(no subject)

[lenora_rose]

I think I might have just solved all my problems with the next section except two. (And this isn't asking for advice on solving the problems, though debate whether the problems are problems at all is fine...)

My next section of the Serpent Prince takes place during a short war. I hate battle scenes. And in fact, it has occurred to me that most (not all, alas) of the war can pretty much be slid past in a few paragraphs, and I only need to touch down, as it were, for a few particular scenes. In the face of how many other books where Battles are treated as the Important Stuff. (Part of my own brain frets over that. There's an art to identifying the bad advice coming from inside, and this time, I think that is bad advice.)

So I'd decided to try a double experiment; First, I *am* just writing the most important bits of the war without transitions, until we hit the other side of the war.

And I'm switching point-of-view. Which is good for myriad reasons (one: Yay, female! Two: it's actually kind of interesting seeing Stoneface from the outside, because his narrative is more emotive than his face. Three: SPOILER... ) It also creates the two new problems.

There are at least two different kinds of first person narratives. There's the kind that neither needs nor wants for excuse; Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths is from ultimately four different first-person voices, and none of those have any reason to have wanted the narrative committed to paper. Minister Faust's the Coyote Kings of the Space-age Bachelor Pad, which uses a metric ton of voices - while I may dispute whether they are all necessary, they are a prime example of not needing a justification.

Then there's the other kind, where the writing is being written by a particular person for another one. Elizabeth E. Wein's the Winter Prince, where a layer is added once you realise who's being spoken to. Steven Brust's Agyar, where the fact that the main character is in fact working on a typewriter in an attic while events unfold is essential to the framework. (His Vlad Taltos books, by contrast, seem to switch from one to the other; the early ones don't seem to demand that he be telling his story at a particular time to a particular person, but the later ones seem to assume he is recording them via magic for some reason. Which I felt was more disruptive a change than useful.)

The Serpent Prince is one of the latter. I have a pretty good idea when, where, and why Ketan is writing. The opening, while officially from another point of view, comes from a document deciphered from a coded journal *and* translated from a foreign language by Ketan (Which is why Del's voice isn't as different from Ketan's as it might be.) The rest of Serpent and Soldier are he himself, excepting only where he copies in letters, which stay brief.

I was already trying to figure out why the Dragon Queens changes narrator, since that narrator, S., has less inclination than Ketan or Del to write things down, but I could at least envision her doing it, if only because Ketan asked.

This new p-o-v, P., has no likely reason for writing. Sure, anyone literate could be keeping a journal. But more, I have even less clue than I do with Del's ciphered journal just how Ketan might get his hands on the document. I'm not sure how important it is to justify, but having started with the framework of knowing where and when things are written down, it might well jolt the illusion to slide over it.

Second, if I add P's voice, then, once the war itself is done, I'm going to either have to drop her like a hot rock again, which means a major action of hers gets missed until the information comes to Ketan and S. in book three, or I end up having to twine and counter-point the two narratives, because I can't drop Ketan's view for the real climax. And noplace else in the books do I alternate.

Well, I guess I should get the war done with as it is. Then worry.

_________________________



Brandon Sanderson: Mistborn

Sanderson is currently known for having been picked as Robert Jordan's successor to finish the Wheel of Time (And has declared that he has no idea how Jordan planned to fit All That into one book, and said he's making it three instead.) part of that was on the strength of his standalone first novel and of the trilogy started by this book.

Well, the good news first: I don't yet know about the other two in the trilogy, but Mistborn is a Big Fat Fantasy that needs to be Big and Fat. It's reasonably tightly written, and where the plot slows, it's because the world or the characters are growing instead, and usually all three happen simultaneously. Not being a Jordan fan, I can't say anything about whether the two writers' styles are a perfect fit, but Sanderson has the chops, and is in the right subgenre of epic fantasy.

You know, everybody knows the parody of fantasy as "Dark Lord rises, plucky young man (occasionally woman) from nowhere follows a prophecy, assembles companions, etc., and takes him out."

(Aside) I've had a problem with this description for a while. Let's look at a few of the fantasy novels ones within sight of my desk as I type:

Sarah Monette (A sort of Dark Lord in the first two, but he's not out to rule the world *or* destroy it. And nobody is prophesied to counter him.)
Neil Gaiman: Anansi Boys
Barry Hughart: Bridge of Birds
Naomi Novik: His Majesty's Dragon
Lynn Flewelling: The Nightrunner books (Oh, look, there's a dark lord in the first two! Not much prophecy, though, at least not about Him)
Elizabeth Bear: Ink and Steel / Hell and Earth (Trying to imagine Bear making someone EEEVIL breaks my brain.)
Marta Randall: Sword of Winter
Jim C. Hines: Goblin Quest (something of a spoof of the Dungeon Quest fantasy, so of course there are traditional elements, but even so, not the usual Dark Lord ideas, just the dungeon crawl. And EEVil is in low evidence, too.)
J.K. Rowling (And yes, there's a Dark Lord, and all the trappings, in spite of being combined with a rather different setting.)
Scott Lynch. Jane Yolen. Jo Walton. Peter s. Beagle. Charles de Lint. Lois McMaster Bujold. Emma Bull. Terry Pratchett. Ellen Kushner. Guy Gavriel Kay (Oh, and there's one more Dark Lord, in the first trilogy, though not the rest; and evil quickly becomes more relative and more grey in all the rest.) Ursula K. Le Guin. Martha Wells. Patricia McKillip. Nancy Springer (Lots of prophecies and traditional trappings early on, but less and less over time.) Robin McKinley (A couple of Eevil Lords, defeated by sometimes-prophesied girls. But not with the world at stake, even at her most traditional and unexamined.)

It always seemed to me, even when laughing terribly at Diana Wynne Jones' Tough Guide to Fantasyland, that the Heroic Quest to Defeat the Dark Lord is actually a lot thinner on the ground than it's given credit for. (In fact, I'm having a hard time figuring out with whom to shelve Sanderson, because I tend to try to group at least somewhat by either subgenre or vaguely identifiable similarities of narrative, style, or other commonalities. And I have little epic fantasy, and the shelves where some appears mostly get disqualified on other grounds. Actually, the closest fit might be Martha Wells's City of Bones, also a post-apocalyptic fantasy about facing mistakes of the distant past. but the rest of her works are nothing like.) (/aside)

This book, first of a trilogy, purports to have gained its "unique perspective" from having wondered what would happen if the Dark Lord weren't beaten, or at least not in the usual way. In short, so far as everyone inside the story knows, it begins with Hero who went to destroy the Dark Power having taken over the world, driven it to ruin, and held it in his own terrible crushing grip instead.

And I don't know. For all its invention, and there's a lot, starting with the assumptions of a dark evil power and a prophecy and a chosen hero does seem to limit the narrative in some very strong ways, *even* once you give the story a different end and set the current tale a good long while after. After all, you're still left with the idea that utter evil does exist. And the new Dark Lord seems to exemplify that. You have the assumptions that prophecies work, or that there are Special Chosen Heroes, usually from humble origins. Even if your hero seems to be using that assumption to pull off a massive plan that's nothing like the people who look to him think it is. Or your heroine never once considers that she might fit the mold, even when she manifests New! Different! Even! More! Special! versions of power. There are things I know about how books two and three go that i wouldn't if I didn't see where Sanderson is doing what Monette calls "Thinking with my Genre Conventions". Even as the whole world-building and backstory disruptnthe narrative of the Dark Lord and the Plucky Hero and the Prophecy: the modern story is starting to slot pieces of itself right back into the narrative.

Here's the thing: it is a terribly inventive book. In Other ways. The major characters sound like people who could exist in these circumstances. It's nicely written, faced paced, a bit violent. The politics are reasonable, even to the ideals held by the heroine's Love Interest, and the drastic mistake made along the way by one of the gang. Most of the world building makes some sense; the fact that plants grow at all and produce anything seems a stretch in places, but it didn't disrupt my suspension as I read, and the peoples' struggles seemed reasonable. (Although the total population and army sizes seemed a bit high.)

The form of magic is unusual and seems to be reasonably thought through; while no doubt someone inventive could consider uses for it not applied here, or counter the characters' techniques, it's all quibbles to do with human ingenuity, and the things real human beings might fail to consider. The physics work more than they don't, though. How fragile both normal and superpowered humans were seemed variable, but then, people are... it was only when it was a little too close to narratively convenient whether someone was frail or tough that I winced.

But I liked Kelsier, I liked Vin a Lot, even when she started displaying occasional bits of Extra Special Power (she seems to have avoided the narrative-warping effects of the Mary Sue - thank god - even as she displays those of the Fantasy Hero). Her inability to trust seemed rather too quickly handled in places, even with the months that slipped past between parts. I liked Elend when he wasn't being deliberately obtuse, I liked most of the gang.



Sarah Monette: Corambis

You know, I was good with the trains, and the robots, even with the proximity to the other societies without. But Sorry, the subways were a serious stretch. I had to pretend they didn't exist.

Last of a four-book series, Corambis is emotionally true to the other three as far as Felix and Mildmay are concerned, and the new narrator, Kay, fit in distressingly well. It was very good to see Felix slowly Getting Over Himself (Although I almost wanted more backsliding into arsehole in places, or a few more moments of non-arseness in the Mirador), and better to see Mildmay opening out to more people.

Monette has been talking about this series in a long stretch of Q&As on her blog, and because of that, i find most of what i feel like saying feels like it was said. I loved this book, and how aspects of the ways the characters dealt with each other - and realisations made about events from the first three books, including one that had seemed just plain weird from the first book - really did make the series as a whole more satisfying, in spite of being in yet one more seriously different locale from Melusine.

I hated some of Felix's choices, but, well, they were in character. and yes, what he did at the climax was just a fabulous answer, not only to the actual danger, but to everything he's been and done.

Part of me wants to see more of the world, but... Monette is right. This narrative is pretty much closed. The places the characters are going are going to be far from boring for those living them, but don't feel like they invite more stories.