Mini review round up! Devices & Desires and The Snow Queen
So, I've been trundling along getting busier than usual. I blame school and a short run of "meh" books.
Devices and Desires by KJ Parker seemed interesting when it started out. There was a nice juxtaposition of societies between the hyper industrialized, very rigid Mezentia and the agarian Dukedoms that border it. The initial "battle" between the Mezentians and the Eremians does allow the reader to get a good picture of Miel Ducas and Duke Orsea. Ziani's escape from Mezentia also allows one something to latch onto character-wise (as Mezentia frowns very heavily on innovation and even more so on portable innovation).
There is a lot of great set up for something really awesome... but it gets horridly bogged down by a lack of focus on character drama or nations or anything else really. Instead there's quite a bit about details that did not seem to have any major bearing on the story at hand, like King Fashion (which would be OK as a side note, but not as a focus) or Ziani's engineering specifications (which were ok to illustrate his perfectionism, but one gets really tired of hearing about his machine specifications when one could think about his wife and plans for revenge or whatever). The characters simply stagnated over the course of reading and the societal juxtaposition wasn't illustrated enough for that to hold my attention either. The best comparison I can think of to describe how this book felt to me was the David Lynch rendition of Dune. It was so over focused on detail that actual plot gets lost.
I have to say that I could not get all the way through the book and will concede the possibility that something might happen to tie everything up and start it moving at a quicker pace during the last hundred pages or so, but I kept finding other more interesting things to do instead (like schoolwork). In any case, I haven't felt the slightest need to pick up this book again. If I want a dry read, my textbooks will be there.
I was hoping for the Snow Queen to be a nice light read. It certainly is a light read, but I have to call it "OK" rather than "nice." As with Lackey's books along a similar vein, The Snow Queen bases itself off of a classic fairy tale or myth or ballet story of the same name. Alexsia, the snow fairy Godmother, finds someone taking her name and doing evil under a similar moniker and the pervasive magical force known as the Tradition has been taking notice. Since Alexsia as a "fairy" Godmother is one of the people in charge of watching over the Tradition and ensuring happy endings, she of course has to go about seeing what the matter is and setting it to rights.
The major problem seemed to be Alexsia herself. Since she usually did some variation on the Snow Queen tale herself to help keep clever young men from becoming morally bankrupt idiots, she of course knew how to break the power hold of her quarry and the main drama should have been to find out who it was in the first place. However, since everything is found out through magical inquiry, this becomes something of a dull point and any sense of intrigue that could have happened is lost because of it.
In previous books, there was a good twist on some part of the tale, like George rescuing the princess from the dragon... except George is short for Georgina or Cinderella becoming a Godmother herself instead of marrying the prince. Not so much with this tale. Alexsia makes much about participating in a tale going along a Traditional path, but it felt rather dull overall. There wasn't anything hugely objectionable, but I had been expecting better based on previous experience (I like One Good Knight especially).
Devices and Desires by KJ Parker seemed interesting when it started out. There was a nice juxtaposition of societies between the hyper industrialized, very rigid Mezentia and the agarian Dukedoms that border it. The initial "battle" between the Mezentians and the Eremians does allow the reader to get a good picture of Miel Ducas and Duke Orsea. Ziani's escape from Mezentia also allows one something to latch onto character-wise (as Mezentia frowns very heavily on innovation and even more so on portable innovation).
There is a lot of great set up for something really awesome... but it gets horridly bogged down by a lack of focus on character drama or nations or anything else really. Instead there's quite a bit about details that did not seem to have any major bearing on the story at hand, like King Fashion (which would be OK as a side note, but not as a focus) or Ziani's engineering specifications (which were ok to illustrate his perfectionism, but one gets really tired of hearing about his machine specifications when one could think about his wife and plans for revenge or whatever). The characters simply stagnated over the course of reading and the societal juxtaposition wasn't illustrated enough for that to hold my attention either. The best comparison I can think of to describe how this book felt to me was the David Lynch rendition of Dune. It was so over focused on detail that actual plot gets lost.
I have to say that I could not get all the way through the book and will concede the possibility that something might happen to tie everything up and start it moving at a quicker pace during the last hundred pages or so, but I kept finding other more interesting things to do instead (like schoolwork). In any case, I haven't felt the slightest need to pick up this book again. If I want a dry read, my textbooks will be there.
I was hoping for the Snow Queen to be a nice light read. It certainly is a light read, but I have to call it "OK" rather than "nice." As with Lackey's books along a similar vein, The Snow Queen bases itself off of a classic fairy tale or myth or ballet story of the same name. Alexsia, the snow fairy Godmother, finds someone taking her name and doing evil under a similar moniker and the pervasive magical force known as the Tradition has been taking notice. Since Alexsia as a "fairy" Godmother is one of the people in charge of watching over the Tradition and ensuring happy endings, she of course has to go about seeing what the matter is and setting it to rights.
The major problem seemed to be Alexsia herself. Since she usually did some variation on the Snow Queen tale herself to help keep clever young men from becoming morally bankrupt idiots, she of course knew how to break the power hold of her quarry and the main drama should have been to find out who it was in the first place. However, since everything is found out through magical inquiry, this becomes something of a dull point and any sense of intrigue that could have happened is lost because of it.
In previous books, there was a good twist on some part of the tale, like George rescuing the princess from the dragon... except George is short for Georgina or Cinderella becoming a Godmother herself instead of marrying the prince. Not so much with this tale. Alexsia makes much about participating in a tale going along a Traditional path, but it felt rather dull overall. There wasn't anything hugely objectionable, but I had been expecting better based on previous experience (I like One Good Knight especially).