Lazy and Pretentious

With The Fall of the Kings fresh in my mind, I thought I may as well talk more about Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint series. It really charmed me - or, I should say Alec charmed me, and the social and political play in the first novel was fun and interesting. I didn't find the related short stories (eg: The Death of the Duke) very interesting until I read The Privilege of the Sword, which itself isn't as likable as the first novel because Katharine frankly isn't as compelling as Alec was. My reasons for reading Privilege revolved around him.

Then, while I slogged through the beginning of The Fall, I realized something: it isn't the city that is the center of the story as I originally interpreted it, and as I've seen reviews assume; Alec is the center. If he isn't present, his close relatives are, and they're all bound by circumstances he created. They're constantly fighting the reputation he built for Tremontaine, even though the books indicate the family's "madness" was a hereditary condition that went back as far as the family line itself.

With that in mind, I'm surprised to say that The Fall of the Kings, which was my least favorite of the three for about two hundred pages, has taken a place equal to Swordspoint in my heart.

Now that I think about it, a world that revolves around one character is incomplete. That doesn't mean it isn't likable, only that the magic of the story doesn't last long after that character leaves the picture. Nothing is left to endure but the desire to see more of the same. Alec was a minor fixture in Privilege, more off-screen than not. In The Fall he isn't present at all, but what the Swordspoint universe lacks with Alec's absence is made up for with a strong mythology, lush, beautiful recurring images, a conflict between truth and the status quo, and a real sense of where this unnamed city is in relation to the rest of its world, which until now has remained vague and unformed. By focusing on the university, and the department of history in particular, the authors gave us both interesting characters (in my opinion) and a compelling environment in which they could thrive, and I can finally leave the Swordspoint universe with a sense of what it looks like. I even got a bit of literal magic in the bargain.

My complaints are brief: one, the end of the story was predictable - but that was also the only appropriate way for it to end. Two, it dragged in spots; I think the novel could have been better paced. Thirdly, having read Privilege first, I felt Katharine's character was flat and inconsistent, but that's a result of the order in which I experienced them; The Fall was written before Privilege, and therefore was the basis of her character, not an incomplete conclusion.

This isn't to say I think the book is perfect; only that, for what it achieves - a world with real depth in addition to likable characters - makes it a better book than the other two.

I also think it has the sense of overblown drama that the original Swordspoint did, and which Katharine's book lacked. It took me a while to finish, though, because of the pacing issues mentioned above, and because Elantris was still on my reading list and busy pissing me off. Alas.

Anyway, it's telling the majority of fan fiction is about Alec somehow. Seriously. And thank god.

So hey, I normally neglect this journal anyway, but I should be reading more, not less, seeing as Nanowrimo doesn't actually jack my monthly word count up that much anymore; it's not like I don't have time to read. The problem is twofold:

1. I started playing Fire Emblem 4, and it's a time sink.

2. November's reading list started with Elantris, which has turned out to be really fucking slow.

It's getting better, but it took about a third of the book to get there, and-- and I don't know. It's not a bad novel. As a matter of fact, it avoids some pretty annoying cliches and features intelligent characters who generally do intelligent things. Elantris itself presents an interesting mystery, but that's the problem - it's so interesting I don't give a damn about the other plots going on. Forget Hrathen and Sarene, and give me more Raoden. I'd like the book a lot better that way.

... so. I still haven't finished it yet, and it's been about three weeks. I'd really like to get on with reading so I can move on to the other stuff on my list (The Fall of the Kings, The Terrorists of Irustan, the second Honor Harrington book), but the way the story crawled - still does, really, whenever I have to read about Sarene - makes me dread the attempt.

This is probably the sign that tells other people they should put the book down and step away. Why is that so hard for me?

Here I thought I was getting a lot of reading done, and it turns out I only read about as much as a normal person - you know, the type that isn't lazy. I admit, slave-drivers professors do extract more effort and accomplishment out of me when it comes to reading. Sigh.

So, the month started with Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, which I'm head-over-heels in love with - so much, in fact, that I burned a few bucks on Privilege of the Sword, which I haven't had time to read yet. My observations are probably too fangirly and biased to be interesting, but I can tell you that I love Alec, and the novel did a few things I really appreciated:

1. It kept the scope small - one city, personal struggles.
2. Nobody made a big deal out of romance or sexual orientation.
3. Fascinating characters.

Based just on the first novel, I have to say that actually, despite the details, the city leaves something to be desired. There's Riverside - then there's the Hill. Riverside has more flavor than the Hill, but neither part of the city was expressed in such depth that I could picture it. Nothing of the middle ground is visible. The book seller was about it, and I have my doubts about his designation as middle class, given his merchandise and clientele. Also, I have absolutely no sense of what the world outside of the city is like. Yes, you see a few places-- kind of. But not really.

On the other hand, the characters were so interesting that I didn't feel cheated by the lack of detail. It just looks a little empty in retrospect. Maybe the sequel(s) will fix that.

After that I moved on to Jim Butcher's Dresden Files with Storm Front and, just now, Fool Moon. Right up front I noticed a lot of detective fiction's common tropes (societal anxiety, P.I vs. law enforcement, knight in shining armor), and while the nature of magic in the series is mundane and cliche (faeries? werewolves? pentacles?), the noir-ish style of the narration makes up for it. So does a cast of interesting characters.

However-- I'm not sure I'll read any more for a while because the author does something I really hate: he sets his characters up for suspicion and misunderstanding with convenient placement of characters at the wrong place at the wrong time, with ridiculous communication breakdowns, and lets these fake, avoidable problems drive the plot. And let's not forget the stubborn refusal of a character to listen.

Have I mentioned I hate that? I really, really loathe that technique.

At first I thought Morgan (from Storm Front) was a cliche, overblown villain-type - i.e. the rival detective with the real police force who dislikes the P.I. for bending rules and/or some incident in the past that broke trust between them. Every classic detective story seems to have one, but don't quote me on that, as I'm sure there are plenty that buck the tradition. Morgan fits it perfectly. He's also an over-zealous idiot who jumps to conclusions and shows up at exactly the wrong times so he can maintain his tainted view of Dresden and threaten him with official action, yadda yadda.

As it turns out, Murphy also jumps onto this boat - in both books. Considering how well she and Dresden are supposed to know each other, I find it unrealistic and frustrating, and it makes me want to stop reading for a few hours so I can contain my disgust.

If the author keeps doing that, I'll have to toss the series for my own good. It'd be a shame, because it's fun, but... god, I hate that.

Well, I'm tired and this is too long, so I'll get to Honor Harrington and Nine Princes in Amber some other time.

So... I wish I could say something deep or perceptive about Dune, but having just finished it, the clearest thought in my mind is: this book doesn't need a sequel. There's no reason to read the others, unless maybe I'm curious about... uh, the Harkonnens, which is the only other volume I can bring to mind right now. There are things that could be elaborated on - the source of the feud between Atreides and Harkonnen, for instance, or the Bene Gesserit secrets - but they're almost better as a mystery.

The duels were interesting, actually, and I can see why someone said they'd be a good model for someone trying to figure out how to write a one-on-one fight scene. I can't say they're excellent, since I don't know what an excellent fight scene looks like, but Herbert maintained reasonable tension, didn't waste too much time with useless dialogue, and kept the action moving, all with pacing that didn't stand out as bad - which says to me it was at least okay. The descriptions were to the point. None of them lasted longer than they should have. Larger battles were mainly narrated via reports to the characters leading each force, which I think was a smart course, as it saved the author from having to maintain ten different threads of action while avoiding confusion and maintaining tension, which sounds like it'd be hard.

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The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe
1. The Shadow of the Torturer
2. The Claw of the Conciliator
3. The Sword of the Lictor
4. The Citadel of the Autarch

Given the fragmented nature of my reading schedule, I'm not sure I can remember everything I wanted to say about these books. I let them sit for a couple of weeks at a time between books, and between Conciliator and Lictor, I think I waited at least two months, maybe more. My memory for timelines, characters, and details is pretty dependable, but I don't know if I'd trust myself to do an analysis right now.

The series starts with The Shadow of the Torturer, when the narrator, though writing from far in the future, is still very young and ignorant of everything outside of the tower he grew up in, and maybe some of the surrounding area-- so in essence, the reader learns more about Severian's world with him, though he still has an advantage over us-- he grew up with mythologies and histories the reader didn't, and so he approaches strange events with a kind of infuriating calmness.

But the interesting thing about the narration, the thing I liked, was how undependable it was. It's Severian the Autarch, talking about a time years before he became who he is now, and you can tell hindsight is affecting his memory of the events-- or such is my theory, rather than suspecting the validity of his claim to a perfect memory, because having the ability to recall everything doesn't make those memories proof against the holder's changing perspective. Severian "knows" a few too many things at points in the narrative. I speculated about that here, but considering how I read these books, I can't say with confidence that opinion is based firmly in the actual text. Some events do make me wonder about him, though; his meetings with the former Autarch, for example, felt surreal, and I suspect the probability of Severian guessing the man's identity when he was still ignorant of almost everything else.

The last novel does give a possible sort of explanation (Citadel, ch.38) for this type of foreknowledge, which would also explain the surreality of his experiences and the people he met (the Green Man or the old man on the mountain are two examples), but that would be awfully simple, wouldn't it? Like a Deus ex Machina-- which I believe he mentions in some chapter or other. XD I don't remember which one, though. It was late in the book, maybe somewhere around his rescue from the Ascians.

What makes me want more is realizing how little of the world was actually revealed in these novels. I started with the impression the setting was vast and mysterious, and Severian's Citadel was only a tiny sliver; the journey through the rest of the city, which stretches for several chapters (possibly more than a dozen? I remember it being quite a while, all the way to the end of the first book), reinforces this notion. Then he gets out of the city, and the world almost seems small again. It's interesting that, even though he journeys farther in the last three books than he ever did in Nessus during the first volume, it feels much shorter and more compact. I think Severian learns and expands more during the first book, just within himself. The learning curve is steeper.

What I didn't like was how the narrative jerked me around in time. I've mentioned several times how off-putting the jump from the first to second novel was - there simply wasn't a transition. At all. There was a bigger jump in time between books two and three, but at least it told me what happened. Between three and four the transition was much smoother.

On the same note, the style of Severian's narration was incredibly hard to get used to at first, and that also jerked me around. He has a habit of stopping in the middle of describing events to go on a tangent about something it reminded him of as he was writing (the freshest example being his recollection of his last meeting with Dr. Talos in Citadel), and I got lost several times during the first novel. I'm not sure if Wolfe stopped doing that in the later novels, or perhaps if they were shorter on contemplation than the first one, which involves the narrator reflecting on the most distant events of his life - or, if I got used to the jumping around and learned to roll with it.

So, Wikipedia says The Book of the Long Sun (also four books) and The Book of the Short Sun are distantly connected to the ones I just read. There's also The Urth of the New Sun, which is directly connected, and I think I'd like to read that. I both want more and don't, right now. Also, I was interested in his Latro novels a long time ago, and if I read anything of Wolfe's next, it might be those instead.

The interpretations and theories section of the Wikipedia article boggle me. Either I really wasn't paying attention while I read - possible, during the times I was scrambling to keep up with the narrative style - or these people are completely out there. I don't know, some of those theories are really strange. The only one that sounds remotely plausible is the speculation the Autarch is Thecla's father.

Really, though, I'm not the deepest reader, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I enjoyed the books though. Someday I'd like to read the others set in this world.