I’ve read a lot of books in recent months that I didn’t finish, or felt ambivalent about. I have notes on a few of them.<\/p>\n
This is a portal fantasy with a pair of protagonists. The first protagonist is a loser. He finds a door–a literal door–to another world, and it’s the greatest thing to happen to him in, like, ever<\/em>; he fully expects that in this new world he\u2019ll be a hero. Rather uniquely, the novel realizes he\u2019s an idiot. He does end up touched by Mysterious Powers but his homeless friend, protagonist number two, is the one who’ll probably have something closer to a traditional hero role. This novel is trying to deconstruct stories about schlubs who travel to another world and discover their inner strength. I have a soft spot for this genre, but I still enthusiastically agree it needs deconstruction.<\/p>\n Unfortunately The Pilgrims<\/em> never arrives where it’s going because it’s the first volume in another damn trilogy that ends on another damn cliffhanger. As usual for the first and second books of trilogies, it feels like mostly padding.<\/p>\n Actually, the padding is interesting to think about, if not to read. I’ve noticed some epic fantasies set lots of action in what you might call “Adventure Land.” Vague fields, forests, or mountains where nothing happens apart from bands of adventurers travelling through having what Dungeons and Dragons<\/em> calls \u201cencounters.\u201d\u009d<\/a> There’s no evidence that Adventure Land belongs to anyone, or is used for anything, unless it’s been set aside as a park. If so, fantasyland has a very<\/em> extensive national park system; Teddy Roosevelt would be proud. There might be roads in Adventure Land but these novels rarely mention farms. (Civilizations need agriculture; I’d expect most cities to be surrounded by farms.) There might<\/em> be a ruin, if the novel is especially D&D<\/em>-ish. Usually the only inhabitants of Adventure Land are monsters. Or bandits. Or inexplicably self-sufficient cottages which if the protagonist is lucky are owned by helpful allies, and if unlucky by Tom Bombadil<\/a>.<\/p>\n A lot<\/em> of The Pilgrims<\/em> takes place in Adventure Land. It’s specifically mentioned that farming is taking place under a dome. Beyond that, there’s a city, and a castle, and the rest of the land is… I dunno. I’ve got to admit, by the midpoint of the novel I was picturing the characters tramping across a giant lawn.<\/p>\n Saunders writes SF like John M. Ford did: leaning heavily on incluing<\/a> for explanations, feeding you only just enough context to deduce the world, the backstory, and the underlying meaning of what\u2019s happening. I find that Ford stays just on the right side of gnomic. For me, Saunders crossed the line into obtuse. This may be partly because The March North<\/em> is military fantasy, which is not usually my thing. There\u2019s a lot of military jargon and maneuvering and it\u2019s hard to tell how much is relevant, or in what way. The characters spend long passages exchanging technobabble about magic artillery. On the positive side of the ledger, all of it sounds like real technical discussion. On the negative side, all of it sounds like real technical discussion. It\u2019s not particularly interesting, and it\u2019s never clear why it\u2019s relevant. <\/p>\n The characters are mostly ciphers; salient facts about the narrator\u2019s identity and background aren\u2019t made clear for a while, and the soldiers might as well be a formless mass labeled \u201csoldiers.\u201d\u009d When a good chunk of them die it\u2019s about as affecting as seeing barrels get smashed in a video game.<\/p>\n There’s a second book set in the same world that doesn’t share the same setup or characters as this one. It might have been better if I’d read that first; maybe I’ll try it someday.<\/p>\n Marta Randall\u2019s prose is good so at first this seemed promising. I soon discovered this is a book where it\u2019s considered acceptable for a guy to own an entire inhabited planet and treat the natives as servants. I checked some of the later chapters and didn\u2019t see any suggestion that at any point the novel questioned this. 1978 seems late for something like this to be published.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also some lack of acknowledgement of how big planets are. Like, 200 refugees come to this planet owned by a single family, and the wife wants to make it clear the refugees don’t own the land they’re living on. Because\u2014setting aside the natives, which is, let us admit, a pretty massive thing to set aside\u2014an entire planet inhabited by 200 people is facing a serious land shortage, right?<\/p>\n The Drosten’s Curse<\/em> is a Doctor Who<\/em> tie-in starring the fourth Doctor. It’s an expansion of one of the Time Trips<\/em> novella ebooks the BBC published a couple years ago.<\/p>\n At first the prose style seemed a little strange. The Drosten’s Curse<\/em> uses a lot of ellipses and run-on sentences. But it felt right, somehow. Eventually it hit me: the prose is a pretty accurate replica of the way Tom Baker talked when he played the Doctor. The narrative voice of The Drosten’s Curse<\/em> is the fourth Doctor as a Douglas Adames-esque third person omniscient narrator. That’s a smart choice, and appropriate: the novel takes the same whimsical tone as that one year during Tom Baker’s tenure that Adams worked on the program.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, after a while the novel starts to drag. There’s just too much happening, and too much of it feels random. And it may be that the fourth Doctor’s voice only works as prose in smaller doses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve read a lot of books in recent months that I didn’t finish, or felt ambivalent about. I have notes on a few of them. Will Elliott, The Pilgrims This is a portal fantasy with a pair of protagonists. The first protagonist is a loser. He finds a door–a literal door–to another world, and it’s … Continue reading Recent Reading, Unfinished and Ambivalent<\/span> Graydon Saunders, The March North<\/em><\/a><\/h2>\n
Marta Randall, Journey<\/em><\/a><\/h2>\n
A. L. Kennedy, the Drosten’s Curse<\/em><\/a><\/h2>\n