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tachyondecay
Second review: September 7, 2015
Not going to write a lot here, because I covered most of it in my review of 4 years ago, below.
Victory of Eagles is a lot of fun because Temeraire takes it into his head to form his own little dragon corps and even request a rank. That’s cool for many reasons. First, he wrests some acknowledgement of dragon sapience from Government. Second, Temeraire discovers that having rank is not all fun and games. Wellesley gives him quite the dressing-down about taking responsibility for one’s subordinates’ actions after Iskierka rushes off.
One of the ongoing perks of this series is the way that Temeraire and Laurence misunderstand each other’s worlds. We see more of that from Temeraire’s side this time in his conversations with the other dragons. Gentius is confused by his first captain’s propensity for reading romances. The dragons are all about accumulating shiny things, which is hilarious to me but deadly serious for them. And Temeraire also just doesn’t understand Laurence’s dedication to this idea of honour and how it was necessary to return to Britain to face punishment, even execution, instead of fleeing somewhere more welcoming, like China.
This book features some major battles and extensive departures from established history. (You would think Britain’s Aerial Corps would help them win the Napoleonic Wars faster, but Napoleon actually has the upper hand for most of this book!) However, I’d argue that this is all interesting historical background. The majority of Victory of Eagles is, as I outlined above, about Temeraire and Laurence’s relationship. Both have now stepped into the other’s world a little bit.
Of course, by the end we’re back on a ship, bound for the wild and uncharted frontier of Australia. That’s exciting! I haven’t read Tongue of Serpents before, so it will be brand new for me. We’ll see how Temeraire and Laurence negotiate this brave new world, and whether Temeraire can continue the struggle for dragon rights.
First review: February 10, 2009
I haven't read book 4 yet, but one of the advantages of Naomi Novik's writing is that this is the sort of series where skipping a single book won't harm your enjoyment of a subsequent volume. As long as you keep up with the major plot points (there was a dragon virus; they found a cure in Africa; Laurence and Temeraire shared it with France as well as Britain and are now traitors for it), it's easy to sink your teeth into Victory of Eagles.
Both Temeraire and Laurence were broken at the end of the last book, apparently. Temeraire is consigned to a "retirement" covert while Laurence serves some time on a naval vessel, each being held against the other's good behaviour. Laurence is condemned to hang (although we, as the faithful readers, know at this point that such an event would never come to pass!). Temeraire, as usual, is having trouble comprehending the strange nature of nationalism and the military judicial system. His reactions to the other dragons who live in the covert are humourous. Indeed, the improvements he makes to his own cave are a catalyst that results in Temeraire forming his own "aerial corps" of dragons. Composed of retired fighters, tamed dragons who have never fought, and feral dragons, Temeraire convinces them to join him with promises of treasure and improvements in their quality of life.
Novik knows enough of her history to have fun with altering it to suit her purposes. The book begins with Napoleon establishing a foothold in England and proceeding to attempt to quell the countryside and obtain the resources required for feeding his sizable corps of dragons (one of the very few complaints I'd make about this book is the amount of space it devotes to concerns about feeding dragons). Admiral Nelson hasn't died at Trafalgar, but actually dies in the battle at the climax of this book instead--a casualty of a tsunami created by Lien's use of the divine wind. Lien herself plays a rather minor role in this book.
Perhaps more plot-driven than character-driven, Victory of Eagles still contains great moments for both of the main characters. As an "outsider", Temeraire can make brutal observations of the folly of humanity. At the same time, he does or says some things we would find questionable or even unacceptable. Laurence, meanwhile, continues to wrestle with his conflicting statuses--both traitor and potential saviour. Novik has much fun pitting one against the other; they act as each other's foils while remaining allies against those who would rend them apart.
I disliked very little about this book. Parts of it were slow. As I mentioned above, Novik devotes an inordinate amount of time to matters of food and obtaining enough livestock to satisfy the dragons. I'm willing to forgive her, however, since it is an important plot point, so perhaps it's better to stress it rather than understate its importance and risk criticism for glossing over such a potential plot hole.
Fans of the Temeraire series will enjoy this book. It isn't the best of the series, in my opinion, but it's still entertaining. For those new to Temeraire's series, I would naturally recommend reading the first book first--you will be a little confused if you skip all the books before this one!
My reviews of Temeraire:
← Empire of Ivory | Tongues of Serpents →
Not going to write a lot here, because I covered most of it in my review of 4 years ago, below.
Victory of Eagles is a lot of fun because Temeraire takes it into his head to form his own little dragon corps and even request a rank. That’s cool for many reasons. First, he wrests some acknowledgement of dragon sapience from Government. Second, Temeraire discovers that having rank is not all fun and games. Wellesley gives him quite the dressing-down about taking responsibility for one’s subordinates’ actions after Iskierka rushes off.
One of the ongoing perks of this series is the way that Temeraire and Laurence misunderstand each other’s worlds. We see more of that from Temeraire’s side this time in his conversations with the other dragons. Gentius is confused by his first captain’s propensity for reading romances. The dragons are all about accumulating shiny things, which is hilarious to me but deadly serious for them. And Temeraire also just doesn’t understand Laurence’s dedication to this idea of honour and how it was necessary to return to Britain to face punishment, even execution, instead of fleeing somewhere more welcoming, like China.
This book features some major battles and extensive departures from established history. (You would think Britain’s Aerial Corps would help them win the Napoleonic Wars faster, but Napoleon actually has the upper hand for most of this book!) However, I’d argue that this is all interesting historical background. The majority of Victory of Eagles is, as I outlined above, about Temeraire and Laurence’s relationship. Both have now stepped into the other’s world a little bit.
Of course, by the end we’re back on a ship, bound for the wild and uncharted frontier of Australia. That’s exciting! I haven’t read Tongue of Serpents before, so it will be brand new for me. We’ll see how Temeraire and Laurence negotiate this brave new world, and whether Temeraire can continue the struggle for dragon rights.
First review: February 10, 2009
I haven't read book 4 yet, but one of the advantages of Naomi Novik's writing is that this is the sort of series where skipping a single book won't harm your enjoyment of a subsequent volume. As long as you keep up with the major plot points (there was a dragon virus; they found a cure in Africa; Laurence and Temeraire shared it with France as well as Britain and are now traitors for it), it's easy to sink your teeth into Victory of Eagles.
Both Temeraire and Laurence were broken at the end of the last book, apparently. Temeraire is consigned to a "retirement" covert while Laurence serves some time on a naval vessel, each being held against the other's good behaviour. Laurence is condemned to hang (although we, as the faithful readers, know at this point that such an event would never come to pass!). Temeraire, as usual, is having trouble comprehending the strange nature of nationalism and the military judicial system. His reactions to the other dragons who live in the covert are humourous. Indeed, the improvements he makes to his own cave are a catalyst that results in Temeraire forming his own "aerial corps" of dragons. Composed of retired fighters, tamed dragons who have never fought, and feral dragons, Temeraire convinces them to join him with promises of treasure and improvements in their quality of life.
Novik knows enough of her history to have fun with altering it to suit her purposes. The book begins with Napoleon establishing a foothold in England and proceeding to attempt to quell the countryside and obtain the resources required for feeding his sizable corps of dragons (one of the very few complaints I'd make about this book is the amount of space it devotes to concerns about feeding dragons). Admiral Nelson hasn't died at Trafalgar, but actually dies in the battle at the climax of this book instead--a casualty of a tsunami created by Lien's use of the divine wind. Lien herself plays a rather minor role in this book.
Perhaps more plot-driven than character-driven, Victory of Eagles still contains great moments for both of the main characters. As an "outsider", Temeraire can make brutal observations of the folly of humanity. At the same time, he does or says some things we would find questionable or even unacceptable. Laurence, meanwhile, continues to wrestle with his conflicting statuses--both traitor and potential saviour. Novik has much fun pitting one against the other; they act as each other's foils while remaining allies against those who would rend them apart.
I disliked very little about this book. Parts of it were slow. As I mentioned above, Novik devotes an inordinate amount of time to matters of food and obtaining enough livestock to satisfy the dragons. I'm willing to forgive her, however, since it is an important plot point, so perhaps it's better to stress it rather than understate its importance and risk criticism for glossing over such a potential plot hole.
Fans of the Temeraire series will enjoy this book. It isn't the best of the series, in my opinion, but it's still entertaining. For those new to Temeraire's series, I would naturally recommend reading the first book first--you will be a little confused if you skip all the books before this one!
My reviews of Temeraire:
← Empire of Ivory | Tongues of Serpents →
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My experience with Iain M. Banks has been lukewarm. I liked but didn't love the first book in this series, Consider Phlebas, and I absolutely hated The Algebraist. I read The Player of Games because I am an artificial intelligence, post-scarcity junkie, and Banks is the kind of author who serves as my pusher.
The Player of Games more than makes up for any disappointment I felt over Consider Phlebas. In this return to the Culture universe, Banks manages to craft a character and a story that are compelling, both on an emotional and on a philosophical level. Most of the book takes place in a society outside the Culture, but make no mistake: this is an indictment, in some ways, of the sneakiness with which the Culture disarms possible threats. Banks employs a subtle, double-edged wit to portray simultaneously both the utopian aspects of this society and how it might look to the aliens it encounters.
But first, let's talk about the eponymous Jernah Morat Gurgeh. He plays games, almost any type of game, and he is probably the best player of games in the entire Culture. He's really rather an authority on it. Have achieved such a pinnacle, Gurgeh is bored out of his mind and spoiling for a challenge of some kind. After the additional push of some blackmail from a slightly crazy drone, Gurgeh allows himself to be enlisted by Contact, the division of the Culture that does exactly what the name implies, to play a game called Azad.
Azad is the cornerstone of the Empire of Azad, a civilization in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Contact isn't quite sure what to do with the Empire—in fact, for an imperial power structure to survive the advent of space travel is very rare, or so we are told. This one seems to have survived because of the game after which it is named; almost every Azadian plays Azad, and one's performance determines one's status, vocation, etc. Oh, and the Azadians have three sexes: male, female, and what our limited vocabulary forces us to call "apex". The apices are dominant, having selectively bred the males and females for strength of arms and docility, respectively.
Gurgeh gets parachuted into this game, and we are told that both sides expect him to lose rather quickly. Certainly, the Azadians have no desire to see Gurgeh advance into the higher levels of play: how would you feel if an alien showed up one day and beat you at the game around which your entire society revolves? Notably, the ultimate winner of Azad becomes the Emperor. When initially being briefed on the mission, Gurgeh asks the Contact representative if they expect him to become Emperor, and the representative essentially laughs. In that one respect, Contact tells Gurgeh the truth: they don't really expect him to become Emperor. That would be too simple. No, Contact is manipulating Gurgeh—and Banks is manipulating the reader—in a far deeper game.
Central to The Player of Games is the conundrum that faces most visions of utopia: if there is no suffering, no challenge to one's livelihood, wouldn't life be stagnant and pointless? The vast AI resources of the Culture mean that no human has to do any work unless he or she wants to; everyone essentially has unlimited free time. Disease and death are uncommon. There is no money, and aside from the occasional crime of passion, there is little enough crime—mostly because there are no formal laws. The Culture is axiomatically uninhibited, and this problematic: when everything is permitted and nothing is forbidden, how can one grow by pushing the boundaries?
Banks explores this question by juxtaposing Gurgeh against the Culture's emissary to the Empire of Azad, Shohobohaum Za. Za has not quite gone native, but he speaks about the Empire with a certain amount of admiration for the "rough-and-tumble" nature of life there. At first Gurgeh has no idea what Za means; he doesn't even really grasp the concept of an empire or ruling through coercion. He only begins to understand how different Azadian society is after he learns about it through the game (because, after all, the game is the society and the society is the game). Sometimes, influenced by the reaction of Gurgeh's companion drone, Flere Imsaho, I began to worry that Gurgeh was being seduced by the game Azad, that he was beginning to lust after power and victory a little too much. This comes to a head when Gurgeh becomes the subject of a Physical Challenge. Basically, if he loses he will be castrated; if he wins, his opponent, an apex, will have its reversible vagina and ovaries removed. Gurgeh could suffer the indignity, get extracted by his ship, and have the Culture's advanced medical technology restore his genitals. Yet he wants to win, wants to advance, even if it means causing, through his victory, his opponent to lose the ability to reproduce and become an outcast. Flere Imsaho takes Gurgeh on a little tour of the slums of the capital city and shows Gurgeh some scrambled channels that cater to the depraved sexual and violent needs of the empire's elite. All of this seems designed to remind us that even if some people, like Gurgeh, aren't creative enough to make their own fun in a post-scarcity society, it's infinitely better than the injustices visited upon the members of a society like the Empire of Azad.
It turns out that the situation isn't so simple. I keep saying "we are told" in this review, because Contact tells Gurgeh one thing (or several things) and then actually intends another. He is certainly not naive of this fact; the duplicity of Contact is notorious among the Culture, and he knows he is being manipulated. He's just not sure exactly how or why. It only becomes obvious during the endgame, when Gurgeh faces off against incumbent Emperor Nicosar, what Contact intends. And just as Flere Imsaho's horror tour is supposed to wake us to the inequities of the Empire, Contact's real goals remind us that the Culture is not always sunshine and rainbows. Because when the Culture decides your society is not worthy, they do not destroy you. They do not attack you. They dismantle your society from within and let your own people do the rest. It's a little chilling, especially when, at the very end, Banks reveals exactly how intricately Contact manipulated Gurgeh into accepting the mission and achieving their goals.
In this respect, The Player of Games continues the theme from Consider Phlebas, and Gurgeh even explicitly remarks upon it: in the Culture, individuals do not make much of a difference. Minds undertake the larger, galactic-level decisions, such as running Contact, because they vastly exceed humans in both intellectual capacity and longevity. Individual humans become, in one sense, pawns that the Minds manipulate in order to serve the larger needs of the Culture as a whole. What's so troubling is that it apparently works, because the Culture has been around for eleven thousand years. That kind of makes sense, because this impersonal, non-individualistic approach to decision-taking removes the ego that might otherwise corrupt a politician and his or her government. However, it goes against a lot of the thinking that pervades our contemporary society, and that makes the theme a bitter pill to swallow.
Note that I'm not actually advocating for (or against) the Culture as an ideal vision of what we should strive for as our future. It's unrealistic, because it assumes human beings are nicer than they probably are. In real life, I doubt we can ever eliminate that criminal element (even if we do arrive at a point where we no longer need laws). Any new technology is immediately going to be seized upon for two purposes: to make money legitimately, and to commit crimes. Our future will almost certainly be a lot grittier than the society depicted in the Culture series. Nevertheless, I am enamoured of the Culture, what it represents, and the interesting philosophical implications of a human/machine symbiosis on a political level.
So I enjoyed The Player of Games thematically, and I also liked the character of Jernau Morat Gurgeh. As a protagonist he might not be ideal, especially at first, because he whines about his dissatisfaction with being awesome. Yet that proves a useful starting point for Gurgeh to change and grow, mostly for the better. I really like that Banks enforces a certain level of ignorance when it comes to Gurgeh's knowledge of science and technology. A lot of science fiction novels focus on the characters who know exactly how all of their society's advanced technology works; some take it one step further and seem to assume that, in the future, everyone will understand quantum mechanics. Banks averts this:
Even better, Gurgeh remembers this very close to the end of the book and asks Flere Imsaho what ultraspace is, but he doesn't really understand the explanation. Gurgeh is by no means unintelligent—he writes papers on game theory and has mastered in years a game that takes Azadians their entire lifetime to play well. So I enjoyed that Banks made a layperson the protagonist of a science-fiction novel and still managed to make the entire book work. It attests to a skill that seemed largely fallow in The Algebraist and did not quite shine enough in Consider Phlebas.
With The Player of Games, I no longer feel lukewarm toward Banks or his Culture series. I am officially hooked.
My reviews of the Culture series:
← Consider Phlebas | Use of Weapons →
The Player of Games more than makes up for any disappointment I felt over Consider Phlebas. In this return to the Culture universe, Banks manages to craft a character and a story that are compelling, both on an emotional and on a philosophical level. Most of the book takes place in a society outside the Culture, but make no mistake: this is an indictment, in some ways, of the sneakiness with which the Culture disarms possible threats. Banks employs a subtle, double-edged wit to portray simultaneously both the utopian aspects of this society and how it might look to the aliens it encounters.
But first, let's talk about the eponymous Jernah Morat Gurgeh. He plays games, almost any type of game, and he is probably the best player of games in the entire Culture. He's really rather an authority on it. Have achieved such a pinnacle, Gurgeh is bored out of his mind and spoiling for a challenge of some kind. After the additional push of some blackmail from a slightly crazy drone, Gurgeh allows himself to be enlisted by Contact, the division of the Culture that does exactly what the name implies, to play a game called Azad.
Azad is the cornerstone of the Empire of Azad, a civilization in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud. Contact isn't quite sure what to do with the Empire—in fact, for an imperial power structure to survive the advent of space travel is very rare, or so we are told. This one seems to have survived because of the game after which it is named; almost every Azadian plays Azad, and one's performance determines one's status, vocation, etc. Oh, and the Azadians have three sexes: male, female, and what our limited vocabulary forces us to call "apex". The apices are dominant, having selectively bred the males and females for strength of arms and docility, respectively.
Gurgeh gets parachuted into this game, and we are told that both sides expect him to lose rather quickly. Certainly, the Azadians have no desire to see Gurgeh advance into the higher levels of play: how would you feel if an alien showed up one day and beat you at the game around which your entire society revolves? Notably, the ultimate winner of Azad becomes the Emperor. When initially being briefed on the mission, Gurgeh asks the Contact representative if they expect him to become Emperor, and the representative essentially laughs. In that one respect, Contact tells Gurgeh the truth: they don't really expect him to become Emperor. That would be too simple. No, Contact is manipulating Gurgeh—and Banks is manipulating the reader—in a far deeper game.
Central to The Player of Games is the conundrum that faces most visions of utopia: if there is no suffering, no challenge to one's livelihood, wouldn't life be stagnant and pointless? The vast AI resources of the Culture mean that no human has to do any work unless he or she wants to; everyone essentially has unlimited free time. Disease and death are uncommon. There is no money, and aside from the occasional crime of passion, there is little enough crime—mostly because there are no formal laws. The Culture is axiomatically uninhibited, and this problematic: when everything is permitted and nothing is forbidden, how can one grow by pushing the boundaries?
Banks explores this question by juxtaposing Gurgeh against the Culture's emissary to the Empire of Azad, Shohobohaum Za. Za has not quite gone native, but he speaks about the Empire with a certain amount of admiration for the "rough-and-tumble" nature of life there. At first Gurgeh has no idea what Za means; he doesn't even really grasp the concept of an empire or ruling through coercion. He only begins to understand how different Azadian society is after he learns about it through the game (because, after all, the game is the society and the society is the game). Sometimes, influenced by the reaction of Gurgeh's companion drone, Flere Imsaho, I began to worry that Gurgeh was being seduced by the game Azad, that he was beginning to lust after power and victory a little too much. This comes to a head when Gurgeh becomes the subject of a Physical Challenge. Basically, if he loses he will be castrated; if he wins, his opponent, an apex, will have its reversible vagina and ovaries removed. Gurgeh could suffer the indignity, get extracted by his ship, and have the Culture's advanced medical technology restore his genitals. Yet he wants to win, wants to advance, even if it means causing, through his victory, his opponent to lose the ability to reproduce and become an outcast. Flere Imsaho takes Gurgeh on a little tour of the slums of the capital city and shows Gurgeh some scrambled channels that cater to the depraved sexual and violent needs of the empire's elite. All of this seems designed to remind us that even if some people, like Gurgeh, aren't creative enough to make their own fun in a post-scarcity society, it's infinitely better than the injustices visited upon the members of a society like the Empire of Azad.
It turns out that the situation isn't so simple. I keep saying "we are told" in this review, because Contact tells Gurgeh one thing (or several things) and then actually intends another. He is certainly not naive of this fact; the duplicity of Contact is notorious among the Culture, and he knows he is being manipulated. He's just not sure exactly how or why. It only becomes obvious during the endgame, when Gurgeh faces off against incumbent Emperor Nicosar, what Contact intends. And just as Flere Imsaho's horror tour is supposed to wake us to the inequities of the Empire, Contact's real goals remind us that the Culture is not always sunshine and rainbows. Because when the Culture decides your society is not worthy, they do not destroy you. They do not attack you. They dismantle your society from within and let your own people do the rest. It's a little chilling, especially when, at the very end, Banks reveals exactly how intricately Contact manipulated Gurgeh into accepting the mission and achieving their goals.
In this respect, The Player of Games continues the theme from Consider Phlebas, and Gurgeh even explicitly remarks upon it: in the Culture, individuals do not make much of a difference. Minds undertake the larger, galactic-level decisions, such as running Contact, because they vastly exceed humans in both intellectual capacity and longevity. Individual humans become, in one sense, pawns that the Minds manipulate in order to serve the larger needs of the Culture as a whole. What's so troubling is that it apparently works, because the Culture has been around for eleven thousand years. That kind of makes sense, because this impersonal, non-individualistic approach to decision-taking removes the ego that might otherwise corrupt a politician and his or her government. However, it goes against a lot of the thinking that pervades our contemporary society, and that makes the theme a bitter pill to swallow.
Note that I'm not actually advocating for (or against) the Culture as an ideal vision of what we should strive for as our future. It's unrealistic, because it assumes human beings are nicer than they probably are. In real life, I doubt we can ever eliminate that criminal element (even if we do arrive at a point where we no longer need laws). Any new technology is immediately going to be seized upon for two purposes: to make money legitimately, and to commit crimes. Our future will almost certainly be a lot grittier than the society depicted in the Culture series. Nevertheless, I am enamoured of the Culture, what it represents, and the interesting philosophical implications of a human/machine symbiosis on a political level.
So I enjoyed The Player of Games thematically, and I also liked the character of Jernau Morat Gurgeh. As a protagonist he might not be ideal, especially at first, because he whines about his dissatisfaction with being awesome. Yet that proves a useful starting point for Gurgeh to change and grow, mostly for the better. I really like that Banks enforces a certain level of ignorance when it comes to Gurgeh's knowledge of science and technology. A lot of science fiction novels focus on the characters who know exactly how all of their society's advanced technology works; some take it one step further and seem to assume that, in the future, everyone will understand quantum mechanics. Banks averts this:
The Limiting Factor was tearing through something it called ultraspace with increasing acceleration.… He didn't even know what ultraspace was. Was it the same as hyperspace? At least he had heard of that….
Even better, Gurgeh remembers this very close to the end of the book and asks Flere Imsaho what ultraspace is, but he doesn't really understand the explanation. Gurgeh is by no means unintelligent—he writes papers on game theory and has mastered in years a game that takes Azadians their entire lifetime to play well. So I enjoyed that Banks made a layperson the protagonist of a science-fiction novel and still managed to make the entire book work. It attests to a skill that seemed largely fallow in The Algebraist and did not quite shine enough in Consider Phlebas.
With The Player of Games, I no longer feel lukewarm toward Banks or his Culture series. I am officially hooked.
My reviews of the Culture series:
← Consider Phlebas | Use of Weapons →
This is a very charming and endearing book, which is good, because it is also implausible and silly and so otherwise it would be terrible. Afterworlds is a very tongue-in-cheek novel about writing and publishing novels, with a novel within the novel, because yo dawg, I heard you like novels in your novels so I novelled a novel novel for you. Novel novel novel….
Darcy Patel is an eighteen-year-old high school graduate whose NaNoWriMo novel gets accepted for publication. She moves to New York (parents love that idea, not), gets an apartment way too expensive for her despite her six-figure advance, and struggles with rewrites while falling in love with fellow debut writer Imogen Gray. Along the way, Darcy discovers a literary community and tries to figure out who she wants to be as an author even as she hides from actually growing older as a person.
Like most writing about writers, Afterworlds is rather navel-gazing. What rescues it from mediocrity is the YA-twist Westerfeld puts on it. This isn’t some twenty-thirty-forty-something male writer with two days’ stubble working on the Great American novel and reflecting morosely on how no one seems to recognize his genius. Darcy is about as young and naive as it gets when it comes to, you know, actually living. She leans on her younger sister for budgetary help, and her naivety in negotiating her first relationship is a constant source of tension in an otherwise effortless life with Imogen. And even if the premise of an eighteen-year-old getting a novel she wrote in thirty days accepted for publication seems unlikely, Westerfeld delivers plenty of doses of reality, from the tight deadlines to the excruciating waiting to the exhaustion built around the transition from writer to published writer. There are quite a few lampshades hanging around by the end of the book, and it’s this self-awareness that makes Afterworlds work.
Alternating between Darcy’s story and chapters from her work (also called Afterworlds, probably just to make these reviews more confusing) is another fascinating twist on the typical novel about novelists. Lizzie’s story, albeit more fantastical than Darcy’s, is not quite as captivating—I kept wanting to get back to Darcy’s life, to see what happens next on her journey to becoming a published author. That might seem strange given that Lizzie turns into a reaper and can see ghosts! It comes down to the writing, though, and the fun Westerfeld must have had trying to make his writing seem less polished and “worse” when he writes as Darcy. The version of Darcy’s novel that we read is the final draft—we witness her agonizing over edits, particularly to the ending, throughout her side of the story—but even so the writing is rougher and less experienced that Westerfeld’s ordinary style. I hope this was fun for him and not, say, nerve-wracking in the extreme—but the result is great.
Afterworlds also reminds me of the immense joy of the writing process itself, and of its wondrous complex parts, from drafting to editing to copyediting. I don’t write fiction as much as I did when I was younger, but it’s not something I have ever or will ever give up. And reading Afterworlds inspired me to open up an old WIP and noodle around in it for a while. I can only image what it would do to members of its target audience who harbour writerly aspirations—and that can only be a good thing!
In the end, this is not an amazing novel (either of them), and it’s far from my favourite thing Westerfeld has done. But that’s OK. It has an interesting niche, and it was a lot of fun. I laughed at parts, and sighed a little bit when Imogen goes off on Darcy and tells her that Darcy is basically too young to understand how to handle love—because it’s both true but also very harsh, and it’s a sharp demonstration of how we wound those who are closest to us. By far my favourite character has to be Nisha, Darcy’s smart-as-a-whip sardonic sister:
So much yes!
Darcy Patel is an eighteen-year-old high school graduate whose NaNoWriMo novel gets accepted for publication. She moves to New York (parents love that idea, not), gets an apartment way too expensive for her despite her six-figure advance, and struggles with rewrites while falling in love with fellow debut writer Imogen Gray. Along the way, Darcy discovers a literary community and tries to figure out who she wants to be as an author even as she hides from actually growing older as a person.
Like most writing about writers, Afterworlds is rather navel-gazing. What rescues it from mediocrity is the YA-twist Westerfeld puts on it. This isn’t some twenty-thirty-forty-something male writer with two days’ stubble working on the Great American novel and reflecting morosely on how no one seems to recognize his genius. Darcy is about as young and naive as it gets when it comes to, you know, actually living. She leans on her younger sister for budgetary help, and her naivety in negotiating her first relationship is a constant source of tension in an otherwise effortless life with Imogen. And even if the premise of an eighteen-year-old getting a novel she wrote in thirty days accepted for publication seems unlikely, Westerfeld delivers plenty of doses of reality, from the tight deadlines to the excruciating waiting to the exhaustion built around the transition from writer to published writer. There are quite a few lampshades hanging around by the end of the book, and it’s this self-awareness that makes Afterworlds work.
Alternating between Darcy’s story and chapters from her work (also called Afterworlds, probably just to make these reviews more confusing) is another fascinating twist on the typical novel about novelists. Lizzie’s story, albeit more fantastical than Darcy’s, is not quite as captivating—I kept wanting to get back to Darcy’s life, to see what happens next on her journey to becoming a published author. That might seem strange given that Lizzie turns into a reaper and can see ghosts! It comes down to the writing, though, and the fun Westerfeld must have had trying to make his writing seem less polished and “worse” when he writes as Darcy. The version of Darcy’s novel that we read is the final draft—we witness her agonizing over edits, particularly to the ending, throughout her side of the story—but even so the writing is rougher and less experienced that Westerfeld’s ordinary style. I hope this was fun for him and not, say, nerve-wracking in the extreme—but the result is great.
Afterworlds also reminds me of the immense joy of the writing process itself, and of its wondrous complex parts, from drafting to editing to copyediting. I don’t write fiction as much as I did when I was younger, but it’s not something I have ever or will ever give up. And reading Afterworlds inspired me to open up an old WIP and noodle around in it for a while. I can only image what it would do to members of its target audience who harbour writerly aspirations—and that can only be a good thing!
In the end, this is not an amazing novel (either of them), and it’s far from my favourite thing Westerfeld has done. But that’s OK. It has an interesting niche, and it was a lot of fun. I laughed at parts, and sighed a little bit when Imogen goes off on Darcy and tells her that Darcy is basically too young to understand how to handle love—because it’s both true but also very harsh, and it’s a sharp demonstration of how we wound those who are closest to us. By far my favourite character has to be Nisha, Darcy’s smart-as-a-whip sardonic sister:
“Just numbers?” Nisha snorted, and her face took on a look of adamantine certainty. “The universe is math on fire, Patel. That’s my faith.”
So much yes!
Hmm. A little too Stephen King for me. But that’s kind of a compliment.
I liked the various shorter works Thomas Olde Heuvelt has had nominated for Hugo Awards, so when I saw this on my library’s New Books shelf, it was a no-brainer. HEX looked like just the right amount of creepy and fantastic: I liked the idea of a social media–influenced modern take on a cursed town. As the narrative develops and the plot descends into ickier and ickier chaos, Olde Heuvelt asks you to come along on a truly twisted ride. It’s not really my cup of tea, but I can see others enjoying it. Hence the “too Stephen King”—his novels don’t do it for me, but I understand why so many people find him captivating.
The town of Black Spring (transplanted from the Netherlands in the original to a small Dutch-descended town in New York in the translation) has a witch problem and a ghost problem. A ghost-witch problem, if you will: Katherine van Wyler haunts the town, silent and accusatory. Any attempts to mess with her, and people just start dropping dead. And Black Spring is the Hotel California of towns: once you move in, if you leave for extended periods of time you get suicidally depressed. So … yeah. Enjoy.
The town’s younger residents chafe against this life. Their Internet access is filtered, and they are tired of living under the yoke of such a curse. So as adolescent boys do, they push back. They transgress—not significantly, at least not at first, but enough to send out the ripples that turn into tsunamis by book’s end. HEX, like many of its ilk in the suspense and horror genres, is all about unintended consequences. I appreciate, however, that this book does not pit the young and old squarely against each other. There are shades of grey, with people like Richard Grim and Tyler’s father, Steve, on the boys’ side (for the most part), squaring off against the more conservative, religious members of the town.
Olde Heuvelt effectively parcels the exposition behind Katherine’s origins and powers into manageable chunks throughout the story. He feeds us just enough that we get to enjoy watching other characters squirm, even as we grow increasingly uncomfortable. The full extent of Katherine’s ability or the nature of her haunting doesn’t become apparent for a very long time. In this way, the novel gradually ratchets up the suspense. I particularly appreciate the interplay between Tyler and Jaydon, and how the latter is someone for whom our sympathy leaches away. He just gets worse and worse, and while it’s true the townspeople are awful to him, his actions are no credit to his character.
The book unfortunately suffers from a dearth of diverse characters. There are, to be generous, only two significant women characters in HEX. As the novel hits its peak they both act in stereotypically unhinged ways. And, you know, that would be perfectly fine—if there were enough other women around who didn’t succumb to histrionics. This is the problem with having one or two women in a cast. The cast list otherwise feels like a boys’ club, and there’s just a very masculine feeling to the various conflicts and storylines.
I’m also a little tired of the “it’s humans who are the monsters!” trope, which HEX leans on heavily in its final moments. I get it. We’re the bad ones, and the monsters are merely reflections of our own darkness. But the ending feels like such a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that all I could do was close the book and start the next one. While I understand the source of the punitive nature of Katherine’s ghost, I don’t enjoy these endings as much as ones that were avoidable. (We might debate whether or not the townspeople’s actions might have been nudged to avert going down this road, but I’m not convinced.) I prefer Hardy and Dickens’ abjectly mundane tragedies over those of the supernatural simply because their characters bring about their own undoing without an external agency’s oversight.
That being said, even I’m not immune to the spine-tingling, bone-chilling, blood-thinning effect of Olde Heuvelt’s writing. If you know you like books like this, then you will like this book. It’s just very effective at what it does, and Nancy Forest-Flier’s translation does nothing to diminish these sensations. HEX is the type of horror novel that I do enjoy from time to time, even if I don’t go out of my way to read the genre more widely.
I liked the various shorter works Thomas Olde Heuvelt has had nominated for Hugo Awards, so when I saw this on my library’s New Books shelf, it was a no-brainer. HEX looked like just the right amount of creepy and fantastic: I liked the idea of a social media–influenced modern take on a cursed town. As the narrative develops and the plot descends into ickier and ickier chaos, Olde Heuvelt asks you to come along on a truly twisted ride. It’s not really my cup of tea, but I can see others enjoying it. Hence the “too Stephen King”—his novels don’t do it for me, but I understand why so many people find him captivating.
The town of Black Spring (transplanted from the Netherlands in the original to a small Dutch-descended town in New York in the translation) has a witch problem and a ghost problem. A ghost-witch problem, if you will: Katherine van Wyler haunts the town, silent and accusatory. Any attempts to mess with her, and people just start dropping dead. And Black Spring is the Hotel California of towns: once you move in, if you leave for extended periods of time you get suicidally depressed. So … yeah. Enjoy.
The town’s younger residents chafe against this life. Their Internet access is filtered, and they are tired of living under the yoke of such a curse. So as adolescent boys do, they push back. They transgress—not significantly, at least not at first, but enough to send out the ripples that turn into tsunamis by book’s end. HEX, like many of its ilk in the suspense and horror genres, is all about unintended consequences. I appreciate, however, that this book does not pit the young and old squarely against each other. There are shades of grey, with people like Richard Grim and Tyler’s father, Steve, on the boys’ side (for the most part), squaring off against the more conservative, religious members of the town.
Olde Heuvelt effectively parcels the exposition behind Katherine’s origins and powers into manageable chunks throughout the story. He feeds us just enough that we get to enjoy watching other characters squirm, even as we grow increasingly uncomfortable. The full extent of Katherine’s ability or the nature of her haunting doesn’t become apparent for a very long time. In this way, the novel gradually ratchets up the suspense. I particularly appreciate the interplay between Tyler and Jaydon, and how the latter is someone for whom our sympathy leaches away. He just gets worse and worse, and while it’s true the townspeople are awful to him, his actions are no credit to his character.
The book unfortunately suffers from a dearth of diverse characters. There are, to be generous, only two significant women characters in HEX. As the novel hits its peak they both act in stereotypically unhinged ways. And, you know, that would be perfectly fine—if there were enough other women around who didn’t succumb to histrionics. This is the problem with having one or two women in a cast. The cast list otherwise feels like a boys’ club, and there’s just a very masculine feeling to the various conflicts and storylines.
I’m also a little tired of the “it’s humans who are the monsters!” trope, which HEX leans on heavily in its final moments. I get it. We’re the bad ones, and the monsters are merely reflections of our own darkness. But the ending feels like such a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ that all I could do was close the book and start the next one. While I understand the source of the punitive nature of Katherine’s ghost, I don’t enjoy these endings as much as ones that were avoidable. (We might debate whether or not the townspeople’s actions might have been nudged to avert going down this road, but I’m not convinced.) I prefer Hardy and Dickens’ abjectly mundane tragedies over those of the supernatural simply because their characters bring about their own undoing without an external agency’s oversight.
That being said, even I’m not immune to the spine-tingling, bone-chilling, blood-thinning effect of Olde Heuvelt’s writing. If you know you like books like this, then you will like this book. It’s just very effective at what it does, and Nancy Forest-Flier’s translation does nothing to diminish these sensations. HEX is the type of horror novel that I do enjoy from time to time, even if I don’t go out of my way to read the genre more widely.
Oh, man, when I fall into the CanLit tree, sometimes I manage to hit every branch on the way down. I say I like character-driven stories, but Garbo Laughs is a harsh reminder of how important plot is even when your character drives things. Because in this case, Elizabeth Hay’s characters aren’t driving the story, so much as sitting around while a narrative just kind of tumbles desultorily around them, tugging at them occasionally in vain attempts to get their attention. They steadfastly refuse to engage with it, however, so it eventually passes them by (but not before raining revengeful death upon some of them!).
As the title and cover copy promise, this book is inextricably tied up in “old” movies and Harriet’s love, bordering on obsession, for them. I don’t know enough about early cinema to understand all the allusions or the ins-and-outs of these conversations. I’m aware of the names Sinatra, Astaire, Kelly, Brando, etc. I’ve seen The Godfather (which I don’t actually consider an “old” movie). The oldest movie I’ve probably watched is the restored Metropolis, but that doesn’t really intersect with American cinema. I don’t know what the oldest American movie I’ve watched is—maybe Casablanca. Anyway, while I don’t share Harriet’s fascination, I do understand her passion. Thanks to the way Hay describes it, I can liken it to my own love for books. Where Harriet loves snuggling up with an old movie, I love snuggling up with an old book. There is nothing like it and nothing better.
Surrounding Harriet are a panoply of characters who together might form an ensemble cast, if this book needed a cast. What it really needs is more conflict than the nebulous antipathy between Harriet and Leah or Harriet’s own internal struggle with her inability to write comedy. Hay even throws in the spectre of a possible affair, whether it’s Harriet’s unwanted attraction to Jack or Lew’s easygoing friendship with Dinah. These are strong beginnings, great characters. But Hay doesn’t give them quite enough leeway, doesn’t spool out quite enough leash, and so their conflicts don’t actually go anywhere.
In particular, Harriet’s children are important characters in relation to her, but their development is stunted. Kenny is adorable and precocious, and he does get a subplot about being bullied for his oddball movie passions inherited from mom. Jane, while happy enough to respond to inquiries, is a less known quantity, and I wish that we heard more from her. Unfortunately, the narration sticks pretty tightly to Harriet, so your mileage with this book is greatly influenced by your tolerance for her particular neuroses.
I say that glibly but don’t mean to make light of them. For some people I can see this being an excellent work. I’m sure Harriet will strike a chord with many. Hay’s choice to portray a marriage that is not broken or dysfunctional yet still abjectly unsatisfying is a good one. Harriet and Lew love each other in a way, but neither seems to have the key to making the other one happy. They just kind of putter along, except they aren’t quite old enough for that old married couple stereotype to kick in. It’s interesting the few times that Hay shows them having sex, because it tends to happen out of the blue and Harriet seems to indicate she enjoys it—but I guess her emotional needs aren’t being met. She wants someone who is a little more combative, hence the attraction to Jack, or even the little thrill she gets from being so annoyed by Leah’s manipulations.
So I’d be lying if I claimed nothing happens in this book. There are many interesting character dynamics. Hay has that easygoing, classically CanLit style of narration with smooth dialogue full of names of people I don’t recognize because I was born after the Turner years. The point being: there is an audience for this book, and I’m not quite it, but I’m probably next door to the people who are it. Garbo Laughs is sincere in its attempt to blend humour, hubris, and humility into a kind of sharp and pointed look at modern married life through the lens of the golden oldies. It reminds me a bit of Georgian novels, but Hay’s writing doesn’t quite sing to me the way Austen’s or Brontë’s does.
As the title and cover copy promise, this book is inextricably tied up in “old” movies and Harriet’s love, bordering on obsession, for them. I don’t know enough about early cinema to understand all the allusions or the ins-and-outs of these conversations. I’m aware of the names Sinatra, Astaire, Kelly, Brando, etc. I’ve seen The Godfather (which I don’t actually consider an “old” movie). The oldest movie I’ve probably watched is the restored Metropolis, but that doesn’t really intersect with American cinema. I don’t know what the oldest American movie I’ve watched is—maybe Casablanca. Anyway, while I don’t share Harriet’s fascination, I do understand her passion. Thanks to the way Hay describes it, I can liken it to my own love for books. Where Harriet loves snuggling up with an old movie, I love snuggling up with an old book. There is nothing like it and nothing better.
Surrounding Harriet are a panoply of characters who together might form an ensemble cast, if this book needed a cast. What it really needs is more conflict than the nebulous antipathy between Harriet and Leah or Harriet’s own internal struggle with her inability to write comedy. Hay even throws in the spectre of a possible affair, whether it’s Harriet’s unwanted attraction to Jack or Lew’s easygoing friendship with Dinah. These are strong beginnings, great characters. But Hay doesn’t give them quite enough leeway, doesn’t spool out quite enough leash, and so their conflicts don’t actually go anywhere.
In particular, Harriet’s children are important characters in relation to her, but their development is stunted. Kenny is adorable and precocious, and he does get a subplot about being bullied for his oddball movie passions inherited from mom. Jane, while happy enough to respond to inquiries, is a less known quantity, and I wish that we heard more from her. Unfortunately, the narration sticks pretty tightly to Harriet, so your mileage with this book is greatly influenced by your tolerance for her particular neuroses.
I say that glibly but don’t mean to make light of them. For some people I can see this being an excellent work. I’m sure Harriet will strike a chord with many. Hay’s choice to portray a marriage that is not broken or dysfunctional yet still abjectly unsatisfying is a good one. Harriet and Lew love each other in a way, but neither seems to have the key to making the other one happy. They just kind of putter along, except they aren’t quite old enough for that old married couple stereotype to kick in. It’s interesting the few times that Hay shows them having sex, because it tends to happen out of the blue and Harriet seems to indicate she enjoys it—but I guess her emotional needs aren’t being met. She wants someone who is a little more combative, hence the attraction to Jack, or even the little thrill she gets from being so annoyed by Leah’s manipulations.
So I’d be lying if I claimed nothing happens in this book. There are many interesting character dynamics. Hay has that easygoing, classically CanLit style of narration with smooth dialogue full of names of people I don’t recognize because I was born after the Turner years. The point being: there is an audience for this book, and I’m not quite it, but I’m probably next door to the people who are it. Garbo Laughs is sincere in its attempt to blend humour, hubris, and humility into a kind of sharp and pointed look at modern married life through the lens of the golden oldies. It reminds me a bit of Georgian novels, but Hay’s writing doesn’t quite sing to me the way Austen’s or Brontë’s does.
I’ve had this book for ages and just never got around to reading it (I’m really behind on reading my ebooks, because I need to give my tablet a root canal). I figured with an American presidential election around the corner, and with the pseudo-eschatological tones of certain candidates’ campaigns, Archangel Protocol was a nice pairing. I didn’t realize it is 15 years old! Lyda Morehouse says in her preface that she resisted the urge to update it, and I respect that. I won’t rag much on the outdated feeling of this vision of the future anymore than I would stories from the 1960s. Nevertheless, while there were moments that made me smile with fierce appreciation, by and large this book was a hard one for me to like. Despite being about angels, it just seems to lack soul.
Archangel Protocol opens with a hard riff on the noir detective genre, except gender-flipped, and this is the best thing about the book. Not only is our hardboiled detected/ex-cop, Deidre McManus, a woman, but the first thing she does when her prospective client walks into her office is strongly objectify him:
So instead of a femme fatale we’re subverting the trope with a male fatale, or whatever the term would be, and it’s fun. This is where I think Archangel Protocol encounters its problem: it tries to be both fun and noirish, and it can’t quite decide where to draw that line.
Then there’s the overlay of religion and religious themes. Deidre gets drawn into what appears to be a conspiracy to take over the United States, or something like that, involving fake angels that only show up on the LINK (which is like the Internet and cyberspace’s love child). Michael turns out to be an actual angel, from the for-realz heaven—or is he? I couldn’t tell if Michael and his ilk were actually supposed to be literal angels or if this was just another mindfuck hallucination of Deidre’s—and not being to tell whether this was reality or not could have been OK, but I also couldn’t tell if Morehouse was intentionally making it difficult to tell or if it was just sloppy writing. Savvy?
Either way, though, the plot is still a twisty-turning messy rubber band ball of loose ends that often doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. Take Danny, Deidre’s former partner, jailed for killing the Pope. He gets out, they meet up, he gets killed—but not before passing on a mysterious Bible he annotated. So I guess he was just a convenient plot device? The Bible, despite Deidre having to possess it, never seems to be that big a deal anyway. It’s more important that Deidre has super-awesome LINK hax0rzing skills that let her take on the Big Bad … not that I understood what kind of skills those were, because Morehouse doesn’t spend much time describing them.
Confusion. Confusion is what I primarily experienced reading Archangel Protocol, and not in a “whoa this is awesome I have no idea what’s going on but my mind is blown” kind of way. Deidre spends her time either running (while having vague metaphysical conversations with Michael) or investigating (which is a lot more interesting but never really seems to do much). In the end, I just had a hard time caring about what was happening in this book, because I didn’t really understand what was going on.
It’s a shame. Morehouse has an interesting world here. There’s a good backstory, which she doesn’t reveal through too much exposition. Deidre herself is an interesting enough character. I like her flaws; I like how, as a product of her time, she has a bit of latent homophobia even though she herself has rejected most of the evangelical and conservative notions of this future American society. I like the way she handles herself, carrying both the strength of an ex-cop out to find the truth and the fragility of someone who is so completely alone. Unfortunately, none of these things shine bright enough to eclipse the muddled plot, dull secondary characters, or weird pseudo-religious-maybe-hallucinatory angel stuff.
Though Archangel Protocol holds immense potential for excellent storytelling, Morehouse’s writing doesn’t bear up. I’m glad I finally got around to reading it and clearing it off my list—but I won’t be jumping to read the sequels any time soon.
Archangel Protocol opens with a hard riff on the noir detective genre, except gender-flipped, and this is the best thing about the book. Not only is our hardboiled detected/ex-cop, Deidre McManus, a woman, but the first thing she does when her prospective client walks into her office is strongly objectify him:
Granted, masculine beauty has always been a weakness of mine, but this man literally took my breath away. Olive-skinned, tall, broad-shouldered, slender-waisted—he looked like he might have been sculpted from marble. Unfortunately, this David remembered to dress himself this morning. His fashion sense leaned toward urban combat. Leather jacket and dusty blue jeans hugged his muscular frame. He looked like a warrior sheathed in casual armor.
So instead of a femme fatale we’re subverting the trope with a male fatale, or whatever the term would be, and it’s fun. This is where I think Archangel Protocol encounters its problem: it tries to be both fun and noirish, and it can’t quite decide where to draw that line.
Then there’s the overlay of religion and religious themes. Deidre gets drawn into what appears to be a conspiracy to take over the United States, or something like that, involving fake angels that only show up on the LINK (which is like the Internet and cyberspace’s love child). Michael turns out to be an actual angel, from the for-realz heaven—or is he? I couldn’t tell if Michael and his ilk were actually supposed to be literal angels or if this was just another mindfuck hallucination of Deidre’s—and not being to tell whether this was reality or not could have been OK, but I also couldn’t tell if Morehouse was intentionally making it difficult to tell or if it was just sloppy writing. Savvy?
Either way, though, the plot is still a twisty-turning messy rubber band ball of loose ends that often doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. Take Danny, Deidre’s former partner, jailed for killing the Pope. He gets out, they meet up, he gets killed—but not before passing on a mysterious Bible he annotated. So I guess he was just a convenient plot device? The Bible, despite Deidre having to possess it, never seems to be that big a deal anyway. It’s more important that Deidre has super-awesome LINK hax0rzing skills that let her take on the Big Bad … not that I understood what kind of skills those were, because Morehouse doesn’t spend much time describing them.
Confusion. Confusion is what I primarily experienced reading Archangel Protocol, and not in a “whoa this is awesome I have no idea what’s going on but my mind is blown” kind of way. Deidre spends her time either running (while having vague metaphysical conversations with Michael) or investigating (which is a lot more interesting but never really seems to do much). In the end, I just had a hard time caring about what was happening in this book, because I didn’t really understand what was going on.
It’s a shame. Morehouse has an interesting world here. There’s a good backstory, which she doesn’t reveal through too much exposition. Deidre herself is an interesting enough character. I like her flaws; I like how, as a product of her time, she has a bit of latent homophobia even though she herself has rejected most of the evangelical and conservative notions of this future American society. I like the way she handles herself, carrying both the strength of an ex-cop out to find the truth and the fragility of someone who is so completely alone. Unfortunately, none of these things shine bright enough to eclipse the muddled plot, dull secondary characters, or weird pseudo-religious-maybe-hallucinatory angel stuff.
Though Archangel Protocol holds immense potential for excellent storytelling, Morehouse’s writing doesn’t bear up. I’m glad I finally got around to reading it and clearing it off my list—but I won’t be jumping to read the sequels any time soon.
Sentences you thought you’d never read: Amistad (the movie) reminds me of Tropic Thunder.
This seems like as good a time as any other to read Amistad, the novelization of the 1997 Spielberg film now played in high school history classes the world over (including in my Grade 12 history class). With only fuzzy memories of the film, I decided the $2 for this book at the library-affiliated used bookstore was a bargain. This past week in my English class of adult Indigenous learners, we’ve been talking about stereotypes and, in particular, Black Lives Matter and racism. Amistad tackles these very issues in a fictionalized version of the United States just a few decades before the Civil War.
I don’t remember much about the movie—it’s on Netflix, so maybe I’ll re-watch it at some point—except that it wasn’t half-bad despite starring Matthew McConaughey. That’s why the movie reminds me of Tropic Thunder, which is another exception to my general rule that I just don’t want to watch movies with McConaughey in them. I can’t explain my completely irrational dislike of him, but there you have it. Anyway, I recall the movie as being “good” in that nineties-message-movie kind of way, plus-or-minus the hastily shellacked layers of historical commentary applied to the characters and sets. The movie and book are both very much aware that they are a story about slavery and freedom, and they are also very self-aware of the wider historical continuum, including the Civil War. The result is a kind of anachronistic imposition of twentieth-century ideas about nineteenth-century attitudes towards abolition and slavery.
This book bills itself as “brilliantly narrated by Alexs Pate”, and I spent some time trying to figure out if those awards were for writing. (Based on what I can read from his website, it looks like he’s gotten some awards for some of his other books, so maybe his writing was just constrained by an attempt to reproduce the screenplay too faithfully.) Amistad reminds me why I tend to avoid novelizations, because it feels brutally like one: all telling, no showing, with an omniscient narrator who spills everyone’s thoughts onto the page with the subtlety of a gossip columnist:
This is simply execrable writing. It’s so patronizing; it sounds like someone trying to explain these issues to children. Not only overly simplistic, it’s just so obviously hammering on the book’s theme. I don’t have an issue with didactic novels, but there is a point where the narrator’s intrusion into the story becomes grandstanding on a soapbox. Pate is approaching Doctorovian levels here, but unlike Doctorow his characters lack anything in the way of depth or a twinkle of humour—and unlike the movie, they don’t have the performances of actors like Anthony Hopkins and Morgan Freeman to enjoy.
It’s tempting to think that peeks inside the minds of characters like the narration above is adding depth to them, but it doesn’t. Instead these tidbits merely turn the characters into caricatures of their historical personae: Van Buren is a career politician who cares only about re-election; Calhoun is a dyed-in-the-wool slaveowner; Adams is an abolitionist who doesn’t like calling himself that, etc. While all or some of these representations might be accurate (I don’t know enough about the history to judge), they are still one-dimensional. A single story, no matter how true, is still just a single story.
Worse still, Amistad’s voice speaks to us from a position of hindsight. The narrator keeps dropping hints about looming Civil War, as if it were obvious to all the politicians at the time that war was going to happen. Again, not a scholar of American Civil War history here—and I’m sure that there were some politicians at the time who recognized and worried about the growing tension between the northern and southern states. But this is twenty years prior to the war, and while the Amistad played a role in exacerbating those tensions, there was still so much more yet to come. The book also grandstands on the idea that Amistad was this huge turning point in the American abolitionist movement, that it was somehow precedent-setting and opinion-changing in how people saw slavery. The narrator puts a “weight of history” tone into the storytelling, emphasizing the supposedly inherent backwardness of the anti-abolitionists and how it’s only a matter of time before the country finally does away with slavery.
Some of these flaws are faults with the movie and screenplay, and so perhaps it is unfair to criticize a novelization for replicating them. But that presumes a novelization cannot fix or expand upon what happens onscreen—isn’t the kind of the point? Novelizations can be strong companions to a movie. Indeed, this book manages to bring depth to one group that isn’t well-represented onscreen: the Africans of the Amistad. They do not speak English, and so for most of the movie they lack a voice—or the voice is mediated through a translator, later on. This makes for an uncomfortable situation in which a movie about the humanity of Black people is told through a white saviour lens, as a bunch of landed white guys debate in the finest traditions of imperial Rome. Because he doesn’t have to use subtlitles, Pate has an opportunity to flesh out individuals from within the group, to emphasize differences in tribe and character—and he uses this opportunity to great advantage. Not only do we get a much better idea of what makes Cinque such a determined figure, but we also see the differing opinions among the Africans and their perspective on the matter.
Still, even this small benefit is not really enough to save the book. I can’t recommend the novelization of Amistad. The movie itself, while far from perfect, is pretty entertaining and moving. The book, with its flat and surprisingly bad storytelling, doesn’t come close to capturing that. There are far superior works of literature available that deal with these issues in more interesting and complex ways (feel free to recommend some to me in the comments).
This seems like as good a time as any other to read Amistad, the novelization of the 1997 Spielberg film now played in high school history classes the world over (including in my Grade 12 history class). With only fuzzy memories of the film, I decided the $2 for this book at the library-affiliated used bookstore was a bargain. This past week in my English class of adult Indigenous learners, we’ve been talking about stereotypes and, in particular, Black Lives Matter and racism. Amistad tackles these very issues in a fictionalized version of the United States just a few decades before the Civil War.
I don’t remember much about the movie—it’s on Netflix, so maybe I’ll re-watch it at some point—except that it wasn’t half-bad despite starring Matthew McConaughey. That’s why the movie reminds me of Tropic Thunder, which is another exception to my general rule that I just don’t want to watch movies with McConaughey in them. I can’t explain my completely irrational dislike of him, but there you have it. Anyway, I recall the movie as being “good” in that nineties-message-movie kind of way, plus-or-minus the hastily shellacked layers of historical commentary applied to the characters and sets. The movie and book are both very much aware that they are a story about slavery and freedom, and they are also very self-aware of the wider historical continuum, including the Civil War. The result is a kind of anachronistic imposition of twentieth-century ideas about nineteenth-century attitudes towards abolition and slavery.
This book bills itself as “brilliantly narrated by Alexs Pate”, and I spent some time trying to figure out if those awards were for writing. (Based on what I can read from his website, it looks like he’s gotten some awards for some of his other books, so maybe his writing was just constrained by an attempt to reproduce the screenplay too faithfully.) Amistad reminds me why I tend to avoid novelizations, because it feels brutally like one: all telling, no showing, with an omniscient narrator who spills everyone’s thoughts onto the page with the subtlety of a gossip columnist:
Van Buren cared about the future of America. Slavery was too complicated and too interwoven into the fabric of American life to think that it could be eradicated by simply being against it. What good would that do anyway?
This is simply execrable writing. It’s so patronizing; it sounds like someone trying to explain these issues to children. Not only overly simplistic, it’s just so obviously hammering on the book’s theme. I don’t have an issue with didactic novels, but there is a point where the narrator’s intrusion into the story becomes grandstanding on a soapbox. Pate is approaching Doctorovian levels here, but unlike Doctorow his characters lack anything in the way of depth or a twinkle of humour—and unlike the movie, they don’t have the performances of actors like Anthony Hopkins and Morgan Freeman to enjoy.
It’s tempting to think that peeks inside the minds of characters like the narration above is adding depth to them, but it doesn’t. Instead these tidbits merely turn the characters into caricatures of their historical personae: Van Buren is a career politician who cares only about re-election; Calhoun is a dyed-in-the-wool slaveowner; Adams is an abolitionist who doesn’t like calling himself that, etc. While all or some of these representations might be accurate (I don’t know enough about the history to judge), they are still one-dimensional. A single story, no matter how true, is still just a single story.
Worse still, Amistad’s voice speaks to us from a position of hindsight. The narrator keeps dropping hints about looming Civil War, as if it were obvious to all the politicians at the time that war was going to happen. Again, not a scholar of American Civil War history here—and I’m sure that there were some politicians at the time who recognized and worried about the growing tension between the northern and southern states. But this is twenty years prior to the war, and while the Amistad played a role in exacerbating those tensions, there was still so much more yet to come. The book also grandstands on the idea that Amistad was this huge turning point in the American abolitionist movement, that it was somehow precedent-setting and opinion-changing in how people saw slavery. The narrator puts a “weight of history” tone into the storytelling, emphasizing the supposedly inherent backwardness of the anti-abolitionists and how it’s only a matter of time before the country finally does away with slavery.
Some of these flaws are faults with the movie and screenplay, and so perhaps it is unfair to criticize a novelization for replicating them. But that presumes a novelization cannot fix or expand upon what happens onscreen—isn’t the kind of the point? Novelizations can be strong companions to a movie. Indeed, this book manages to bring depth to one group that isn’t well-represented onscreen: the Africans of the Amistad. They do not speak English, and so for most of the movie they lack a voice—or the voice is mediated through a translator, later on. This makes for an uncomfortable situation in which a movie about the humanity of Black people is told through a white saviour lens, as a bunch of landed white guys debate in the finest traditions of imperial Rome. Because he doesn’t have to use subtlitles, Pate has an opportunity to flesh out individuals from within the group, to emphasize differences in tribe and character—and he uses this opportunity to great advantage. Not only do we get a much better idea of what makes Cinque such a determined figure, but we also see the differing opinions among the Africans and their perspective on the matter.
Still, even this small benefit is not really enough to save the book. I can’t recommend the novelization of Amistad. The movie itself, while far from perfect, is pretty entertaining and moving. The book, with its flat and surprisingly bad storytelling, doesn’t come close to capturing that. There are far superior works of literature available that deal with these issues in more interesting and complex ways (feel free to recommend some to me in the comments).
Occasionally I link to other reviews when I think they make a salient point that complements or contrasts nicely with mine. In this case I’m going to link to Khanh’s review of this book, because it is simply one of the best reviews ever. I laughed out loud reading this, and I liked it better than the book. That is my review of the review.
On to reviewing The Kiss of Deception, Mary E. Pearson’s attempt at … I’m not sure. Fantasy romance? Intrigue? One reason Khanh’s review tickled me so much is that its form is quite accurate. This book is basically a Shakespeare comedy wrapped up in modern English and set in a fantasy world. That is the only way to excuse the utterly shameful number of coincidental meetings, disguises and mistaken identities, and unbelievable plot twists. I was waiting for someone to talk about taking an ass to Padua or something.
Now, here’s the thing: tongue-in-cheekness aside, none of the above automatically makes this a bad book. It’s all about flair, and execution, and style. If this book had been more self-aware and winked occasionally at the reader, as if to say, “Yes, this is ridiculous, and that’s the whole point” then I might be down with it. Although there are a few moments of introspection (more on that in a bit) when it comes to Lia’s character, by and large this book tries to play to the darker side too much for its light plotting. Lia has a big destiny! There’s an assassin hunting her! War looms! People close to Lia die! The book announces each of these developments with thundering fanfare, as if we’re supposed to be bowled over. Except I’m not, because not for a moment do I care about these people or their cookie-cutter kingdoms.
Lia is a princess-gone-rogue because, for some strange reason, she would rather not be horse-traded in marriage to a prince of another kingdom. The nerve, right? She and her maid flee to the maid’s old stomping ground, pretty much causing a major diplomatic incident in the process. But it’s cool because her dad and everyone except her brothers were always mean to her, so screw them, right? Lia and Pauline try to keep a low profile, even going so far as to leave false trails for anyone trying to find them, and then they take up disguises as bar maids. Despite having no training whatsoever, Lia masters this very quickly—almost as quickly as not one but two people independently searching for Lia find her. That was fast! Oh, and these two people—an assassin and a prince—both end up rooming together at the inn where Lia is working. Do you see what I mean now about coincidences?
But what, it gets better: these three characters end up in a love triangle.
I wanted to throw the book across the room at this point, but I was reading it between innings at a baseball game, and the announcer explicitly tells us not to throw stuff on the field.
Before you go #NotAllLoveTriangles on me: this is a cliché for a reason. It’s even more of a cliché in YA, and in YA with a female protagonist. Let’s not forget that one of these characters is supposed to kill her and another was supposed to marry her but didn’t because she ran away. (Why did the “barbarous” Venda send a teenaged assassin off to kill Lia anyway? Why not send a grizzled veteran who isn’t going to fall for her? Or a straight woman? Or an ace assassin? Hmm? That was a dumb move.)
Stories work best not just with antagonists but with third parties who cross the protagonist for more mundane reasons. The entire plot of this book hinges on (a) the very people who are supposed to kill Lia not killing her despite having every opportunity and (b) everyone helping Lia in some way or another. Although the antagonists don’t exactly roll out a red carpet to help Lia, they indulge her to a ridiculous degree. More painfully, all the minor characters fall into step with Lia. Pauline? Faithful and loyal to the end. Berdi? She’ll blab your secrets around to everyone she thinks is trustworthy, but hey—isn’t that how all innkeepers roll? Gwyneth? Secretly a former spy but now totally not going to betray Lia, even though she thinks Lia is being selfish and should think more of the good of the kingdom.
Aside from the disguised prince and assassin, there is zero guile in these characters. No one is out for what’s theirs. No one has any depth beyond their role in furthering the plot. How much cooler would it have been if Pauline and Lia actually had a falling out over Lia’s lie about Mikael? Or if Gwyneth betrayed Lia because she just doesn’t like her that much? Or if, you know, either of the two people who found Lia less than a week after searching for her did something about it instead of creepily hanging around her like groupies? I’m not saying any of this has to happen, but something needs to.
And it’s a shame, because this lack of stakes undermines what might otherwise be touching moments of characterization. There’s a scene where Pauline finally screws her courage to the sticking place and tries to tell Berdi and Gwyneth that she’s pregnant. But they’ve already figured it out, and all the women hug Pauline and touch her belly and reassure her that it’s all going to be OK. This should be touching, heartwarming even, and nice example of women supporting each other. Nevertheless, it just feels so hollow, because I don’t believe that any of these characters have motivations or desires beyond their one-dimensional role in the plot. So they’re really just puppets, and that robs the scene of its pathos.
The story picks up the pace after Lia realizes she has been a massively selfish brat and decides to do something about it. Whatever its flaws, I don’t agree with anyone who suggests Lia herself lacks self-awareness: she might be naive to start, but she does change. She realizes her position gives her responsibilities that she cannot shirk simply because she’s unhappy with an arranged marriage. Watching her begin to develop a sense of interest in participating in the affairs of the wider world might be one of the few redeeming aspects of the book.
Alas, the utterly underwhelming setting and worldbuilding does not step in to support this character growth. Pearson’s world feels like a more shallow type of Eddingsverse: a bunch of fantasy-name kingdoms, some vague mythology, a prophecy, etc. Morrighan’s gods don’t have names—they’re just “the God of Compassion”. Could we get any more generic? Similarly, Lia meets up with a Bedouin/Traveller-inspired group of nomads whose matriarch gets to babble vague phrases about how the Ancients were too urban and didn’t respect nature or whatnot. Again, these creates a veneer of diversity beneath which lies … nothing of interest. I don’t see the cultures here, the beliefs or values. We’re not even in Planet of Hats (TVTropes) territory here.
There is, somewhere deep inside The Kiss of Deception (ugh, I shudder even at the title now), a seed of a good story yearning to get free. Should more princesses run away from arranged marriages? Hell yes! Subvert ALL THE TROPES! Unfortunately, this attempt at subversion is far from successful, to wit: love triangle, barely compelling protagonist, super-uncompelling antagonists, banal and vanilla setting, and no real stakes to the plot. While it might be possible to overlook or two of these things, all of them combined made for a unsatisfactory read.
I didn’t start this review with the intention of going 1-star, by the way. I was going to 2-star this book and call it a day, because I guess I still have some shred of niceness left in me (I’m working on it). But I don’t want to give you the impression you might like this book. That’s 486 pages of your life that you won’t get back, and reader, I cannot do that to you.
I’ll conclude with a few recommendations if my review has resulted in an empty slot on your to-read list that needs filling.
If you want fantasy with a “strong female character” and political intrigue … Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series will deliver that. Warning: definitely not YA, very hot-and-steamy with S&M components.
If you want a reworking of the Snow White fairytale set in the Wild West with commentary on race … then try the novella Six-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne Valente.
Finally, if you want a story about a woman losing her identity in a fantasy world and then falling in love and rebelling against everything, you’re missing out if you don’t read The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Largely overshadowed by the equally-awesome The Wizard of Earthsea, this book is so good it hurts.
On to reviewing The Kiss of Deception, Mary E. Pearson’s attempt at … I’m not sure. Fantasy romance? Intrigue? One reason Khanh’s review tickled me so much is that its form is quite accurate. This book is basically a Shakespeare comedy wrapped up in modern English and set in a fantasy world. That is the only way to excuse the utterly shameful number of coincidental meetings, disguises and mistaken identities, and unbelievable plot twists. I was waiting for someone to talk about taking an ass to Padua or something.
Now, here’s the thing: tongue-in-cheekness aside, none of the above automatically makes this a bad book. It’s all about flair, and execution, and style. If this book had been more self-aware and winked occasionally at the reader, as if to say, “Yes, this is ridiculous, and that’s the whole point” then I might be down with it. Although there are a few moments of introspection (more on that in a bit) when it comes to Lia’s character, by and large this book tries to play to the darker side too much for its light plotting. Lia has a big destiny! There’s an assassin hunting her! War looms! People close to Lia die! The book announces each of these developments with thundering fanfare, as if we’re supposed to be bowled over. Except I’m not, because not for a moment do I care about these people or their cookie-cutter kingdoms.
Lia is a princess-gone-rogue because, for some strange reason, she would rather not be horse-traded in marriage to a prince of another kingdom. The nerve, right? She and her maid flee to the maid’s old stomping ground, pretty much causing a major diplomatic incident in the process. But it’s cool because her dad and everyone except her brothers were always mean to her, so screw them, right? Lia and Pauline try to keep a low profile, even going so far as to leave false trails for anyone trying to find them, and then they take up disguises as bar maids. Despite having no training whatsoever, Lia masters this very quickly—almost as quickly as not one but two people independently searching for Lia find her. That was fast! Oh, and these two people—an assassin and a prince—both end up rooming together at the inn where Lia is working. Do you see what I mean now about coincidences?
But what, it gets better: these three characters end up in a love triangle.
I wanted to throw the book across the room at this point, but I was reading it between innings at a baseball game, and the announcer explicitly tells us not to throw stuff on the field.
Before you go #NotAllLoveTriangles on me: this is a cliché for a reason. It’s even more of a cliché in YA, and in YA with a female protagonist. Let’s not forget that one of these characters is supposed to kill her and another was supposed to marry her but didn’t because she ran away. (Why did the “barbarous” Venda send a teenaged assassin off to kill Lia anyway? Why not send a grizzled veteran who isn’t going to fall for her? Or a straight woman? Or an ace assassin? Hmm? That was a dumb move.)
Stories work best not just with antagonists but with third parties who cross the protagonist for more mundane reasons. The entire plot of this book hinges on (a) the very people who are supposed to kill Lia not killing her despite having every opportunity and (b) everyone helping Lia in some way or another. Although the antagonists don’t exactly roll out a red carpet to help Lia, they indulge her to a ridiculous degree. More painfully, all the minor characters fall into step with Lia. Pauline? Faithful and loyal to the end. Berdi? She’ll blab your secrets around to everyone she thinks is trustworthy, but hey—isn’t that how all innkeepers roll? Gwyneth? Secretly a former spy but now totally not going to betray Lia, even though she thinks Lia is being selfish and should think more of the good of the kingdom.
Aside from the disguised prince and assassin, there is zero guile in these characters. No one is out for what’s theirs. No one has any depth beyond their role in furthering the plot. How much cooler would it have been if Pauline and Lia actually had a falling out over Lia’s lie about Mikael? Or if Gwyneth betrayed Lia because she just doesn’t like her that much? Or if, you know, either of the two people who found Lia less than a week after searching for her did something about it instead of creepily hanging around her like groupies? I’m not saying any of this has to happen, but something needs to.
And it’s a shame, because this lack of stakes undermines what might otherwise be touching moments of characterization. There’s a scene where Pauline finally screws her courage to the sticking place and tries to tell Berdi and Gwyneth that she’s pregnant. But they’ve already figured it out, and all the women hug Pauline and touch her belly and reassure her that it’s all going to be OK. This should be touching, heartwarming even, and nice example of women supporting each other. Nevertheless, it just feels so hollow, because I don’t believe that any of these characters have motivations or desires beyond their one-dimensional role in the plot. So they’re really just puppets, and that robs the scene of its pathos.
The story picks up the pace after Lia realizes she has been a massively selfish brat and decides to do something about it. Whatever its flaws, I don’t agree with anyone who suggests Lia herself lacks self-awareness: she might be naive to start, but she does change. She realizes her position gives her responsibilities that she cannot shirk simply because she’s unhappy with an arranged marriage. Watching her begin to develop a sense of interest in participating in the affairs of the wider world might be one of the few redeeming aspects of the book.
Alas, the utterly underwhelming setting and worldbuilding does not step in to support this character growth. Pearson’s world feels like a more shallow type of Eddingsverse: a bunch of fantasy-name kingdoms, some vague mythology, a prophecy, etc. Morrighan’s gods don’t have names—they’re just “the God of Compassion”. Could we get any more generic? Similarly, Lia meets up with a Bedouin/Traveller-inspired group of nomads whose matriarch gets to babble vague phrases about how the Ancients were too urban and didn’t respect nature or whatnot. Again, these creates a veneer of diversity beneath which lies … nothing of interest. I don’t see the cultures here, the beliefs or values. We’re not even in Planet of Hats (TVTropes) territory here.
There is, somewhere deep inside The Kiss of Deception (ugh, I shudder even at the title now), a seed of a good story yearning to get free. Should more princesses run away from arranged marriages? Hell yes! Subvert ALL THE TROPES! Unfortunately, this attempt at subversion is far from successful, to wit: love triangle, barely compelling protagonist, super-uncompelling antagonists, banal and vanilla setting, and no real stakes to the plot. While it might be possible to overlook or two of these things, all of them combined made for a unsatisfactory read.
I didn’t start this review with the intention of going 1-star, by the way. I was going to 2-star this book and call it a day, because I guess I still have some shred of niceness left in me (I’m working on it). But I don’t want to give you the impression you might like this book. That’s 486 pages of your life that you won’t get back, and reader, I cannot do that to you.
I’ll conclude with a few recommendations if my review has resulted in an empty slot on your to-read list that needs filling.
If you want fantasy with a “strong female character” and political intrigue … Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Legacy series will deliver that. Warning: definitely not YA, very hot-and-steamy with S&M components.
If you want a reworking of the Snow White fairytale set in the Wild West with commentary on race … then try the novella Six-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne Valente.
Finally, if you want a story about a woman losing her identity in a fantasy world and then falling in love and rebelling against everything, you’re missing out if you don’t read The Tombs of Atuan, by Ursula K. Le Guin. Largely overshadowed by the equally-awesome The Wizard of Earthsea, this book is so good it hurts.
In case you were wondering if the gut punches ever stop coming, the answer is no. No, they do not. First Marco and his mom, and now Jake and his brother. Applegate plays hardball in #31: The Conspiracy, where Jake and his family will be away from the city for four days, which is a problem for Tom's Yeerk, who must return to the Yeerk pool in three days to feed. This sets into motion a bizarre (and somewhat absurd) chain of events while Jake breaks down and wonders if he will have to kill his brother.
So, you know, just another day as the Animorphs.
The comparisons to war and discussion of Jake’s transformation into a leader are far more explicit here than they have been in other books. Jake likens his experiences to those of his now-deceased great-grandfather, who fought in World War II and has the medals to prove it. I like the way Applegate uses this analogy, particularly with regards to the medals and Jake’s newfound understanding for why his great-grandfather never talked about the war. Previously we’ve seen Jake’s transformation into a more hardened leader through the others’ eyes, and occasionally in his own novels he reflects on it. But this is the first novel where he really thinks about the future, about what might happen when the war is over, if they win. What will he be? Who will he be? We call veterans “heroes” but it is reductive and probably inaccurate to think that they consider themselves such.
And so the series continues with its theme that in war there are no winners.
Perhaps more moving is the way the other Animorphs step up with Jake unable to lead. Applegate portrays Marco as the coldly calculating lieutenant who has the contingency plans in place, even if they mean … well … even if they mean doing what Jake might not be able to do. It’s the same Marco who was entertaining the notion that he might have to kill his other mother. Once again, the stark contrast between class clown Marco and cold Marco is very fascinating. Rachel might be the group’s hot-blooded warrior, but Marco is the one who will sacrifice the queen if it means checkmate.
One of the most enduring aspects of this series, and one reason it still feels fresh even thirty books in, is the characters’ vulnerability. In other novels, particularly in YA, vulnerability often feels ersatz. I’m speaking of emotional vulnerability here, rather than vulnerability to defeat at the hands of the antagonist. The Animorphs, as they take turns telling these stories, bare their souls to us. Each time we learn a little more about them, about their fears and reservations. About what they worry will go horribly wrong if they fail, or even if they succeed.
I’m giving The Conspiracy a lower rating than this review might otherwise seem to justify simply because the actual plot is dumb. Don’t tell me the Yeerks couldn’t find a way around the trip, or a way to extricate Tom without killing Jake’s dad. And even if killing him was the most logical or even expedient way to deal with the problem, why a drive-by shooting? The Yeerks must have so many more subtle methods at their disposal. But of course, this is the lumpy cake filling that is Animorphs plots: sometimes you get one that’s just too convoluted, because hey, we’re knocking out fifty of these and we need to make sure those kids morph some cool things.
In this sense I’m reminded of Star Trek: The Next Generation and, perhaps even more so, Star Trek: Voyager. (I’m ridiculously excited at the moment, because Netflix Canada just got all six series—they had TNG for a while, then it disappeared in March, and now it is back, plus more. It has been ages since I got to watch Deep Space Nine!) Anyway, my point is that while these series are awesome in aggregate, the actual episodes within them can often be stinkers. Even episodes with valid and interesting philosophical themes will fall flat from an entertainment or artistic point of view. That’s what happens when you produce 26 episodes a year, and it happens when you write so many books in a children’s series. The surprising thing isn’t that some are silly, but that so many are actually gold.
Speaking of Star Trek, next week—er, I mean, book—Rachel faces “The Enemy Within”, although because of a morphing accident rather than a transporter accident. Don’t touch that dial!
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #30: The Reunion | #32: The Separation →
So, you know, just another day as the Animorphs.
The comparisons to war and discussion of Jake’s transformation into a leader are far more explicit here than they have been in other books. Jake likens his experiences to those of his now-deceased great-grandfather, who fought in World War II and has the medals to prove it. I like the way Applegate uses this analogy, particularly with regards to the medals and Jake’s newfound understanding for why his great-grandfather never talked about the war. Previously we’ve seen Jake’s transformation into a more hardened leader through the others’ eyes, and occasionally in his own novels he reflects on it. But this is the first novel where he really thinks about the future, about what might happen when the war is over, if they win. What will he be? Who will he be? We call veterans “heroes” but it is reductive and probably inaccurate to think that they consider themselves such.
And so the series continues with its theme that in war there are no winners.
Perhaps more moving is the way the other Animorphs step up with Jake unable to lead. Applegate portrays Marco as the coldly calculating lieutenant who has the contingency plans in place, even if they mean … well … even if they mean doing what Jake might not be able to do. It’s the same Marco who was entertaining the notion that he might have to kill his other mother. Once again, the stark contrast between class clown Marco and cold Marco is very fascinating. Rachel might be the group’s hot-blooded warrior, but Marco is the one who will sacrifice the queen if it means checkmate.
One of the most enduring aspects of this series, and one reason it still feels fresh even thirty books in, is the characters’ vulnerability. In other novels, particularly in YA, vulnerability often feels ersatz. I’m speaking of emotional vulnerability here, rather than vulnerability to defeat at the hands of the antagonist. The Animorphs, as they take turns telling these stories, bare their souls to us. Each time we learn a little more about them, about their fears and reservations. About what they worry will go horribly wrong if they fail, or even if they succeed.
I’m giving The Conspiracy a lower rating than this review might otherwise seem to justify simply because the actual plot is dumb. Don’t tell me the Yeerks couldn’t find a way around the trip, or a way to extricate Tom without killing Jake’s dad. And even if killing him was the most logical or even expedient way to deal with the problem, why a drive-by shooting? The Yeerks must have so many more subtle methods at their disposal. But of course, this is the lumpy cake filling that is Animorphs plots: sometimes you get one that’s just too convoluted, because hey, we’re knocking out fifty of these and we need to make sure those kids morph some cool things.
In this sense I’m reminded of Star Trek: The Next Generation and, perhaps even more so, Star Trek: Voyager. (I’m ridiculously excited at the moment, because Netflix Canada just got all six series—they had TNG for a while, then it disappeared in March, and now it is back, plus more. It has been ages since I got to watch Deep Space Nine!) Anyway, my point is that while these series are awesome in aggregate, the actual episodes within them can often be stinkers. Even episodes with valid and interesting philosophical themes will fall flat from an entertainment or artistic point of view. That’s what happens when you produce 26 episodes a year, and it happens when you write so many books in a children’s series. The surprising thing isn’t that some are silly, but that so many are actually gold.
Speaking of Star Trek, next week—er, I mean, book—Rachel faces “The Enemy Within”, although because of a morphing accident rather than a transporter accident. Don’t touch that dial!
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #30: The Reunion | #32: The Separation →
I’d like to gush over this one and give it five stars because it’s Rachel and my bias for her awesome/tragic character arc knows no bounds. Except. Except. The Separation is just not a very good novel. It has a cool (albeit unoriginal) idea that is squandered on a dull threat-du-jour.
Have you seen Superman III? What about the TOS episode “The Enemy Within”? The Voyager episode “Faces” (even more so than the TOS episode I feel like this one very accurately corresponds to this novel)? The Buffy episode “The Zeppo” (which is amazing, btw)? Farscape’s “My Three Crichtons”? Charmed’s “Which Prue Is It Anyway?” Half a dozen episodes of Smallville because apparently all of Krypton ended up in pieces on Earth and the writers can’t leave well enough alone?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then you’ll immediately get the premise of The Separation. If you answered “yes” to all of the above, then congratulations: you’re automatically awesome. (If you answered “no” to all of the above, go watch “The Enemy Within”, like, right now.)
Rachel gets split into two personalities: Nice Rachel and Mean Rachel. Nice Rachel is a scaredy-cat airhead who nevertheless retains the ability to think long-term; Mean Rachel is a psychopathic and aggressive force of nature who only has short-term reasoning. Neither can survive without the other. But before the Animorphs can find a way to put them back together, they have to deal with the threat of an anti-morphing ray the Yeerks are about to start testing.
One of the disappointments of this novel is simply that the Yeerk plot turns into a bit of a red herring. Despite Erek talking the anti-morphing ray up as a huge game-changer, there is no resolution after the Animorphs fail to apprehend the device in transit. I know it’s the main focus of the next book, but I don’t feel like that excuses how it is portrayed and then just dropped in this book. I think the whole thing would have been more successful if the book just focused on the Rachels and their difficulties interacting with the rest of the world and the Animorphs.
Because there is so much potential here—that is, after all, why this storytelling device has been used so often. And Rachel is certainly the correct Animorph upon whom to inflict this divisive form of torture. She has long been the standard bearer for Applegate’s ambivalence about the nature of aggression. While all the Animorphs are changed, forced to “grow up” too fast because of their roles as child soldiers, Rachel’s situation is unique in that she proves markedly good at being a warrior. Notably, Applegate takes care throughout this series to emphasize that Rachel’s fighting skills are not something to be ashamed of, most obviously in Marco’s frequent but nonetheless accurate comparisons to Xena. Of all the Animorphs, Rachel is the one who seems to be most at home when they are on missions. Yet in past books she has questioned the propriety of her enthusiasm for fighting.
The Separation attempts to do a few interesting things with the Mean/Nice Rachels. There are some funny moments with Rachel’s sister and father. It’s played for laughs very early in the novel. And the resolution requiring the two Rachels to work together is nice as well—I really like how Jake leaves it up to the Rachels to figure out that they need each other; it’s a nice show of faith on the leader’s part. Yet there could have been so much more!
Alas, what we get instead is an uneven story that shoehorns two plots together so that neither one gets the treatment it deserves. While The Illusion remedies that for the Yeerk plot, Mean/Nice Rachel must be content with their appearances in The Separation.
But next time, yes, we do find out what happens with the anti-morphing ray and we get more Rachel/Tobias drama! It should be good.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← #31: The Conspiracy
Have you seen Superman III? What about the TOS episode “The Enemy Within”? The Voyager episode “Faces” (even more so than the TOS episode I feel like this one very accurately corresponds to this novel)? The Buffy episode “The Zeppo” (which is amazing, btw)? Farscape’s “My Three Crichtons”? Charmed’s “Which Prue Is It Anyway?” Half a dozen episodes of Smallville because apparently all of Krypton ended up in pieces on Earth and the writers can’t leave well enough alone?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, then you’ll immediately get the premise of The Separation. If you answered “yes” to all of the above, then congratulations: you’re automatically awesome. (If you answered “no” to all of the above, go watch “The Enemy Within”, like, right now.)
Rachel gets split into two personalities: Nice Rachel and Mean Rachel. Nice Rachel is a scaredy-cat airhead who nevertheless retains the ability to think long-term; Mean Rachel is a psychopathic and aggressive force of nature who only has short-term reasoning. Neither can survive without the other. But before the Animorphs can find a way to put them back together, they have to deal with the threat of an anti-morphing ray the Yeerks are about to start testing.
One of the disappointments of this novel is simply that the Yeerk plot turns into a bit of a red herring. Despite Erek talking the anti-morphing ray up as a huge game-changer, there is no resolution after the Animorphs fail to apprehend the device in transit. I know it’s the main focus of the next book, but I don’t feel like that excuses how it is portrayed and then just dropped in this book. I think the whole thing would have been more successful if the book just focused on the Rachels and their difficulties interacting with the rest of the world and the Animorphs.
Because there is so much potential here—that is, after all, why this storytelling device has been used so often. And Rachel is certainly the correct Animorph upon whom to inflict this divisive form of torture. She has long been the standard bearer for Applegate’s ambivalence about the nature of aggression. While all the Animorphs are changed, forced to “grow up” too fast because of their roles as child soldiers, Rachel’s situation is unique in that she proves markedly good at being a warrior. Notably, Applegate takes care throughout this series to emphasize that Rachel’s fighting skills are not something to be ashamed of, most obviously in Marco’s frequent but nonetheless accurate comparisons to Xena. Of all the Animorphs, Rachel is the one who seems to be most at home when they are on missions. Yet in past books she has questioned the propriety of her enthusiasm for fighting.
The Separation attempts to do a few interesting things with the Mean/Nice Rachels. There are some funny moments with Rachel’s sister and father. It’s played for laughs very early in the novel. And the resolution requiring the two Rachels to work together is nice as well—I really like how Jake leaves it up to the Rachels to figure out that they need each other; it’s a nice show of faith on the leader’s part. Yet there could have been so much more!
Alas, what we get instead is an uneven story that shoehorns two plots together so that neither one gets the treatment it deserves. While The Illusion remedies that for the Yeerk plot, Mean/Nice Rachel must be content with their appearances in The Separation.
But next time, yes, we do find out what happens with the anti-morphing ray and we get more Rachel/Tobias drama! It should be good.
My reviews of Animorphs:
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