Short-circuiting good story drama
I've enjoyed most of Kate Elliott's books, so of course I checked out her new novella The Servant Mage as soon as I could. I...mostly really liked it. Fellian is a Lamplighter, a fire mage bound to indentured servitude under the relatively-new Liberationist regime. The Liberationists overthrew the dragon-elemental Monarchy in the name of equality and freedom and promptly set about oppressing everyone but the new ruling party, as you'd expect. Then a band of rebel Monarchists offer Fellian a chance to escape if she'll use her powers to help them rescue a royal baby before the Liberationists murder it. They show her that she's capable of much more than the Liberationists claim, and that her power doesn't spring from the contamination of an evil demon after all. But can she trust the Monarchists either?
Spoilers from here on out.
No, of course not. They're monarchists! That is, the particular band she falls in with seem quite nice on an individual level and seem quite prepared to accept that she's a reasonably talented person they can respect despite her common birth. They don't have rules like "only nobles get to ride horses" out of malice; that's just how it's done. And the dragon-monarchs are legitimately born with more supernatural power than anyone else, so it isn't completely random to think that they could use that power to steward the country. But they still are condemning people to servitude based on birth, which is no better than the reasons the Liberationists use. And while rescuing babies is great, what about all the innocent people they put in harm's way to do it? Why should an accident of magical talent make one person's life worth so much more than everyone else's?
So, an interesting setup with lots of dramatic potential. There are a lot of great details along the way which hint at a large, rich world we'd like to explore without overwhelming the story. For example, once Fellian finally gets back to her remote mountain province, we find out that "fellian" is the local name of a tenacious nettle, which for cultural and historical reasons is also used as a symbol of a place with rooms for rent. Not only is the explanation something I can believe as a realistic way symbols often have multiple meanings depending on context because of the way people adapt them over time, but it means Fellian literally gets to follow her "self" from town to town on the way home. Neat! And the reason she can hope to reunite with at least one family member is interesting too: the Liberationists executed her mother and elder father, but weren't local and didn't understand that polyandry was common in this remote province, so it just didn't occur to them that her younger father was a member of the household too. Maybe he's still alive!
Except...it just didn't have the zing that most of her other books do. At first I thought it was a problem of length. And it could definitely stand a little more room to fill out the story a bit. But I think the bigger problem was that the story withheld one crucial piece of information from us for the "surprise" factor, and the "surprise" wasn't as dramatic as everything that could have happened if we'd known it all along.
See, the Monarchists recruit Fellian because her parents were executed by the Liberationists for distributing seditious literature and they assume that means she and her parents were Monarchists. But as Fellian explains in her climactic refusal to join the cause permanently after she's saved their bacon in the present crisis, that isn't true. Her parents' "crime" was teaching people to read, and the Monarchists weren't any more supportive than the Liberationists. Neither faction is really good for people of her class. When she gets home, she realizes that what she really wants is independence for her province. Maybe they can get it by bargaining with the Monarchists--we'll help you if you leave us alone. And maybe the servants in the Monarchist camp will be allies...
Which is great, but it means the narrative had to hide her thoughts and feelings from us every time this naturally would have come up. It helps that they were on the run and constantly dodging Liberationist soldiers and supernatural dangers, so she has good reasons for any ruminations to get interrupted. But still. If we'd learned the truth as soon as Fellian realized the Monarchists thought she was a sympathizer, we could have had drama from her trying to hide her true feelings from them long enough to gain her freedom. We could have had drama from her getting to know several Monarchists to be much better people than she'd assumed, and wondering if maybe their cause wasn't so bad after all--or at least whether teaming up with them permanently might be her and her country's best option. We could have had her tempted to join them simply because even the dangerous life of a Monarchist rebel might be better than either staying in indentured servitude or risking everything to go home and maybe suffer even worse losses. Her refusal could have been a decision we weren't sure she would have the strength to make instead of a "big reveal." And after a whole novella of feeling hopelessly caught between two sides which both offer Fellian's people nothing, her independence plan would feel like a longed-for glimmer of hope rather than a new idea we hardly have time to read before the story is over. I think that even with the story crammed into this short novella format, it would have felt much broader and richer if we'd had this development along the way.
In other words, Film Crit Hulk is onto something with his repeated statements about holding too much information back for too long being bad for dramatic tension. (See: the Finding Nemo Opening Law: "99% of the time you want to put your main character’s core motivation in or near the opening, do not save it for a later reveal.") Instead of creating a great mystery with an exciting reveal, it often short-circuits the even better drama we could have had.
Spoilers from here on out.
No, of course not. They're monarchists! That is, the particular band she falls in with seem quite nice on an individual level and seem quite prepared to accept that she's a reasonably talented person they can respect despite her common birth. They don't have rules like "only nobles get to ride horses" out of malice; that's just how it's done. And the dragon-monarchs are legitimately born with more supernatural power than anyone else, so it isn't completely random to think that they could use that power to steward the country. But they still are condemning people to servitude based on birth, which is no better than the reasons the Liberationists use. And while rescuing babies is great, what about all the innocent people they put in harm's way to do it? Why should an accident of magical talent make one person's life worth so much more than everyone else's?
So, an interesting setup with lots of dramatic potential. There are a lot of great details along the way which hint at a large, rich world we'd like to explore without overwhelming the story. For example, once Fellian finally gets back to her remote mountain province, we find out that "fellian" is the local name of a tenacious nettle, which for cultural and historical reasons is also used as a symbol of a place with rooms for rent. Not only is the explanation something I can believe as a realistic way symbols often have multiple meanings depending on context because of the way people adapt them over time, but it means Fellian literally gets to follow her "self" from town to town on the way home. Neat! And the reason she can hope to reunite with at least one family member is interesting too: the Liberationists executed her mother and elder father, but weren't local and didn't understand that polyandry was common in this remote province, so it just didn't occur to them that her younger father was a member of the household too. Maybe he's still alive!
Except...it just didn't have the zing that most of her other books do. At first I thought it was a problem of length. And it could definitely stand a little more room to fill out the story a bit. But I think the bigger problem was that the story withheld one crucial piece of information from us for the "surprise" factor, and the "surprise" wasn't as dramatic as everything that could have happened if we'd known it all along.
See, the Monarchists recruit Fellian because her parents were executed by the Liberationists for distributing seditious literature and they assume that means she and her parents were Monarchists. But as Fellian explains in her climactic refusal to join the cause permanently after she's saved their bacon in the present crisis, that isn't true. Her parents' "crime" was teaching people to read, and the Monarchists weren't any more supportive than the Liberationists. Neither faction is really good for people of her class. When she gets home, she realizes that what she really wants is independence for her province. Maybe they can get it by bargaining with the Monarchists--we'll help you if you leave us alone. And maybe the servants in the Monarchist camp will be allies...
Which is great, but it means the narrative had to hide her thoughts and feelings from us every time this naturally would have come up. It helps that they were on the run and constantly dodging Liberationist soldiers and supernatural dangers, so she has good reasons for any ruminations to get interrupted. But still. If we'd learned the truth as soon as Fellian realized the Monarchists thought she was a sympathizer, we could have had drama from her trying to hide her true feelings from them long enough to gain her freedom. We could have had drama from her getting to know several Monarchists to be much better people than she'd assumed, and wondering if maybe their cause wasn't so bad after all--or at least whether teaming up with them permanently might be her and her country's best option. We could have had her tempted to join them simply because even the dangerous life of a Monarchist rebel might be better than either staying in indentured servitude or risking everything to go home and maybe suffer even worse losses. Her refusal could have been a decision we weren't sure she would have the strength to make instead of a "big reveal." And after a whole novella of feeling hopelessly caught between two sides which both offer Fellian's people nothing, her independence plan would feel like a longed-for glimmer of hope rather than a new idea we hardly have time to read before the story is over. I think that even with the story crammed into this short novella format, it would have felt much broader and richer if we'd had this development along the way.
In other words, Film Crit Hulk is onto something with his repeated statements about holding too much information back for too long being bad for dramatic tension. (See: the Finding Nemo Opening Law: "99% of the time you want to put your main character’s core motivation in or near the opening, do not save it for a later reveal.") Instead of creating a great mystery with an exciting reveal, it often short-circuits the even better drama we could have had.