2011 Book 59: Endurance
Book 59: Endurance (Green, Book 2) by Jay Lake, isbn 9780765326768, 320 pages, Tor, $26.99
The Premise: (from Goodreads) Green is back in Copper Downs. Purchased from her father in sunny Selistan when she was four years old, she was harshly raised to be a courtesan, companion, and bedmate of the Immortal Duke of Copper Downs. But Green rebelled. Green killed the Duke, and many others, and won her freedom. Yet she is still claimed by the gods and goddesses of her world, and they still require her service. Their demands are greater than any duke’s could have been.
Godslayers have come to the Stone Coast, magicians whose cult is dedicated to destroying the many gods of Green’s world. In the turmoil following the Immortal Duke’s murder, Green made a God out of her power and her memories. Now the gods turn to her to protect them from the Slayers.
My Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: Three stars might be the lowest rating I've ever given a Jay Lake book. But I have a good relationship with Jay, and I think he expects me to be honest in my reviews and not just give extra stars or say nice things just because we've chatted on Livejournal and I've interviewed him for my website. And if I'm being honest ... ENDURANCE didn't work for me as well as its predecessor GREEN. I think I've delayed writing this review for as long as I have (Goodreads tells me I finished reading the ARC I was graced with back on September 29) because I've struggled with putting into words exactly why the book didn't work for me.
It's not Jay's prose, which is as strong as ever. Jay is fantastic at creating a sense of place in everything he writes. Without the dense descriptive verbiage other fantasy writers employ, Jay makes the locations of ENDURANCE as important as the characters. Whether Green is lingering in the hills above Copper Downs encountering ghosts and wild-women, stalking the streets of the city, wreaking havoc in the Textile Bourse or resting in the nascent Temple of Endurance, her surroundings play as much a role in what happens as the people around her do. Striking the balance of enough description without overdoing it is, I think, a bit harder in a first person narrative and Jay pulls it off. Likewise, the characters themselves stay in character; returning characters feel familiar, new characters fit in appropriately. Any change in personality is a logical progression from what the characters experience.
No, I think my slight disappointment with the book boils down to two problems:
1. It just feels like a "middle book." Like most first books, GREEN wrapped up very well even while leaving questions about Green's future open to sequels. ENDURANCE starts strong from that point, re-establishing who Green is, where she is, and what has passed since the first book ended. Jay parcels out pertinent information from the previous book when it's necessary (easy to do with a narrator who is clearly telling the story from a removed-in-time vantage point) without resorting to the dreaded "info-dump" (the potential problem of a first-person narrator). But plot strands intended to be resolved in the concluding volume of the trilogy are introduced part-way through the book and as a reader I was almost immediately aware that not all of these plot strands could, or would, be resolved in the immediate volume. While I was satisfied with most of the action of the book (as I'll discuss in a moment), I still couldn't shake that feeling that the book doesn't stand completely on its own. It nagged just enough to bring my enjoyment of the book down a touch.
2. I realized that while I feel for Green and the situation she finds herself in, I didn't really like her in this book. Being privy to her internal monologues made me want to slap her upside the head and tell her to wake up and pay attention and stop being so obstinate. Now, on one level this is a good reaction to have -- I'm a fan of those moments in a book where the reader recognizes some danger the main character doesn't, I think it heightens tension and there were moments in this book where the tension was palpable for this very reason. But there were a large number of moments where I felt that Green was just choosing to ignore lessons I thought she'd already learned (for instance, about giving unconditional trust to strangers just because they seem nice, or about assuming you know what someone else's motivations are just because it's what you'd do). The danger of her situation, the hard decisions she has to make -- I understood all of that, none of it was lost on me, and yes I do get that sometimes, in tense situations, we forget lessons we've obviously learned. But this feeling lingered throughout the book for me, and that's not a great thing when the entire book is from that character's POV.
Now, from those two comments one might walk away from this review thinking I hated the book, so let me be clear: 3 stars means I liked the book, I just didn't love it. In addition to the aforementioned strong prose and sense of place and characters, the main action of Endurance propels along at a great pace. The plot of the Godslayers coming to Copper Downs, and Green once again being co-opted by godly powers to save the day, is a compelling one and Jay sweeps us along with it. We the readers realize what is going on long before Green does, and that ratchets the tension up even further: will SHE figure it out in time. And of course, as with the end of book one, the final series of confrontations are BIG, dramatic, explosive, borderline insane.
So there's a lot to recommend ENDURANCE. And your reaction may be different in terms of the book feeling like a middle book and in terms of how you feel about Green by the end of it. I will say this, in closing: even though I found myself not liking Green very much by the end of the book, I still want to see how her story resolves when Jay releases KALIMPURA. She may not be likable, but she is compelling. And Jay Lake has earned my trust as an author.
The Premise: (from Goodreads) Green is back in Copper Downs. Purchased from her father in sunny Selistan when she was four years old, she was harshly raised to be a courtesan, companion, and bedmate of the Immortal Duke of Copper Downs. But Green rebelled. Green killed the Duke, and many others, and won her freedom. Yet she is still claimed by the gods and goddesses of her world, and they still require her service. Their demands are greater than any duke’s could have been.
Godslayers have come to the Stone Coast, magicians whose cult is dedicated to destroying the many gods of Green’s world. In the turmoil following the Immortal Duke’s murder, Green made a God out of her power and her memories. Now the gods turn to her to protect them from the Slayers.
My Rating: 3 stars
My Thoughts: Three stars might be the lowest rating I've ever given a Jay Lake book. But I have a good relationship with Jay, and I think he expects me to be honest in my reviews and not just give extra stars or say nice things just because we've chatted on Livejournal and I've interviewed him for my website. And if I'm being honest ... ENDURANCE didn't work for me as well as its predecessor GREEN. I think I've delayed writing this review for as long as I have (Goodreads tells me I finished reading the ARC I was graced with back on September 29) because I've struggled with putting into words exactly why the book didn't work for me.
It's not Jay's prose, which is as strong as ever. Jay is fantastic at creating a sense of place in everything he writes. Without the dense descriptive verbiage other fantasy writers employ, Jay makes the locations of ENDURANCE as important as the characters. Whether Green is lingering in the hills above Copper Downs encountering ghosts and wild-women, stalking the streets of the city, wreaking havoc in the Textile Bourse or resting in the nascent Temple of Endurance, her surroundings play as much a role in what happens as the people around her do. Striking the balance of enough description without overdoing it is, I think, a bit harder in a first person narrative and Jay pulls it off. Likewise, the characters themselves stay in character; returning characters feel familiar, new characters fit in appropriately. Any change in personality is a logical progression from what the characters experience.
No, I think my slight disappointment with the book boils down to two problems:
1. It just feels like a "middle book." Like most first books, GREEN wrapped up very well even while leaving questions about Green's future open to sequels. ENDURANCE starts strong from that point, re-establishing who Green is, where she is, and what has passed since the first book ended. Jay parcels out pertinent information from the previous book when it's necessary (easy to do with a narrator who is clearly telling the story from a removed-in-time vantage point) without resorting to the dreaded "info-dump" (the potential problem of a first-person narrator). But plot strands intended to be resolved in the concluding volume of the trilogy are introduced part-way through the book and as a reader I was almost immediately aware that not all of these plot strands could, or would, be resolved in the immediate volume. While I was satisfied with most of the action of the book (as I'll discuss in a moment), I still couldn't shake that feeling that the book doesn't stand completely on its own. It nagged just enough to bring my enjoyment of the book down a touch.
2. I realized that while I feel for Green and the situation she finds herself in, I didn't really like her in this book. Being privy to her internal monologues made me want to slap her upside the head and tell her to wake up and pay attention and stop being so obstinate. Now, on one level this is a good reaction to have -- I'm a fan of those moments in a book where the reader recognizes some danger the main character doesn't, I think it heightens tension and there were moments in this book where the tension was palpable for this very reason. But there were a large number of moments where I felt that Green was just choosing to ignore lessons I thought she'd already learned (for instance, about giving unconditional trust to strangers just because they seem nice, or about assuming you know what someone else's motivations are just because it's what you'd do). The danger of her situation, the hard decisions she has to make -- I understood all of that, none of it was lost on me, and yes I do get that sometimes, in tense situations, we forget lessons we've obviously learned. But this feeling lingered throughout the book for me, and that's not a great thing when the entire book is from that character's POV.
Now, from those two comments one might walk away from this review thinking I hated the book, so let me be clear: 3 stars means I liked the book, I just didn't love it. In addition to the aforementioned strong prose and sense of place and characters, the main action of Endurance propels along at a great pace. The plot of the Godslayers coming to Copper Downs, and Green once again being co-opted by godly powers to save the day, is a compelling one and Jay sweeps us along with it. We the readers realize what is going on long before Green does, and that ratchets the tension up even further: will SHE figure it out in time. And of course, as with the end of book one, the final series of confrontations are BIG, dramatic, explosive, borderline insane.
So there's a lot to recommend ENDURANCE. And your reaction may be different in terms of the book feeling like a middle book and in terms of how you feel about Green by the end of it. I will say this, in closing: even though I found myself not liking Green very much by the end of the book, I still want to see how her story resolves when Jay releases KALIMPURA. She may not be likable, but she is compelling. And Jay Lake has earned my trust as an author.