Habitation of the Blessed (Valente)
There are three things that will beggar the heart and make it crawl--faith, hope, and love--and the cruelest of these is love.
3+/5 (subject to sequel revision). I finished my first Valente! So this is a book that I would never have read except on iPod. I read this in dribbles and drabbles while getting my hair cut, in airports, while getting gas for the car, and so on.
I had sort of a weird reaction to this book. It took me a really loooong time to get into it, for one thing, which is why I had to read it on iPod. I don't know that I take well to Valente's style. I mean, she is clearly a good writer, but I think that writers with distinct styles tend to polarize people into "love" and "don't love," and I'm definitely in the "don't love" camp with respect to Valente. (McKillip, who has a similar lyrical style, is totally in the "love" camp for me, although I certainly know a number of people who put her in the "don't love" pile. I have no idea why I love one and not the other.)
Then, around the third-to-halfway point, I decided I was kind of in love with its strange Pentexoreans and their ways of dealing with immortality.
Then, a little more than halfway through, it decided to turn into a Polemic Against Christianity, and I was all... uhhh, okay, what? What upset me about this development was not the polemic itself, which was annoying but not particularly upsetting (annoying not least because the beginning of the book had me hoping for some at least quasi-deep theological discussion), but the part where it seemed to be putting itself forward as avant-garde and daring for pointing out the flaws in Christianity. Um, no. About seven hundred years too late to be avant-garde (the Divine Comedy did it earlier and better), and almost thirty years too late to be daring (in the 80's Mists of Avalon might have sort-of been daring for pointing out the patriarchial hypocrisies of Christianity, but these days... not so much). Also, it annoyed me that the Pentexoreans are basically sophisticated twenty-first-century voices. Prester John himself is extraordinarily irritating, because his character is basically that of Stupid Ignorant StrawmanFundamentalist!Christian who gets his mind blown. Part of my irritation is that apparently John had read pretty much zero theology, because any early christian church theologian worth his salt could have come up with way better answers than John did when the Pentexorians asked him theology questions. You can imagine that conversations where a twenty-first-century sophistication is asking a really, really stupid and ignorant guy questions are at best demolishing of straw men and at worst John sitting around stammering, "Uh, okay, guess you're right."
Then, a little further, and the book turned (well, somewhat; the Christian-bashing is still around; for example, the above quote is a beautifully done dark take on Paul -- but, um, sort of a set piece) into something else... a rumination on immortality and identity, and that part was really awesome.
Then I got almost to the end, and the Christianity part started to actually get interesting, and then... everything sort of ended in the middle and mushed into a pulp. (Actually, it mushes into a literal fictional pulp, but anyway.) ... I don't know what I think, because this is book 1 of a (three-part?) series, and I have no idea of how much of the stuff that abruptly ended in the middle is going to be taken up in subsequent books, but I suspect not the parts that I thought were really interesting... but maybe so, in which case I'll be pretty excited.
And then I got to the end, and Plot Happened, and Setup for Next Book happened, and, okay, whoa, yeah.
So in the end, I liked it, enough that I'll probably read the next two books. But it was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. And I suspect after reading the second and third books there will be backaction on my opinion of the first, though I do not know what it will be.
I think those who already love Valente will really love this book. I think those who have more than a passing familiarity with Christian theology will be annoyed by this book. I think that those who have no opinion on the first two things, but who like fantastical writing, will like this book very much, probably more than I did. I think (and am living proof) that it is possible to be annoyed by this book and still be impressed by it.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/63730.html.
3+/5 (subject to sequel revision). I finished my first Valente! So this is a book that I would never have read except on iPod. I read this in dribbles and drabbles while getting my hair cut, in airports, while getting gas for the car, and so on.
I had sort of a weird reaction to this book. It took me a really loooong time to get into it, for one thing, which is why I had to read it on iPod. I don't know that I take well to Valente's style. I mean, she is clearly a good writer, but I think that writers with distinct styles tend to polarize people into "love" and "don't love," and I'm definitely in the "don't love" camp with respect to Valente. (McKillip, who has a similar lyrical style, is totally in the "love" camp for me, although I certainly know a number of people who put her in the "don't love" pile. I have no idea why I love one and not the other.)
Then, around the third-to-halfway point, I decided I was kind of in love with its strange Pentexoreans and their ways of dealing with immortality.
Then, a little more than halfway through, it decided to turn into a Polemic Against Christianity, and I was all... uhhh, okay, what? What upset me about this development was not the polemic itself, which was annoying but not particularly upsetting (annoying not least because the beginning of the book had me hoping for some at least quasi-deep theological discussion), but the part where it seemed to be putting itself forward as avant-garde and daring for pointing out the flaws in Christianity. Um, no. About seven hundred years too late to be avant-garde (the Divine Comedy did it earlier and better), and almost thirty years too late to be daring (in the 80's Mists of Avalon might have sort-of been daring for pointing out the patriarchial hypocrisies of Christianity, but these days... not so much). Also, it annoyed me that the Pentexoreans are basically sophisticated twenty-first-century voices. Prester John himself is extraordinarily irritating, because his character is basically that of Stupid Ignorant StrawmanFundamentalist!Christian who gets his mind blown. Part of my irritation is that apparently John had read pretty much zero theology, because any early christian church theologian worth his salt could have come up with way better answers than John did when the Pentexorians asked him theology questions. You can imagine that conversations where a twenty-first-century sophistication is asking a really, really stupid and ignorant guy questions are at best demolishing of straw men and at worst John sitting around stammering, "Uh, okay, guess you're right."
Then, a little further, and the book turned (well, somewhat; the Christian-bashing is still around; for example, the above quote is a beautifully done dark take on Paul -- but, um, sort of a set piece) into something else... a rumination on immortality and identity, and that part was really awesome.
Then I got almost to the end, and the Christianity part started to actually get interesting, and then... everything sort of ended in the middle and mushed into a pulp. (Actually, it mushes into a literal fictional pulp, but anyway.) ... I don't know what I think, because this is book 1 of a (three-part?) series, and I have no idea of how much of the stuff that abruptly ended in the middle is going to be taken up in subsequent books, but I suspect not the parts that I thought were really interesting... but maybe so, in which case I'll be pretty excited.
And then I got to the end, and Plot Happened, and Setup for Next Book happened, and, okay, whoa, yeah.
So in the end, I liked it, enough that I'll probably read the next two books. But it was a bit of a rollercoaster for me. And I suspect after reading the second and third books there will be backaction on my opinion of the first, though I do not know what it will be.
I think those who already love Valente will really love this book. I think those who have more than a passing familiarity with Christian theology will be annoyed by this book. I think that those who have no opinion on the first two things, but who like fantastical writing, will like this book very much, probably more than I did. I think (and am living proof) that it is possible to be annoyed by this book and still be impressed by it.
This entry was originally posted at http://cahn.dreamwidth.org/63730.html.