Beyond the Ruins of Elechan

Dear Publishing, can we just stop now? NOW? Last decade would be better, but now will do.

So I picked up Brandon Sanderson's 'Warbreaker'. Which gets high praise from various sources, among them Romantic Times (I have an almost perfect track record there: anything RT loves, I dislike strongly.) But among the praise, among the things that people felt the need to highlight about this book and this writer are 'strong female characters' (Booklist), 'outstanding heroines and heroes' (Michael Moorcock), 'strong, believable characters' (Libraryjournal).
And 'subtle prose, notable for its quiet irony' (Moorcock), 'master storyteller' (Libraryjournal), 'master of large-scale stories' (Booklist).

So that set the stage for what I was expecting. (I *did* try to check my own impressions of Sanderson at the door. This isn't a first novel, he's an established, acclaimed author with more than half a dozen novels under his belt.

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Yeah. Subtle prose, quiet irony - not exactly the words I would have chosen.

So then we get to chapter one. Which opens with a female character, seventeen, who is idle (ok, she is the fourth daughter of a minor king). She's a wilful teenager - escaping her duties, such as they are, breaking local laws, not even bothering to learn why, exactly, those laws are in place (hey, it's only for fun, right? And I didn't like the law anyway). Let me repeat: the female protagonist with which the book opens, apart from being very young and very inexperienced _spends her day idling and setting the world up for trouble_. Other than being passive-agressive, she's simply passive. She has no ambitions, no dreams, no hobbies, no nothing. And as much lack of knowledge as she's displaying, she has to have worked at that.

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I'm tired of reading this story. I'm tired of reading books about manly men and spoiled girl-children.

The next scene opens with Siri's father revealing that he knows exactly what the political situation is like, and, yes, war is on the cards: but the plot is better served by an innocent, stupid little girl of seventeen (going on eleven) than by a woman of any age who understands the politics of her home country and seeks to serve it as best she can and who comes up with cunning ploys to throw the situation around and to save her home from invasion-

But no. That cannot be. If females aren't kept in their place - inferior to men, restricted to the domestic sphere, endangering others through their lack of knowledge and foresight, it appears as if the world will collapse. Or maybe it's impossible for certain writers/editors/publishers to imagine that there should _be_ other types of female characters - ones who stand at the centre of their own stories, who are neither young nor beautiful, and who are not paired with older, more experienced males; female characters who end up having better insights and skills than male characters, females who save male characters rather than exist to be saved by them, who are on equal footing. And who may be younger or older, experienced or inexperienced, but who are never inferior or put on a pedestal.

I'm sure this book has its good points, it's interesting plot (though I cannot find the magic 'system' as unique and never-seen-before as it has been praised; it's magic. Not entirely run-of-the-mill, but still magic that feels like a 'system' rather than, well, magical. There's very little of the numinous in the exact weighing and calculating of how many souls' worth of Breath a character has in him. Once upon a time, I would have ignored the infantilisation of half the human race; once upon a time I would not have noticed. (I found one of the first fantasies I've read, where it's all about teh menz and women have their agenda taken away as soon as the heroes come onto the stage… my current self said 'ugh' and did not want to read on.). But at the same time I am tired of book after book after book in which half the human race gets a footnote or two. And let's not talk about minorities or characters with disabilities or social structures other than one man, one woman, 2.4 children. (Quite often with the mother either dead or so lightweight that she might as well not be there.).

Bored now.

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This is the second volume in a series of mysteries set in an Elizabethan theatre.

This book has all the usual strengths of Marston's work. The only reason these books aren't in the first tier of books I adore is that they are mysteries - they are centred _around_ a mystery plot, using omniscient viewpoint, they dip into and out of the plot from a multitude of angles. The books I love best in the whole wide world are character-driven books, so this is a mismatch - but these books are, in my opinion, very good examples of where the bar should hang:

- the background is interesting enough that they never feel infodumpy to me. On the contrary, I have the feeling that I am learning things - I have studied Elizabethan theatre briefly, and the information in the books slots into that - they feel exceedingly well researched.

- teh wymmenz are right there. The female characters are plentiful, talking to each other (and not just about men), they have their own agendas and personalities and they are not seen through the male gaze. You have neither 'exceptional woman' nor only modern thinking egalitarian characters; it's a realistic mixture. So. Much. Win.

- it's a mystery. I mean, I real honest-to-god mystery, with mysterious things going on that the protagonist needs to solve. And yes, people die eventually, but not many of them. Compared to dozens of modern mysteries I have read that follow a pattern of 'someone dies (usually gruesomely), more people die, the protagonist needs to race the killer before the killer kills the protag (if female) or the protag's girlfriend) if male), it is immensely refreshing to have protagonists battling with mysterious and dangerous and just plain puzzling events which are NOT perpetuated by a serial killer. I love, love love this and wish there was more of it in the world.


But the real reason why I wanted to write this one up (I've praised Marston before) is that from a spec fic point of view, this book nails it.

People are afraid of supernatural events. They are part of their lives, and the author treats them as real. So often historic novels have an undertone of 'hah, look at all these fools being afraid of this, we rational folk who write and read this know better'. Marston goes the other way. Not only does he never ever mock his characters for treating the supernatural as real, *he puts that reality on the page*.

Ten days later, at The Theatre in Shoreditch, Banbury's Men presented their new play, _The Witch of Oxford_. It was well played and equally well received until the moment when the witch cast her first spell. As she tried to summon up a black dog to act as her familiar, it appeared out of the air with gnashing savagery and chased everyone within reach. The pay was abandoned and the company spent the night in prayer.

And with that, the characters' fear of the supernatural is validated, which made me squee and swoon. So while none of Marston's books are likely to be my favoritest ever, and I don't love all of them to the same degree, I overall like him very much and am extremely likely to continue to pick up his books if I see them.

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This book was a freebie, and it's walking out the door mostly unread.

I've recently been reading a few more mysteries, and mostly enjoying them - they don't excite me to the same degree as speculative fiction does, but I've had fun.

This book comes from a different branch of the mystery genre. I see 'mystery' as 'a crime has been comitted, a detective or amateur sleuth finds out whodunnit (and sometimes whatbeendun). This book features a professional lawman bungling a prisoner transport, getting shot, and wanting to append the criminal. He also gets involved in a sting operation against a drug lord - so... Crime Novel? Thriller?

It's a personal story - man with gun gets into trouble, seeks revenge, cleans up the town.

I'm not the right reader for this. I'm not interested in gun porn. I'm not interested in revenge stories. The initial problem is a setup-by-the-author - the characters were stupid and incompetent, and I dislike stupidity and incompetence, and I don't want to read about them.

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It doesn't help that I found the writer's descriptive skills less than wonderful. Random passage:
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I have a weakness for Age of Sail fiction. I don't read a lot of it, but I come from a seafaring family - my grandfather was a captain - so while I've never been on a tall ship under sail (and would not be able to negotiate the rigging), I soaked up a fair amount of sea stories and, well, general ambience.

I picked this book up because it was there. It's the nineteenth in a series I otherwise haven't encountered. It was published in 1978, so the chances of encountering others are probably small.

While I was reading, this struck me as an odd book somehow. I was about half way through the book before I could work out why: I was reading it in non-fiction mode.

Editors and agents laugh about the idea of 'fiction novels' but this book is, to all intents and purposes, a non-fiction novel. It's a novel for people who don't like novels, and I *really* wish I had the critical vocabulary to explain this better, but the tone is much closer to a biography - or an excerpt of a trade history of the period - than to an actual novel. It drops into live action every now and again, but that doesn't seem to be the point of the story.

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For all that it breaks the 'rules of fiction' and not in a good way - a lot of the backstory is repeated, Ramage, despite having a life partner is ogling someone else, there's a dose (but a small one, and other stuff to balance it) of sexism, this is a surprisingly readable book, an amusing way to pass a couple of hours. Which, quite honestly, puts it ahead of a lot of books I've picked up. I'd read more of them just to find out what happened - won't seek them out, won't buy them - but it was a reminder that books can work despite doing a lot of things that 'common knowledge' has as dealbreakers. It probably wouldn't have passed a crit group, or an agent's 'first five pages' test, but it's a reasonable midlist offering.

One thing I particularly liked - and that is worth painting out - is that the author has a knack to include not just telling detail, but show that detail from the inside. Many of the small things he portrays are things that give the impression that the writer had been on an 19th century sailing ship - which is unlikely, but he gives the impression of using authentic details about life on board, colonial architecture etc. Little things like describing how sailors make their own clothing because they're too proud to wear the purser's, how often you grease the blocks, where and how spirits are stored on board, how to shave on board a ship, in what order people get into boats...

Specific details. Unique ones, that I cannot recall from any other book about the era. _Personal_ ones. And coupled with an interesting setting and a genuine sympathy for, and appreciation of, common sailors, and a mostly respectful treatment of women, this is not a bad read, all in all.

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So. Ian Whates, The Noise Within. People - including Neil Asher, Stephen Baxter (who gave cover blurbs - guess whose books I won't pick up after this?) and the editor who bought this - must have seen something in this book.

So I decided to keep reading. I mean, after the sociopath protagonist and the guy who grabs a helpless woman it couldn't get exactly worse, could it?

It could.

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So unsympathetic characters behaving badly and a plot that's built on one coincidence after the next, with events waving flags of 'this bit exists so the character can realise there's a traitor' or 'we need to get this character out of the house.'

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I think that is a major contributor to why I hate this book: there is no internal arc for the characters. they're already perfect, they have nowhere to go, and no desire to go anywhere. They enter the world of the book fully-formed, and they don't hesitate to point out just how much *better* they are than the average person.

Average reader is average and does not appreciate this.

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At this point I had hoped that the writer had used up a lifetime's allocation of fail. At this point I will not - Juliet E. McKenna's books aside, which are excellent - buy anything else published by Solaris, because I do not want to support a publisher who thinks nothing of publishing this book. I could have a shred of sympathy if the things I bounce off were central to the story, but the abysmal lack of morality, the sexism, and now the ablism are incidental - background, and presented as something I'm supposed to accept as neutral, not engage with.

Meet Emilio. Meet the author's racist fail.
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When the dust has settled, Leyton goes to hunt down the traitor (he knew there had to be one sabotaging the data-collecting mission, *because nobody could possibly have created those defenses without being warned first.* (Ack, spit.))

A contact writes a name on a piece of paper-

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Yeah, well. This was one of the reasons I started The Writer Reads: to point out techniques that do and do not work. This book was a cornucopia of 'nots'. I made it to the end in an effort to find out what could possibly be enticing enough that readers were willing to look past the problems... and must conclude that you need to be able to not see the sexism, racism and ablism, the plotholes, and the Gary Stu characterisations.

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(Greywalker Volume 2)

This isn't a great book. It's domestic in outlook - the protagonist, Harper, solves a case (she's a detective) and deals with a paranormal threat. This follows typical mystery patterns in that the protag has an arc, but not a very strong one - at the end of the book she isn't a very different person from the one she was at its beginning, and some of the plot events seem a little contrived.

This isn't a great book, but it's bloody damn good. It's a notch above the books I've read in the subgenre so far, because the protagonist, the setting, and the mystery are unique. Because there isn't a Romance plot, the protagonist is free to have non-sexual relationships with other characters, including friendships that come across as honest and a long-distance relationship that seems - for the moment - to suit both participants.

There's a wide range of human relationships and humanity in this book. It passes the Bechdel test on the first page of the prologue, and there was never a sexist, racist, or ablist undertone I could detect and that got the chance to annoy me. (Not saying that there aren't any, but they went under my radar - for me it was a total non-issue).
And... this is what books should be like. The elements, the protagonist, the story itself: one or the other reader may like them more or less, but the writing is more than competent in every aspect I could think of.

This is the writer's second published novel, and it's already pretty darn good. As a reader I am keeping my fingers crossed that she's able to continue to write and publish. I am happy to pick up further novels in this series if I see them, though I won't seek them out, but I am *really* curious what she will produce in ten years' time.

Random qouote:
Columbia Canter is the tallest building in Seattle. It rears up from Fifh Avenue like three obsidian tors melded into one jutting prominence by some weird volcanic fit. In defiance of the prevailing winds, curved surfaces face Puget Sound like black sails. it is the bastion of billion-dollar corporations and millionaire executives. Someone called it the most obscene erection of ego on the Pacific Coast and I don't think he was too far wrong.

So, yes. If you like paranomal mysteries, if you're interested in a story that is interwoven with its setting, if you want a few hours thoroughly enjoying yourself: I reccommend this book.

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Ian Whates, with his editorial hat on, recently came to the attention of the blogosphere as the editor of an anthology with 17 male contributors and 4 female ones.

Ian Whates' 2010 Science Fiction novel _The Noise Within_ (also published by Solaris) happened to be in my 'to read' pile. So I picked it out.

I present, without comment, its characters in the order we meet them. [The book begins on page nine. I will give page numbers.] I occasionally summarise, descriptive passages, but do not skip them.

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Some concluding remarks behind the next cut

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Many years ago I found myself in a place where the only reading matter was a Russian dictionary. (I don't speak Russian though I just about can sound out the cyrillic alphabet.) Since then, that dictionary has been my benchmark.

And, really, the two are no comparison: the dictionary treated both genders equally, it was full of new ideas, and it inspired me to delve more deeply into it. This book failed on all three counts.

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Steve Cockayne: The Iron Chain (Legends of the Land Book Two)

I picked this up on a charity table. It's published by Orbit, blurbed by SFX, Interzone, and China Miéville among others, contains The Iron Chain [...] confirms Steve Chockayne's place at the head of the new generation of great fantasy fiction writers.. Considering I'd never heard of him, I was curious. There's a mentioning of 'the forbidden art of cartography' and, for a quid, I decided to give it a chance.

Ah well. It *was* a quid for charity.

I'm not familiar enough with the Literary Fiction genre to know how common this type of narrative is. I'm certain I have read similar books - not set in second worlds and featuring magic, more gritty suburban streets - but to cut a long story short: almost everybody dies or otherwise suffers and leads a miserable existence. It's mainly the story of a man who reacts to his miserable childhood by seeking revenge on everybody who ever crossed him. The End.

And yeah, that pissed me off.

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Not my kind of book. And I could forgive that, if I hadn't been forced to spend much time inside the head of a person I didn't much like.

The prose is workmanlike; it didn't make me swoon, it did't bounce me off, either.

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My rule of not reading Fantasy books where characters are named Tom, Dick, or Harry (sorry - Geoff, Ruth, Thomas, Gideon, and Annie) has proven itself once more: if the best a writer can come up with for their fantasy names are names that sound as if everybody is living in Ambridge (apologies, Archers fans - Ambridge has _more_ diversity) then the book is probably not worth my time.

Oh, and there are fortune-telling travellers in wagons who happen to be dark-skinned. They're not portrayed particularly negatively - actually, they're decent folk - but it's still worldbuilding from stereotype central. And while there are a lot of women in it, and the men don't have a lot of agenda, either, the women end up in subordinate roles, being duped, and otherwise pandering to the males.


If someone has read this book, or others by the author, I'd like to know what they liked about it, because place at the head of the new generation of great fantasy fiction writers... I don't get it. At all.

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Jude Fisher: Sorcery Rising

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Does the book pass the Bechdel test? Yes. There are two scenes in which a Gypsy talks to her daughter about magic (very briefly). There *are* scenes in which a man and a woman talk about ordinary things in a non-sexually-charged way, and there are scenes in which women talk about men and how to be attractive to men... but scraping past the mark on five hundred words *isn't* a great achievement.

If a man had written this, I wouldn't feel so betrayed, I think, but here's part of the answer to 'if there are so many women in publishing, why are the books still so overwhelmingly male'? It seems as if the women are doing their bit to contribute to the system: by choosing to write about settings in which women are systematically repressed, by choosing to write strong women that are killed or cut down to size, by choosing to include women who exist only as sex objects, by choosing to make the central issues the issues of men, by choosing to write mainly from the focus of men, by writing a rape scene in an omniscient passage containing both male and female POV from the male viewpoint which makes the rape, for that moment, while we are in his experience, OK.

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*Not* a book from the 'to review' shelf; a book from the 'I have two books I really want to buy, I need another for the special offer' shelf.

The cover is beautiful. I know one should not buy books by their covers, but this one is refined and professional and beautiful in its own right. I'd heard of the author - in the 'nice, but fluff' category, and that's what I got.

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All in all, they are niggles. Things that make the book into something less than 'oh, wow, I love this' but not enough to stop me from reading it. The language was nothing to write home about - neither pretty nor clunky, just very readable and functional.

4) The feel of the book was decidedly Regency in many ways - wigs and card tables and going to the theatre and loose women. And I know that Sam Pepys was a theatre goer and IIRC he wasn't entirely abstinent so again, this might be authentic, but I would have liked the book better if it had brought out the post-civil-war feel more strongly. In my experience, almost everybody feels they're living in exciting times - all these new invenions! Progress everywhere! - so rather than the feeling that these characters are moving in well-established circles, I'd have liked a better sense of the time. (On brief acquaintance, I could not pin down the exact year.)

(Hm. Maybe that's something to keep in mind for historical and historically-inspired fiction in general. Describe what's new, what's different, what makes people excited, and what sets this time and place apart from others.)


The author's biography says he was a lecturer at Oxford, so presumably he *has* done his research (I did get that impression) but having done research and putting accurate details on the page isn't the same as being able to evoke an authentic feeling.

Which brings me to the last point: things the book does well: plot and gender

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Also, the dog does not die. There's a dog involved briefly, and he's part of a fight, and I feared for him from his first appearance, but the writer did *not* go for the cheap shot, not there, not ever.


A complete bibliography of the author can be found at Wikipedia - he wrote a good many books. For me, they are library reads (or I'd pick them up cheaply as ebooks) - amusing to read, good fun, but not books that I must read or that I'll go out of my way to find.
On the other hand, if I find them in the Works on the 3 for £5 offer, I'll snap up a few more.

This was a very pleasant way to spend a couple of evenings.

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