that do an excellent job of straddling the line).

 

(Another thing to note is that most of this theorizing is drawn from Leroux's novel; if you move on to the Webber musical, which features a much smaller, more localized deformity, there's much less reason to assume that el Pene de los Phantom doesn't operate. Since it's mostly that musical that Meadows is basing her book on, I won't argue there.)

 

What all of this really means for Meadows' novel is that when it comes to the literal Phantom-sex, I'm always interested to see how it goes, why it happens, and what that means for the story and for the time period in which the story was written (and, hey, if it's well-written, toe-tingling sex, bonus!). Unfortunately, writing the story in the twenty-first century doesn't mean that the characters are allowed to behave as if they, too, are from the twenty-first century, so from the moment that Christine was all pulling Erik's clothes off and demanding that he do her because she's his wife, my very abused Period Probability Sensors started blaring resignedly.

 

We already knew that the Phantom's appearance is based on the Webber musical rather than the Leroux novel, but it appears that he may have been watered down some even from that, judging from the descriptions here of his "full and pink" lips. That Webber makeup isn't a full-body deformity, but it is also nothing I would call even remotely attractive.

 

The sex scene is about what you would expect from the abysmally overdramatic rest of the text, being a combination of things that make no sense--your dress "seemed to melt from you", Christine?--and hilarious prose imagery such as the "fire deep in the pit of [Christine's] stomach". It isn't just overdone, as in some of the romance novels I've previously read for this project; it is mind-blowingly bad in its simultaneous heavy utilization of cliche, confusion, and just plain poor writing. There is, naturally, an earth-shattering orgasm for virgin Christine, sleeping with her virgin husband.

 

But, post-sex, Erik has a conveniently-timed crisis of conscience and decides that he can't demand that Christine stay down here with him forever after all. It would have been much nicer of him to have this epiphany before taking her virginity and seriously damaging her chances of marrying anybody else (not that her chances were great in the first place, but it sure doesn't help), but you can look at the situation as a sort of extension of the kiss epiphany in the novel or at the end of the Webber musical. Since Meadows wants this to be a much more passionate, sexual relationship between Erik and Christine, apparently this version of Erik isn't satisfied being kissed for the first time and has to get laid for the first time, at which point he experiences the same understanding that he's not being kind to Christine by keeping her hostage. Of course, there's a serious difference in that this version of Christine is mooney-eyed mad over Erik and doesn't want to leave... so he drugs her and sends her torpid body home with Raoul, who he's been keeping locked up in the next room for his entire honeymoon, apparently. Erik's somewhat roundabout justification is that he's giving her a choice to go experience Life Upstairs with Raoul and that she can come back if she chooses him instead, but it all strikes me as a bit silly at this point. She never does come back, because Raoul is a sensible dude and wants to tell the police where the murderer lives, and she has to promise never to go back there in order to stop him.

 

Christine's insistence that Erik is dead makes a little more sense here when she relates the story of how she went back to his house to deliver her wedding invitation (your wedding, remember? To Raoul? You do remember him?) and saw him expire of a wasting sickness, after which the Persian booted her out of the house and sent her home. Of course, we already know from the first few chapters that this was faked, but she doesn't.

 

Christine is kind of a massive bitch to Raoul, starting now and continuing on throughout the rest of the book. From her internal musings on how her love for Erik is "infinitely more important than what I feel for Raoul" to her hysterical tantrums when he tries to do concerned things like stopping her from being recaptured by a madman, she is really, really less than admirable in her dealings with him. I want him to dump her neurotic ass and move to Jamaica with a supermodel.

 

The following conversation occurred in this chapter.

 

Anne: "And then it reads, 'I stiffened as a hot finger of pain burned inside me, but it faded and became a throbbing mound of pleasure as our bodies and souls merged as one.' Huh. Now the pleasure is in a mound."

John: "Wait. Is she still telling all of this to her teenage son?"

Anne: "Well, since the whole chapter is her telling Christian the story of her relationship with Erik and Raoul, and it doesn't say anywhere that she stopped... uh, yeah, I guess so."

John: "Do not read any more of this book to me. I am done now."

Anne: "Are you sure? She's 'shattering in a rainbow of colors and sensations' in the next paragraph."

John: "Seriously, woman, I'm not listening to more of this."

 

And then I soldiered on alone.

 

Chapter 2:

 

Yes, it is apparently confirmed that she did tell Chapter One to her son. All of it. Including her earth-shattering Phantom-induced orgasm. Yeah, I know he's seventeen (I think), but that is still way way way WAY too much information for your kid, Christine, especially in the nineteenth century.

 

Christine refers obliquely in her internal monologue here to the fact that Christian is Erik's son, rather than Raoul's (well no goddamn duh). However, this will not officially be announced until another quarter of the way through the novel, at which point everyone will act shocked and surprised.

 

The bizarre descriptions continue, from Christine's body "melting into the covers" (what the hell is this woman on?) to the "mountain of utter joy" that is now quivering in her soul at the thought of reuniting with Erik (what, mounds of emotion aren't good enough for her anymore? Now it's mountains?). The random line breaks and punctuation issues also continue, amidst descriptions of the way that Christian's eyes glow (yes, glow) when he's angry. Oy vey.

 

Here's a question I had for much of this book: Raoul is always away on "business". He goes here, he goes there, he goes to London for a week. But since he hasn't been removed from the de Chagny line or fortune, what, exactly, is this "business" he's always up to? I assume that if he were still in the army, some mention of that would have been made, but he ain't. I don't think that Meadows knows, either. I imagine her waving her authory hand: "Oh, you know, he's doing viscounty things. Pay attention to Erik and Christine and stop bothering me about these unimportant side characters."

 

Now that Christian has revealed to Christine that Erik is, in fact, still alive, she naturally trots right on down to the opera house to look for him, even though that's a terrible idea (and something she promised not to do, I believe). There, we discover that apparently Erik doesn't physically age because he looks exactly the same after almost two decades (lucky him) and that both he and Christine are perpetually leaky faucets, because I don't think anyone stops crying from this point until the very end of the novel. Every action or conversation is accompanied by a rain of agonized tears, which really loses its effect when it's constantly ongoing. Unfortunately, because I know this is supposed to be a poignant scene, I couldn't care less about Christine's indignant hurt over having been tricked or Erik's agony-wracked regret at having driven her away, because I think they're both pretty much jackass characters and I don't give a shit about their reunion. Christine continues to be harsh when Erik, referring to Raoul, asks, "What about the boy?" and she replies, "What about him?" Sigh. She states that she loves Raoul "as a brother", which is a classic modern interpretation of Raoul's rule as the safe Gothic lover from Leroux's novel; while the original novel sets up the choice between two equally appealing but fundamentally different romantic ideals (Erik, the sexually-charged and mysterious, passionate affair, and Raoul, the loving, warm, undemanding suitor), many modern readers view the sexless hero as less of a hero because of his lack of passionate context, and subsequently reinterpret his feelings (or, at least, Christine's feelings for him) as platonic love rather than romantic. It's interesting to note that while Christine is often reimagined in this way to love Raoul in a strictly platonic context, he always still loves her romantically, despite the fact that she is an equally innocent, non-sexually-connotated character. It would be interesting to theorize that there's a certain amount of self-insert going on here since most of the authors in question are women, but that would require a psychology degree that I don't have. Another idea that might apply is the possibility that, as a culture, we still view innocence and sexual repression as desirable traits in a woman but not in a man, leading us to view Christine as more positive because she possesses them and Raoul as less so for the same reason.

 

Chapter 3:

 

And then, boom! Christine is banging Erik like there is no tomorrow! Like, every night! Seriously! I'd point out something about adultery and how marriage is a sacrament in Catholicism, but, again, Christine has already demonstrated ultimate fail at Catholicism. The attempt to circumvent this issue by says, "Oh, well, I was married to Erik first!" does not fly with me, for reasons discussed earlier, and also because it's such an obvious attempt to rationalize behavior that she knows to be unethical.

 

Page 95 is like distilled literary pain. Erik has "eyes full of questions that [Christine] answered breathlessly with [her] soul". Moments later, the same eyes "became tortured pools of tears". Then his eyes are "burning questions of desire". This all happened in the same paragraph.

 

But even all this was okay with me until the very bottom of the page, where Christin reflects that "It had been seventeen years, seventeen long years since I had last made love."

 

...WHAT. Are you trying to tell me that you've NEVER slept with Raoul, your HUSBAND? What the hell is going on here? What is going on here, it turns out, is that she did sleep with him a few times, but after Christian was born the doctor informed them that another childbirth might kill her, so Raoul refused to touch her after that out of concern for her safety. I know this is meant to illustrate the loneliness and passionlessness of Christine's marriage to Raoul, but what it really tells me is that he loves her too much to risk her safety just to get his rocks off, while Christine is too dumb to even mention the danger to Erik (it's especially ironic that she's thinking about how she couldn't sleep with Raoul WHILE sleeping with Erik). No, she is achieving "release from the shackles of celibacy, release from the nagging thought that perhaps I was not as attractive as I used to be..." Yeah, good thing you have someone to cheat on your loving husband with now.

 

About a week later, Christine suddenly remembers that she could get pregnant, and "wonders how she could have forgotten it". I also wonder that, since she was thinking about it DURING SEX. There is much angst over Erik's wayward penis bullets once she tells him about this, though I find it kind of hilarious that no one has realized that there is the secondary concern of Raoul possibly suspecting something is up if the wife with whom he does not have sex suddenly turns up pregnant. Luckily, Erik is apparently able to whip up a Plan B elixir in the bathroom, so any possible Phantom Baby Part II action is averted for now. Later, in order that the mad bangerating not be interrupted, he shows her "a device used by people to prevent pregnancy", prompting me to hoot with laughter and try to figure out what kind of "device", exactly, this might be (sorry, Erik, but the IUD has not yet been invented). I have to assume it's a condom, which was present in the nineteenth century, though unpopular, only sort of effective, and usually made of animal intestine. But can one call an animal-intestine condom a "device"? Why does this sound like Meadows had to throw in something to allow the shagging to continue, but didn't feel like doing any research into icky things like nineteenth-century birth control because it might involve details that would ruin the warm glow of the characters' mounds of happiness?

 

The following line, "Raoul had never offered a solution to our intimacy dilemma," does not engender the intended feelings of preference for Erik that it's supposed to. It just makes me annoyed by the heavy-handed attempt to convince the reader that it's okay for Christine to cheat on Raoul because he's not trying to use contraception (incidentally, not okay in the Church as well, which, as revealed by some of his later dialogue, Raoul also belongs to) and thus doesn't really want/love/deserve her as much.

 

Back at the Chateau de Chagny, Christian's eyes have apparently become gold with brown flecks in them, rather than the other way around. This makes no sense, but is at least less ridiculous-sounding than the glitter-eyes were.

 

Unexpectedly, the person I like most here is Christian. Christine's rhapsodic internal monologues about how much she loves Erik and how much the sex makes her soul sing or some rubbish are interrupted by her son pointing out that she is behaving like a skank, treating his father badly, and flouting her marriage vows. To him, I say, bravo, and I agree with him--I also hope that Raoul kills Erik at some point, because that would hastened the conclusion of this book. In fact, anybody, please kill somebody else important. I have other things to do and this book is not making reading it quickly an easy task.

 

John, despite refusing to read the rest of the book, nevertheless kept up a running bet with me throughout this section. I maintained that, the way things were being set up, Erik probably didn't know that Christian was his son. John maintained that only an idiot could not know that, and preferred the theory that Erik was just going to spring his knowledge casually later on. I won that bet when Erik was LE SHOCKED to discover that the kid who looks and acts exactly like him in every way except for the facial deformity was, in fact, his son. I'm a dollar richer, but it won't cover the therapy bills from wondering how in god's name Erik, supposedly a genius, could not have figured this out, and why he would be stalking the kid if he didn't know it (probably because he's a little piece of Christine, d'aww).

 

Now, there had been a lot of evidence for Meadows borrowing heavily from Kay's novel already, what with her characterization of Erik's and the Persian's relationship, her relation of the events at the end of the novel, the idea of the Phantom's son being raised as Raoul's, but it all becomes official here. Erik actually refers to the Persian by name, and his name is Nadir, which is, of course, the name assigned to Leroux's nameless Persian by Kay in her own book. While it does make identifying the sources for this novel easier, I feel compelled to point out that this is treading on dangerous ground; Nadir (this specific version of the Persian) is a character created by Kay for her novel. While Kay's novel was out of print at the time that Meadows' book was released, it had not fallen into the public domain, which makes the use of its characters and plotlines very dodgy at best. I'm not here to blow the whistle on anybody (I don't have the legal expertise to do that even if I wanted to, which I don't), but to aspiring writers: don't do this. It is a very, very, very bad idea, both for one's reputation and possibly for one's pocketbook if it comes around to litigation.

 

Epic grammatical fail continues, with sentences like "The new managements seems quite enamored", or the ever-popular "taught" muscles. It burns us, precious.

 

Book 3: Erik

 

Chapter 1:

 

One really has to admire Christian's balls in trying to shoot Erik in order to avenge his father and save his mother's virtue (what little of it there is left, anyway). I cannot, however, admire the fact that he wants to "reek" revenge instead of wreaking it, since that implies he has on some kind of Eau de Retribution. Even less admirable is the fact that Erik plans to murder him in order to hurt Raoul, and only stops when Christine starts screaming that the kid is his son rather than Raoul's. Christine is remarkably okay with carrying her half-strangled unconscious son back to Erik's house to recover, but then again, Christine is remarkably okay with pretty much everything Erik does, no matter how reprehensible.

 

There is much sorrow over the horrible fact that, had Christine ever told Raoul that the child wasn't his, she would have been kicked out of his house for being a slutmonkey! She would have been alone in the cruel, cruel world! There would have been poverty and people looking down their noses at her! Yes, this is all very unpleasant-sounding, but I would kind of have to side with Raoul in the not wanting to live with a woman who has other mens' babies while married to him. Erik is able to conveniently feel all of this just by touching Christine, when the torment of her wealth of sadness rushes over him like a tidal wave or something, and he mourns how she had to shoulder the secret of the boy's heritage all alone. It's all very dramatic, and also ridiculously silly. I'm not going to claim that she didn't have cause to keep the secret... I'm just going to say that I'm not feeling real sorry for her for having to live with her choices.

 

In case we needed any more confirmation that this Nadir is in fact the same one from Kay's novel, his wife's death, a large part of his backstory, is mentioned in conversation. Oddly enough, Meadows uses the name Nadir very infrequently, probably fewer than ten times throughout the novel, and usually refers to him as either the daroga or the Persian. I have to wonder why she bothered to borrow the name at all, since it seems like it's either slapdash writing that she didn't check for consistency or an attempt to ride on the coattails of Kay's success in the Phantom community.

 

We indulge in a short flashback, in which Erik discovers Christine's pregnancy seventeen years ago when he hears Raoul chastise Christine for riding in the middle of the night in her condition (what is she doing riding a horse in the dead of night? Nobody knows). Her insistence to Raoul that she isn't sure she's pregnant because she's "not that late yet" is painfully anachronistic, both in its vernacular and in the fact that a nineteenth-century lady does NOT discuss menstruation with her husband, except in the most veiled of terms to explain why forays to her room are a bad idea this week.

 

Apparently, Erik saw childbirth "several times" in Persia. I am pretty sure that, seeing as how he is male, he would not be allowed at births, especially in Muslim Persia, but nobody cares what I think. Luckily, he has a magical drug that makes the baby pop right out and completely eases her pain like SuperMorphine. Is there no aspect of physical health that Erik can't whip up a potion for? Fuck being the Phantom, he should go into alchemy and the apothecary business. Or become the world's creepiest midwife (imagine seeing THAT when you look down between the stirrups). Somehow, he knows vast volumes about childbirth, but doesn't know that babies are almost always born with blue eyes and fair hair and that many grow into other colors, so he is convinced that the kid is Raoul's and goes off to mope somewhere.

 

Rampant wild typos graze on the savannah of this book's pages like so many wildebeest. In nature: majestic. In this book: depressing.

 

Chapter 2:

 

Ouch! Ouch! "The woman who had bare me a son"? For fuck's sake, this book is killing me. Make it stop. "I should have shrank back into the shadows"? Stop it!

 

Christian continues to be the only person willing to call Christine on her bullshit. From his cutting response when Christine accuses him of showing her disrespect ("Disrespect, Mother? You have an affair... How much respect are you showing for Father?") to his enraged response to her attempts to defend said affair, I kind of agree with him. Christine resolves the situation by slapping her son and then going off to have more sex with Erik, rather than feeling any shame.

 

Another little Greek reference is made here on page 142 (only on 142 out of over 400?... sob), when Erik compares himself to Pandora because he's caused this situation between Christine and her son. It's not particularly well thought-out, but always nice to see.

 

Oddly enough, while it seems like Erik's mask is full-face as in Leroux's novel, it is consistently described as white, which links it directly to Webber's musical. It seems likely that Meadows is mixing the two versions there, and indeed she does so when it comes to the disfigurement itself, as well; she never tells us what it looks like, stating only that it covers his face and doesn't extend to the rest of his body.

 

I'm curious as to why Erik still refers to Raoul as "the boy", considering that said vicomte is probably nearing 40 by now. It's easy to forget that Erik is meant to be much older, what with the mysterious lack of physical aging he's got going on, but it seems plausible that Erik still thinks of him as a boy; after all, he hasn't had a lot of direct contact with him since the events of Leroux's novel. On the other hand, he's been stalking Christine at her house for the last seventeen years and has probably seen him grow up just as much as anybody else, so it's open to interpretation. Speaking of Raoul, Erik goes into a rage when he learns that Christine's husband once had her locked in a room with doctors for several nights because she was ranting and raving about coming back to Erik's lair. Christian pwns the adults again when he points out that not only was Raoul doing so out of genuine concern for her safety, but hello, hypocrisy much, Erik?

 

Line break madness returns. I know that formatting errors happen, but that's the sort of thing that you're supposed to catch in edits.

 

Chapter 3:

 

I have to say, by this point, that I want to know what happens. These characters are just such a huge clusterfuck that I have to see how Meadows is going to try to resolve this vast snarl of a situation that she's created, and I can still see the kernel of an interesting plot premise under there. I want to see how the story turns out, even though I want to strangle all the characters and I can't stand the quality of the writing. If only Christine would stop making out with Erik in front of her horrified kid, now...

 

When Christian accuses Christine of betraying Raoul by having an affair with Erik, she pulls out the "married first" card, as I knew she would, and claims that she was betraying Erik all the years she was married to Raoul. Christian, who is smarter than his mother would like, points out that since there was no priest and the vows were never recorded, she never actually married Erik. Christine retorts that "it's all the same, isn't it?" and insists that God heard the vows, which is a very nice idea that completely rationalizes her ability to have her cake and eat it, too. Christian's incredulous pointing out of the fact that that would mean that her vows to Raoul didn't mean anything is met with mumbling, waffling, and indecisiveness, because Christine is incapable of even deciding which marriage is valid, much less choosing one of the men. It would be nice if I could view this as a natural outgrowth of her character in the original novel, in which she was torn between the two as she tried to figure out what she wanted, but this Christine is not doing that. This Christine chose both, and is playing a game of diminishing returns trying to have both while she knows that this isn't possible, and--not incidentally--doing pretty irreparable emotional damage to a lot of people while she does so, including her son. As a reader struggling to like or identify with her as a major protagonist, I am deeply frustrated by her inability to make a mature decision here, and am not impressed by her choice to behave in a reactionary way as her emotions dictate instead of taking some responsibility for her life, her choices, and the welfare of her child. Christian eventually gives up on getting any sense out of her and departs, saying, "God will repay you for this treachery, Mother," and, damn, I really hope so.

 

Also, Christine actually says, verbatim, the following immortal line when Christian points out what a psychopath Erik is: "Yes, I have no doubt he's murdered. But I can see beyond that, Christian." I don't blame Christian; I would have given up at this point, too. He's more tolerant than I am, in fact, because I would have told Christine where to stick it when she instructed him to lie to Raoul for her about her whereabouts.

 

There is more extremely obvious borrowing from Kay's novel here, including Erik's time as an exhibit in the Gypsy sideshow, the earlier scene from his mother's house in which he sees his face for the first time in a mirror and attacks the apparition in a panic, and his mother's furious reaction when he asks her for a kiss and she rebuffs him. These scenes are partially rewritten, since they are being told from Erik's point of view rather than from his mother's, but very little has been changed. A further element of Kay's novel is present here when Erik begins having heart episodes, which will increase in frequency over the course of the book; this device was also used in Pettengill's 2002 novel, though it's likely that she also borrowed the idea from Kay's work.

 

Erik is by this point tired of sharing Christine's time with Raoul, and suggests that he use the same drug on her that he used to simulate his own death, which would then allow her to be free to live with him while the upper world thought she was dead. In her first responsible move of the novel, Christine refuses because of the grief it would cause her son to think she was dead, though frankly I kind of wanted her to do it, then tell her son she was alive and just let everyone else think she was dead. Go have your underground love nest, let Raoul remarry someone who won't cheat on him, and let me go read something that doesn't make me want to stab all the characters. It would be a win-win, wouldn't it? Alas.

 

Had she stopped with it being hard on Christian, I would have liked her for the decision, but on page 169, she adds, "But what about God, Erik? Isn't it cheating God, in a way, to pretend to die? Aren't such decisions His?" Oh, NOW you care about God, you ridiculous little woman? You're okay with multiple marriages, adultery, contraception, blasphemy, and murder, but FAKING YOUR DEATH IS WHERE YOU DRAW THE LINE. Sweet chocolate crackers, I hate this inconsistent, obnoxious character.

 

The silliness continues to abound, when Erik kills a mugger on the shores of the lake (what the hell is a mugger doing in the sub-sub-sub-basement of the Paris Opera House? Are there a lot of rich fat people down here that we're unaware of?), which is naturally not his fault because he did it to save Christian so there can't be any aspersions cast on his role as the hero. I didn't pay much attention, partly because the interlude is mostly pointless (it serves only for Christian to get to actually see Erik kill someone in person rather than just suspecting it) and partly because I was too distracted trying to figure out how anyone could have written the phrase "It seemed as if he had inherited many of my sixth senses" with a straight face.

 

Book 4: Christian

 

Chapter 1:

 

Whee, back to Christian. Isn't all this point-of-view-switching fun? Christian's internal musings suffer from the same inconsistency here that they did earlier in the novel; he's afraid of Erik, yet goes down to his house to ask him about his relationship with his mother and Raoul, and he hates him for being the wedge in his parents' marriage and yet for some inexplicable reason also likes him, and it's all very tiresome. Meadows is obviously trying to work a nature vs. nurture idea here and coming down heavily on the side of nature, but there's not enough time devoted to it to make it the thoroughly plausible idea it needs to be, and the effect is that I'm reminded forcefully of Forsyth's similar bizarre choices in his 1999 novel (come on--no one wants to remind me of that, do they?). So when Christian, having just had several tiffs with his mother and having seen this man murder someone, is letting Erik massage his temples casually, I am not having much luck in visualizing things with any degree of seriousness.

 

Erik stomps about a lot and informs Christian that he will murder Raoul if he so much as lays a finger on Christine, etc., etc. This happens a lot over the course of the book, but each time, I just end up being confused as to why everyone seems to be so thoroughly convinced that Raoul's going to hurt Christine. I mean, this is the guy who gave up sex with her out of love, who married her despite vast social pressure to do otherwise, and who has doted on her in every scene we've seen them in together. At this point in the book, he knows she's cheating on him--he doesn't know who with, since he thinks Erik is dead, but he's not stupid and can put two and two together when she keeps leaving the house all night and making up bad lies about where she's been--and the most he's done about that is to raise his voice at her and then feel bad afterward. Meadows has set him up as a very sympathetic character who simply has the misfortune of being married to a woman who wants to bone somebody else, so it's rather confusing every time Erik starts a rant about how he'll wring Raoul's neck if he abuses her (again: hypocrisy much, dude?). I am amazed, looking back at these notes, at my own naivete, because I didn't recognize all this business for what it is now obviously intended to be: foreshadowing (ut-oh).

 

So close, on page 187, and yet so far away! Christian reflects that Erik had returned Christine to Raoul in order to spare her leading a life underground with him, knowing that Raoul would provide a better life for her, and thinks that "Surely that was love in its purest form, coming from a being with a soul as black as midnight". Overdramatic prose aside, yes--letting Christine go with Raoul is the Phantom's big moment of redemption, in which he finally expresses love in an unselfish manner. Unfortunately, Erik's later decision to completely renege and start stealing her off to his house and sleeping with her again, almost two decades later, in spite of the Persian trying to warn him against it and reminding him of the reason he did it in the first place, negates that sacrifice almost completely. Mention of said sacrifice therefore fails to bring a tear to the eye, since it has stopped being a noble gesture and become more of a nonsensical choice that caused several years of pointless angst.

 

This time, it is a "mound of curls" on Raoul's head (yeah, that's not the anatomical placement the phrase "mound of curls" makes me think of, but then again I am filthy). At least it's a mound of a physical object this time, though I somehow doubt that Raoul is actually piling all his curls on the top of his head, unless he's one of those nineteenth-century transvestites.

 

Christian discovers here, much to his shock and horror, that Raoul has been out with a prostitute. While I can understand the kid's desire to freak out, considering that both parents are ruining his conception of their happy marriage, I'm not really bothered by this. It wouldn't be uncommon at all for a member of the aristocracy to see the occasional lady of the night, and while that isn't exactly what I'd call admirable, it is what I'd call understandable when the guy is completely unable to touch his beloved wife. No sex for seventeen years is rough, as we heard from Christine earlier. Interestingly, this reminds me of the 1989 Little/Englund film, which also featured an interlude with a prostitute, though in that movie it was Erik visiting her, not Raoul. The idea of the prostitute as a method of relief and intimacy for a character who is denied it through little fault of his own is fairly similar, and in both cases a sympathetic way of revealing how said character copes with the strictures of everyday life. Christian eventually somewhat recovers from his shock and reflects that, while he doesn't approve of Raoul's behavior, he has to admit that Raoul is only visiting the whores for physical relief, while Christine is having a full-blown love affair.

 

Christian follows the earlier description of Raoul's hair with mention of the "mound of thoughts that assaulted [his] brain". The mounds are attacking us now.

 

Blah blah blah, people keep mentioning Erik's biceps. Apparently he's quite buff. All that working out his alter-ego Eric from Phantom of the Mall does must be spreading to other versions.

 

After seeing Raoul drop his prostitute off, Christian wanders through a bad part of town like a bonehead, gets accosted by some muggers, and goes into his fugue rage state and murders them. Luckily, Erik has been stalking him and spirits him off into the sewers before the police arrive. Angst, fear, etc. I was too disturbed by the incomplete sentences, usage of adverbs where adjectives should have been, and just plan wrong word choice ("I have no qualms with you"?) to be very emotionally involved.

 

Chapter 2:

 

Everyone decides that Christine's former dressing room (now Christian's, because why not put him in the womens' section?) is the best place to talk about Christine's infidelity, and are all then discombobulated by the animal scream of anger that occurs when Raoul looms over Christine a little bit too much. Oh noes! What could THAT have been? No one knows. The only person who can be pardoned for not knowing is Raoul, who still thinks that Erik is dead, but it's a stretch even for him, considering his past. Christine is thoroughly surprised when Erik later tells her that he was behind the mirror for the whole conversation! If these characters were any dumber, they'd forget how to breathe and we could all go home early.

 

Speaking of dumb, Christian begins becoming confused about who's side he's on now, wondering if it's really Christine and Erik who are doing wrong since Raoul is apparently also a cheatzor. I would absolutely accept this out of a modern-day character, but it's more questionable for a nineteenth-century one; Christian is supposedly seventeen and the son of a nobleman, so he would probably have an inkling by now of the way that men of his caste generally (not in public, but behind closed doors) behave. And even if he doesn't know that mistresses are common, or knows and doesn't approve, there's no getting around the fact that in the culture of the time, penalties and opinion would be MUCH more severe for an unfaithful wife than an unfaithful husband. This is still the 1800s; it is not what you would call an enlightened time for feminism yet, and where a man discovered in an affair would have to endure scandal and public disapproval (depending on his station and the details), a woman would be immediately dropped by public opinion to the level of irredeemable whore. Mind you, in Christine's case, it's probable that no one would be surprised considering her origins, but that's neither here nor there since apparently no one in this book gives a rat's ass about class boundaries. At any rate, Christian's dislike of his father's behavior is believable, but it is stretching credulity to put it on the same plateau as his horror at his mother's. Poor kid's going to start cutting himself and writing in a journal soon.

 

Christine has an epic tantrum when Christian suggests that they turn Erik in for being a murderer; the focus of her argument is that "they would kill him Christian, not because they thought he might be guilty, but because of his face! Only because of his face!" I feel like they would probably try to arrest him, and then possibly kill him because he's a wanted criminal and known murderer rather than just because he's ugly (because this is the nineteenth century, not the twelfth), but logic is completely lost on this crazy woman, and Christian is apparently too tired to argue with her any longer. Due to the blackout he suffered when killing the muggers (muggers: an author's best friend for throwaway antagonists who don't matter and are totally extraneous except to open the door for more navel-gazing!), Christian isn't sure if he killed them or if Erik did, and wants one or both of them to go turn themselves in to the police and face the music. Christine is not a fan of this idea, but considering that her response when Christian tells her to man up and pick one of her "husbands" so that everyone can stop dealing with this miserable situation is a petulant "I don't want to," she can die in a fire as far as I'm concerned.

 

I would like to note here that the reason Meadows keeps the story rolling at all is that she makes a good attempt at keeping the characters as three-dimensional and complex as possible. She doesn't always or even often succeed (witness Christine, the worst of the lot when it comes to sympathetic characterization), but she makes a point of not allowing Raoul, Christian, or Erik to be characterized as either flat villains or shining examples of holiness. That's brave, and I applaud her for it (now, the secondary characters are a completely different matter...).

 

A good example of this is when Christian confronts Raoul about his philandering and the vicomte immediately admits to his sins and then very delicately explains to his son the sexual situation between himself and Christine. It is obvious that Raoul loves his son dearly (and equally obvious, to a reader brighter than a rock, that he is by this point aware that he is not the boy's real father), and his refusal to either deny his behavior or pretend that it is morally defensible is admirable. In fact, he's admirable enough that Christian is somewhat ashamed of his own behavior after talking to him, and, in one of the most relevant instances of character growth in the book, decides to go turn himself in to the police on the morrow, despite the objections of all three parents.

 

Chapter 3:

 

His attempt to convince Erik to go to the police with him is hilarious, if ill-fated. Christian's naivete, personal strength, and sense of fair play make him very reminiscent of the original Christine, which is nice, because her current form isn't doing much for us.

 

...and then we're back to the cardboard antagonists used to vex the main characters when they run out of things to be internally emo about. First up, it's the police inspector, who is... wait for it... Carlotta's husband! Apparently this version of Carlotta is either Leroux-based or remarried after the unfortunate death of Piangi at the end of Webber's musical. The kangaroo court we expect is incoming, but the nasty little man is thwarted by an angel of pure and light and good, etc., by the name of Madeleine.

 

Why, yes, that is the name used for Erik's mother in Kay's 1990 novel. Since so much of this book is obviously influenced by that one, I wondered for a while if it was a case of unconscious borrowing, but later moments indicate that it is entirely on purpose. Like the original Madeleine (and Leroux's original Christine, who is supposedly a dead ringer for her), she is blonde, pale, lovely, and in love with the opera. If you are waiting in breathless suspense to see whether she might be a love interest for Christian, I'll go ahead and spoil it for you: she is. Unfortunately, where Kay's cyclical relationships were making a statement about the power of relationships over the rest of one's life and the perpetuation of the Phantom's psychological problems, repeating them here for a third generation has become gratuitous. At any rate, Madeleine, supposedly the star witness for the prosecution, fails to identify Christian as the murderer and he walks without even going to trial, all the while thinking about how purty she is.

 

By the way, while I love a nice Greek metaphor as much as the next girl, you are not allowed to reuse the same one in the same book, so the "speed of Achilles" returning on page 219 is not a good idea. Ten-point penalty.

 

And now Christine is off to the cathedral (I know; I'm surprised, too). I made a very stormy, cranky face indeed when Meadows attempted to convince me that operatic training apparently makes people loud by default (not extrapolation; Christian, supposedly an opera singer himself, actually thinks this). Lady, it's not like someone just turned the gain way up on your voice; it's projection, not volume. Yeah, a whisper could ring around the room as Christine's is currently doing for ease of eavesdropping, but it doesn't have to. If anything, greater operatic training gives one greater control over one's volume. The great sopranos are praised for their pianissimo, you know.

 

The entire scene is pretty much just more excessive angst, as Christine prays for a magical solution to her two-men one-bed dilemma and then collapses in tears on the ground (sadly, she "crumbles" again... but someone will be along to sweep her up, I'm sure). While I'm glad that she has apparently recognized that what she's doing might not be morally okay, it's much too late for me to care about her emotional state. I'm tired. I'm tired of the constant hyperdramatic antics and prose, and I'm tired of the ridiculously contrived and representationally devoid plot. TOO BAD! 175 PAGES LEFT TO GO!

 

Chapter 4:

 

Christian spends a lot of time being very impressed and gratified that Erik didn't kill Raoul in the church when said vicomte arrived to pick Christine up off the floor and worriedly bear her back home to bed. I do not share his sentiments. I don't have enough chocolate chips to go around giving cookies to everybody who doesn't murder people for no good reason.

 

Ready for more Throwaway Antagonist Theatre? This time, it's Madeleine's father, who is a drunken, abusive possible rapist who abuses her constantly (don't go looking for reasoning or even interesting execution; it isn't there)! In fact, he beats her into a coma for going out to the opera with Christian, who in turn beats him until he has a heart attack and dies! Wheee! I know that this book somehow does not have ENOUGH ANGST in it yet, but I still have trouble believing that Christian has progressed to the point where he can feel his "soul tearing" because of Madeleine's distress. Yes, he has every right to be concerned, especially since he's attracted to her, but this is only the second time they've met. He carts her unconscious body off to the Chateau de Chagny and commences staring weepishly at it for the next several days.

 

Chapter 5:

 

Luckily, Erik the Magical Pharmaceutical Fairy is here to help! This time, not only does he have helpful potions, but he also knows how to perform a partial craniotomy on her in order to relieve the pressure. Somehow, everyone is able to keep the hole in her skull a secret from Raoul whenever he comes by to check on her. More interesting than the medical proceedings is the fact that Erik is physically present at the Chateau de Chagny (and, in fact, has apparently been there many times over the last several years); this isn't the first time, since Leroux's novel clearly details the incident with the window and the revolver, but it does reverse situations handily and place the Phantom as the interloper into Raoul's territory, rather than the other way around. It's a good opportunity to play on the classic horror-story idea of the unknown or the evil invading a formerly familiar and safe environment (much as the similar scene was handled in the original novel), but since Erik isn't unknown or evil or even really very smart in this version, it plays out more like a certain R&B cycle about a closet.

 

It is around this point that The Truth Comes Out and Raoul discovers that Erik is alive, which of course answers a lot of his questions in a distinctly uncomfortable manner. I cannot condone his subsequent enraged shouting and shaking of Christine's shoulders, but I can certainly understand it. I mean, I want to do that, and I sure don't love her. Christine's attempts to seize control of the situation are laughable, especially when, when asked by her livid husband if she is banging the Phantom, she tells him that it's none of his business. She is, somehow, shocked when he disagrees, and further shocked when he reveals that, because he does not have the brainpower of a lemming, he is aware that Christian is not his son. The monumental stupidity of her character is unequalled in this conversation, which ends abruptly when Christian overhears that last bit about not being Raoul's son and storms in demanding to know what's going on... because, SOMEHOW, he still has NO IDEA who it could be. HOW MANY MORE TIMES DO I HAVE TO BEAT MY HEAD AGAINST MY DESK BEFORE THIS WILL ALL END?

 

He goes off to reflect on how his "voice had become a husky, trembling horde of loathing" (a... horde? What?) and angst over "the black secrets that tormented [his] soul". Just buy some damn black nail polish, would you?

 

Adverbs do not equal adjectives! No one can give you a "rye" smile without bread! And the commas! Why the commas? I'm losing hair, here.

 

Book 5: Christine

 

Chapter 1:

 

On page 266: "This Raoul was a seasoned aristocrat, a man who's bearing was almost royal at times." That's it. I'm officially done with trying to read this book sober.

 

Raoul has now had enough character development to really be defined, and he is very much a grown man in this novel. He's no longer wishy-washy in the slightest, nor does he accept any indecision or avoidance out of the dithering Christine; he's not a boy anymore, no matter what Erik calls him. Meadows has made this a conflict between two men--Raoul and Erik, fighting over Christine as the prize--rather than one between archetypes with Christine as the ultimate decision-maker. This is good for the characters, at least in terms of making them more relatable, human figures, but it's complete disaster for the ideas of the original novel. Were this a more entertaining book, I wouldn't care, but as it is, I mourn everything that might have brightened a page or two here and there.

 

Not only does Christine now have a "mound of sobs", which I suppose is closer to a concrete noun than usual, but it is "laying" in her breast. I'll get out my chalkboard-tapping stick and my stern horn-rimmed glasses and say it only once, people: lying and laying are NOT interchangeable. One is a verb that is directly DONE--you LIE down, an item LIES on the floor--and the other is a verb that you use when doing something TO something else--you LAY a book on the table, or you LAY your head down, or you LAY mortar for future bricks. Learn it or face censure.

 

Erik shows himself in Raoul's house for no apparent reason here, and Raoul naturally attempts to shoot him; Christine tries to stop him, and gets slapped. This is the first instance of serious violence against Christine on Raoul's behalf; obviously, the foreshadowing has begun to kick in, and we can only be in for more fun to come.

 

Chapter 2:

 

Another blatantly obvious Kay reference is here, when it's revealed that Christian looks exactly like Erik's father (who Erik never met because he died before he was born). Again, this backstory is lifted whole from Kay's novel and from the character of Erik's father, Charles, in that version.

 

Almost nothing is going on in this chapter except for hysterical whining and angst as Christine and Erik wail over how Raoul is trying to keep them apart. Christine also doctors Erik's hand, which he has smashed up by punching through a plate-glass door in a fit of anger when Raoul slapped Christine. Much distress over the fact that he might never be able to play piano again (no lie; actually the concern)! Christine's breathless, adoring exclamations over how Erik "risked it all for her" are ridiculous; punching a window isn't risking it all for her. It's having a tantrum.

 

Also, Christine, stop telling Erik that he has "nothing to atone for". The most blameless versions of Erik still have shit they should probably apologize for, and this is not one of those guys.

 

Chapter 3:

 

Raoul, finally fed up, threatens to send Christine away; she has a hissy fit, begging him to be reasonable, while I wearily wonder what universe she lives in that accepts letting your unfaithful wife continue to live in your house, siphon off your fortune, and bang the ghoul in the Opera House while you do nothing as reasonable behavior. What does she think he's going to do, pretend he doesn't know about it all? She finally secures his promise not to send her away in return for her promise not to visit or sleep with Erik anymore, but does so with the internal equivalent of crossed fingers, thinking to herself all the while that she's totally going to break this promise, like, tomorrow. It's not her fault, you see--she can't help it, because she is incapable of living without Erik! Woe! I took a short foray back to page 69, because I thought I remembered a fucking hilarious line that she'd said earlier, and indeed, here it is:

 

"I reminded Raoul that he had promised [not to turn Erik in], and that I would never marry a man who did not have the honor to keep his promises."

 

Glad that honor stuff doesn't apply to you, huh, Christine?

 

If we can side-journey back to a little representational theory, Christine still functions as the mother figure in this novel, but, obviously, much of that has been outsourced from Erik to Christian. It's not at all a large shift, since Christian is just a proto-Erik anyway and has the distinction only of having a bit more of a developed conscience than does his biological father. This is something that we see in more than a few versions; again, I'd theorize that it has to do with modern readers finding Christine's dual role as love interest and mother unpalatable in a purely romantic setting, so a new focus has been created for her maternal leanings in order to keep any icky Oedipal tones from ruining the fluffy bunnyshine.

 

Every time Erik does anything in the darkness, his white mask glows eerily, etc., and is apparently visible for miles in every direction. It's very dramatic, but I'm just saying that this is probably why the original Erik's mask was black. It's inconvenient to always be visible for getting shot, for example, which is in fact becoming an issue at this point in the novel.

 

There's no doubt whatsoever left about the monstrous amount of influence that Kay's book has on this one, but another example is present when Erik is startled by Madeleine's name, presumably because it is also his mother's name in Kay's book.

 

Erik's rage is, again, all-encompassing and stompy when Christine whimperingly tells him all about how Raoul threatened her by saying that he would send her away and keep her from seeing Christian if she didn't agree to dump Erik. Much ranting about the vicomte's sliminess in using a child against his mother occurs, though to be honest, again, I don't think Raoul is being at all unreasonable when he doesn't want his cheatering wife around if she won't change her ways.

 

Christian, by the way, FINALLY figures out whose kid he is in this chapter. After a brief meltdown, the effect of this epiphany is mostly a predictable but still not very reasonable increase in unfounded affection for Erik, and a loss of the rest of his compunctions when it comes to watching his mom make out with the dude.

 

I mentioned it earlier, but it's especially marked in this chapter: these people cry all the time, constantly, at the drop of a hat. I don't know how they can have any salt left in their bodies with the constant gushing welling streaming pouring bursting floods of tears that are, one assumes, raising Paris' water level by a few feet.

 

Book 6: Christian

 

Chapter 1:

 

Christian is okay with Christine and Erik making out constantly because, now that he has Madeleine and he loves her so so much, he understands the torment of their souls, or something. Again, he's only known her for a couple of weeks and she's been in a coma for one of them, but shut up. He loves her and they are getting married (no, really. They are. Madeleine points out that she is but a poor street sparrow, but, as we said earlier, fuck social convention in this book!).

 

Dammit! Just when we'd mastered the difficult lie vs. lay quandary (at least, for the moment), now we have tense issues! "I lay Madeleine on the bed"? Goddammit, no, you LAID her on the bed, because, you see, it's PAST TENSE. What do people learn in school these days? Get off my lawn!

 

Christine's Showcase in Flexible Morals continues when Christian catches her sneaking out to Erik's and asks her about the promise she made to Raoul. Her response? "There are promises we make with our minds, Christian, and there are promises we make with our hearts. Which do you think would be stronger?" Here's an idea: instead of justifying our actions with suspiciously maudlin platitudes, we could go ahead and not make promises we're not going to keep, with our minds, hearts, or any other body parts! Take off your persecuted hat, Christine. I'm tired of looking at it. I would think this book is a secret pro-polyamory treatise, except that polyamory would involve the consent of all the participants, and a greater degree of emotional maturity than anyone is displaying.

 

Chapter 2:

 

And, at long last, the Erik Hunt has commenced, with Raoul running about in the underground looking for him and Christine and Christian also charging randomly around, hoping that their presence will help matters somehow. Things are finally winding down, and, as I predicted way back when this book was fresh and new and I didn't yet want to drown myself in a jug of moonshine, it is apparent that the only way out of this character snarl that Meadows has created is for some major character to die. I almost don't care who as long as we get to wrap this thing up, but it's pretty obvious that Christine is the best choice, since neither of the male characters is capable of growth or even of changing their minds (oh, Leroux's Erik, we hardly knew ye!).

 

In the final confrontation, naturally Erik and Christine feel that the thing to do is to send Christian to intervene on their behalf and put himself bodily in the way of his crazed former father figure (by this point, Raoul has completely gone off the deep end for reasons that mostly escape me, becoming a violent foil villain for... well, for the original violent villain). Fantastic parenting there, you guys. Christian is not doing much better in the sympathetically admirable department, either, "smirking" when he sees that Raoul looks vulnerable when compared to Erik, and then deciding that the best course of action is to clock Raoul over the head with a gun and leave his body lying in the cellar while they all run around in the dark some more.

 

In an intensely painful (for me) last-ditch effort to resolve the situation without violence, Christian asks Erik to leave his mother alone again. Erik responds by self-righteously asking him if he could let Madeleine go in order to be happy with another man, and then feels vindicated when Christian says that he could not. I'm afraid all the characters will have to pardon me for not joining them in their enjoyment of the fact that they apparently don't have the same capacity for unselfish love that the original Erik did. I'm not going to do a little jig because they suck at self-sacrifice (AGAIN--if this had been done well and I had liked the characters, or even if it had just served a useful purpose, I'd have gone with it, but absolutely none of that is present). YOU GUYS ARE MISSING THE POINT.

 

The entire chapter makes me cry, and not in the way Meadows wants it to. Christian is lying to his father and faking loyalty so he can disrupt his plans, while Erik is plotting everyone's deaths and Raoul apparently has no issue with letting Christine go off and bang Erik for another week or so while he stalks Erik with a gun (and Christine is perfectly happy to oblige). AND THEN, Madeleine's scuzzball father leaps in like a resurrected supervillain, suddenly appearing in the garden at the chateau in order to attack his pure, innocent, helpless daughter! What the hell? It doesn't even... it doesn't even make sense! The chateau's not even IN Paris! What on earth are you trying to do here?

 

Chapter 3:

 

Christian goes ahead and murders Madeleine's father (again) with his bare hands. It's not his fault, of course, because he HAD to break the man's neck to keep Madeleine from being killed. For fuck's sake, have these people never heard of nonlethal force? You couldn't have stopped strangling him when he passed out? It's always either Fun Happy Time or DEATH! Madeleine, after an initial deer-like startle in which she flees for a little while, manages somehow to simultaneously cower in fear and still blow little I LOVE YOUs to the guy she just saw murder her father (and, since his face "transforms" when he does violent things, she has now realized was also the man she saw murder the muggers).

 

"Suddenly a mound of black despair coursed through my veins." Everyone stop and try to picture a mound... coursing through veins... suddenly. Yes, I, too, am having difficulty.

 

Raoul, meanwhile, decides that the thing to do here is start shooting bitches in the middle of an opera performance, and starts taking potshots at Erik from his box while the audience turns into a screaming mob and Christine starts hurling herself at him again, prompting more distracted slapping which prompts more Erik-rage which prompts more shots of vodka on my coffee table.

 

Chapter 4:

 

Raoul threatens to shoot Christian for getting in his way here, which makes about zero sense to me since he was willing to do vastly illegal things to save his son from his own folly earlier in the book, and has shown every indication of completely doting on the boy. It's all part of the painful drama insanity, which includes Erik making "the cry that surely Satan made when God threw him out of heaven". Hyperbole and drama are fantastic, effective, time-honored literary devices that can be employed to great effect in a narrative, but when the book is nothing but, it becomes completely unreadable without bursting into laughter, which is basically what I ended up doing for about the last five chapters.

 

In a total shocker, Christine is indeed the winner of the Character Death Lottery, throwing herself into the path of the bullet when Raoul tries to shoot Erik and ending up bleeding all over the floor with a bullet lodged in her skull. Erik retaliates by beating Raoul's face into the wall until he passes out in a bloody mess, leaving the vicomte to spend the remainder of the book in a wheelchair with severe brain damage. Christian chooses to start crying dramatically to the ceiling, generally in the vein of, "Oh, Father, why couldn't you leave it alone," which illustrates that apparently no one in this book understands that men who will put up with their beloved wives bumping uglies (double entendre!) with other men are kind of on the rare side, and also that Raoul's actions are apparently exempt from all this soul-searching about love that we just went through.

 

Christine takes entirely too long to dramatically wither away from blood loss, but she finally does expire after swearing Erik and Christian to take care of one another (Raoul can apparently go to hell, despite her earlier on-and-off sisterly concern over his well-being). The following scene, including the weeping of further rivers of tormented tears and Erik's extremely half-assed suicide attempt, is intensely painful to read, but for exactly the opposite reasons from the ones that would indicate that it was well-written. Christian somehow manages to convince Erik that he NEEDS him, and then promptly moves back into Raoul's house and takes over as the vicomte-in-training. Raoul, wheelchair-bound, is confined to a small set of rooms and never spoken to by his adopted son again, and Madeleine marries her handsome young murderer and everyone lives happily ever after. There is a small dim spot here when a grief-crazed Erik attempts to exhume Christine and take her home with him (gross, but in keeping with the original Erik's fascination with death, at least), but suddenly everyone remembers that they are Catholic and decides that it would be wrong to remove her from hallowed ground, so at least we don't have to hear about any corpse-cuddling and further oceanic volumes of tears.

 

Epilogue: Madeleine

 

BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE.

 

I don't think Meadows actually knows what words she's using mean. When I ran up against "'Christ!' I shrieked, coining Christian's favorite phrase," I was out of alcohol. I hadn't budgeted for an epilogue. Get thee to a dictionary, children.

 

In a bizarre Twilight Zone-esque twist, Christian's and Madeleine's baby is born horribly deformed, just like dear old grandpa (guess Meadows was too fond of that repetition of cycles idea to let the chance pass by). What's really bewildering about this is not that the kid is born with a deformity--that's plausible--but that, rather than staying with the sympathetic, pitying tone that the rest of the book used for Erik's physical misfortune, the scene is played off like the end of a horror film, with Madeleine staring in horror and Raoul spinning around in his wheelchair, cackling in fiendish glee and demanding that the baby be named Erik. I'm not even angry at this point; I'm just perplexed. Is Meadows suggesting that similarly awful things are going to happen to this kid and result in another Phantom (his mother is named Madeleine, after all, and he does have at least one intolerant adult in the house)? To do so would be to suggest that this could possibly even have happened before, if Erik's grandfather had had a similar condition. But these characters are presented as being able to see past little things like facial deformities, what with Christian's crazy teenage years here, so why would they choose to repeat history that way? Is Meadows suggesting that Christian's going to die before he gets home, and that Madeleine will repeat her namesake's mistakes? It's all very confusing, and while it's interesting to ponder, the complete break from the tone of the rest of the book and the total failure to tie things together makes it more of a pain than a boon.

 

But you know what IS a boon? After a short but stunningly badly-written About the Author note, THE BOOK IS OVER!

 

The single worst problem that this book has--beyond the theme assassinations, beyond the grammatical mistakes and homophone genocide, beyond the intensely overdone prose and beyond the throttle-worthy protagonists--is that it cannot show a moment of emotional content or character growth to save its life. Instead, every shift in emotion or nuance of motivation is told to us in excruciating detail, ad nauseum, constantly force-feeding the reader a steady diet of indisputable facts about the characters' inner workings that not only bogs down action but makes for spell-bindingly boring reading. The characters, for all their careful description, are flat as pancakes because they are never given any opportunity to act without constant, maddening analysis and explication.

 

This book is purgatory.