Vaughn, Carrie: Discord's Apple
Discord's Apple (2010)
Written by: Carrie Vaughn
Genre: Modern Fantasy
Pages: 299 (Hardcover)
Why I Read It: I'm not totally sure why I didn't immediately read this upon its release, except I think it was released too close to her latest Kitty novel, and I didn't want to overload. Whatever. Since February was a tough month, I decided that I should read the authors I consider favorites but for whatever reason, I have unread books of theirs in my TBR. Vaughn's Discord's Apple was the first on my list of comfort authors, even though I was nervous about reading what is technically an early work.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: When Evie Walker goes home to spend time with her dying father, she discovers that his creaky old house in Hope’s Fort, Colorado is not the only legacy she will inherit. Hidden behind the basement door is a secret and magical storeroom, a place where wondrous treasures from myth and legend are kept safe until they are needed again.
Of course, this legacy is not without its costs: there are those who will give anything to find a way in.
With the help of her father, a mysterious stranger named Alex, and some unexpected heroes, Evie must guard the storeroom against ancient and malicious forces and protect both the past and the future even as the present unravels.
Spoilers, yay or nay?: Yay! Vaughn's packed so much into this book and there's so much I want to discuss that I have a feeling I won't be able to help BUT spoil the poor thing, so spoil I will! If you want to avoid such nasty things as spoilers, just skip to "My Rating" and you'll be fine. Oh, WAIT: I spoil a plot point for Voices of Dragons and After the Golden Age: it's a tiny thing, but if you haven't read either one of those books and you want to, you may want to hold off on this review. Especially since, yanno, After the Golden Age isn't even out yet. HOWEVER, said SUPER SPOILER is at the end of the "Thumbs Down" section and marked clearly, so once you see the SUPER SPOILER section, you can skip to "My Rating" and not miss anything.
Thumbs Up: One thing I wasn't expecting from this book at all was this sort of SF dystopia feel, and it sneaks up on you. You slowly notice little clues that make you realize the characters are living in a HIGHLY governed/regulated country, and I really wish we'd gotten to see more of it, given how it plays into the story itself. I was quite fascinated by how things got to be the way they currently are in this book, and Vaughn provides enough clues so that the reader can guess (and she does explain a little), but I wanted so much more, because oddly enough, because that's what interested me.
Not to say the core idea holding the story together didn't interest me: the Storeroom. That was, actually, quite fascinating and charming. I loved seeing all these magical items from all over the world gathered in this one place, and I loved the way the magic worked to protect it. Even the way the job was handed down generation to generation was fascinating to me. In a way, this book reminds me of Neil Gaiman's American Gods in that you have this giant melting pot of myth and mythology coming to clash in the modern world, and it's hard NOT to love such a premise.
Now, this next part is a thumbs up so much as it is I'm glad to see the shoe on the other foot for a change, and I'll just quote the book for this part: Men could be raped (page 78). This actually jumpstarts one of the more interesting relationships in the novel that doesn't get explored near enough, especially in light of how Sinon/Alex fell for Evie by the end. I would've actually liked to have been in Sinon/Alex's head as Alex, to see how he viewed Evie, especially in comparison to Apollo. Okay, sure, there's no real comparison, but you can compare feelings, can't you? I'll talk more about this plot point later.
And call me demented (come on, we know I am!), but I was rather thrilled by Evie's accidental killing of Robin. I was as mystified as she was, until the culprit was revealed, and then it made all the sense in the world (but wouldn't if you weren't very familiar with fae-based urban fantasy). Well played.
Also, I appreciated the type of villain Hera was. I'm not saying what she did was right, or that she couldn't use a lot more development as a character, but I liked that she wasn't a super-evil bitch. Her goals were actually kind of fascinating, and the fact she returns the apple speaks highly of who she really is.
Thumbs Down: Remember what I said earlier about this reminding me of American Gods? That's also a bad thing, because in comparison to that book, even though Vaughn's obviously doing something different than Gaiman, Discord's Apple pales in comparison. I suspect those of us who've read Gaiman's Hugo Award Winner are going to see this book as a lighter, fluffier version of the same premise, and that's not wholly a compliment. I don't know if Vaughn read American Gods or not, but if she had, I wish she'd gone further to dissaude any comparisons. Not that I can take things and compare them side-to-side: rather, it's just the idea of world mythology coming together in a melting pot, you know? They ARE different books, but I couldn't help but compare. I just couldn't. Maybe that makes me a bad reader?
One issue I had with this book was the sheer number of POV characters Vaughn utilized to tell the story. What review recently did I declare that a book can have one POV per 100 pages at most? So a 100 page book would have a maximum of one POV, a 200 page book a maximum of two POVs, and so on and so forth.
For a book that runs 299 pages in hardcover, we get the following:
1) Evie
2) Sinon/Alex
3) Robin
4) Bruce
5) Hera
6) Flashbacks of Evie's various ancestors
7) The POVs of Evie's comic book characters telling THEIR story.
That's twice as many as my rule allows, people, and it makes for a much weaker book. Sure, Vaughn's telling a rather large and epic story, but surely there was a better way to do that than dipping into so many different peoples' heads. That disappoints me, but hey, it's an early book, and to date, this is the ONLY book of Vaughn's that makes such a POV mess. The Kitty books, Voices of Dragons, and After the Golden Age all have a single POV. Woot!
Getting a more focused POV or two would've really helped me connect to Evie more, who was essentially a weak character who could only find empowerment through her comic book characters (there's nothing, I repeat, NOTHING wrong with that, but it felt like a cheat in terms of development and distracted from the story) and barely found her own bravery at the end, and I'm still not sure how she found her courage, or why Alex, of all people, would find HER heroic. Maybe stupid for standing up to Hera, but heroic? How were Evie's actions ever truly heroic? I don't see it, and I feel cheated for not seeing it, because I'm told Evie's heroic, but I don't believe it. She doesn't do much of anything for the entire story, and while the book reads fast, those sections dragged.
And those four distinct sections . . . yeah, it's an early book and writers are always taking crazy risks and doing things they probably shouldn't do (and sometimes are met with great success for doing so), but I got really bored with the comic book story, which was there not only for an insight to the woman Evie wishes to be, but also to give us a glimpse of what kind of screwed up situation the world's really in. At least the sections focusing on Evie's ancestors showed us how the magic worked, and that was interesting. The flashbacks to ancient times was appropriate to understand Sinon/Alex, but also, that's when the trouble with Discord's apple actually began, so seeing the immediate aftermath versus what was coming with Hera wanting the apple AGAIN was good.
Don't get me wrong: I was stoked by the fact that Evie was female comic book writer and she had a heroine that wasn't all boobs. That was great. I just felt it didn't add much to the story that couldn't have been done better through other methods.
There's also a question here of Alex's lack of belief in any gods whatsoever versus author intrusion. I can't say one way or the other, but it's an odd little section where Alex is laughing and saying there aren't any gods or goddesses, they're all dead, and there's no ONE SINGLE GOD either, it's all in humanity's collective imagination. It doesn't offend me either way, but it's an interesting question and would've been more at home in a book that focused solely on Alex, so we could see the de-evolution of his faith. And hey, he was wrong about Hera, wasn't he? He could be wrong about one true God.
Lastly, before the super-spoiler: I wish Vaughn had begun the book the same way she ended it, in verse.
SUPER SPOILER FOR DISCORD'S APPLE, VOICES OF DRAGONS, and AFTER THE GOLDEN AGE HERE!!!!
Dying fathers. OMG. Okay, so technically, this was the first in terms of the timeline of Vaughn writing it, but that's THREE BOOKS NOW. I swear to god, if Steel has a dying daddy in it, I think I'm going to write to the author and tell her I'm sorry she's still grappling with a personal grief, but it's time to stop using fiction as a therapist and get real help, because THREE DIFFERENT BOOKS makes dying dads predictable, and that makes me a little angry. And I'm not saying this because I'm not sympathetic. I saw the dedication to this book and it's OBVIOUS Vaughn's working through some grief. It's okay, it really is. This was also the first book she did that with. Furthermore, I know what it's like to lose a father figure (I lost my grandfather when I was in sixth grade, and he was more of a dad to me than my real dad ever was or is), and I've been in situations where I've allowed fiction to help me work through grief that I couldn't get out otherwise (the death of a great-grandmother, for those of you wondering).
But then came After the Golden Age (next on the writing time scale, not the publishing time scale), which -- okay -- I can see still working through grief. But then there's Voices of Dragons, which I think was far more recent on the writing timeline. Just, no more dying dads, okay? It's not that I have an emotional inability to handle it. It's just become predictable. I'm seeing fathers in Vaughn's fiction and am not surprised when they die. No more!
But to be fair: Evie's dad kicking the butt was ordained from the start of the book. In VoD, it was a surprise. And in AtGA, it was somewhat a surprise. I've read these books out of order, but still, anyone who reads all three is going to start to wonder.
END SUPER SPOILER
My Rating
Worth Reading, with Reservations: Mind you, this rating is me talking as a Vaughn fan, who's now read everything she's published to date and one book that's not even released yet. I don't have any qualms in saying that this is absolutely her weakest novel, and I'm comforted to know that she wrote this REALLY early in her career, it was just published late. And my saying it's her weakest book doesn't mean there isn't something here to recommend. It's a super-fast read that I finished in a day, the premise is rocking, and there's some interesting takes on what it means to be a hero as well as a villain, which don't become totally obvious until the end. It's a creatively fun work, but yet for those of you who've read American Gods, it falls flat, despite what it has to offer. If you're new to Vaughn's fiction, don't start here: try Voices of Dragons or After the Golden Age instead; for those of you who are fans with Vaughn's work, you'll be able to appreciate it more, even if you're like me and find that it just does measure up to everything else she's done.
Buy or Borrow: Borrow. I enjoy Vaughn's work and still consider her a favorite author, but like I said it's her weakest book. That's not an insult; it's a fact. I've read better from Vaughn, so again, if you're looking to sample her work, know that this one may not be the best indicator, but if you MUST, borrow first. And then try something else. :)
Cover Commentary: It's very simple, and when it comes to looking at PDFs of the cover, nothing to write home about. But in person, there's some lovely foil at work on the hardcover dust jacket, and the title and author's name is embossed nicely.
Next up: Agent to the Stars by John Scalzi