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tachyondecay
I wish I could give Use of Weapons more stars and the appreciation some people are able to heap upon it. I understand where they’re coming from, but I just wasn’t able to focus enough on some of the details of this novel to grasp it. I need to read it again—and probably try reading the Roman numeral chapters backwards, since I didn’t realize they were chronologically reversed—to appreciate it more. For now, though, all I can say is that this is a thorough book. Iain M Banks demonstrates a versatility that would make a trained singer weep.
See, I liked The Player of Games because it had a strong main character I could enjoy. I needed that, because the Culture’s defining characteristic is a kind of aggressive, generic facelessness: the Minds and even the citizens, to some extent, are interchangeable. No one individual is really essential to the operation; most people don’t really make a difference, because everything is run behind the scenes by the machines. So having that one, exceptional person around as an anchor can really help.
Neither of the main characters really do that for me in Use of Weapons. We don’t spend that much time with Sma once the main plot of the novel kicks off. She sets up the plot and comes along for the ride, but then we follow Zakalwe—and he’s something else entirely. Without spoiling the magnificent twist at the end, Zakalwe is not who we think he is, and probably not who he thinks he is either. In him, Banks has created such a naughty, knotty, complicated creature. He still doesn’t quite capture my attention the way Gurgeh did, but I can admire what Banks does with Zakalwe’s psychology.
Not of the Culture directly, Zakalwe comes to work for them after finishing his own private little war. He is good at war—so good it scares people, including him. He becomes a skilled member of Special Circumstances, the branch of the Culture’s Contact division that cleans up messes (or creates them). Then, after a mission goes awry, he decides to retire by going AWOL. Now Sma has been sent to retrieve him, because he’s the only one who can help defuse war brewing in another star cluster.
The politics are a little byzantine, and there’s that constant sense, as with most Culture novels, that they don’t really matter. If the cluster goes to war … well, that won’t harm the Culture. We’re left to accept that the Culture just likes to meddle and go with it. What this part of the story does is set up a contrast between the way Zakalwe is proceeding now and the way he has operated in the past, as revealed in the flashback chapters with those descending Roman numerals.
I don’t regret reading the entire book from front to back the first time through. After all, Banks could have put the last chapter with Roman numerals (which, chronologically speaking, is the first) at the front of the book. He chose not to. So there’s something to be said for playing along and experiencing it this way, even if the narrative itself makes a little more sense going the other way around.
Use of Weapons, as the name implies, paints us a picture of the various ways to deploy force and manipulate people into achieving one’s ends. The weapons here include not just ordinance but also individuals—those in armies, and the big thinkers at the top, such as Zakalwe, who come up with ways to get the armies killed. There are numerous scenes throughout the book that emphasize Zakalwe’s status as a weapon, a kind of loaded pistol that is always threatening to go off.
I guess my main issue with this book is that I eternally felt like it hadn’t actually begun—and then it was over. I kept turning the page, waiting for the main plot to happen and something interesting to occur, and I was never quite satisfied. There are some great moments—such as the chapter when Zakalwe rescues Tsoldrin Beychae only for their means of escape to be shot down—where I enjoyed the scene for what it was. Overall, however, Use of Weapons just feels very flat as a narrative, and that distracted me.
I’d like to re-read it one day and give it another hearing. While I can honestly say I enjoyed it this time around, it didn’t quite leave me with the impression it has left others.
My reviews of the Culture novels:
← The Player of Games | Excession →
See, I liked The Player of Games because it had a strong main character I could enjoy. I needed that, because the Culture’s defining characteristic is a kind of aggressive, generic facelessness: the Minds and even the citizens, to some extent, are interchangeable. No one individual is really essential to the operation; most people don’t really make a difference, because everything is run behind the scenes by the machines. So having that one, exceptional person around as an anchor can really help.
Neither of the main characters really do that for me in Use of Weapons. We don’t spend that much time with Sma once the main plot of the novel kicks off. She sets up the plot and comes along for the ride, but then we follow Zakalwe—and he’s something else entirely. Without spoiling the magnificent twist at the end, Zakalwe is not who we think he is, and probably not who he thinks he is either. In him, Banks has created such a naughty, knotty, complicated creature. He still doesn’t quite capture my attention the way Gurgeh did, but I can admire what Banks does with Zakalwe’s psychology.
Not of the Culture directly, Zakalwe comes to work for them after finishing his own private little war. He is good at war—so good it scares people, including him. He becomes a skilled member of Special Circumstances, the branch of the Culture’s Contact division that cleans up messes (or creates them). Then, after a mission goes awry, he decides to retire by going AWOL. Now Sma has been sent to retrieve him, because he’s the only one who can help defuse war brewing in another star cluster.
The politics are a little byzantine, and there’s that constant sense, as with most Culture novels, that they don’t really matter. If the cluster goes to war … well, that won’t harm the Culture. We’re left to accept that the Culture just likes to meddle and go with it. What this part of the story does is set up a contrast between the way Zakalwe is proceeding now and the way he has operated in the past, as revealed in the flashback chapters with those descending Roman numerals.
I don’t regret reading the entire book from front to back the first time through. After all, Banks could have put the last chapter with Roman numerals (which, chronologically speaking, is the first) at the front of the book. He chose not to. So there’s something to be said for playing along and experiencing it this way, even if the narrative itself makes a little more sense going the other way around.
Use of Weapons, as the name implies, paints us a picture of the various ways to deploy force and manipulate people into achieving one’s ends. The weapons here include not just ordinance but also individuals—those in armies, and the big thinkers at the top, such as Zakalwe, who come up with ways to get the armies killed. There are numerous scenes throughout the book that emphasize Zakalwe’s status as a weapon, a kind of loaded pistol that is always threatening to go off.
I guess my main issue with this book is that I eternally felt like it hadn’t actually begun—and then it was over. I kept turning the page, waiting for the main plot to happen and something interesting to occur, and I was never quite satisfied. There are some great moments—such as the chapter when Zakalwe rescues Tsoldrin Beychae only for their means of escape to be shot down—where I enjoyed the scene for what it was. Overall, however, Use of Weapons just feels very flat as a narrative, and that distracted me.
I’d like to re-read it one day and give it another hearing. While I can honestly say I enjoyed it this time around, it didn’t quite leave me with the impression it has left others.
My reviews of the Culture novels:
← The Player of Games | Excession →
It took me forever to read Servant of the Underworld, and I don’t know why. It’s great. Aliette de Bodard has created a mystery set in the Mexica (Aztec) Empire in 1480. As a long-lived emperor under whom the Mexica have prospered lies on his deathbed, Acatl, a priest of the dead, finds himself investigating a murder or abduction where his estranged brother is the prime suspect. And rather than making this a straight-up historical mystery, like the fantastic Falco series by Lindsey Davis, de Bodard includes some magic in her mystery. Indeed, given its primary setting of Tenochtitlan, this is actually an historical urban fantasy mystery.
All this genre blending might sound like a recipe for disaster, but in de Bodard’s capable hands it makes for a great story. This is a fairly long and involved book, with a lot of machinations behind the main mystery. Just when I thought Acatl had found out “whodunit” and we were nearing the conclusion, I realized we weren’t even past the halfway point! The murder mystery, while integral, is in fact the tip of an iceberg that proves to be more of a test of Acatl’s mettle than anyone could have suspected. Still, I warn mystery lovers that the mystery portion of the book is its weakest aspect. The presence of gods on the playing field means that ordinary human motive becomes muddled, which makes it harder to play along at home, if you know what I mean. While de Bodard still serves up a complicated and compelling mystery, it’s not quite at the level of Christie, whom she name-checks in her afterword as an inspiration.
I admit it took a while for me to warm to Acatl. He makes no secret that he didn’t want to be the High Priest of Mictlan, that he dislikes politics. Fair enough. But he’s really bad at it, and he’s also pretty bad at investigating, and there was just very little for me to like about this guy. Gradually, though, I came around to him. The fact that he’s bad at being a detective is part of his charm; his repeated failures to obtain information from the gods or, indeed, make anyone actually like him, are far cry from the more Mary Sue–like detectives up in our urban fantasy books these days. (I love you, Harry Dresden, you are my fav, but yes, sometimes you are a Mary Sue.) Indeed, it isn’t hyperbole to suggest that Acatl only starts to turn things around when he finally embraces this idea that he has to lead—whether he likes it or not—and has to ask for help—whether he thinks he deserves to or not. And even then, it’s touch and go.
As far as the historical setting goes: look, I’m as ignorant as de Bodard was about the Aztecs when she started out on this journey. She explains what drew her to the culture when she began writing, and the research she did along the way to help the story feel more authentic. I believe her, but she could totally be lying and making it all up, and I wouldn’t know the difference. All I knew about the Aztecs going into this came from a brief time spent with Moctezuma II when I was saving the space-time continuum in Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, and scattered memories of a PC game I think was Aztec/The Sacred Amulet.
One striking part of de Bodard’s use of Mexica myth and magic? Song. The blood I was expecting (and in fact, de Bodard tones down the whole “human sacrifice” element), but I wasn’t expecting the lyrical incantations that Acatl sings as he works his spells. It creates a strong sense that this magic is all a great ritual for the Aztec; it isn’t something external to them but an integral part of their culture. Like the detectives of urban fantasy series set closer to the modern day, Acatl straddles that divide between natural and supernatural; he talks to mortals and gods alike. It’s both surreal and amazing.
In the end, Acatl has to do more than find out who abducted Princess Eleuia, and the story transforms into more of a “save the Empire/save the world” sort of deal. Which is fine. It gets pretty intense, the stakes get much higher, of course, and the supporting cast becomes more important. Although I thought the climax dragged out longer than I wanted, watching Acatl’s development across the entire book more than makes up for it.
I’m looking forward to seeing more of de Bodard’s portrayal of the Mexica in the sequel. She has certainly set Acatl up to be an influential player, no matter how much he despises politics, so I only imagine that this is but the beginning for our modest Mictlan priest. If you like fantasy and mystery or historical fiction, do yourself a favour and check out Servant of the Underworld.
My reviews of Obsidian and Blood:
Harbinger of the Storm →
All this genre blending might sound like a recipe for disaster, but in de Bodard’s capable hands it makes for a great story. This is a fairly long and involved book, with a lot of machinations behind the main mystery. Just when I thought Acatl had found out “whodunit” and we were nearing the conclusion, I realized we weren’t even past the halfway point! The murder mystery, while integral, is in fact the tip of an iceberg that proves to be more of a test of Acatl’s mettle than anyone could have suspected. Still, I warn mystery lovers that the mystery portion of the book is its weakest aspect. The presence of gods on the playing field means that ordinary human motive becomes muddled, which makes it harder to play along at home, if you know what I mean. While de Bodard still serves up a complicated and compelling mystery, it’s not quite at the level of Christie, whom she name-checks in her afterword as an inspiration.
I admit it took a while for me to warm to Acatl. He makes no secret that he didn’t want to be the High Priest of Mictlan, that he dislikes politics. Fair enough. But he’s really bad at it, and he’s also pretty bad at investigating, and there was just very little for me to like about this guy. Gradually, though, I came around to him. The fact that he’s bad at being a detective is part of his charm; his repeated failures to obtain information from the gods or, indeed, make anyone actually like him, are far cry from the more Mary Sue–like detectives up in our urban fantasy books these days. (I love you, Harry Dresden, you are my fav, but yes, sometimes you are a Mary Sue.) Indeed, it isn’t hyperbole to suggest that Acatl only starts to turn things around when he finally embraces this idea that he has to lead—whether he likes it or not—and has to ask for help—whether he thinks he deserves to or not. And even then, it’s touch and go.
As far as the historical setting goes: look, I’m as ignorant as de Bodard was about the Aztecs when she started out on this journey. She explains what drew her to the culture when she began writing, and the research she did along the way to help the story feel more authentic. I believe her, but she could totally be lying and making it all up, and I wouldn’t know the difference. All I knew about the Aztecs going into this came from a brief time spent with Moctezuma II when I was saving the space-time continuum in Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, and scattered memories of a PC game I think was Aztec/The Sacred Amulet.
One striking part of de Bodard’s use of Mexica myth and magic? Song. The blood I was expecting (and in fact, de Bodard tones down the whole “human sacrifice” element), but I wasn’t expecting the lyrical incantations that Acatl sings as he works his spells. It creates a strong sense that this magic is all a great ritual for the Aztec; it isn’t something external to them but an integral part of their culture. Like the detectives of urban fantasy series set closer to the modern day, Acatl straddles that divide between natural and supernatural; he talks to mortals and gods alike. It’s both surreal and amazing.
In the end, Acatl has to do more than find out who abducted Princess Eleuia, and the story transforms into more of a “save the Empire/save the world” sort of deal. Which is fine. It gets pretty intense, the stakes get much higher, of course, and the supporting cast becomes more important. Although I thought the climax dragged out longer than I wanted, watching Acatl’s development across the entire book more than makes up for it.
I’m looking forward to seeing more of de Bodard’s portrayal of the Mexica in the sequel. She has certainly set Acatl up to be an influential player, no matter how much he despises politics, so I only imagine that this is but the beginning for our modest Mictlan priest. If you like fantasy and mystery or historical fiction, do yourself a favour and check out Servant of the Underworld.
My reviews of Obsidian and Blood:
Harbinger of the Storm →
So my review for the first book in this series begins, “It took me forever to read Servant of the Underworld, and I don’t know why. It’s great.”
That was two years ago.
Yeah.
I’ve had Harbinger of the Storm all that time, thanks to my wonderful subscription to Angry Robot Books … I’ve just been very, very, very negligent in actually reading these books! And I don’t know why, because they are great! Aliette de Bodard is such a smart writer. It’s totally my bad.
Unlike in the real world where I am a garbage person, only one year has gone by in Tenochtitlan. Revered Speaker Axayacatl has just died. This is a problem, because the Revered Speaker’s power is what keeps star-demons and other bad things that go bump in the night at bay. With him dead, the council must invest a new Revered Speaker as soon as possible. Except someone summons a star-demon and uses it to kill a council member! And the top suspects are the people most likely to succeed as Revered Speaker! Acatl, High Priest of the Dead and Resident Detective Busybody (that part is not his official title) decides to investigate, while also trying to keep the wards barely protecting the Fifth World from completely disappearing.
So, yeah. Investigating a murder and trying to save the world. No big.
I remember literally nothing from the first book save what I wrote in my review, so I’m not going to compare Harbinger of the Storm to it. Fortunately, this book feels very much like a standalone adventure. While you can get a lot from reading the first book, skipping it is not a problem here. De Bodard dribbles enough exposition in to let you into this world—though, to be honest, you probably won’t fully understand it. Just as with her science fiction, de Bodard is excellent at dropping the reader into an alien society and not burdening them with a pretense of knowledge. She has recreated the Mexica for us, but she is not pretending to explain them to us. There is a lot we have to infer, or just accept that we don’t get.
The magic in this series is so interesting. De Bodard takes a very literal interpretation of the Aztec religion. As such, magic and tradition (which are really one and the same) suffuse this entire book. Acatl slashes his earlobes every morning to make offerings to Mictlan. To everything there is a ritual, a time. Each character in this book has a purpose, a role, a way of fitting into the order of being in this universe. As I mentioned above, these roles and relationships are sometimes inscrutable to the reader, at least at first—to Acatl, it’s obvious that such-and-such falls into the purview of the She-Snake, or that Teomitl can or cannot do something because of his status in the Imperial Family. Reading this novel is like reading an Agatha Christie book if you’ve never been exposed to British society in any way—and I like that.
Magic also plays a central role to the mystery in Harbinger of the Storm. I can’t recall the last time I read an honest-to-goodness magical mystery—excepting, of course, urban fantasy, because that is kind of urban fantasy’s thing. I like that you can’t separate these plot elements here: the motives behind the murders are entirely predicated upon the Aztec belief system and the fact that it is not only desirable but necessary for Tenochtitlan to have the patronage and favour of a powerful god lest the world be destroyed.
Now, Acatl is not a great detective. He isn’t a great politician, either. It’s entertaining, in fact, how dense he can be about some things—but he redeems himself; he realizes his mistakes and is always trying to rectify them. This humility endears him to me, even as he blunders around and makes a fool of himself. And there is also a heroism to him; he is willing to sacrifice himself or take great risks if he thinks it means there is even a chance of saving his world. This is particularly significant juxtaposed with the various antagonists; even though some of them are not responsible for the murders per se, de Bodard is careful to underscore how each and every one of them has their own plots, their own schemes, their own agendas. The seriousness of the politics at the heart of this novel is palpable; people who enjoy contemporary political/suspense thrillers could do well to check out historical versions like these.
I want to touch on the historicity of Harbinger of the Storm, but first an aside about the characters. There’s a curious dearth of major female characters here! Of the three named women who have any real role in the plot, two (Ceyaxochitl and Xahuia) are sidelined fairly early on. The third, Acatl’s sister Mihmatini, gets a much juicier role in this book than she had in the first, but she too is put on a bus two thirds of the way through the book! I’m not sure what to make of this, given de Bodard’s prominent women of the Xuya stories (I don’t buy the setting/time period as an excuse). My only guess is that, as in the case of Mihmatini, de Bodard tried to place women in important positions of power but had trouble configuring the plot in such a way that they had much involvement in the story. Still, it’s a facet of this book that I found particularly unsatisfying.
In contrast, the amount of work that has gone into reifying the Aztecs here is quite satisfactory! Harbinger of the Storm comes with not one but two (somewhat repetitive) notes in the end matter explaining how de Bodard went about her research and some of the liberties that she took with her source material. I always find this part of historical fiction fascinating. Authors usually list a couple of books they found useful, but how many give you a full bibliography at the end? The amount and depth of de Bodard’s research is breathtaking, and it clearly pays off in her worldbuilding. In this particular case, I liked hearing a little about how she borrowed some of these characters (like Teomitl) from history and the extent to which she had to dramatize things.
Historical fiction has always been a genre that I enjoy but do not prioritize. And when I do read historical fiction, the stories are often set in Britain (because I find British history fascinating) or similarly Eurocentric or white-dominated spaces. Harbinger of the Storm is a refreshing departure from such fare. Rigorous in its research and magnificent in its magic and mystery, it is a fun read that will keep you on your toes as you wonder what gods and men might possibly throw at Acatl next.
My reviews of Obsidian and Blood:
← Servant of the Underworld
That was two years ago.
Yeah.
I’ve had Harbinger of the Storm all that time, thanks to my wonderful subscription to Angry Robot Books … I’ve just been very, very, very negligent in actually reading these books! And I don’t know why, because they are great! Aliette de Bodard is such a smart writer. It’s totally my bad.
Unlike in the real world where I am a garbage person, only one year has gone by in Tenochtitlan. Revered Speaker Axayacatl has just died. This is a problem, because the Revered Speaker’s power is what keeps star-demons and other bad things that go bump in the night at bay. With him dead, the council must invest a new Revered Speaker as soon as possible. Except someone summons a star-demon and uses it to kill a council member! And the top suspects are the people most likely to succeed as Revered Speaker! Acatl, High Priest of the Dead and Resident Detective Busybody (that part is not his official title) decides to investigate, while also trying to keep the wards barely protecting the Fifth World from completely disappearing.
So, yeah. Investigating a murder and trying to save the world. No big.
I remember literally nothing from the first book save what I wrote in my review, so I’m not going to compare Harbinger of the Storm to it. Fortunately, this book feels very much like a standalone adventure. While you can get a lot from reading the first book, skipping it is not a problem here. De Bodard dribbles enough exposition in to let you into this world—though, to be honest, you probably won’t fully understand it. Just as with her science fiction, de Bodard is excellent at dropping the reader into an alien society and not burdening them with a pretense of knowledge. She has recreated the Mexica for us, but she is not pretending to explain them to us. There is a lot we have to infer, or just accept that we don’t get.
The magic in this series is so interesting. De Bodard takes a very literal interpretation of the Aztec religion. As such, magic and tradition (which are really one and the same) suffuse this entire book. Acatl slashes his earlobes every morning to make offerings to Mictlan. To everything there is a ritual, a time. Each character in this book has a purpose, a role, a way of fitting into the order of being in this universe. As I mentioned above, these roles and relationships are sometimes inscrutable to the reader, at least at first—to Acatl, it’s obvious that such-and-such falls into the purview of the She-Snake, or that Teomitl can or cannot do something because of his status in the Imperial Family. Reading this novel is like reading an Agatha Christie book if you’ve never been exposed to British society in any way—and I like that.
Magic also plays a central role to the mystery in Harbinger of the Storm. I can’t recall the last time I read an honest-to-goodness magical mystery—excepting, of course, urban fantasy, because that is kind of urban fantasy’s thing. I like that you can’t separate these plot elements here: the motives behind the murders are entirely predicated upon the Aztec belief system and the fact that it is not only desirable but necessary for Tenochtitlan to have the patronage and favour of a powerful god lest the world be destroyed.
Now, Acatl is not a great detective. He isn’t a great politician, either. It’s entertaining, in fact, how dense he can be about some things—but he redeems himself; he realizes his mistakes and is always trying to rectify them. This humility endears him to me, even as he blunders around and makes a fool of himself. And there is also a heroism to him; he is willing to sacrifice himself or take great risks if he thinks it means there is even a chance of saving his world. This is particularly significant juxtaposed with the various antagonists; even though some of them are not responsible for the murders per se, de Bodard is careful to underscore how each and every one of them has their own plots, their own schemes, their own agendas. The seriousness of the politics at the heart of this novel is palpable; people who enjoy contemporary political/suspense thrillers could do well to check out historical versions like these.
I want to touch on the historicity of Harbinger of the Storm, but first an aside about the characters. There’s a curious dearth of major female characters here! Of the three named women who have any real role in the plot, two (Ceyaxochitl and Xahuia) are sidelined fairly early on. The third, Acatl’s sister Mihmatini, gets a much juicier role in this book than she had in the first, but she too is put on a bus two thirds of the way through the book! I’m not sure what to make of this, given de Bodard’s prominent women of the Xuya stories (I don’t buy the setting/time period as an excuse). My only guess is that, as in the case of Mihmatini, de Bodard tried to place women in important positions of power but had trouble configuring the plot in such a way that they had much involvement in the story. Still, it’s a facet of this book that I found particularly unsatisfying.
In contrast, the amount of work that has gone into reifying the Aztecs here is quite satisfactory! Harbinger of the Storm comes with not one but two (somewhat repetitive) notes in the end matter explaining how de Bodard went about her research and some of the liberties that she took with her source material. I always find this part of historical fiction fascinating. Authors usually list a couple of books they found useful, but how many give you a full bibliography at the end? The amount and depth of de Bodard’s research is breathtaking, and it clearly pays off in her worldbuilding. In this particular case, I liked hearing a little about how she borrowed some of these characters (like Teomitl) from history and the extent to which she had to dramatize things.
Historical fiction has always been a genre that I enjoy but do not prioritize. And when I do read historical fiction, the stories are often set in Britain (because I find British history fascinating) or similarly Eurocentric or white-dominated spaces. Harbinger of the Storm is a refreshing departure from such fare. Rigorous in its research and magnificent in its magic and mystery, it is a fun read that will keep you on your toes as you wonder what gods and men might possibly throw at Acatl next.
My reviews of Obsidian and Blood:
← Servant of the Underworld
OK, I tried to write this review without spoilers, but I can’t. I have to talk about the fates of certain characters, because the more I think about it the angrier I get. Trigger warning for violence against women used as a plot device. Buckle up.
Do you want to live forever? I’m not talking to you, Starship Trooper. I’m talking to you, disposable poor person from 1878. Would you like to be a test subject?
Eric Scott Fishl combines the moral and philosophical quandaries of alchemy’s quest for immortality with the setting of the post–Civil War era Old West United States. It’s a cool idea, and I suspect there is a lot in here for some readers. I don’t, as a general rule, read westerns. Their setting tends not to click with me. There are some exceptions—The Dead of Winter, another Angry Robot book, is one. Dr. Potter’s Medicine Show comes close to being another; ultimately, in this case, it isn’t the setting so much as the characters and the writing that leave me unsatisfied.
The eponymous Dr. Potter is a sham. He’s a snake-oil salesman in a frankly underwhelming travelling circus/freak-show; and he isn’t even in charge. He’s the face of the show, but sinister ringmaster Lyman Rhoades is pulling the strings—and he’s just a minion for the big man back home, the brains of the operation. Dr. Potter is beholden to this benefactor, reliant upon him for the drug that will keep him alive. And so he plays a dark and dirty role in a Faustian bargain, even as Rhoades exercises his power over the people of the show with brutal and violent intensity.
I like a lot of the ideas that Fischl throws into this book. However, the end product doesn’t feel as smooth as it could be. There is a lot of telling rather than showing here. The first few chapters introduce the various groups of characters who will matter in the story, and the narrator spends most of their time describing these characters’ pasts and their current feelings to us. I much prefer it when authors let us piece these things together, let it come out through dialogue and the occasional tidbits of exposition. Big paragraphs might be satisfying to write, but they tank the pace of the story. And while this is a stylistic quibble at its heart, it’s one that stays with me throughout the whole book. Fischl never settles for a one-liner or an implication when a carefully-constructed paragraph, or even page, is possible. As a result, we get a lovely and holistic view of the world of Dr. Potter’s Medicine Show—but for me, this starts to eclipse the action and the actual characters behind these ideas.
And then we get into the problematic bits.
This book has a serious lack of women with agency. It irked me for the first part of the book, with the introduction of Mercy (heavy-handed symbolic name anyone?) as Rhoades’ wife and chew-toy. Literally her only purpose in this plot is to suffer and cry and be a symbol for the men to pity while they hand-wring over how weak they are for not taking Rhoades on. There is a particularly unsettling scene (middle of chapter 4, not going to quote from it here because it’s super disturbing) where Rhoades sexually assaults Mercy. Fischl describes Rhoades’ actions in grotesque detail. I can’t imagine how someone who might be triggered by these depictions would react to reading it; I have no such triggers and I felt viscerally disturbed by what happened. But it’s not even the level of detail—I get that the scene is meant to be unsettling in a book that is meant to disturb. It’s not the way the scene was written so much as its purpose for the plot. It’s the fact that the scene is entirely a gratuitous way of using violence against women to demonstrate that Rhoades is a Very Bad Guy, as if we hadn’t already had that confirmed in half a dozen other ways.
I soldiered on, hoping that Fischl would give us a more positive depiction of women, or maybe even give Mercy an arc that could redeem her beginning. Elizabeth McDaniel looked, briefly, like she might be that character—but nope! Both Mercy and Elizabeth are fridged (TVTropes), again, purely it seems for the effect this has on the audience and to demonstrate just how bad Rhoades is.
Look, I know that violence against women has a tried and true history in horror stories. That doesn’t make it right, or good, or acceptable. And it is possible for women to meet grisly ends in manners that are not sexualized. Finally, there are basically four named women in this book (the third is Annabelle, Dr. Hedwith’s wife, who thankfully is not raped or killed as far as I know—she just kind of disappears halfway through the book; the fourth, Mary McDaniel, is fridged and used as the motivation for a short-lived revenge plot before the the book even starts). None of them have any kind of existence, arc, or purpose independent of the male characters; this is fantastically sucky. I am not opposed to bad things happening to characters, of any gender, for the purposes of horrifying the audience (though, to be honest, it isn’t really my bag). But this is not the way to do it at all. So I’m calling it out, and you can like Dr. Potter’s Medicine Show but you also better be ready to acknowledge how problematic this representation of women is.
I also have some reservations about Oliver as a depiction of a Black man in post–Civil War America. Fischl makes some choices of diction, description, and behaviour and then lampshades them with explanations that feel faintly stereotypical to me. Moreover, while Oliver has a more active role in the plot, owing to his gender, it’s a role largely subservient to or in support of white men. This is an area I’m not as well-versed in, though, so I’ll leave my critiques there, and hopefully other (preferably Black) readers could weigh in either way.
It’s a shame, because the ending of this book is very exciting. I like it when good plans go to tatters and we end up in a Battlestar Galactica finale, everything-is-going-to-shit situation. For all my complaints about exposition and pacing earlier in the book, I really like the pacing and intensity of the ending. I just wish I didn’t have to wade through such poor representation to get there.
Honestly cannot recommend this book.
Do you want to live forever? I’m not talking to you, Starship Trooper. I’m talking to you, disposable poor person from 1878. Would you like to be a test subject?
Eric Scott Fishl combines the moral and philosophical quandaries of alchemy’s quest for immortality with the setting of the post–Civil War era Old West United States. It’s a cool idea, and I suspect there is a lot in here for some readers. I don’t, as a general rule, read westerns. Their setting tends not to click with me. There are some exceptions—The Dead of Winter, another Angry Robot book, is one. Dr. Potter’s Medicine Show comes close to being another; ultimately, in this case, it isn’t the setting so much as the characters and the writing that leave me unsatisfied.
The eponymous Dr. Potter is a sham. He’s a snake-oil salesman in a frankly underwhelming travelling circus/freak-show; and he isn’t even in charge. He’s the face of the show, but sinister ringmaster Lyman Rhoades is pulling the strings—and he’s just a minion for the big man back home, the brains of the operation. Dr. Potter is beholden to this benefactor, reliant upon him for the drug that will keep him alive. And so he plays a dark and dirty role in a Faustian bargain, even as Rhoades exercises his power over the people of the show with brutal and violent intensity.
I like a lot of the ideas that Fischl throws into this book. However, the end product doesn’t feel as smooth as it could be. There is a lot of telling rather than showing here. The first few chapters introduce the various groups of characters who will matter in the story, and the narrator spends most of their time describing these characters’ pasts and their current feelings to us. I much prefer it when authors let us piece these things together, let it come out through dialogue and the occasional tidbits of exposition. Big paragraphs might be satisfying to write, but they tank the pace of the story. And while this is a stylistic quibble at its heart, it’s one that stays with me throughout the whole book. Fischl never settles for a one-liner or an implication when a carefully-constructed paragraph, or even page, is possible. As a result, we get a lovely and holistic view of the world of Dr. Potter’s Medicine Show—but for me, this starts to eclipse the action and the actual characters behind these ideas.
And then we get into the problematic bits.
This book has a serious lack of women with agency. It irked me for the first part of the book, with the introduction of Mercy (heavy-handed symbolic name anyone?) as Rhoades’ wife and chew-toy. Literally her only purpose in this plot is to suffer and cry and be a symbol for the men to pity while they hand-wring over how weak they are for not taking Rhoades on. There is a particularly unsettling scene (middle of chapter 4, not going to quote from it here because it’s super disturbing) where Rhoades sexually assaults Mercy. Fischl describes Rhoades’ actions in grotesque detail. I can’t imagine how someone who might be triggered by these depictions would react to reading it; I have no such triggers and I felt viscerally disturbed by what happened. But it’s not even the level of detail—I get that the scene is meant to be unsettling in a book that is meant to disturb. It’s not the way the scene was written so much as its purpose for the plot. It’s the fact that the scene is entirely a gratuitous way of using violence against women to demonstrate that Rhoades is a Very Bad Guy, as if we hadn’t already had that confirmed in half a dozen other ways.
I soldiered on, hoping that Fischl would give us a more positive depiction of women, or maybe even give Mercy an arc that could redeem her beginning. Elizabeth McDaniel looked, briefly, like she might be that character—but nope! Both Mercy and Elizabeth are fridged (TVTropes), again, purely it seems for the effect this has on the audience and to demonstrate just how bad Rhoades is.
Look, I know that violence against women has a tried and true history in horror stories. That doesn’t make it right, or good, or acceptable. And it is possible for women to meet grisly ends in manners that are not sexualized. Finally, there are basically four named women in this book (the third is Annabelle, Dr. Hedwith’s wife, who thankfully is not raped or killed as far as I know—she just kind of disappears halfway through the book; the fourth, Mary McDaniel, is fridged and used as the motivation for a short-lived revenge plot before the the book even starts). None of them have any kind of existence, arc, or purpose independent of the male characters; this is fantastically sucky. I am not opposed to bad things happening to characters, of any gender, for the purposes of horrifying the audience (though, to be honest, it isn’t really my bag). But this is not the way to do it at all. So I’m calling it out, and you can like Dr. Potter’s Medicine Show but you also better be ready to acknowledge how problematic this representation of women is.
I also have some reservations about Oliver as a depiction of a Black man in post–Civil War America. Fischl makes some choices of diction, description, and behaviour and then lampshades them with explanations that feel faintly stereotypical to me. Moreover, while Oliver has a more active role in the plot, owing to his gender, it’s a role largely subservient to or in support of white men. This is an area I’m not as well-versed in, though, so I’ll leave my critiques there, and hopefully other (preferably Black) readers could weigh in either way.
It’s a shame, because the ending of this book is very exciting. I like it when good plans go to tatters and we end up in a Battlestar Galactica finale, everything-is-going-to-shit situation. For all my complaints about exposition and pacing earlier in the book, I really like the pacing and intensity of the ending. I just wish I didn’t have to wade through such poor representation to get there.
Honestly cannot recommend this book.
Yes, I have indeed read another romance novel with vampires. What is wrong with me?
As with The Rest Falls Away, Soulless has been on my to-read list for a while now. I almost bought the boxed set of all five books in this series at Christmas time, stopping myself on the grounds that I wouldn’t want to bring them back to England with me, so they’d gather dust at home until the summer. When I went to the Bury library last week to pick up some books I’d reserved, I noticed Soulless in a display of alternate history novels. Call it serendipity, but I took the opportunity to cross this one off my list.
I should clarify that, while this is both a romance and a vampire novel, it’s not a romance vampire novel. That is, the main character, Alexia, falls in love—but with a werewolf, not a vampire! However, vampires constitute a significant portion of this story as well.
Gail Carriger takes a lot of liberties in imagining an alternative Victorian England where the supernatural is not just real but openly acknowledged. Vampires and werewolves conform to rules of civility that allow them to coexist alongside humans. (Ghosts also exist but are less … ahem … substantial.) Humans can become supernatural beings if they have excess “soul”. Alexia Tarabotti is special because she is soulless, and therefore neutralizes supernatural beings with her touch. Vampires’ fangs retract, werewolves revert to human form, and the creatures become mortal. Carriger never really addresses how Alexia’s abilities affect ghosts, unfortunately.
Given that Alexia’s state as a soulless “preternatural” is one of the most unique and intriguing things about the book, one might have expected Carriger to explore its ramifications more creatively than she does. Everyone who is aware of Alexia’s status declares her important and significant, as evinced by the resolution of the book setting her up as a VIP. Unfortunately, soullnesses is sidelined in favour of the development of the romance subplots and the mystery of the missing supernaturals. This doesn’t ruin the book—I, for one, still found it quite enjoyable—but it’s a regrettable decision.
Alexia’s romance with Lord Maccon is far from the standard, more torrid fare that one might expect in a stereotypical romance novel. Carriger tends towards comedy in all respects, so the romance is a whirlwind of mixed signals and cross-cultural misunderstandings. Alexia’s difficulties fitting into society—owing to her Italian heritage and her forwardness and independent spirit relative to the ideal for women of that era—parallels Maccon’s own unease as a “barbarous” Scottish werewolf among the London ton. (That’s a brilliant word for the fashionable slice of society, by the way.) Similarly, Alexia’s indomitable “Alpha” spirit matches Maccon’s obstinacy. The two are, in short, perfect for each other.
Carriger pokes fun at all aspects of Victorian comportment, fashion, and attitudes towards women. In flippant tones she describes the social disaster of having a club for scientific gentleman next to Duke Snodgrass’ house, or reminds us that because of Alexia’s Italian heritage, her skin and hair are darker than is ideal. Alexia’s half-sisters and mother are more traditional in how they perform their gender roles—the overall effect almost comes across as a kind of softened version of Cinderella.
For all the light-hearted mockery, however, Carriger is more than content to echo the typical tropes of Victorian high society rather than subvert or interrogate them any further. As with Alexia’s soulless state, it seems there is much more that Carriger could have explored here, had she chosen to take the book in that direction. I love the light and frothy tone that Carriger maintains, but I’ve always been more impressed when an author can maintain such a tone and still engage in more substantial social commentary.
If what you desire is an entertaining mixture of Victorian England, werewolves and vampires, and romance, then Soulless has all of that. It has a snappy, engaging plot—although the villain isn’t necessarily that interesting or imposing—and Carriger carefully introduces nuanced differences between Alexia’s world and ours as a result of the existence of supernatural and preternatural beings.
I’m always intrigued when books receive such a diverse spread of ratings and reviews from my friends on Goodreads. Some of my friends loved Soulless while others hated it. At the risk of seeming tepid, I have to say that I’m somewhere in the middle. Soulless is a lot of fun, but it also has its nuisance moments. I always wanted to keep on reading and to discover what would happen next—but there were times when I had to roll my eyes at the campiness of the whole thing. There is a slight duality of tension within the book, which cannot decide exactly what type of book it wants to be.
I shall definitely carry on with the Parasol Protectorate series, though I’m rethinking that urge to buy the boxed set.
My reviews of the Parasol Protectorate series:
Changeless →
As with The Rest Falls Away, Soulless has been on my to-read list for a while now. I almost bought the boxed set of all five books in this series at Christmas time, stopping myself on the grounds that I wouldn’t want to bring them back to England with me, so they’d gather dust at home until the summer. When I went to the Bury library last week to pick up some books I’d reserved, I noticed Soulless in a display of alternate history novels. Call it serendipity, but I took the opportunity to cross this one off my list.
I should clarify that, while this is both a romance and a vampire novel, it’s not a romance vampire novel. That is, the main character, Alexia, falls in love—but with a werewolf, not a vampire! However, vampires constitute a significant portion of this story as well.
Gail Carriger takes a lot of liberties in imagining an alternative Victorian England where the supernatural is not just real but openly acknowledged. Vampires and werewolves conform to rules of civility that allow them to coexist alongside humans. (Ghosts also exist but are less … ahem … substantial.) Humans can become supernatural beings if they have excess “soul”. Alexia Tarabotti is special because she is soulless, and therefore neutralizes supernatural beings with her touch. Vampires’ fangs retract, werewolves revert to human form, and the creatures become mortal. Carriger never really addresses how Alexia’s abilities affect ghosts, unfortunately.
Given that Alexia’s state as a soulless “preternatural” is one of the most unique and intriguing things about the book, one might have expected Carriger to explore its ramifications more creatively than she does. Everyone who is aware of Alexia’s status declares her important and significant, as evinced by the resolution of the book setting her up as a VIP. Unfortunately, soullnesses is sidelined in favour of the development of the romance subplots and the mystery of the missing supernaturals. This doesn’t ruin the book—I, for one, still found it quite enjoyable—but it’s a regrettable decision.
Alexia’s romance with Lord Maccon is far from the standard, more torrid fare that one might expect in a stereotypical romance novel. Carriger tends towards comedy in all respects, so the romance is a whirlwind of mixed signals and cross-cultural misunderstandings. Alexia’s difficulties fitting into society—owing to her Italian heritage and her forwardness and independent spirit relative to the ideal for women of that era—parallels Maccon’s own unease as a “barbarous” Scottish werewolf among the London ton. (That’s a brilliant word for the fashionable slice of society, by the way.) Similarly, Alexia’s indomitable “Alpha” spirit matches Maccon’s obstinacy. The two are, in short, perfect for each other.
Carriger pokes fun at all aspects of Victorian comportment, fashion, and attitudes towards women. In flippant tones she describes the social disaster of having a club for scientific gentleman next to Duke Snodgrass’ house, or reminds us that because of Alexia’s Italian heritage, her skin and hair are darker than is ideal. Alexia’s half-sisters and mother are more traditional in how they perform their gender roles—the overall effect almost comes across as a kind of softened version of Cinderella.
For all the light-hearted mockery, however, Carriger is more than content to echo the typical tropes of Victorian high society rather than subvert or interrogate them any further. As with Alexia’s soulless state, it seems there is much more that Carriger could have explored here, had she chosen to take the book in that direction. I love the light and frothy tone that Carriger maintains, but I’ve always been more impressed when an author can maintain such a tone and still engage in more substantial social commentary.
If what you desire is an entertaining mixture of Victorian England, werewolves and vampires, and romance, then Soulless has all of that. It has a snappy, engaging plot—although the villain isn’t necessarily that interesting or imposing—and Carriger carefully introduces nuanced differences between Alexia’s world and ours as a result of the existence of supernatural and preternatural beings.
I’m always intrigued when books receive such a diverse spread of ratings and reviews from my friends on Goodreads. Some of my friends loved Soulless while others hated it. At the risk of seeming tepid, I have to say that I’m somewhere in the middle. Soulless is a lot of fun, but it also has its nuisance moments. I always wanted to keep on reading and to discover what would happen next—but there were times when I had to roll my eyes at the campiness of the whole thing. There is a slight duality of tension within the book, which cannot decide exactly what type of book it wants to be.
I shall definitely carry on with the Parasol Protectorate series, though I’m rethinking that urge to buy the boxed set.
My reviews of the Parasol Protectorate series:
Changeless →
Look, this isn’t really a novel.
Huh. Is there an echo in here?
I was thinking it had been several years since I last read a Neal Stephenson novel, but it turns out to be just under a year. I borrowed Cryptonomicon from a friend’s mother, because it’s truly not on that I’m a mathematician by training yet haven’t read the most mathematical Stephenson work. I put off reading it for a few weeks, because I knew that it would take a while. This past week was probably not the best week to read it—then again, would there have been a best week? I got lots of programming done on my website while avoiding this book, though.
This book is ostensibly about codes and code-breaking. I’d liken it to The Imitation Game, except I also have managed to skip that one somehow—and anyway, Alan Turing and Bletchley Park feature much less prominently here. Rather, Cryptonomicon follows a fictional friend of Turing’s, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, who is a genius codebreaker. Waterhouse serves in the American armed forces during World War II, where he breaks codes (duh) and gets involved in other unlikely shenanigans. Stephenson develops this plot in parallel with one set in the present day (which is to say, 1999, which is, gosh, 18 years ago now). Lawrence’s grandson, Randy, ends up interacting with the descendants of many of the other characters from Lawrence’s story, as he and a friend try to set up a data haven off the coast of the Philippines.
That’s ostensibly the plot, but like I said, this isn’t really a novel and the story isn’t really a story. It’s more of a loose narrative framework around which Stephenson erects pages-long diatribes on coding, computer science, mathematics, and other very nerdy stuff. It is much like his later efforts of Anathem and Seveneves, which are more about the philosophy of mathematics and how humanity might adapt to life in space, respectively, although of the three novels this one might have something most recognizable as a plot.
I’m not afraid to admit to skimming large portions of this novel. It’s not necessary to … experience … every word of Cryptonomicon to follow it. The connections among the characters are fairly heavy-handed, with Stephenson giving the reader plenty of opportunities to notice a familiar name, symbol, or meme showing up in a different place and time. Additionally, I can tolerate the fairly frequent tangents Stephenson has his characters go off on to explain one mathematical or cryptological concept or other; I’m less tolerant of how this spills over into the descriptions of simplest actions. Randy can’t possibly open his car door, no—this occasions nothing less than three meaty paragraphs on the manufacture of his car and the way the angle of the car door makes Randy think about a line of Perl code he wrote back in his university days. Perl, by the way, is a script people often use on UNIX….
Seriously, this book is not a well-edited, well-paced, well-plotted adventure. It’s Neal Stephenson making shit up about guys named Lawrence and Randy so he can tell you all the cool computer things he knows.
And to his credit, he manages to often be entertaining while doing so. For the most part, I enjoyed the segments that follow Lawrence. The role of code-breaking in World War II, and its concurrent stimulation of the invention of electronic computing, is an interesting subject that is often overlooked in historical treatments of that time. In addition to explaining how certain code systems worked and how the Allies broke these codes, Stephenson also takes the time to show us, rather than merely tell us, how encrypted communications were essential to the war effort. Moreover, he also points out the difficulty of breaking codes in wartime: you don’t want the enemy to know their codes are broken, because then they will change to a different code. So you have to throw them off the scent, so to speak, and create fake reasons for why you knew what the enemy was going to do. I don’t know how accurate this is to actual activities during the war, but it’s a fun corollary thought experiment to the whole activity of intercepting and reading enemy messages.
There’s also a fair amount of humour in here. I liked the highly fictionalized, summarized communiques between Bischoff and Donitz. I liked the portrayal of Colonel Comstock’s preparations for a meeting with Lawrence, girding himself and his team as if they were about to go into an actual battle.
Similarly, although I was less enamoured of the present-day plot and characters, I still like the general ideas. Stephenson was ahead of the curve when it came to talking about cryptocurrencies and even data havens. These ideas seem almost saturated, old hat here in 2017—but I imagine that in 1999, when the Web was still kind of a space for hackers and academics and military types, it was all cutting edge. Stephenson makes a strong case that there are different types of heroism, and that having a strong technical background can be just as valuable as being able to fight or being educated in a scholarly field like law.
I just wish that I didn’t have to wade through so much dull or outright dumb stuff to get to the good bits of this book.
This is the third book in a row I’m dragging for having a rubbish depiction of women. Honestly, people, it isn’t hard, but let’s go over the basics again so we stop screwing this up.
Maybe you should have women as main characters? There are very few named women characters in this book. Most of them exist as sexual and romantic interests for the men, who are the main characters.
Maybe your women should exist for reasons other than sexytimes? Amy Shaftoe is the closest we get to a female main character in this book. She is not a viewpoint character. She does not have an appreciable arc. She has an illusion of agency, but this is largely undermined by her purpose to exist as a manic pixie dreamgirl for Randy. Stephenson seems to confuse “strong female character” with “does lots of physical stuff/wears a leather jacket/I must imply that she might be a lesbian at least five times”.
Maybe you should stop being creepy? Cryptonomicon is super male-gazey in about every sense of the term. The narrator constantly mentions how much Lawrence or Randy need to masturbate, have sex, or otherwise ejaculate before they can “focus”. The male characters from both time periods make sexist remarks, talk about women, look at and objectify women, etc., in ways that are boorish and chauvinistic and stereotypical. There are more examples of this than I can count or possibly mention here. At one point, Randy and Avi are discussing a lawsuit directed at their fledgling company. Avi compares the lawsuit with a mating ritual, saying that their company is a “desirable female” and the lawsuit bringer wants to mate with them, and this is his way of posturing. Later in the novel, Randy spends a few pages mulling over how some women are “just wired” to want to be submissive to men, and that’s why Charlene ended up leaving him, because of course as a computer god, his brain can’t possibly be wired to understand little things like social cues. (It’s actually amazing, in a way, how Stephenson can manage to perpetuate stereotypes against both women and male nerds at the same time.)
It’s gross, is what it is. In any other book it would be bad enough. What really bothers me about its presence in Cryptonomicon is how it compounds, and has perhaps even influenced, given its age and status in the genre now, the portrayal of technologically-adept/minded folks (call them nerds, geeks, hackers, whatever). Young women interested in cryptography deserve to read a story about cryptography without constantly seeing the few female characters in the book objectified or reduced down to “biologically, women want to submit and have sex!” Young men shouldn’t see this kind of behaviour rationalized or played for laughs; they shouldn’t receive the message that nerds are somehow “programmed” to be socially awkward and therefore it’s OK to be creepy and male gazey all the time.
So Cryptonomicon is a book with a bunch of good bits too few and scattered among less good or downright weird and gross bits that I didn’t much appreciate. The mathematical, code-breaking parts of this book are good—really good. But, I mean, I kind of wish I had access to an abridged version with just those parts? Because wading through the, say, 80% of the book that isn’t those parts is just not worth the effort.
Honestly, so far the best depiction of mathematics in fiction I’ve come across is The Housekeeper and the Professor, which doesn’t only depict math but also humanizes it intensely. (And before you ask, no, I haven’t read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime but I certainly plan to steal—uh, borrow—a copy lying around school one of these days.) Cryptonomicon tries to be a math nerd’s wet dream, but Stephenson’s insistence on mentioning his male characters’ wet dreams just doesn’t work for me.
Huh. Is there an echo in here?
I was thinking it had been several years since I last read a Neal Stephenson novel, but it turns out to be just under a year. I borrowed Cryptonomicon from a friend’s mother, because it’s truly not on that I’m a mathematician by training yet haven’t read the most mathematical Stephenson work. I put off reading it for a few weeks, because I knew that it would take a while. This past week was probably not the best week to read it—then again, would there have been a best week? I got lots of programming done on my website while avoiding this book, though.
This book is ostensibly about codes and code-breaking. I’d liken it to The Imitation Game, except I also have managed to skip that one somehow—and anyway, Alan Turing and Bletchley Park feature much less prominently here. Rather, Cryptonomicon follows a fictional friend of Turing’s, Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse, who is a genius codebreaker. Waterhouse serves in the American armed forces during World War II, where he breaks codes (duh) and gets involved in other unlikely shenanigans. Stephenson develops this plot in parallel with one set in the present day (which is to say, 1999, which is, gosh, 18 years ago now). Lawrence’s grandson, Randy, ends up interacting with the descendants of many of the other characters from Lawrence’s story, as he and a friend try to set up a data haven off the coast of the Philippines.
That’s ostensibly the plot, but like I said, this isn’t really a novel and the story isn’t really a story. It’s more of a loose narrative framework around which Stephenson erects pages-long diatribes on coding, computer science, mathematics, and other very nerdy stuff. It is much like his later efforts of Anathem and Seveneves, which are more about the philosophy of mathematics and how humanity might adapt to life in space, respectively, although of the three novels this one might have something most recognizable as a plot.
I’m not afraid to admit to skimming large portions of this novel. It’s not necessary to … experience … every word of Cryptonomicon to follow it. The connections among the characters are fairly heavy-handed, with Stephenson giving the reader plenty of opportunities to notice a familiar name, symbol, or meme showing up in a different place and time. Additionally, I can tolerate the fairly frequent tangents Stephenson has his characters go off on to explain one mathematical or cryptological concept or other; I’m less tolerant of how this spills over into the descriptions of simplest actions. Randy can’t possibly open his car door, no—this occasions nothing less than three meaty paragraphs on the manufacture of his car and the way the angle of the car door makes Randy think about a line of Perl code he wrote back in his university days. Perl, by the way, is a script people often use on UNIX….
Seriously, this book is not a well-edited, well-paced, well-plotted adventure. It’s Neal Stephenson making shit up about guys named Lawrence and Randy so he can tell you all the cool computer things he knows.
And to his credit, he manages to often be entertaining while doing so. For the most part, I enjoyed the segments that follow Lawrence. The role of code-breaking in World War II, and its concurrent stimulation of the invention of electronic computing, is an interesting subject that is often overlooked in historical treatments of that time. In addition to explaining how certain code systems worked and how the Allies broke these codes, Stephenson also takes the time to show us, rather than merely tell us, how encrypted communications were essential to the war effort. Moreover, he also points out the difficulty of breaking codes in wartime: you don’t want the enemy to know their codes are broken, because then they will change to a different code. So you have to throw them off the scent, so to speak, and create fake reasons for why you knew what the enemy was going to do. I don’t know how accurate this is to actual activities during the war, but it’s a fun corollary thought experiment to the whole activity of intercepting and reading enemy messages.
There’s also a fair amount of humour in here. I liked the highly fictionalized, summarized communiques between Bischoff and Donitz. I liked the portrayal of Colonel Comstock’s preparations for a meeting with Lawrence, girding himself and his team as if they were about to go into an actual battle.
Similarly, although I was less enamoured of the present-day plot and characters, I still like the general ideas. Stephenson was ahead of the curve when it came to talking about cryptocurrencies and even data havens. These ideas seem almost saturated, old hat here in 2017—but I imagine that in 1999, when the Web was still kind of a space for hackers and academics and military types, it was all cutting edge. Stephenson makes a strong case that there are different types of heroism, and that having a strong technical background can be just as valuable as being able to fight or being educated in a scholarly field like law.
I just wish that I didn’t have to wade through so much dull or outright dumb stuff to get to the good bits of this book.
This is the third book in a row I’m dragging for having a rubbish depiction of women. Honestly, people, it isn’t hard, but let’s go over the basics again so we stop screwing this up.
Maybe you should have women as main characters? There are very few named women characters in this book. Most of them exist as sexual and romantic interests for the men, who are the main characters.
Maybe your women should exist for reasons other than sexytimes? Amy Shaftoe is the closest we get to a female main character in this book. She is not a viewpoint character. She does not have an appreciable arc. She has an illusion of agency, but this is largely undermined by her purpose to exist as a manic pixie dreamgirl for Randy. Stephenson seems to confuse “strong female character” with “does lots of physical stuff/wears a leather jacket/I must imply that she might be a lesbian at least five times”.
Maybe you should stop being creepy? Cryptonomicon is super male-gazey in about every sense of the term. The narrator constantly mentions how much Lawrence or Randy need to masturbate, have sex, or otherwise ejaculate before they can “focus”. The male characters from both time periods make sexist remarks, talk about women, look at and objectify women, etc., in ways that are boorish and chauvinistic and stereotypical. There are more examples of this than I can count or possibly mention here. At one point, Randy and Avi are discussing a lawsuit directed at their fledgling company. Avi compares the lawsuit with a mating ritual, saying that their company is a “desirable female” and the lawsuit bringer wants to mate with them, and this is his way of posturing. Later in the novel, Randy spends a few pages mulling over how some women are “just wired” to want to be submissive to men, and that’s why Charlene ended up leaving him, because of course as a computer god, his brain can’t possibly be wired to understand little things like social cues. (It’s actually amazing, in a way, how Stephenson can manage to perpetuate stereotypes against both women and male nerds at the same time.)
It’s gross, is what it is. In any other book it would be bad enough. What really bothers me about its presence in Cryptonomicon is how it compounds, and has perhaps even influenced, given its age and status in the genre now, the portrayal of technologically-adept/minded folks (call them nerds, geeks, hackers, whatever). Young women interested in cryptography deserve to read a story about cryptography without constantly seeing the few female characters in the book objectified or reduced down to “biologically, women want to submit and have sex!” Young men shouldn’t see this kind of behaviour rationalized or played for laughs; they shouldn’t receive the message that nerds are somehow “programmed” to be socially awkward and therefore it’s OK to be creepy and male gazey all the time.
So Cryptonomicon is a book with a bunch of good bits too few and scattered among less good or downright weird and gross bits that I didn’t much appreciate. The mathematical, code-breaking parts of this book are good—really good. But, I mean, I kind of wish I had access to an abridged version with just those parts? Because wading through the, say, 80% of the book that isn’t those parts is just not worth the effort.
Honestly, so far the best depiction of mathematics in fiction I’ve come across is The Housekeeper and the Professor, which doesn’t only depict math but also humanizes it intensely. (And before you ask, no, I haven’t read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime but I certainly plan to steal—uh, borrow—a copy lying around school one of these days.) Cryptonomicon tries to be a math nerd’s wet dream, but Stephenson’s insistence on mentioning his male characters’ wet dreams just doesn’t work for me.
My friend Julie’s review pretty much nails why #37: The Weakness is, coincidentally, so weak. I’m just going to pile on with a few more observations.
This is Rachel’s chance to lead while Jake is away. She bungles it, but not as badly as the ghostwriter of this book (Elise Smith) bungles Rachel’s characterization. Her portrayal as an insecure megalomaniac gives me flashbacks, as it did Julie, to aggressive Rachel from #32: The Separation; Rachel’s whole narration just feels so off, such a caricature, that, plot holes aside, the entire book is just an uncomfortable reading experience. If this were a TV show, it would be as if Rachel’s normal actor were replaced by someone else, kind of how Dick York gets replaced by Dick Sargent in Bewitched and no one in the show acknowledges that Darrin is a completely different person (magic!).
Julie’s review goes on to critique the plot holes of this book with an unabashed and entirely justified rant. Reading this story is like reading someone’s really bad Animorph fanfic: all the characters are here; the essential story elements are here; but there are dumb contrivances and terrible story decisions. Why do the Garatrons need to physically resemble the Andalites if that is never relevant to the story (or subsequent stories) in any way? Is it just to drop in a mention of convergent evolution? And I agree that there is so much craziness happening in this book without any of it ever becoming an issue for the Animorphs. They trash a TV station, literally steal an airplane from a military base, and nothing bad comes of it. The level of action in this book is close to Megamorphs, Michael-Bay-style effects level—and it makes just as much sense as a Michael Bay film, i.e., zero.
It’s a shame, because The Weakness does have a few elements with potential. The whole “who would make a better leader” subplot does not interest me, mostly because it is something that this series has spent time on already. But this feels like a wasted opportunity to talk about strategy. Until now, the Animorphs have been very heavy on tactics: how they attack, when they attack, etc. Recent books have shifted this focus from tactics to strategy, with the Animorphs forced to temporarily work with Yeerks like Visser One in order to prevent a “worse” invasion of Earth. The question of whether or not the Animorphs are better off waging war against the Yeerks in secret or exposing them to prompt global resistance is a thorny one, and something that will come to the fore by the end of the series. The fraught, dangerous mission that the Animorphs undertake in this story, and the way they come up against the spectre of exposure, could have led to some interesting discussions among the team. Instead, we just get infighting. Because … conflict?
Every time I encounter a book like this, I have to remind myself that in 54 issues, they can’t all be winners. And young me probably didn’t mind as much. Nevertheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out The Weakness as anything other than what it is: not just a hot mess, but a hot mess left behind by the guy who made you pay for the meal because he “forgot his wallet”.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← Visser | #38: The Arrival
This is Rachel’s chance to lead while Jake is away. She bungles it, but not as badly as the ghostwriter of this book (Elise Smith) bungles Rachel’s characterization. Her portrayal as an insecure megalomaniac gives me flashbacks, as it did Julie, to aggressive Rachel from #32: The Separation; Rachel’s whole narration just feels so off, such a caricature, that, plot holes aside, the entire book is just an uncomfortable reading experience. If this were a TV show, it would be as if Rachel’s normal actor were replaced by someone else, kind of how Dick York gets replaced by Dick Sargent in Bewitched and no one in the show acknowledges that Darrin is a completely different person (magic!).
Julie’s review goes on to critique the plot holes of this book with an unabashed and entirely justified rant. Reading this story is like reading someone’s really bad Animorph fanfic: all the characters are here; the essential story elements are here; but there are dumb contrivances and terrible story decisions. Why do the Garatrons need to physically resemble the Andalites if that is never relevant to the story (or subsequent stories) in any way? Is it just to drop in a mention of convergent evolution? And I agree that there is so much craziness happening in this book without any of it ever becoming an issue for the Animorphs. They trash a TV station, literally steal an airplane from a military base, and nothing bad comes of it. The level of action in this book is close to Megamorphs, Michael-Bay-style effects level—and it makes just as much sense as a Michael Bay film, i.e., zero.
It’s a shame, because The Weakness does have a few elements with potential. The whole “who would make a better leader” subplot does not interest me, mostly because it is something that this series has spent time on already. But this feels like a wasted opportunity to talk about strategy. Until now, the Animorphs have been very heavy on tactics: how they attack, when they attack, etc. Recent books have shifted this focus from tactics to strategy, with the Animorphs forced to temporarily work with Yeerks like Visser One in order to prevent a “worse” invasion of Earth. The question of whether or not the Animorphs are better off waging war against the Yeerks in secret or exposing them to prompt global resistance is a thorny one, and something that will come to the fore by the end of the series. The fraught, dangerous mission that the Animorphs undertake in this story, and the way they come up against the spectre of exposure, could have led to some interesting discussions among the team. Instead, we just get infighting. Because … conflict?
Every time I encounter a book like this, I have to remind myself that in 54 issues, they can’t all be winners. And young me probably didn’t mind as much. Nevertheless, I’d be remiss if I didn’t call out The Weakness as anything other than what it is: not just a hot mess, but a hot mess left behind by the guy who made you pay for the meal because he “forgot his wallet”.
My reviews of Animorphs:
← Visser | #38: The Arrival
As with Truthwitch, Windwitch is a great palate cleanser after some less-than-inspiring reads. It has been a rough couple of weeks, reading-wise, and I’m trying to get back on top of my reading and reviewing game. So I grabbed this from near-the-top of the reading pile where it landed after buying it when it was published. Windwitch is not quite as exciting as the first book—it seems to lack a unifying, urgent central plot—and your enjoyment will depend a lot on how you feel about the characters Susan Dennard has paired up for this instalment.
Spoilers for Truthwitch but not this book.
Windwitch picks up very shortly after the first book ends. Safi is in thrall to Empress Vaness of Marstok; Iseult is attempting to cross the continent in order to find her; and Merik is screwing things up, as usual. This time, Merik is presumed dead. If only he had stayed that way. (Can you tell I don’t much like Merik?) Oh, and that Bloodwitch guy is back trying to get you to feel sympathy for him (or Aeduan?).
The main takeaway of this book’s lot is that no character has any idea WTF is going on. If this were Twitter, there would be a lot of confused @ing while everyone argues over which hashtags to use. Unfortunately, Dennard doesn’t quite Storify it all for us.
One interesting dimension is the addition of Vivia, Merik’s sister, to the viewpoint characters. Vivia in the first book was an unseen, distant antagonist-by-proxy. We pretty much had to take Merik’s word for it that she was bad news, and now we can see how his perception distorted her. Yes, Vivia is not all sunshine and puppy dogs and rainbows. But I like her character; I like her a lot better than Merik. I trust that she is trying to find the best way to help her people, just like Merik is, even if she doesn’t always trust other people enough to take them into her confidence. If you hand her a problem, Vivia is the kind of person who is going to seem like she isn’t working on the problem, then come to you long after you think she has forgotten about it and present a fait accompli solution. If you hand Merik a problem, he is going to look at it for a while and then try to fix it with sailing or something. (I’m being a little too harsh on Merik, I admit. In attempting to solve his own murder he does some good investigative legwork.)
I’m struggling, however, to come up with anything about Windwitch that really excites me. Truthwitch excited me because Safi and Iseult had such a great, platonic chemistry going on. Separating them was a bold move, one that I think paid off in that book—but in this book, it just leads to the two subpar-by-comparison pairings of Safi/Vaness and Iseult/Aeduan. Safi and Vaness are fun for about three seconds—it’s nice that Safi is self-aware about how annoying she is being, that she is using that to be deliberately obstructive of either Vaness or, later, their captors. Iseult is a little better; I still don’t know why the second book wasn’t Threadwitch and didn’t follow Iseult more closely, because hers continues to be, in my opinion, the most interesting arc of this entire series.
Iseult is going through some hard times. Her fleeting, unwilling contacts with Esme and her internal conflict over the possibility of being a Cleaving, puppeteering Weaverwitch are very compelling. She is so wrapped up in trying to get to Safi, trying to help Safi, that she is trying to shove these personal concerns on to the backburner—and they won’t let her. In this respect, Dennard pairing Iseult with Aeduan works pretty well. They already have a history together, what with her saving his life, and their powers are relatively incompatible—her cloak protects her from him smelling her blood, and he has no Threads for her to manipulate. It’s fun to see them make a deal to grudgingly work together—but the end result is as messy and inconclusive as the rest of this book.
My refrain in my head throughout reading Windwitch was that it fell into the fantasy novel trap of confusing travel with plot.
Seriously, so much of this story is just characters travelling across the Witchlands, whether of their own free will or at the behest of another set of characters. And then if something happens, they get to backtrack a little! Oh, and there is something nefarious happening with pirates? But it’s largely a background element that only gets shoved into the foreground at the end to provide a kind of tacked-on climax with action sequences that are really confusing if you don’t visualize when you read (hello).
Truthwitch has a forward momentum prompted by Safi’s urgent need to escape her arranged marriage and a Bloodwitch on her tail. Windwitch has little of that. The essential outcomes of this story, which I won’t spoil, feel small enough that they could have been compressed into the first act of the book, and then whatever is in book 3 could have been the rest of this book. Everything else just feels like … well, I don’t want to drop an F-bomb on you, but here I go.
Much of this book feels like filler.
There, I said it. I might as well toss in the dreaded “second-book syndrome” in for good measure.
Really, trying hard not to hate on Windwitch because the setting and characters are still pretty great. It’s just that the story in this one, especially compared to the first book, lacks a unity that I crave in these kinds of epic adventures. For a book ostensibly about Merik, if the title is anything to go by, its focus is scattershot at best. And unlike most books with multiple POVs, I had trouble understanding why we were following certain POVs and not others. While Dennard does her best to suggest underlying arcs that will hopefully come to more prominence over time (the Cahr Awen and the Origin Wells, obviously; Esme, etc.), the POV characters, with one or two exceptions, seem remarkably uninvolved in furthering these arcs.
I like this series and really respect what Dennard is trying to do—trying to do new things and not hitting the mark is always better than falling back on tried-and-true formulae. Nevertheless, Windwitch will go down as “uh, that middle book”—especially if Bloodwitch is a more worthy sequel, which I hope it will be.
My review of the Witchlands:
← Truthwitch
Spoilers for Truthwitch but not this book.
Windwitch picks up very shortly after the first book ends. Safi is in thrall to Empress Vaness of Marstok; Iseult is attempting to cross the continent in order to find her; and Merik is screwing things up, as usual. This time, Merik is presumed dead. If only he had stayed that way. (Can you tell I don’t much like Merik?) Oh, and that Bloodwitch guy is back trying to get you to feel sympathy for him (or Aeduan?).
The main takeaway of this book’s lot is that no character has any idea WTF is going on. If this were Twitter, there would be a lot of confused @ing while everyone argues over which hashtags to use. Unfortunately, Dennard doesn’t quite Storify it all for us.
One interesting dimension is the addition of Vivia, Merik’s sister, to the viewpoint characters. Vivia in the first book was an unseen, distant antagonist-by-proxy. We pretty much had to take Merik’s word for it that she was bad news, and now we can see how his perception distorted her. Yes, Vivia is not all sunshine and puppy dogs and rainbows. But I like her character; I like her a lot better than Merik. I trust that she is trying to find the best way to help her people, just like Merik is, even if she doesn’t always trust other people enough to take them into her confidence. If you hand her a problem, Vivia is the kind of person who is going to seem like she isn’t working on the problem, then come to you long after you think she has forgotten about it and present a fait accompli solution. If you hand Merik a problem, he is going to look at it for a while and then try to fix it with sailing or something. (I’m being a little too harsh on Merik, I admit. In attempting to solve his own murder he does some good investigative legwork.)
I’m struggling, however, to come up with anything about Windwitch that really excites me. Truthwitch excited me because Safi and Iseult had such a great, platonic chemistry going on. Separating them was a bold move, one that I think paid off in that book—but in this book, it just leads to the two subpar-by-comparison pairings of Safi/Vaness and Iseult/Aeduan. Safi and Vaness are fun for about three seconds—it’s nice that Safi is self-aware about how annoying she is being, that she is using that to be deliberately obstructive of either Vaness or, later, their captors. Iseult is a little better; I still don’t know why the second book wasn’t Threadwitch and didn’t follow Iseult more closely, because hers continues to be, in my opinion, the most interesting arc of this entire series.
Iseult is going through some hard times. Her fleeting, unwilling contacts with Esme and her internal conflict over the possibility of being a Cleaving, puppeteering Weaverwitch are very compelling. She is so wrapped up in trying to get to Safi, trying to help Safi, that she is trying to shove these personal concerns on to the backburner—and they won’t let her. In this respect, Dennard pairing Iseult with Aeduan works pretty well. They already have a history together, what with her saving his life, and their powers are relatively incompatible—her cloak protects her from him smelling her blood, and he has no Threads for her to manipulate. It’s fun to see them make a deal to grudgingly work together—but the end result is as messy and inconclusive as the rest of this book.
My refrain in my head throughout reading Windwitch was that it fell into the fantasy novel trap of confusing travel with plot.
Seriously, so much of this story is just characters travelling across the Witchlands, whether of their own free will or at the behest of another set of characters. And then if something happens, they get to backtrack a little! Oh, and there is something nefarious happening with pirates? But it’s largely a background element that only gets shoved into the foreground at the end to provide a kind of tacked-on climax with action sequences that are really confusing if you don’t visualize when you read (hello).
Truthwitch has a forward momentum prompted by Safi’s urgent need to escape her arranged marriage and a Bloodwitch on her tail. Windwitch has little of that. The essential outcomes of this story, which I won’t spoil, feel small enough that they could have been compressed into the first act of the book, and then whatever is in book 3 could have been the rest of this book. Everything else just feels like … well, I don’t want to drop an F-bomb on you, but here I go.
Much of this book feels like filler.
There, I said it. I might as well toss in the dreaded “second-book syndrome” in for good measure.
Really, trying hard not to hate on Windwitch because the setting and characters are still pretty great. It’s just that the story in this one, especially compared to the first book, lacks a unity that I crave in these kinds of epic adventures. For a book ostensibly about Merik, if the title is anything to go by, its focus is scattershot at best. And unlike most books with multiple POVs, I had trouble understanding why we were following certain POVs and not others. While Dennard does her best to suggest underlying arcs that will hopefully come to more prominence over time (the Cahr Awen and the Origin Wells, obviously; Esme, etc.), the POV characters, with one or two exceptions, seem remarkably uninvolved in furthering these arcs.
I like this series and really respect what Dennard is trying to do—trying to do new things and not hitting the mark is always better than falling back on tried-and-true formulae. Nevertheless, Windwitch will go down as “uh, that middle book”—especially if Bloodwitch is a more worthy sequel, which I hope it will be.
My review of the Witchlands:
← Truthwitch
Truthwitch was an essential palate cleanser. I needed something light, something that is not necessarily a romp but that would not allow me to get bogged down. And that’s what this book is. Susan Dennard’s Witchlands remind me of L.E. Modesitt, Jr.’s Recluce saga and others of its ilk; by transitivity, they remind me of my younger days when I could curl up with a thick fantasy novel while it rains outside and just read the afternoon away. In many ways this is your typical Medieval European Fantasy story that could have been written any time in the last thirty years—except that instead of your standard, brooding young-to-middle-aged man, it has two stellar young women as its protagonists.
Safiya, the eponymous Truthwitch, is nobility but not all that interested in being noble. Her Threadsister—read, sidekick—Iseult is a Threadwich, and together they have the fighting training to kick all kinds of ass. We see this from the start, which opens in media res with Safi and Iseult fighting back-to-back while, presumably, cool electronic music plays in the background as they take down tens of well-trained redshirts. It’s the kind of well-choreographed John Woo style action you’d happily watch in a movie, and Dennard has a talent for putting it on the page without making it too confusing, especially to readers like myself who have trouble visualizing scenes. Also, the fact that Safi and Iseult are nascent con artists certainly doesn’t hurt when it comes to endearing them to me. I love con artist characters.
The pacing of the book does not let up from that opening, and for the next three hundred pages our protagonists barely get time to breathe. Readers hoping for eye-blurring paragraphs of exposition will be disappointed, because Dennard often errs on the side of confusion for the sake of succinctness. Even with the handy map at the front of the book, I often found myself confused about which nation was which, who belonged or worked for which nation, and why I should care about these conflicts. Similarly, there are aspects of Truthwitch’s plot that are never well developed or dropped in out of left field—and not in a “ooh, what a delightful twist” sort of way. I’m thinking, namely, of Uncle Eron’s Xanatos gambit, or the identity of Aeduan’s father. In the case of the former, we never hear details about this plot to make us understand why Eron acts the way he does. In the case of the latter, the twist lacks much in the way of dramatic weight, because I neither know enough nor care enough about Aeduan’s father to be moved by the revelation.
Indeed, for all its impressive action sequences, Truthwitch has weird moments of telling when it could be showing. We’re told that Safi despises her uncle and really wants to escape from any association with him. But they are together so briefly on page we don’t really see this relationship. Same goes for Safi’s friendship with, say, Leopold. Minor characters to give us some sense of the main character’s background are great and all (I liked, for example, the way Dennard handles Iseult’s relationship with Gretchya and Alma), but when those characters stick around and figure in the larger plot, as Leopold does, I get the sense that I missed something.
Fortunately, Safi and Iseult’s friendship and the way this influences the plot makes up for a lot of these deficiencies. Safi is headstrong, impulsive, and needs Iseult to temper these qualities. In Safi, Iseult finds someone who supports her and stands with her against the discrimination she faces as a result of her ethnicity. Both are very strong characters, but their strengths work along complementary axes. As the title of the novel implies, Safi is the principal protagonist; for much of the novel, Iseult spends her time injured and in and out of consciousness. Nevertheless, I like how Dennard still develops Iseult as a character: we see tantalizing hints that her Threadwitch powers go deeper than they normally should. In fact, Iseult ends up in communication with a shady character, and this perhaps ends up endangering Safi and their other allies. So while Safi is facing external enemies, Iseult’s journal is slightly more personal and introspective.
I cannot stand the “romance” between Safi and Merik, if that’s what it is—belligerent sexual tension (TVTropes) is such a cliché, and Dennard brings nothing new to it here. I ship Safi and Iseult—platonically—instead. I will watch them stand back to back against haters and Bloodwitches and nincompoop Aetherwitches any day of the week!
Although Merik in general is not a great character for me, I have to concede one point: I did enjoy the shipboard scenes far more than I thought I would. Dennard doesn’t waste an opportunity to show us that Merik is, at heart, a sailor. He isn’t just some prince assigned command of a ship. He knows how sailing works; he knows the songs, the rhythm of the movement on the deck. When he issues orders and supervises movement, you really get the sense of the entire crew working as one to making the ship viable, and that’s not something I always feel when reading such scenes in other fantasy novels.
I’ll finish off with some remarks on the magic system in Witchlands. While the naming of the types of witches might be trite, I like the glimpses of codification Dennard provides in things like the tattoos on people’s hands to indicate their witchery and specializations, or the way Witchlands society has integrated certain magic into its practices, as is the case in the bewitched contracts. However, for such an intriguing system, I’d level the charge that it just isn’t used enough—at least, not in the case of Safiya! Being a Truthwitch is supposed to be a big deal, because she is so rare and valuable (or so we are told, again, rather than shown). Yet aside from an internal truth-o-meter pinging every time someone talks to her, we seldom see Safi actually exercise her truthiness powers in a meaningful or significant way. I think the most magic we see comes from Merik and Aeduan, neither of whom are the title characters of this book. And so that disappointed me a little.
You might wonder why, if I’m listing all these criticisms of Truthwitch, I’m claiming to have liked it so much. Because I did. Like it, that is. Indeed, I liked it so much I went out and bought Windwitch the day after finishing it (I thought I would need to pre-order Windwitch, but serendipity would have that it came out three days prior to me reading this one!). To be honest, the cover had a lot to do with that decision too. Normally I don’t remark much on the cover, good or bad—but isn’t this cover gorgeous? Scott Grimando depicts Safiya in an elegant power pose, with a great outfit that isn’t hypersexualized, cool swirly magic stuff around her, and I love the little detail of the sword crossing through the title like that. The Windwitch cover is just as nice, and I want to collect the whole series and have a matching set.
I guess I fall back on this idea that there is a big difference between a book’s quality and a reader’s enjoyment of that book. Truthwitch is a complex and messy book with so many moving parts that it’s fun to pick it apart on a structural level, just to see what makes it tick. Yet when you put those pieces back together and run the plot from start to finish, you end up with a story that, at least in my case, delivers exactly what is wanted: a fast-paced, high-stakes adventure with some great leads and action scenes. This is a summer blockbuster of fantasy novels: yeah, when you put the book down and look back on it, there are glaring problems—but in the moment of reading, there is nowhere else you would rather be and nothing else you could possibly need.
My reviews of the Witchlands:
Windwitch →
Safiya, the eponymous Truthwitch, is nobility but not all that interested in being noble. Her Threadsister—read, sidekick—Iseult is a Threadwich, and together they have the fighting training to kick all kinds of ass. We see this from the start, which opens in media res with Safi and Iseult fighting back-to-back while, presumably, cool electronic music plays in the background as they take down tens of well-trained redshirts. It’s the kind of well-choreographed John Woo style action you’d happily watch in a movie, and Dennard has a talent for putting it on the page without making it too confusing, especially to readers like myself who have trouble visualizing scenes. Also, the fact that Safi and Iseult are nascent con artists certainly doesn’t hurt when it comes to endearing them to me. I love con artist characters.
The pacing of the book does not let up from that opening, and for the next three hundred pages our protagonists barely get time to breathe. Readers hoping for eye-blurring paragraphs of exposition will be disappointed, because Dennard often errs on the side of confusion for the sake of succinctness. Even with the handy map at the front of the book, I often found myself confused about which nation was which, who belonged or worked for which nation, and why I should care about these conflicts. Similarly, there are aspects of Truthwitch’s plot that are never well developed or dropped in out of left field—and not in a “ooh, what a delightful twist” sort of way. I’m thinking, namely, of Uncle Eron’s Xanatos gambit, or the identity of Aeduan’s father. In the case of the former, we never hear details about this plot to make us understand why Eron acts the way he does. In the case of the latter, the twist lacks much in the way of dramatic weight, because I neither know enough nor care enough about Aeduan’s father to be moved by the revelation.
Indeed, for all its impressive action sequences, Truthwitch has weird moments of telling when it could be showing. We’re told that Safi despises her uncle and really wants to escape from any association with him. But they are together so briefly on page we don’t really see this relationship. Same goes for Safi’s friendship with, say, Leopold. Minor characters to give us some sense of the main character’s background are great and all (I liked, for example, the way Dennard handles Iseult’s relationship with Gretchya and Alma), but when those characters stick around and figure in the larger plot, as Leopold does, I get the sense that I missed something.
Fortunately, Safi and Iseult’s friendship and the way this influences the plot makes up for a lot of these deficiencies. Safi is headstrong, impulsive, and needs Iseult to temper these qualities. In Safi, Iseult finds someone who supports her and stands with her against the discrimination she faces as a result of her ethnicity. Both are very strong characters, but their strengths work along complementary axes. As the title of the novel implies, Safi is the principal protagonist; for much of the novel, Iseult spends her time injured and in and out of consciousness. Nevertheless, I like how Dennard still develops Iseult as a character: we see tantalizing hints that her Threadwitch powers go deeper than they normally should. In fact, Iseult ends up in communication with a shady character, and this perhaps ends up endangering Safi and their other allies. So while Safi is facing external enemies, Iseult’s journal is slightly more personal and introspective.
I cannot stand the “romance” between Safi and Merik, if that’s what it is—belligerent sexual tension (TVTropes) is such a cliché, and Dennard brings nothing new to it here. I ship Safi and Iseult—platonically—instead. I will watch them stand back to back against haters and Bloodwitches and nincompoop Aetherwitches any day of the week!
Although Merik in general is not a great character for me, I have to concede one point: I did enjoy the shipboard scenes far more than I thought I would. Dennard doesn’t waste an opportunity to show us that Merik is, at heart, a sailor. He isn’t just some prince assigned command of a ship. He knows how sailing works; he knows the songs, the rhythm of the movement on the deck. When he issues orders and supervises movement, you really get the sense of the entire crew working as one to making the ship viable, and that’s not something I always feel when reading such scenes in other fantasy novels.
I’ll finish off with some remarks on the magic system in Witchlands. While the naming of the types of witches might be trite, I like the glimpses of codification Dennard provides in things like the tattoos on people’s hands to indicate their witchery and specializations, or the way Witchlands society has integrated certain magic into its practices, as is the case in the bewitched contracts. However, for such an intriguing system, I’d level the charge that it just isn’t used enough—at least, not in the case of Safiya! Being a Truthwitch is supposed to be a big deal, because she is so rare and valuable (or so we are told, again, rather than shown). Yet aside from an internal truth-o-meter pinging every time someone talks to her, we seldom see Safi actually exercise her truthiness powers in a meaningful or significant way. I think the most magic we see comes from Merik and Aeduan, neither of whom are the title characters of this book. And so that disappointed me a little.
You might wonder why, if I’m listing all these criticisms of Truthwitch, I’m claiming to have liked it so much. Because I did. Like it, that is. Indeed, I liked it so much I went out and bought Windwitch the day after finishing it (I thought I would need to pre-order Windwitch, but serendipity would have that it came out three days prior to me reading this one!). To be honest, the cover had a lot to do with that decision too. Normally I don’t remark much on the cover, good or bad—but isn’t this cover gorgeous? Scott Grimando depicts Safiya in an elegant power pose, with a great outfit that isn’t hypersexualized, cool swirly magic stuff around her, and I love the little detail of the sword crossing through the title like that. The Windwitch cover is just as nice, and I want to collect the whole series and have a matching set.
I guess I fall back on this idea that there is a big difference between a book’s quality and a reader’s enjoyment of that book. Truthwitch is a complex and messy book with so many moving parts that it’s fun to pick it apart on a structural level, just to see what makes it tick. Yet when you put those pieces back together and run the plot from start to finish, you end up with a story that, at least in my case, delivers exactly what is wanted: a fast-paced, high-stakes adventure with some great leads and action scenes. This is a summer blockbuster of fantasy novels: yeah, when you put the book down and look back on it, there are glaring problems—but in the moment of reading, there is nowhere else you would rather be and nothing else you could possibly need.
My reviews of the Witchlands:
Windwitch →