Brennan, Marie: Doppelganger
Doppelganger
Author: Marie Brennan
Genre: Fantasy/Adventure
Pages: 388
Final Thoughts: A quick read, strong enough that I'll look for the next.
This is one of my required novels for my SHU program; I chose it largely on a recommendation from calico_reaction, who mentioned its interesting use of religion. Since I'm dealing with religious elements in my own work, it seemed appropriate. The premise intrigued me - that every witch is split in two just after birth and the second half, the nonmagical doppelganger, must be killed to ensure the survival of the "true" witch. I've also always liked the idea of magics based on the old elemental (air/earth/water/fire) system, which this touches, and I realize now that I've finished the book that I'd like to achieve something of the same relatively modern storytelling tone in the midst of a more traditional fantasy setting, so I'm glad four times over that I've read it.
Normally I try to avoid spoilers in my reviews, but because I'm more or less dissecting this for the purposes of my education I'll give you fair warning now that if you intend to read the book, you might want to skip the details here and scroll down to the last few paragraphs, where I wrap up with plenty of plot ambiguity restored.
I'll start with POV, because I have read several comments about the interesting things that happen there. In the beginning, the points of view between Miryo (the witch) and Mirage (the doppelganger) are very distinct, and POV changes are clearly delineated by chapter breaks. As the two come closer to each other physically, POV changes occur from scene to scene within the chapters, and as they finally interact with one another we find a sort of "joined-POV" narration. Normally, limited 3rd person narration focuses on one person at a time for information about thoughts and internal reactions, and when the "camera" pans away from Miryo and Mirage that certainly happens, but those two begin to blend into a combined person in terms of narration relatively early, I thought. I think the change might have been more effective (i.e. less noticeable even when looking back at it) if it had happened more gradually, but its quick shift does mirror the characters' immediate feelings of mutual trust and familiarity, so I can see why Brennan decided to structure it this way. The only times I found head-hopping issues were when we hopped to someone other than Mirage or Miryo without a scene change. I recall it happening with Mirage's fellow hunter, Eclipse, as a way to finish out several chapters, and it distracted me every time. Otherwise, I found the voice(s) to be consistent and believable.
As I mentioned, I've always liked the idea of elemental magics, and this handled that aspect differently than many books I've read. Aside from the fact that Brennan creates a fifth "element," that of the Void, which adds an interesting and unique twist to the balance, she creates a world where although a witch chooses a branch of magic to follow, that doesn't close her off to the use of other magics. For instance, an Air witch can still use Earth or Fire energies for her magic, though they may not usually come in handy for her usual tasks. Witches can't touch the Void like they can the other elements, which plays a key point in the plot.
We get a fairly clear picture of the organizational structure of the witches' community throughout the course of the book, but I felt the religious aspects were less clearly addressed. For a while I was unclear about the fact that the witches were not in *direct* service to the Goddess, but rather that there was a separate priesthood (priestesshood?) to regulate worship of the Goddess, whose five aspects correlate with the five magical elements: Fire/Maiden, Air/Bride, Water/Mother, Earth/Crone, Void/Warrior. Though the priests look down on the witches, saying they are "unbalanced", the first witch was ostensibly given her magical power as a reward for special closeness to the Goddess, and the witches all honor the deity carefully.
Both Mirage and her fellow hunter, Eclipse, essentially a brother to her, and all their colleagues - even rival, "evil" hunters - seem to take their piety seriously, offering prayers at various points and stopping in temples for guidance and blessings throughout the story.
I don't have so much trouble believing that an entire country would honestly believe in a deity, and the fact that the religion isn't as fully developed in front of the reader as it could be isn't a huge issue to me. My nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right about the scenario centers, I think, on the fact that every one of these "pious" characters also swears and curses fairly regularly in a manner that I feel any pious follower would feel a certain amount of guilt about. I can believe that mercenary hunters who pay lip service to the Goddess would curse like - well, like soldiers any time they weren't in a public enough place to feel like it would matter - but it doesn't jibe for those same people to offer sincere prayer and voluntarily ask for guidance from the deity they were not-quite-blaspheming a few pages earlier.
I should mention that because of the slight underdevelopment of the priestly organizations, there's no clear idea about whether the curses are considered acceptable for common use, so I'm just going off of my own experience that most religions place a taboo on certain usages, and it the very use of these curses suggests an un-pious base to them. It gives the impression that this religion is a shallow thing in their lives, not that it informs and directs their actions as faithful followers. I'd believe either the piety or the shallow/naive approach, but not simultaneously in all the characters.
On the subject of curses, I always find it interesting when an author makes up curses suitable for their individual worlds - I thought the idea of cursing someone or something "to the Void" was clever and appropriate, but I wished Brennan hadn't tried to make Void into a multi-tasking curse. She tried to make it take the place of two or three common four-letter words from English, and the transfer just didn't work for me, except in the case of substituting the Void for hell.
Moving on, I liked Brennan's world building. She's obviously done her homework, and accounts of travel and its trials are given enough treatment to allow sympathy with a road-weary character (and the necessities a life on the road entails - like losing time because the horses need to be reshod) but not enough to bog down the narrative. I did find myself turning quite often to check the map in the front, because there are so many regions and towns that I usually had to check to be sure I was "going the right direction" in my head to follow the characters. I found myself double checking town locations even though I read very quickly, so I don't know how much trouble someone who read over a longer period of time might have keeping track of things. Without the map, I would have felt lost, and I think that's something of a weakness, but on the other hand checking never distracted me so much that I couldn't jump straight back into the story once I'd oriented myself.
The character focus in the book is clearly set on Mirage and Miryo, which is nice in that it lets the reader really get inside their heads, but I felt that most of the secondary characters were shorted as a result. Even Eclipse, who travels with Mirage for the vast majority of the book, is still something of an enigma by the end. He is a static character, though he watches the dynamic changes in Mirage and Miryo and gives a certain perspective on them, and I wished he'd had a better/bigger role in the end.
Some have mentioned that they wished for more of an indication of the deep bond between Mirage and Eclipse, and that they had a hard time believing there was no physical attraction between them. I have mixed feelings about this, because I can identify very clearly with the idea of really, truly having a brother-sister bond with someone who isn't your real sibling, without anything "deeper" in terms of sexuality coming into play at all. And in response to the fact that Mirage is naked in front of him (twice because she had major injuries that needed immediate treatment, and he was the only option), without any apparent reaction from him in the presence of a naked woman, I'd put forth the idea that if they are as close as they have been described, trained and worked together as often as it's implied they do, then he's had to deal with these injuries of hers before (she manages to get injured with frightening regularity) and I'd not be surprised if he's achieved the same detachment as an EMT. It's an injury to be healed, or his sister dies. That's the end of it.
That's not to say I didn't wonder once or twice myself if there really wasn't something else going on between the two of them. I think the urge to see Eclipse desire Mirage in some way is a knee-jerk reaction to the fact that we really don't learn that much about him. We know why she attached to him - she was an outsider when she enrolled for hunter training, and he befriended her - but we don't know what his motivation was for attaching himself to her. Was he an outsider as well? Is he just a compassionate sucker for the outcast? What makes him tick? Why is he a hunter? Because we don't know as much as we want to about him or their "sibling" connection, we look for something else we can understand, and the jump to romance between what would be considered lead male and female characters is, unfortunately, so frequent in fantasy that it's the first thing we look for.
A final note on character descriptions: I think Brennan did a great job of describing both Mirage and Miryo in their reactions to seeing one another's actions and reactions in the first few days of meeting one another. For example, at one point Mirage knows exactly what Miryo means with a raised eyebrow, without having to exchange words, because Mirage uses the same gesture often herself. And Miryo's reactions to Mirage's hasty choices reveal as much about Miryo and how she thinks as they do about Mirage.
I felt like some of the heavier issues here are shelved in favor of a light adventure story. Miryo's moral struggle about killing her doppelganger, which should have been disposed of as an infant before receiving a soul at the touch of moonlight, is almost entirely glossed over. She angsts about it here and there as she hunts Mirage, but I didn't get a sense of its gut-wrenching intensity. A witch dedicated to helping anything in need, suddenly required to take the life of her own other half (which now does have a soul, whether or not it should) would be completely distraught about it, regardless of whether the alternative was her magic eventually destroying the witch herself.
And then as soon as Miryo decides not to kill Mirage right away, they both dedicate themselves to proving the common wisdom about doppelgangers wrong without a real, cohesive reason to do so. Again, this could be Brennan's attempt at a not-so-subtle reminder of how similar the two are, that they would automatically align on a project, but I can't help thinking there would have been a great deal of friction about how to approach the problem - after all, Mirage has been trained with a lifetime of what Miryo sees as frightening, dangerous directness, while Miryo has always studied, always investigated, always tried to move with a plan. Yeah, eventually they'll settle the differences and learn to work together, but I can't see that happening as seamlessly as it does in the book.
Despite all of this, I did really enjoy the book - the premise is very strong, and I'm interested enough in the world and these characters that I look forward to finding a copy of its sequel. Part of this is because I do hope I get more depth in some characters I want to know better now. I have to say I didn't see the solution coming in the form it did at all. In fact, I rather liked the idea that as two halves of the same person who couldn't be killed except by each other they might join up together and work as a pair, invincible and hunting down evil where ever they could find it in all its various forms, whether mundane or magical. However, I do have to admit the book's ending is more practical, and I think I like it equally well.
Oh, and the mage-battle at the end when she faces down all five Prime witches and wins was really cool, too. I do like mage-battles. :)
Doppelganger gave me ideas about things I'd like to achieve in my own writing, and helped me think about the role I want religion to have in my book and how to make it seem rooted and integral to the appropriate characters. I really enjoyed it on many levels - finished it in about 7 hours of reading, split by only enough time to get a full night of sleep, which is something of an indicator of its pulling power.
My overall impression is that it seems hasty - as if Brennan had an outline, and she and her editor got so excited about putting the book out that the last few passes through to add flesh to the outline bones just didn't happen before it went to print. That's not to say it's all skin and bones, just that I would've liked a few more pounds on the frame here and there.
I'll be reading the second, Witch and Warrior, as soon as I can find the book and the time, and I'll be hoping for more meat on its bones. If I get it, I think Marie Brennan might become an author whose books I anticipate when they're released. If not, I'll be disappointed that such potential never quite came to fruition.
Book #14