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Ghosts in the Snow, Tamara Siler Jones
Feb. 19th, 2011 08:05 pmA book recommended to me by a friend with such enthusiasm that I was made genuinely curious, even before she bought it for me for this last Christmas (She'd tried to order it the Christmas before, but Amazon failed). It's a fantasy, set in a sort of castle in a quasi-medieval fantasy world. There's not a lot of magic left - in the backstory, the protagonist, Dubric, was part of what sounds like a cross between a traditional fantasy quest and a really dirty war. Dubric now uses a combination of modern police methods (examining the location of the death, etc) and lingering magic items to try and figure out what's going on.
I didn't particularly like it. A few moments in the plot struck me as stretching it (it's a castle of 400-some people. First, do they really need six girls to work full time exclusively on tending chickens and collecting eggs? Second, even invisible, it seemed to me that there were too many cases where the villain could get away from the scene far too easily with far too few clues, too few people noticing things like bloody footprints. Third, it really seems like the person pinned with the crimes had far too little time alone to not have an alibi after a while. Fourth, there were too many moments where the equivalents of modern policing seemed ... forced into the culture is probably the best way of putting it.) But those were mostly quibbles I could have worked with if I weren't put off continuously by the big issue I had.
I knew going in that the friend of mine in question has nastier tastes in fiction than I, but we have a significant overlap, and my tastes can tend to grim, provided it not be hopeless grimness. I can appreciate writers like Sarah Monette or Carol Berg whose premises have started with horrible damage to people, whose writing is in what Monette Calls the "noir" attitude (Yes, named after the style of detective story.) In fact, I write in that noir place on occasion. Bird of Dusk is not a pretty book. (I have in fact thought that it's a very Bergian book, though she favours elaborate high fantasy settings). Bad things happen to good people in many of my stories, though Bird is an outlier among the finished or currently worked on stuff.
But Jones goes beyond bad things happening. Her plot is a serial killer plot, and the killer is doing things like removing kidneys from his victims and eating them, or disembowelling them and dumping bits in a dye vat, so yes, nastiness is expected. Viscera are mentioned often, there's a lot of blood.
But that's not the nastiness I found myself objecting to. it's the fact that all the people are hateful and bitter.
First, the people of the castle are frequently described in crowds, and mobs, and line-ups, and these are rarely bored or worried or grieving. They're always angry, or annoyed, griping and making snarky nasty unhelpful remarks. Jones frequently uses the description "Someone in the crowd shouted" or similar, for usually some particularly vile comment.
Virtually every possible witness has to be pushed into giving any information, almost everyone who talks to Dubric is complaining that he's doing nothing. Nobody offers information, very few people make reasonable placating comments or say anything remotely nice to or about one another. People accuse one another of the murder in the face of common sense evidence to the contrary, and once the killer gets away with a few more murders, every woman screams and runs from every man -- almost. The lord of the castle, when he finds out one of the accused is his grandson, demands he be set free and declared innocent no matter how many women have been killed, and shows rabid indifference to his own people - after having been shown early on refusing to raise taxes or bleed his people like other lords. The ghosts chasing Dubric until he solves the crime at one point turn on him and attack him horribly, and often torment him once they start moving, apparently unable to figure out that torturing the person who's trying to find their killer is a bad idea, even though one of the only other characters who's not scum *is* a ghost.
And as soon as there's a whisper of suspicion about one person, the mob begins demanding his blood, and in fact there is a riot, and it's not made clear how he gets out of it. Once the riot happens, Dubric's picked men, who have been the only ones to date who could apparently use logic at all, or notice bloody footprints, or have consciences, are shown -- well, here I'
m resorting to an excerpt (Lars is Dubric's man, and has been until now logical, helpful, and basically a good kid, in spite of being left alive in one of the most horrible murder scenes): Even as he elbowed away a screeching window maid, Lars turned, sword in hand, shallowly slicing open the belly of a weaver wielding a pair of brass candlesticks. Before the weaver slumped to the floor, he turned the sword and clubbed the maid's head with it. She dutifully fell at his feet, and he stepped over her without a second thought.
Without a second thought.
Nobody seems to care about one another except the designated romantic couple. And even the guy in that pair is uncooperative, illogical, and unwilling to help in proving his innocence. Frankly, the fact that he has some redeeming qualities other than being head over heels for a girl is almost a miracle.
At one point, Dubric observes that while everyone's being upset by deaths, nobody seems to be mourning the girls in particular. I hoped this was going somewhere. I hoped this meant that Jones had noticed her own bleakness and was preparing something. But no, it turns out that there are two explanations for this. One: People mourn in private and won't tell him. Which, okay. Maybe, though we're not seen much grieving even in the scenes outside Dubric's purview.
Two: The girls who are killed until the very last are portrayed as girls who slept around a bit. Except that's not what other people call them. Other people in the story call them whores, even when they're not doing it for money. Some of these relationships seem to have been implied to involve geniune affection, too. But not enough for the men to mourn them, or their fellow maids.
Apparently, sleeping around is EVIL.
So, no, I couldn't like the book. It didn't feel like good won even after the murderer was found and destroyed. There wasn't enough good around to win. By the time it was done, I had hit the eight deadly words*. It was too relentless for me to care.
And it makes all the difference. Monette's world is dark. She knows from noir. Her main characters are a whore and an assassin originally, and several of their fellows are spies, necromancers and people who've done horrible magical things. Felix is shrill and selfish, Mildmay has moments of extreme sullenness and they hurt each other, their lovers, and those people hurt them right back. But it's not relentless. Felix and Mildmay also have moments of saving each other from worse, of standing together. Of being good to their lovers, and to the others they know. They do things like go back to fix mistakes, and learn to apologize, and to talk to each other.
This wasn't noir. This was VOID.
*I Don't Care What Happens to These People.
I didn't particularly like it. A few moments in the plot struck me as stretching it (it's a castle of 400-some people. First, do they really need six girls to work full time exclusively on tending chickens and collecting eggs? Second, even invisible, it seemed to me that there were too many cases where the villain could get away from the scene far too easily with far too few clues, too few people noticing things like bloody footprints. Third, it really seems like the person pinned with the crimes had far too little time alone to not have an alibi after a while. Fourth, there were too many moments where the equivalents of modern policing seemed ... forced into the culture is probably the best way of putting it.) But those were mostly quibbles I could have worked with if I weren't put off continuously by the big issue I had.
I knew going in that the friend of mine in question has nastier tastes in fiction than I, but we have a significant overlap, and my tastes can tend to grim, provided it not be hopeless grimness. I can appreciate writers like Sarah Monette or Carol Berg whose premises have started with horrible damage to people, whose writing is in what Monette Calls the "noir" attitude (Yes, named after the style of detective story.) In fact, I write in that noir place on occasion. Bird of Dusk is not a pretty book. (I have in fact thought that it's a very Bergian book, though she favours elaborate high fantasy settings). Bad things happen to good people in many of my stories, though Bird is an outlier among the finished or currently worked on stuff.
But Jones goes beyond bad things happening. Her plot is a serial killer plot, and the killer is doing things like removing kidneys from his victims and eating them, or disembowelling them and dumping bits in a dye vat, so yes, nastiness is expected. Viscera are mentioned often, there's a lot of blood.
But that's not the nastiness I found myself objecting to. it's the fact that all the people are hateful and bitter.
First, the people of the castle are frequently described in crowds, and mobs, and line-ups, and these are rarely bored or worried or grieving. They're always angry, or annoyed, griping and making snarky nasty unhelpful remarks. Jones frequently uses the description "Someone in the crowd shouted" or similar, for usually some particularly vile comment.
Virtually every possible witness has to be pushed into giving any information, almost everyone who talks to Dubric is complaining that he's doing nothing. Nobody offers information, very few people make reasonable placating comments or say anything remotely nice to or about one another. People accuse one another of the murder in the face of common sense evidence to the contrary, and once the killer gets away with a few more murders, every woman screams and runs from every man -- almost. The lord of the castle, when he finds out one of the accused is his grandson, demands he be set free and declared innocent no matter how many women have been killed, and shows rabid indifference to his own people - after having been shown early on refusing to raise taxes or bleed his people like other lords. The ghosts chasing Dubric until he solves the crime at one point turn on him and attack him horribly, and often torment him once they start moving, apparently unable to figure out that torturing the person who's trying to find their killer is a bad idea, even though one of the only other characters who's not scum *is* a ghost.
And as soon as there's a whisper of suspicion about one person, the mob begins demanding his blood, and in fact there is a riot, and it's not made clear how he gets out of it. Once the riot happens, Dubric's picked men, who have been the only ones to date who could apparently use logic at all, or notice bloody footprints, or have consciences, are shown -- well, here I'
m resorting to an excerpt (Lars is Dubric's man, and has been until now logical, helpful, and basically a good kid, in spite of being left alive in one of the most horrible murder scenes): Even as he elbowed away a screeching window maid, Lars turned, sword in hand, shallowly slicing open the belly of a weaver wielding a pair of brass candlesticks. Before the weaver slumped to the floor, he turned the sword and clubbed the maid's head with it. She dutifully fell at his feet, and he stepped over her without a second thought.
Without a second thought.
Nobody seems to care about one another except the designated romantic couple. And even the guy in that pair is uncooperative, illogical, and unwilling to help in proving his innocence. Frankly, the fact that he has some redeeming qualities other than being head over heels for a girl is almost a miracle.
At one point, Dubric observes that while everyone's being upset by deaths, nobody seems to be mourning the girls in particular. I hoped this was going somewhere. I hoped this meant that Jones had noticed her own bleakness and was preparing something. But no, it turns out that there are two explanations for this. One: People mourn in private and won't tell him. Which, okay. Maybe, though we're not seen much grieving even in the scenes outside Dubric's purview.
Two: The girls who are killed until the very last are portrayed as girls who slept around a bit. Except that's not what other people call them. Other people in the story call them whores, even when they're not doing it for money. Some of these relationships seem to have been implied to involve geniune affection, too. But not enough for the men to mourn them, or their fellow maids.
Apparently, sleeping around is EVIL.
So, no, I couldn't like the book. It didn't feel like good won even after the murderer was found and destroyed. There wasn't enough good around to win. By the time it was done, I had hit the eight deadly words*. It was too relentless for me to care.
And it makes all the difference. Monette's world is dark. She knows from noir. Her main characters are a whore and an assassin originally, and several of their fellows are spies, necromancers and people who've done horrible magical things. Felix is shrill and selfish, Mildmay has moments of extreme sullenness and they hurt each other, their lovers, and those people hurt them right back. But it's not relentless. Felix and Mildmay also have moments of saving each other from worse, of standing together. Of being good to their lovers, and to the others they know. They do things like go back to fix mistakes, and learn to apologize, and to talk to each other.
This wasn't noir. This was VOID.
*I Don't Care What Happens to These People.
