opening scenes – Doc Fantasy Reads

Lessons in Brevity

Dear writers, if you’re going to write a 700+ page novel, please have more than one central point-of-view character – especially if you’re writing a portal quest Fantasy which spends 1/3 of the book inside the POV’s home city and/or the POV is an adolescent. Listen. No matter how interesting your character is, no one wants to live in one teenager’s head for 700 pages. Our teenage years were hard enough. Don’t make us relive that angst.

I suppose I should mention the title of the book I’m ranting about. Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory’s Obsidian trilogy is actually half decent – once it starts going. Although the first book, The Outstretched Shadow (2003) is a slow crawl, by the second book, To Light a Candle (2004), Lackey and Mallory seem to have learned their lessons and we see the perspectives of a number of protagonists. In the first book we meet Kellen, son of the Arch-Mage (Head of the High Council which rules the city). We are also introduced to the city of Armethalieh, ruled by a totalitarian system of mages (the High Council). Within the first few pages, we are given a description of how magick effects every single facet of the city: “There was virtually no aspect of life that could not be enhanced by magick” (p. 5). This statement is bracketed by detailed examples, establishing just how integral and integrated magic is in the city. Once this is confirmed, we move swiftly into seeing the extent of the High Council’s authoritarian rule: “They, and not the merchants, determined what could be sold in the marketplace” (p. 8), right down to the patterns and colours allowed in ribbons for decorating clothing. As these details are established within the first 10 pages, it seems a bit… overkill to spend the next 150 pages reinforcing this message.

We finally get to our first exciting incident at the quarter mark, as Kellen is expelled from the city. And the sense of urgency and suspense is handled-well, showing us that the authors are equipped to write exciting scenes. But once Kellen finds safety, the pace slows to a crawl again, as Kellen begins to gather information and evaluate his pre-conceived notions. Although there are a number of interesting events to keep the plot moving – as Kellen encounters a number of fantastical creatures that are outlawed from the city – the emphasis is on his reactions to these encounters which, unfortunately, take the form of introspection, a lot of quiet solitude ambles as Kellen ponders the nature of good and evil (seriously).

I should note that throughout the trilogy, we also see the perspectives of a handful of antagonists, a device I deplore except when handled in prologues like in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time. If your readers don’t like living in the head of a 17-year-old, they’re also unlikely to like seeing the perspectives of an evil – no nuances, wholly dark – character. It’s boring. And uncomfortable. So your character enjoys torturing people and doing other nasty unspeakable activities. Yuck. Do you really need to hammer out that detail over and over again? We don’t need continued reminders of why we should be rooting for the good guys. And, if you ARE going to keep reminding the reader, then we don’t need to have nearly 2/3rds of the book dedicated to introspection with the hero worrying that he’ll turn evil. I assume the contrast was supposed to establish a sense of horror if the hero gives into “temptation” and turns dark. But if you’re having such an all out black and white binary, it seems extremely unlikely that this good-hearted, conscientious person is going to turn so evil that he’ll sacrifice others for profit or pleasure.

In Story Engineering (2011) Larry Brooks describes the ideal structure of a novel. I’ll highlight the key points here:

Set-Up – first 20-25% – introduces character backstory, backstory, foreshadows antagonist
First Plot Point – everything changes for the hero
The Response – hero’s reaction (analysing, responding to)
The Attack – hero becomes proactive and tries to fix things
The Resolution – wrap things up (I.e. no new information introduced. The hero has everything they need to handle conflict)

Let’s apply this outline to The Outstretched Shadow. As I said above, the first 25% of the book gives us background information. While the first few pages describes the totalitarian government, we then spend the next 150 discovering just how extremely authoritative the government is. At 25%, right on cue (according to Brooks’ structure) Kellen is summoned to appear in front of the High Council and is then banished. So we have our first plot point, where everything changes for the hero. From there for the next 350 pages, the story is in “Response” mode. But, as I said above, this response mostly takes the form of deep introspection each time new information is revealed. 350 pages… in Response mode is… a snoozefest. Luckily Kellen is introduced to a number of interesting things that makes the reader preservere on and push past the tedious introspection bit. But you really don’t want your readers to “push past” any point of a book. At page 510 we get to “Attack” – except, significantly, the plan to attack does not come from Kellen himself. HE is not proactive. Instead, he is made to follow strict instructions, and, to top it off, he is given very little accompanying information about the whys. Kellen is sent out as a champion without being told even the smallest tiny detail about the antagonist. Heck, he’s not even told there even IS an antagonist. The language is all very vague and obscure and it’s only at page 592 that Kellen learns that he’s been sent off to face Demons. Let that sink in. Page 592. It’s at this point that we can really see the narration move into “Attack” mode, where the hero is given enough information to make a decision. But – even here – Kellen is in a position where he’s reacting and responding to the information. He’s already well into his journey that he doesn’t have a chance to make many active choices.

At about the 630 page mark we are introduced to a new character – one that is absolutely fundamental in helping to resolve the first novel (and ultimately the trilogy as a whole). From there, I would like to say that the final 80 pages go quickly. They don’t. The resolution itself is another series of introspection as Kellen faces temptations and internal conflict. It follows a fairly Cambellian and Jungian trajectory where the Shadow / Antagonist that the hero must face is himself. Which is absolutely fine, as a central goal of a journey. But not when you have nearly 710 pages dedicated to the deliberations of a single 17-year-old man-child. If you’re a writer and want to go down that route, then my advice is take a page from Jordan’s Wheel of Time and add enough characters that the introspections and self/shadow themes are varied and interesting. (Despite this rant, though, I’d like to add that I thoroughly enjoyed the next book in the series. So I still recommend it to read, but perhaps not if it’s your first introduction to Fantasy Fiction).

Sandman Issue 10: Portrait of Desire

Since I’m focusing on portraits for my Sandman re-read, we’re skipping past the rest of volume 1 (which I started here) and heading straight to issue 10. Volume 2 The Doll’s House is where the motif of portraits become interesting, especially in just the first few pages. We’ll talk about the first one today: a full page portrait of Desire on the first page of the issue:

*Sandman* Issue 10 page 1, portrait of Desire

How do you read a graphic novel? With full page spreads like these I take more time to examine the illustration before reading the text, let it sink into me like I’m in an art gallery. (With panels I need to read the text first for direction before I fully appreciate the image.) This image puts us into the realm of the Endless right away: the background grid of emptiness stretching into the horizon; white teeth gleaming, an uncomfortable oddity to the rest of the face and torso which is in shadows; gleaming red eyes; and a nebula of red not-stars around a planet-like heart.

The narration tells us that there is only one thing in the realm of Desire: this fortress, shaped in a giant “statue of Desire him-, her-, it-self”. An immense statue towering alone on a blanket of emptiness. The narration also identies the statue as a portrait “complete in all the details, built from the fancy of Desire out of blood, and flesh, and bone, and skin.” There is something cold about the statue, the dark blue tones echoing of cold marble or slate. The notion that it’s made of blood and flesh and bones and skins is slightly alarming. … did Desire dream it up? Is that what the text means with “fancy”? Or did Desire somehow acquire these materials to craft their self-portrait? … given the events of the last volume, perhaps it’s best not to ask.

The fortress/ self-portrait is called The Threshold. “Desire has always lived on the edge.” The text pairs nicely with the image as again we’re drawn to examine it; the background gives us a sense of that edge, an empty vastness marked off neatly with borders. The next page continues this theme as the fortress has “empty, echoing veins, like tunnels. You will walk them until you grow old and die without once retracing your steps.” Finally we’re drawn to the centre of the image, the heart itself, which seems almost to pulse. “There was only one place in the cathedral of its body to make its home. Desire lives in the heart.” While in most cases, the phrase “Desire lives in the heart” might be written off as sentimental muck appropriate for a greeting card, here the image is sublime again: something grand and terrifying. This affect is supported with the reference to a Cathedral, another large, echoing cavern which makes its audience feel humbled and awed in the face of something part divine, part alien. The first installation of volume 2 (following the prologue) thus begins with a firm reminder that the Endless are not human nor gods, but something else inexplicable. Something frightening.

Click here to see the second part of the Issue 10 read-along.

Entering the Sandman Universe, Issue 1 – “Sleep of the Just”

I’m starting a new research project today – beginning with a re-read of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, which I thought I’d blog about as a read along. I’m particularly interested in how many different forms of pictures are illustrated within the graphic novel. (And if you have any recommendations for examples of other picture-in-graphic novel depictions, please let me know.) My thesis is that these in-text pictures operate as a type of haunting on the characters, as their past or familiar relationships loom over them as a specter that prevents them from living properly. As I was reading the first volume today, it was nice to see that my thesis was confirmed so quickly within the first issue (and I look forward to see how it develops as the series continues).

“Sleep of the Just,” the first issue of Gaiman’s Sandman collected in Volume 1 Preludes and Nocturnes, begins with Roderick Burgess, a member of a secret occult society, and his attempt to capture and trap Death itself. The spell fails… sorta. The titular page presents a captured entity, sprawled in the middle of the circle with a black cloak wrapped around them in a way that suggests oozing blood and bodily fluids. The creature is alien-like and monstrous, bearing a mask in a shape that is reminiscent of Ripley Scott’s Aliens. Burgess announces that they’ve failed; they haven’t captured Death, but another entity.

But how does he know that? How does he take one look at Dream – as it is Dream that Burgess has captured, and not Death – and recognize him immediately for who he is? Is there a picture of Dream? If so, how did that picture come to be? Fastforward a decade and Burgess’s son, Alex, finds a picture in another grimoire, the Paginiarum Fulvarum, and recognizes that the captured creature is “Kinge of Dreames.” So there IS a picture – a tattered hand-drawn sketch shoved between the pages of the Paginarum. It also seems that Burgess Sr hasn’t come across the picture himself, using only Dream’s accoutrements (his helm, pouch, and ruby) to recognize him. But now we have further questions; namely who drew this picture and how did they meet Dream?

After his father passes, Alex hands over the reigns of the business to a personal assistant and dedicates all of his energies into an obsession with his father: “He wrote a memoir about his father; writes letters to newspapers defending his father’s reputation; is editing a volume of his father’s letters” (bold emphasis taken from the text). As the text suggests that his father’s life consumes Alex, the image accompanying it is of a portrait of Richard Burgess staring at the reader, overlooking Alex as he works at his study head down, face partially obscured by quill. I use the word consumption deliberately as “fulvarum” is likely derived from the Latin to burn, and the way which Alex interacts with both his father’s memory and the grimmore suggests this burning consumption. For instance, as it is now 1970, the quill he employs is not necessary, but one assumes is part of Alex’s obsession with his father’s magical activities. The next panel reveals that Alex then “slashed his father’s portrait with a knife”; the accompanying illustration only of a shadow of a man with a knife in hand, framed by the torn remains of the portrait (also in shadows). The third panel then states that “Alex will no longer read books on magic. Except for one. […] And he only reads one page of that book…” The close-up in the next panel then further draws attention to the fact that the picture of Dream is clearly not part of the original text; the colouring of the page is a lighter tan than the grimoire, the page is smaller, and shadowing suggests that the page is loose-leaf. Alex’s obsession, then, has turned from his father to Dream itself.

Given this obsession, the ending of the issue is particularly fitting. I won’t reveal it because of spoilers, but I will say this: it’s too bad that l Burgess Sr dies before he could receive his own just desserts.

Click here if you want to see the next post in my Sandman readalong

Is there any news, Reshi? – (A Contrast of The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear – Chapter 1)

I’m taking a break today from the University 411/811 blog to read some fantasy fiction. I’m not sure how long I’ll keep up a running commentary of a comparison between Book 1 and 2 of Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles (which I began here), but for now it’s amusing me to see the similarities and contrasts.

“A Place for Demons”, Chapter One of The Name of the Wind, begins simply

It was Felling night, and the usual crowd had gathered at the Waystone Inn. Five wasn’t much of a crowd, but five was as many as the Waystone ever saw these days, times being what they were.
Old Cob was filling his role as storyteller and advice dispensary. The men at the bar sipped their drinks and listened. In the back room a young innkeeper stood out of sight behind the door, smiling as he listened to the details of a familiar story.
The Name of the Wind, p. 3

It’s an interesting way to introduce the hero of the story. “A young innkeeper,” no other identifying markers except age and job title. He’s not even in the scene, but standing just out of sight, listening to the events on stage – the gossip and folktales relayed by his 5 customers – and not contributing anything himself until two pages later. When he does speak, his customers evidence surprise: “The men at the bar seemed surprised to see Kote standing there. They’d been coming to the Waystone every Felling night for months and Kote have never interjected anything of his own before” (p 5). It’s almost comical, that the minor characters in this story are shocked to see the protagonist and to hear him speak. It’s also noteworthy that it takes 5 pages before the readers are even introduced to our hero’s name. Of course, as the narrative continues, Rothfuss fully puts his reader through their paces in interrogating the protagonist’s actions as heroic. Kote’s uncertain status is established just a few sentences later, as the passage continues: “Not that you could expect anything else, really. He’d only been in town for a year or so. He was still a stranger” (5). We still have no details of Kote, except his name, that he’s a stranger, and he evidently has detailed knowledge of half-completed idioms, but brushes off this knowledge as “Just something I heard once” (p. 5).

The mystery of Kote only continues in chapter 1 as a missing companion joins them, hurt and bloodied, and carrying the body of the beast that attacked him, “a spider as large as a wagon wheel, black as slate” (p. 7). Kote immediately identifies the creature as as a “scrael,” cleans and sews up Carter with fourty-eight stitches, and takes the leads in identifying the scrawl as a “demon” by pressing a piece of iron on the body. In each case, Kote attempts to hide his authority as knowledge-keeper by dismissing them: as sources of gossip (a traveller told him about the scrael); or a common saying (that demons react to iron); or by telling his student-companion Bast to spread a rumour about (in this case, that his grandfather was a caravan guard, as explanation for his stitching skills). He also confirms in his conversation with Bast that he made sure they properly disposed of the scrawl (burning it in a fire made of rowan wood and then burying in a pit that was at a suitable depth): “They took it to the priest. He did all the right things for all the wrong reasons” (p. 12). That Kote knows more than a priest, a person who holds secret, divine knowledge, suggests that Kote is at once more learnéd than a person who puts their stock in faith, while also functioning as a figure who had knowledge of deep mysteries itself. The question on hand, after all, is the presence and explanation of a *demon* and while the reader – like the minor characters – might be considering explanations for this mysterious beast, the fact that it reacted to iron in a physical way (smoke arising from burnt flesh where the iron touch), gives the reader a sense of a supernatural mystery that the novel in their hands will hopefully give some answers to. Taken together, the reader is also quick to pick up on the clues that Rothfuss lays out: that our hero is a skilled and knowledgeable person that is in hiding. Rothfuss makes this plain when he finally introduces Kote properly on page 10:

He called himself Kote. He has chosen the name carefully when he came to this place. He has taken a new name for most of the usual reasons, and for a few unusual ones as well, not the least of which was the fact that names were important to him.
The Name of the Wind, p. 10

Who then is Kote? What is his real name, and why did he take a new name? One presumes that the “usual reasons” are because he’s hiding, but hiding from what? And why are names important to him? Clearly there is something significant here, given the title of the book: The Name of the Wind.

In contrast to The Name of the Wind, Chapter One of The Wise Man’s Fear (“Apple and Elderberry”) sets a slightly different mood. As I discussed when examining both prologues, while the beginning notes in The Name of the Wind worked together as a “complement” (NotW p.1), The Wise Man’s Fear adds a “counterpoint” (WMF p.1 ), another layer to the melody. Instead of a scene set at night with a nearly-empty room (5 customers with Kote off-stage), we begin in the morning, in early dawn, with Bast standing in that same room alone and bored. The set piece stays the same, but the scene has changed. Instead of fanciful gossip of demons – “The word ‘demon’ was being spoken, but it was with smiles half-hidden behind raise hands” (NotW p. 16) – we move now to the very real and serious aftermath of a man’s death – “Bad business last night. Chances are, that would be all Graham would had to say about the death of a man he had known his whole life” (WMF p. 7-8). There are echoes between both chapters in the form of gossip of serious topics, demons and death, but while the first is treated with half-amusement and small caution as both townspeople and the reader are unable to confirm fact from fiction, the latter is treated with proper gravitas as both the townspeople and the reader are contemplating the death of a man at the end of the previous novel. The note of this somber counterpoint is reinforced in the final paragraph of chapter 1 in WMF:

The only sounds were the rhythmic creak of the wood and the slow patter of the cider as it ran into the bucket below. There was a rhythm to it, but no music, and the innkeeper’s eyes were distant and joyless, so pale a green they almost could have passed for gray.
The Wise Man’s Fear, p. 11

These final sentences of chapter one closes with a careful evocation of rhythm without music, a feeling of a joylessness, distant, grey, setting a mood similar to the one from NotW, but with a deeper resonance that conveys a forced and false normality.

A Silence in Three Parts: A Return to the Prologues of the Kingkiller Chronicles

As I sat down to re-read Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind (2007) last year, the title of the Prologue struck me as significant. A Silence in Three Parts. As I’ve read the book once before, I’m knew the importance the role of music played for the main character. Born into a travelling troupe, music formed an integral – and almost habitual – part of Kvothe’s early years. I also recalled (*spoiler*) how Kvothe responded to the loss of his family, how he spent nearly a year in solitude, not speaking, but with his father’s violin as his sole companion. Thus the title of the prologue, itself almost a contrast to the title of the first book (The Name of the Wind), seemed particularly poignant.

Unlike countless other Epic Fantasies, works that tend to overrely on lengthy prologues to set up the series, Rothfuss’s prologue fits onto one page. The prologue describes the “silence of three parts”. The first and the “most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking” (p. 1). The paragraph describes a nearly-empty inn, one missing the hustle and bustle of busy taverns. The second silence comes from “a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, […] they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts” (p. 1). Finally, the third silence was one difficult to discern, but emanated from a red-haired man: “it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. […] It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man waiting to die” (p. 1). Three heavy silences, which sets a tone of despair and dread right from the start. And yet, the descriptions reminded of another book, but not a Fantasy or a novel at all, but a children’s picture book, The Sound of Silence by Katrina Goldsaito and illustrated by Julia Kuo. There was one key difference though, between the silence presented by Rothfuss and Goldsaito, while Rothfuss’s silence is cold, aching, a death rattle, Goldsaito’s silence is one of peace, of anticipation and reverence:

Afterword from Goldsaito’s *A Sound of Silence*

The Japanese concept of ma is the silence between sounds. It’s the moment when musicians pause together,
Goldsaito, Afterword to The Sound of Silence

It fascinated me (still does), the idea that silence, the absence of sound, can have such deeply nuanced meaning, to the extent that it could evoke two opposite and contradictory emotions in the hands of different artists.

While in most other Fantasy texts, the prologue offers important world-building information or historical information essential to the understanding of the plot, Rothfuss here takes a completely different approach. Admittingly, there are rumours that the entire Kingkiller Trilogy is itself a prologue to a larger series. If that’s the case, then Rothfuss makes a shrewd choice in presenting a prologue that establishes mood and tone, building atmsophere rather than providing further information. But the prologue also introduces the idea of sounds harmonizing together, complementing each other in a way that is, while not jarring, also not comfortable. Given the significance of sound, (music and speech) throughout the first book, it seems unlikely that Rothfuss presents this idea accidentally. However, I’m still trying to uncover the full significance of silence and sound in Rothfuss’s text. (A bit difficult, as, a decade after the publication of the last book, we still don’t have a firm release date for the final book of the trilogy.)

There are perhaps further clues in the prologue of book 2, The Wise Man’s Fears (2011). The prologue shares the same title and structure as the prologue of book 1. Here “A Silence of Three Parts” has shifted slightly. The first and third silences are still the same: the first, an “echoing quiet made by things that were lacking” (p. 1); the third, “holding the others inside itself. […] was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die” (p. 1). Thus we are still haunted by the empty Inn and a lifeless man, perhaps even more so as readers return eagerly to where we stopped with Kvothe’s narrative. But the second silence has changed. It comes from a man creeping through the inn, avoiding familiar creeking boards, “Each slow step made only the barest tep against the floor. In doing this he added his small, furtive silence to the larger echoing one. They made an amalgam of sorts, a counterpoint” (p. 1). While the second silence in the first book formed an alloy to the first, a complement, this silence forms its opposite: a counterpoint. Still a barely noticeable note, but one that adds texture to the silence. Here we move from “ma” to the first deep breath before the note is blown. This counterpoint adds another layer to the sound, or of Kvothe’s story, but this time Kvothe doesn’t own the silence as he did the first three. This silence comes from the furtive creeping of a man attempting to stay silent. It is Bast of course, creeping through the inn, and one wonders whether the note he is getting ready to play is a harmonious melody or a discordant one. In a sense, then, the prologue functions as almost a Greek chorus, one that foreshadows and reflects the events of each novel. Within 1 page, 2 pages if you count the prologue of both books, Rothfuss has managed to convey so much information simply by describing the sound of silence. The sound of ma is certainly a powerful one and Rothfuss uses it here to great effect.

Check out this post if you want to see more of my Rothfuss read-alone

An Unexpected Journey – Re-Reading The Hobbit Chapter 1

Gif from Hobbit film, with Bilbo Baggins running, captioned with "I'm going on an adventure!"

After a 2020-apocalypse-driven hiatus, I’m diving back into reading with a Tolkien re-read. I hope you’ll join me on my adventure!

I haven’t read The Hobbit in nearly a decade. I’m sure the events of chapter one amused me when I was younger. But as my 34th birthday has passed me by a couple weeks ago, this time I was struck with feelings of ire on behalf of Mr. Bilbo Baggins. Here’s this polite, friendly guy, greeting a stranger with a hearty “good morning” and from that small interaction Bilbo gets stuck with a houseful of uninvited guests demanding seedcakes and telling him how they like their breakfast done in the morning.

At least most of the dwarves are a friendly, affable sort. But Thorin Oakenshield … well I wouldn’t him as my employer. Someone who’s too good to help clear the dishes? No thanks. Tolkien does an amazing job of painting a picture of someone who is puffed up with his own importance, while also indicating that the pride isn’t deserved. (Reminds me of the Tory party…..) Just look at his lineage. Grandfather Thrór is ran out of the North for reasons unknown. Luckily he stumbles across a huge pile of gold in his new mountain and declares himself King under the Mountain. In the South. (Nevermind the dwarves in the North.)

All that gold attracts a dragon, of course. Damn those greedy dragons. Which means Thorin is forced to flee with Grandpop and Dad and a handful of unnamed dwarves. (He doesn’t mention his dear mum. Guess dwarves are born from the ground or something.) The mighty king and heirs are forced to (make their people) work for a living. The horror! Instead of doing fancy smithing work for kings, the dwarves have to resort to the lowly job of blacksmithing and working mines. Thorin’s pride obviously takes a huge hit that his people have to do something so base. (Can you all see me rolling my eyes?)

I’m not sure how I would react if this guy showed up on my doorstep, judging my character while ordering his breakfast. To Bilbo’s credit he handles it with – not exactly grace – but with extremely good manners, going so far as to sacrifice his share of the cakes in order to be a good host.

Of course, it must have been the Baggins part of his nature that has instilled all that politeness and respectability as Tolkien goes on for a lengthy paragraph to state that the adventure-spirit comes from his mother’s side. And not just from his mother, the (im)famous Belladonna Took, but potentially there’s a fairy wife in the Took ancestry too. So the mother’s line damns him twice over. (Un)Luckily for Belladonna, she loses both identity and character when she becomes Mrs. Bungo Baggins. She stops going on adventures, gains respectability through her new name, and her husband builds her a beautiful and luxurious home – with her money. And really, what more could a woman ask for?

The DNF Pile: When Sirens Fail to Lure You to Adventure

Well, we’re only 2 months into the new decade and I’ve already abandoned 3 books from my “to-be-read shelves”. I don’t know about you, but I always kept my Did-Not-Finish piles in the “one day I’ll read this” fantasy dream. But, now that I have a tiny human to take care of alongside the daily realities of work and independent research (i.e with little to no leisure time), I feel the world’s too short to have a to pile of books looming over me, judging and shaming my failure as a reader.

Interestingly, I actually LOVED one of the books that I gave up on. So, being an academic and critic, I couldn’t simply accept the idea that I didn’t like something. I had to dwell deeper. Into the why. and the what. and the how.

The first book, Kage Baker’s The Anvil of the World (2004), has a typical Call to Adventure (Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces) that seems to promise some blood and mayhem at least. Unfortunately, I didn’t even make it that far. The main character is introduced as “Smith,” an anonymous, generic name that matches the make-up of the character. That is, he doesn’t seem to have a character. In the early pages, he serves as a vehicle to carry the story, and reacts to rather than drives the narrative. His personality, former profession, associates, etc, is all tied up in this anonymity so that we know nothing about him. Now for some, this question might be enough to spur them to continue reading (See my discussion of Jess Smith’s Bone for a quick crasher on how micro and macro questions makes for a page turner). However, the summary on the book jacket threw in another complication: the story is described as the tale of Smith, and “the large extended family of Smith”; but it becomes clear very early on that these characters are not related in anyway, and that “Smith” is just a generic title that they have adopted in order to hide in anonymity. It’s unclear whether the copy on the book jacket was just sloppy editing or whether it was deliberately written to hide a double-meaning in the words; either way, the muddled synopsis left a bad taste in my mouth.

Character and narrative voice are key in inviting a reader to continue on with the story. You can have an exciting action-packed opening scene, but if you don’t connect with the voice from the start, then reading becomes a chore. K. Arsenault Rivera’s The Tiger’s Daughter (2017) is another novel I added to my DNF stack due to my lack of engagement with the character/narrator’s voice. The story is conveyed as an embedded frame narrative through a series of letters between the two main characters. As a result, the main narrative is told in second person throughout. Second person voice is a hard sell. It CAN be done effectively (i.e. see N. K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy, 2015-2017; for fear of spoilers, I won’t go into details of why the second person viewpoint served a dramatic purpose in all three novels, but let me just say that utilizing the second person voice to serve a purpose was sheer brilliance on Jemisin’s part). Unfortunately, this doesn’t appear to be the case for Arsenault Rivera’s The Tiger’s Daughter. The story (at least in the first few chapters that I read) is simply told as character 1 relaying the events of their past to character 2 in a “remember when we did x? I’m going to tell you the story of it anyway in this long letter because I love the story so much.” This style of writing seems forced, as if the author wanted to use the letter-style of writing but couldn’t figure out a way to justify its use. Consequently, the letter-writing simply serves as a vehicle to tell the story, instead of using it as a medium to further explore nuances of theme and voice. It would have made more sense if the letter-writer had revealed some unknown fact or perspective that the letter-reader was previously unaware of; or it would have been more interesting if the letter-reader had reacted to the perspective of the letter-writer in some way, perhaps with their own interpretation of events, or an emotion of guilt, or nostalgia, or something. But this didn’t appear to be the case, and I sadly added it to my DNF pile. It was a shame, because I had such hopes for the story (the narrative concerns the romantic relationship between two strong, competent women, both daughters of equally strong, competent women). But as I kept waiting for the “main story” to start, and only realized (after a quick Goodreads search) that the letters was the main narrative, I couldn’t bring myself to continue.

On the surface, The Tangled Lands by Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias S. Buckell (2018) bear some relation to The Anvil of the World and The Tiger’s Daughter. Like The Anvil of the World, The Tangled Lands is novella collection. But, like both Baker’s and Aresnault Rivera’s narratives, this structure is not made clear on the book jacket synopsis. (In fact, The Anvil of the World is advertised as Baker’s first Fantasy novel, which is clearly incorrect.) Now, while I have nothing against novella collections, I would like to be made aware of the structure before I’m a quarter of the way into the book. Knowing the structure and medium of a text is important. It allows the reader to anticipate the peaks and valleys. Hit a peak or valley too soon or too late, and it puts the reader on the wrong footing. What do I mean by this? As I was unaware that the book was a novella collection, as I started reading the first “part,” I immediately felt that the pacing was too fast. It was building too quickly towards a climax, with the stakes being high very early on. Had I been aware that the narrative was a short-story, I would have approached it differently. I would have been prepared for the sprint, rather than settling in for a long, slow journey.

But more frustrating is that I became too emotionally invested in the characters. I had geared myself up to join them on an epic adventure, and befriended them early as a result. I worried for them and feared for them, in a way that I didn’t with my first two DNFs. Bacigalupi (who writes the first story in the collection) does an incredible job of creating characters with depths and high stakes with just a few brush strokes. The main character is presented to us with a history, one who has fallen and suffered great lost. It’s easy to feel worry for him and his young daughter as they dabble in things that are too dangerous for a simple craftsman. And so it was that when I got to the end of the first short story, I felt disappointment, as if I’ve been cheated. I wanted to know what happened to them, and wanted to continue joining my new friends on their dangerous adventure. Unlike the first two books, where I wasn’t invested enough in the characters to continue reading their stories, here I felt like I had lost new friends that I had only begun to discover. And so I may yet return to The Tangled Lands to read again. But only after my grief has time to mellow and heal.

The Sartorial Nightmare of Kick-Ass Female Characters

A couple years ago I finally got around to picking up a collection of Robert Lynn Asprin short stories as a taster (long overdue for a fantasy scholar, I know). Unfortunately, by page 2 I was wondering what the hype was about. Or, more accurately, whether the hype wasn’t fueled by the nostalgia factor. You know, a time where we didn’t (overly) concern ourselves with sexist racism (or sexism and racism).

“Myth-Adventurers” (2007), the first story in Myth-Interpretations (2010), starts off normally enough: two female characters chatting; one human (“a Klahd, actually”, p. 7; whatever that means), the other reptilian (something called “a Pervert… or Pervect if they knew what was good for them”, p. 7). A nod to interspecies racism, but still within the realms of the standard Fantastika set-up.

The first descriptive paragraph alludes to the idea that the two are killers with the “lithe, athletic, graceful look that put one in mind of a pair of lionesses discussing a kill” (7). Lovely metaphor. Paints a pretty picture of two kick-ass ladies and I’m settling in to enjoy their adventure. (Although I’m wondering whether lions are treated as animals or people in this narrative, but that’s just a stray thought.)

Then we flow into the next paragraph: “If their builds and manner weren’t enough of a giveaway, their outfits completed the picture. The Pervect, Pookie, was wearing one of her favourite” (7) -> here is where I turned the page and immediately regretted it:

action leather jumpsuits with multiple zippers which both issued a skin tight fit and held the tools of her trade. The Klahd, Spyder, was still working on her look, but today had settled for calf-high boots with fishnet stockings, a dark plaid mini-skirt, and a sleeve-less black leather halter top which left considerable portions of her midriff bare.
Asprin, p. 8

Here, I paused. Now I’m all for female empowerment and a woman’s right to choose what she wants to wear. If you want to wear calf-high boots with fishnets and a miniskirt, by all means, go ahead. I have nothing against a “sleeveless black leather halter top” except for the redundancy of the description (halter tops are, by definition, sleeveless). But I’m questioning how any real “killer” is going to be fighting in these outfits. Have you ever tried moving in a skintight leather outfit? Let alone one that “both insured a skin tight fit and held the tools of her trade”? How? How does it do both? Does her skin have any circulation?? But maybe as a reptilian species, she moves differently….

The description continues:

All in all, she looked like a parochial schoolgirl gone Goth gone biker slut.
Asprin, p. 8

Yeah. No.

No woman looks in a mirror and describes herself like that. Maybe a school-girl gone bad. maybe a goth girl. Maybe a biker-chick. But not a combination of the three, and definitely no woman aims for a “slut” look. The idea just seems to scream the whole “she was asking for it” mentality. You know. “What was she wearing when she got raped?” “Maybe she wanted to get raped.”

And then the description continues with this bit of ridiculousness:

Throwing stars and knife hilts jutted from their sleeves and belts, along with various mysterious instrument….
Asprin, p. 8

At this point, I was completely unable to continue reading. As Eddie Robson pointed out when I posted the excerpt on twitter, it’s nearly impossible to tuck knives into the sleeves of a sleeveless halter top.

Here’s my own artistic rendition of this outfit:

A very, VERY badly sketched rendition of the outfit. I really can't draw.

But now that I’ve made the sketch, I’ve realized it’s not tooooo far out from other kick-ass Fantastika females. I’m sure one of the first kick-ass female killers that pops into people’s minds is Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2001), who regularly fights in leather and heels. And when I think kick-ass females, I will always think of Lucy Lawless as Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001). I mean, it’s in the title. If you haven’t seen Xena’s iconic, um.. armouring, then please do google it now.

Of course, it’s not just females that are made to be ridiculously overly-sexualized in books or in film/tv. Who can forget the show that launched the Xena spin-off, Hercules (1995-1999) with Kevin Sorbo’s deep-v sleeveless tunic? And really, any action adventure sword and sorcery-type film from the ’80s have plenty of bare-chested muscly men (I’m looking at you Schwarzenegger/Conan the Barbarian, 1982).

Given the context and history, Asprin’s description of his characters isn’t surprising. But I suppose my disgruntlement with Asprin’s work is two-fold. One, the posthumous collection published in 2010 would benefit from an introduction that glorifies the works a bit less. (I’d like to say that about ALL of the “classic SF” writers, actually. I’d like to see an introduction in classical-reprints that gives a small nod to the racism and sexism that many of these writers actively peddled). Perhaps I shouldn’t except the 2007 Myth-Adventures to be “woke” or sensitive, but, there is always a part of me that argues that, regardless of “the times”, writers and artists should do better.

But the second reason the passage aroused my pique only became obvious when I attempted to re-read the collection again, this time alongside Kurtis J. Wiebe’s Rat Queens (2013-). Rat Queens, if you haven’t read it, is…. how to describe it…? like a car-accident that you can’t look away from, but one involving a clown car crashing into a trailer full of dragons. At times violent, humorous, incredibly gory, and extremely touching. Now, I can easily see one of the characters (Betty, in particular) describe themselves as a “schoolgirl gone Goth gone biker slut”. BUT, and here’s the distinction for me, there is one thing to have a character describe themselves as such, and another thing entirely for an omniscient narrator to make the comment. And, right from the first two pages, it’s clear that the narrator has a voice, has thoughts and ideas about the look and carriage of these characters. It may be due to the difference in medium (narrative voice versus graphic art), but Wiebe’s graphic medium doesn’t have the same level of authorial commentary as Asprin’s narrative descriptions.

So I end this post with a plea. If you’re a writer, please, PLEASE think about how your narrative voice might unintentionally be peddling the male (or female) gaze. And if you can’t do that, at the very least think about if the outfit you described would be functional in an actual fight. Thank you.

A Re-Read of the first 10 pages of Piers Anthony’s A Spell of Chameleon

After a December hiatus (tangential note: I blame Christmas for that; turns out it’s not a practical idea to make a handcrafted stocking for your baby while on maternity leave), I decided to mosey into the next decade with a re-read some of my favourite Fantasy books that I haven’t touched in years.

I’m now contemplating how many of these books I’m going to absolutely HATE now that I’m reading them as an adult; by which I mean, *not* as a person who disparages children’s fiction, but as a person who can think critically and is more socially aware. In most of my research to date I have focused on 1990-2010 literature, with a brief study dipping into the ’60s. When I started my postgraduate work, though I couldn’t put a finger on why, I knew that ’70s and ’80s Fantasy didn’t appeal to me. I’m desperately hoping as I continue my re-read that the horribly misogynist pattern that I discovered in Anthony doesn’t hold up for any other books I re-examine.

After re-reading the first 10 pages of Anthony’s A Spell for Chameleon (all I can stomach really), it shocked me how blatant the misogyny was. Keep in mind that I’ve been studying ’90s and ’00s Fantasy for the last decade, where authors like Robert Jordan and George R. R. Martin are accused of misogyny because of flat, stereotypical depiction of women (Jordan), or because of their mistreatment of the gender (Martin). And then we have Anthony, who doesn’t believe that women are people in any sense of the word. They are objects, or creatures, designed specifically to fulfill men’s “needs.” That idea doesn’t get more blatant than the chapter where the main character plants and grows a nymph in order to have her as a sex slave. (I didn’t read that far, but it all came screaming back to me as I started the book.)

As early as page 2, we have the main character introduce the supposed love of his life (the woman he wants to marry, or, at least, the women he has to marry in order to have sex with her). The passage reads:

All plants had their enchantments, but no spell could eliminate the need for light, water, and healthy soil. Instead, magic was used to make these necessities of the vegetable kingdom more available, [….].
Bink looked at the girl beside him as she stepped through a slanting sunbeam. He was no plant, but he too had needs, and even the most casual inspection of her made him aware of this.
Piers Anthony, A Spell for Chameleon, p. 1-2

So here we have a man who has brought his beloved out to a romantic lookout point in order to ask for her hand in marriage, and the first thought on his mind when he sees her is how he has “needs”. Are you swooning with the romance of it all? And what a segue-way; contemplating the needs of a plant to a needs of a man. It’s an awkward transition because there ISN’T an nice, normal, respectable way of blatantly stating that women are there to be sexual partners for men.

There’s not much more I can add to this criticism that reviewers Jason Heller and Oren Ashkenzi haven’t already said in their detailed breakdowns on why the book/series/author is horrible. They’re both worth checking out, as they each bring a unique take on the misogyny. Heller dwells into some of Anthony’s other books to flag the pedophilia that keeps cropping up. And Ashkenzi uses the text to give practical lessons on writing; his paragraph-by-paragraph analysis gives a good idea of how Anthony’s novel could have been so much better.

The one thought that does occur to me in re-reading these pages is it’ll be interesting to see whether other ’70s and ’80s Fantasy books have aged well. While reading a handful of reviews posted on other blogs, the theme that kept popping up for me is people who read the work as a teenager and loved it, but re-reading it as an adult realized what a disgusting misogynist mess it is. I wonder if this has to do with maturation (although the main character is nearly 25, he comes across more as a teenager and may appeal more to an adolescent crowd), or whether we, as readers, have become more critically aware. I’d like to think it’s the latter; the young adults of today seem to be a much more socially-conscious group than earlier generations and I can imagine a number of young adults picking up the book and immediately objecting to the obvious male gaze and objectification of women. But I can’t help but contemplate the effect this hugely popular author has had readers in the ’70s. Among all the negative reviews, there are also a number that praise the book for it’s “refreshing” take on sexuality. The very idea leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I hope I’ll be able to stomach other re-reads as my great adventure continues.

On Master Craftsmen Jeff Smith (A Dissection of Bone Vol 1)

Jeff Smith’s Bone has all the ingredients for a good adventure: humour, romance, mystery; and a dragon, of course. Given all of these delightful qualities, I can’t believe I waited nearly 25 years to read it!!

Cover of Writing With Quiet Hands: How to Shape Your Writing to Resonate with Readers - by Paula Munier

But, in a way, I’m glad I waited until now to read Bone Vol 1 (published in 1995!). It accidentally gave me the opportunity to read Writing with Quiet Hands (2015) by Paula Munier first. Accidentally, because I did not think I’d be using her advice to examine and dissect someone’s else’s work. Munier, as a writer, editor, and literary agent, certainly approaches the art of writing – and selling your writing – from every angle possible. In one section she details the 3 levels of “story questions”:

the macro question – the *big question* that drives the plot
the meso questions – questions that drive every scene
the micro questions – questions that are scattered throughout sentences and paragraphs at every opportunity.

Reading Bone for the first time with Munier’s ideas on my mind, it becomes quickly obvious that Smith is a master of the micro questions. Every page has you asking questions, drawing you in to keep reading until you’ve found the answers. As a graphic novel, this is done on both the visual and verbal level.

Let’s take a look at the cover, for example:

Cover of Bone Volume 1: Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith

Although the adage “don’t judge a book by the cover” is often true, I don’t think this idea applies to graphic novels. Smith’s illustration does an admirable job of capturing the qualities of his protagonist. We immediately get the idea that the main character looks affable; the rounded features, the side smile, the hint of a blush, all give an overall impression of a “nice-guy” type. An innocent type. Not naive; But the type that looks like he’ll be taken advantage of because of his good-naturedness. And then you have these ominous eyes peering at the character from the shadows, barely visible except for the white of his eyes. So before you’ve even picked up the book to read, Smith has you asking “who is this guy, and is he going to be okay??”

At this point in the narrative (i.e. the cover), we know nothing about the character. We assume he’s the central protagonist. But we don’t know what he’s doing with a dusty old map or where he’s going. We don’t know what his name is, or any other identifiers about him (career, etc). We’re not even sure it’s a he; this is an (obviously biased) assumption made on our part, because we’re also not sure what he is. Is he meant to be human? Some alien or fantasy creature?

Think about that for a second. Despite knowing nothing about this character, Smith still has the audience wondering if the protagonist is going to be okay simply by looking at the cover. Is that not master craftsmanship?

Smith’s microquestions continue on every page. We jump in in media res, the first panel depicts three characters sweating in a desert. The first line reads: “still no sign of the townspeople,” followed by a second character’s response: “Hey! Ya hear that, Phoney? Th’ coast is clear!” From this brief exchange, the audience immediately wonders “who are these guys, and why are they running from the townspeople?” These questions lead to more questions as we learn that the three Bones (Phoney, Smiley, and Fone) are lost in the desert without water. They are ‘off the map’ in uncharted territories. (Literally, as they are caring around a map that no longer shows their location.) This information leads to questions about the world they’re in. Where are they? Why are parts of this world uncharted?

But before we can properly even ask these questions, the Bones are chased by a swarm of locusts (where did the locusts come from??), and get separated from one another. As we follow the journey of Fone Bone as he gets progressively more lost, more questions arise. Chiefly, where the heck is he?? And, as ominous eyes peer at him from the shadow, we continue to ask “is he going to be okay?”

These questions drive the story forward. As you’re never really sure what exactly is going on, or even the rules of the world that Fone Bone finds himself in, the reader is made to ask on every page “is Fone Bone safe?”. But while this macroquestion should have resulted in a tense, suspensful narrative, Bone volume 1 remains firmly in the realms of a fun adventure. With the rounded lines and almost cartoonish artwork, combined with dialogue that is punctuated by humour and emotion, Smith creates a story that is engaging and fun to read, but one that maintains a forward momentum on each page, drawing the reader to keep reading. I can’t wait to read the later volumes (already on my Christmas list) along with the recently announced televised adaptation.

I would love to hear your thoughts on the volume, but, a Special Request: Please don’t post spoilers of later volumes in the comments. I still need to read them myself!