Grey

Ok so here's what we know is happening:

EL James took a break from swimming around in her big ol' pool of money in order to rewrite the first book, Fifty Shades: Fellowship of the Shade from Christian's perspective.

It's available for preorder already. Somebody should buy me a copy and then I'll read it and say mean things about it. I haven't paid for any of these yet; this is the only kind of piracy I support. Hey what if there were like, hipster pirates who had a sailing ship and cruised around and boarded ships and stole their rum or whatever? Like real old-school pirates. Real artisanal pirates? I guess I would probably get behind that, right? But other than that kind of piracy that I made up, and people not paying for Fifty Shades: The Original Trilogy, I don't support piracy.

Basically what I'm saying is this: I have undergone no shortage of pain and suffering and time-wasting for the several of you who read this blog. And the suffering has only increased as we have plunged deeper and deeper into this. Right? So I'm not saying that you owe me exactly. But what I am saying is that I would like to keep not spending money on this series. [Editor's note: you watched the movie, dude. So don't play like you haven't already broken this.]

What I'm saying is, everyone who reads this should donate a dollar, and then that would be eight dollars, and then that would pay for the book and I'd be ready to go.

But seriously: I'll read it because I'm morbidly curious.

It's not going to be good, of course. It's going to be bad. And considering how much of the series is emails and conversations, this book is going to be a lot like book one. Like, a lot like it. These two characters are basically never apart from the moment they meet, so this is unlikely to offer us anything we didn't already know.

BUT!

The the one thing that might kind of actually work better sort of (note all the qualifiers!) is the fact that the later parts of the series introduce these pseudo thriller elements. During the first book, CG is, on occasion, taking calls and stuff about his ex, Leila, to whom he was such a bad boyfriend that he literally infected her with mental illness! True story! I mean, actual thing in the novel, which is patently untrue. You know what I mean. And there's a buncha stuff going on with his other ex whose name I can't be bothered to look up at the moment.

It's kinda like how in The Hobbit Gandalf goes off and does some stuff and he's like BRB and you don't really know what he's doing because you quit watching the movies because they were to boring.

So even though Ana and CG basically do absolutely everything together, CG gets to do a little more stuff, probably because he's a boy? Probably why. So this new book won't work? But I can imagine a scenario in which it's a marginal improvement.

ALSO:
To my knowledge, this is the first actual book written by EL James. The previous "books" are just collected episodes, which is in part why they are so terrible. So who knows! Maybe the fact that EL sat and wrote this one without posting each chapter on the internets and letting her readers weigh in, and without concern for readers who might join partway through--maybe that helped her do a better job! So maybe this will be better! Fingers crossed!

And even if it's worse, it'll be better than reading the third book, like I've been doing, I think. Because Book 3 is bad enough that Book 1 could be a bit worse and still be better. So I think the math works and I think we should go for it.

Side note:

It's funny to me that EL is doing the thing that Stephanie Meyer set out to do and then stopped. Very full circle. Meyer started writing a book from the vampire's perspective. I didn't read it obvs but I guess he was like, telling a journalist all about his life or something? Whatever. Doesn't matter, because she didn't finish it after somebody leaked a chunk of it. But anyway. Even this follow-up idea is yet another Stephanie Meyer knock-off. And also, of course, a fanfic staple. I do think that my version of The Sun Also Rises from the perspective of a bull is pretty cool tho. And short, obvs so you can get through it in like, twenty minutes.

But anyway. That is happening.

If you wanna be my sponsor or whatever? Contact me via the secret Complaint Phone. Or like leave a comment.