TWR, with growing unease: GG Kay: Tigana
I sort-of-liked the book the first time I read it until I got to a certain point, at which I was thoroughly disgusted.
Now I'm working through my 'review' list of books - do I want to keep it or not - and decided to give it a fair read. I know that some of my friends love it; I love or at least like other books by the same author, and I wanted to base my judgement on more than a remembered deep disgust of the book.
The verdict (I'm about halfway through): I still dislike it, though I now dislike it for many reasons, and I am braced for the scene that disgusted me the first time around.
The first thing that caught my eye was the prose level. It's at my current level of invisibility - there's nothing particularly poetic about it, it doesn't make me swoon and savour the words; but nor does it get in the way of reading by being awkward: it just _is_. It does the job perfectly well, but it's not reason enough to keep the book on my shelf.
The next question I asked myself is 'where are the wymmynz? Female characters with agenda being notoriously thin on the ground in epic fantasy, this is always a legitimate question. And it's not as if the book has no women - but the women are in subordinate positions, even the female POV characters, and they have agenda mostly by the grace of men (not in their own rights) and less than the men on screen.
So the author can rightly point 'but I have created strong women' and yes, he has, he just hasn't created _equal_ women... and I consider that a problem. It's a multiple-POV novel, and while I haven't crunched the numbers completely, there is one brief scene - four and a half pages - featuring _only_ women, which is a small fraction of the pages featuring only men.
They do, indeed, talk about something other than men - or a man-mad sister: for about a paragraph and a half. So it passes the Bechdel test, but only technically - and that's not really good enough.
Also, all of the women with agenda use sex to get what they want. This starts with the singer who wants to distract the protagonist and seduces him (and he's had the hots for her so jumps on the chance; he's not entirely comfortable with fucking her in a small cupboard, but he's not exactly fighting to turn her away, because a quick fuck beats no sex, right?) I don't have quite such a poor opinion of my male planetary co-citizens to find this entirely believable. Sure, there are people like that - people like both of them - but it would need a little justification and characterisation.
The other major female character became a courtesan to get close to the target of her hatred, so she has agenda - she planned this and got herself into the situation - and agenda-by-the-grace-of - she wields power in the harem by the grace of the man whose harem she inhibits.
The other main thing that put me off is that a majority of characters are ruthless. Not just the bad guys - who are *very ruthless indeed* and horrible - but the good guys, too. And they have an important goal, yes - but the end does *not* justify the means for me. The good guys have too little qualms for my taste, are too ready to tell themselves that it's all for a good cause. I can accept that to a point - I don't expect protagonists, particularly protagonists who fight wars and lead armies, to be all about fluffy kittens, but the characters in this book step over the line.
This leaves me with no-one to root for. I'm not rooting for the evil sorcerers by default, but I can't root for most of the good guys either - the displaced prince is callous enough that I'm not particularly interested in seeing him win - he plays the same game as the bad guys, just from a worse starting point and for a more noble reason.
And then there's a stylistic choice the author makes, which is to write from a temporally omniscient viewpoint. By which I mean that he doesn't say 'meanwhile, back at the ranch' but
Later, in the summer, Devin would revive that image of the five of them in the first hour of the long ride south and the memory would make him feel very old.
These occasions aren't very frequent, but they happen, and each time I am reminded that someone is selectively telling me the story - is choosing what I shall and shall not be told - rather than the illusion that I am following a character _as the story happens_. This is distancing me further from a book I am already not overly invested in, and is the death knell... quite apart from the horror that is still to happen, an act so repulsive I could not have imagined it. Stripping another person of their humanity is unforgivable, but I didn't need that to know that the character in question was thoroughly nasty; we had plenty of evidence for that.
All in all, the book gives me plenty of reasons to dislike it and none to like it.
Whether you are repulsed by the same thing I am repulsed by is a personal call; ditto abut whether you are turned off by the subordinate role of women (and a single magical negro blackface) is also a personal choice but this is still not a strong novel in my opinion; neither the language, nor the concept are particularly noteworthy. It does have its good points - I *do* like how it is shown that a seemingly
'powerless' woman can have agenda - but I don't find the world overly exciting or interesting - I've seen most of it before - , I'm not invested in the characters, and the pacing feels decidedly off, so there's nothing in this book that makes it stand out from the rest of the pack.
I can't see myself _wanting_ to read it again, not when I have so many wonderful books on my shelves and so many unread books on my iPhone and so many books to discover online (I'd rather read a sample I don't enjoy than part of a book I don't enjoy, get distracted, and put it back on my shelf.)
Yes, I am in a phase of getting rid of books, and I am not regretting it at all. I am merely making room in my life for more books.
I still - awkward past/present tense switch nonwithstanding - like A Song For Arbonne, or at least I liked it when I last read it.
This entry was also posted at http://beyond-elechan.dreamwidth.org/22551.html Reply wherever you want. This post at DW has
comments.
Now I'm working through my 'review' list of books - do I want to keep it or not - and decided to give it a fair read. I know that some of my friends love it; I love or at least like other books by the same author, and I wanted to base my judgement on more than a remembered deep disgust of the book.
The verdict (I'm about halfway through): I still dislike it, though I now dislike it for many reasons, and I am braced for the scene that disgusted me the first time around.
The first thing that caught my eye was the prose level. It's at my current level of invisibility - there's nothing particularly poetic about it, it doesn't make me swoon and savour the words; but nor does it get in the way of reading by being awkward: it just _is_. It does the job perfectly well, but it's not reason enough to keep the book on my shelf.
The next question I asked myself is 'where are the wymmynz? Female characters with agenda being notoriously thin on the ground in epic fantasy, this is always a legitimate question. And it's not as if the book has no women - but the women are in subordinate positions, even the female POV characters, and they have agenda mostly by the grace of men (not in their own rights) and less than the men on screen.
So the author can rightly point 'but I have created strong women' and yes, he has, he just hasn't created _equal_ women... and I consider that a problem. It's a multiple-POV novel, and while I haven't crunched the numbers completely, there is one brief scene - four and a half pages - featuring _only_ women, which is a small fraction of the pages featuring only men.
They do, indeed, talk about something other than men - or a man-mad sister: for about a paragraph and a half. So it passes the Bechdel test, but only technically - and that's not really good enough.
Also, all of the women with agenda use sex to get what they want. This starts with the singer who wants to distract the protagonist and seduces him (and he's had the hots for her so jumps on the chance; he's not entirely comfortable with fucking her in a small cupboard, but he's not exactly fighting to turn her away, because a quick fuck beats no sex, right?) I don't have quite such a poor opinion of my male planetary co-citizens to find this entirely believable. Sure, there are people like that - people like both of them - but it would need a little justification and characterisation.
The other major female character became a courtesan to get close to the target of her hatred, so she has agenda - she planned this and got herself into the situation - and agenda-by-the-grace-of - she wields power in the harem by the grace of the man whose harem she inhibits.
The other main thing that put me off is that a majority of characters are ruthless. Not just the bad guys - who are *very ruthless indeed* and horrible - but the good guys, too. And they have an important goal, yes - but the end does *not* justify the means for me. The good guys have too little qualms for my taste, are too ready to tell themselves that it's all for a good cause. I can accept that to a point - I don't expect protagonists, particularly protagonists who fight wars and lead armies, to be all about fluffy kittens, but the characters in this book step over the line.
This leaves me with no-one to root for. I'm not rooting for the evil sorcerers by default, but I can't root for most of the good guys either - the displaced prince is callous enough that I'm not particularly interested in seeing him win - he plays the same game as the bad guys, just from a worse starting point and for a more noble reason.
And then there's a stylistic choice the author makes, which is to write from a temporally omniscient viewpoint. By which I mean that he doesn't say 'meanwhile, back at the ranch' but
Later, in the summer, Devin would revive that image of the five of them in the first hour of the long ride south and the memory would make him feel very old.
These occasions aren't very frequent, but they happen, and each time I am reminded that someone is selectively telling me the story - is choosing what I shall and shall not be told - rather than the illusion that I am following a character _as the story happens_. This is distancing me further from a book I am already not overly invested in, and is the death knell... quite apart from the horror that is still to happen, an act so repulsive I could not have imagined it. Stripping another person of their humanity is unforgivable, but I didn't need that to know that the character in question was thoroughly nasty; we had plenty of evidence for that.
All in all, the book gives me plenty of reasons to dislike it and none to like it.
Whether you are repulsed by the same thing I am repulsed by is a personal call; ditto abut whether you are turned off by the subordinate role of women (and a single magical negro blackface) is also a personal choice but this is still not a strong novel in my opinion; neither the language, nor the concept are particularly noteworthy. It does have its good points - I *do* like how it is shown that a seemingly
'powerless' woman can have agenda - but I don't find the world overly exciting or interesting - I've seen most of it before - , I'm not invested in the characters, and the pacing feels decidedly off, so there's nothing in this book that makes it stand out from the rest of the pack.
I can't see myself _wanting_ to read it again, not when I have so many wonderful books on my shelves and so many unread books on my iPhone and so many books to discover online (I'd rather read a sample I don't enjoy than part of a book I don't enjoy, get distracted, and put it back on my shelf.)
Yes, I am in a phase of getting rid of books, and I am not regretting it at all. I am merely making room in my life for more books.
I still - awkward past/present tense switch nonwithstanding - like A Song For Arbonne, or at least I liked it when I last read it.
This entry was also posted at http://beyond-elechan.dreamwidth.org/22551.html Reply wherever you want. This post at DW has
comments.