One of the most useful things I’ve learned from the Internet is the phrase Your Mileage May Vary, usually seen as the abbreviation YMMV, which roughly means “tastes differ.” For instance: I thought Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris was pretty “enhh,” but YMMV.
Elantris is a single-volume fantasy, Sanderson’s first. The city of the title used to be called the city of the gods, inhabited by ordinary people transformed at random into white-haired, silver-skinned near-immortals capable of powerful magics. And then it suddenly all went wrong: the transformation apparently turned those chosen into the walking dead, the city crumbled to ruins, and the magic stopped working.
The society around Elantris collapsed and re-formed into a monarchy, but ten years on, when the book starts, the new government’s stability is threatened by two events: the crown prince is transformed and thrown into Elantris, and a high-ranking priest from a powerful religious empire arrives, intending to convert the country before the empire’s soldiers destroy it. The prince and the priest are two of the point-of-view characters; the third is the prince’s fiancée, a politically-skilled princess from another country who takes an interest in, well, everything. As her companion asks her about halfway through the book, when she raises another issue,
“My lady, don’t you think you might be overextending yourself? You’ve decided to confront the [priest], liberate the court women from masculine oppression, save Arelon’s economy, and feed Elantris.”
That leads into my principal YMMV reaction to this book, the characters. It’s possible that I did the book a bit of a disservice, reading it right after the vivid narrative voices of Mélusine and The Virtu. Elantris is told in the third person, and I found something about the prose distancing—though it could be a chicken-and-egg thing, the characters and the prose. At any rate, the principal characters did not come alive for me, which left me less than invested in the story. If I’d cared more about the characters—well, for one thing, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the quote above, let alone rolled my eyes at it (the prince was, I thought, a bit too good to be true as well). The priest interested me least, so while I recognized his increased complexities, they came too late in the book to affect me. (The priest was also particularly a victim of the sagging middle that Chad noted; the last fifty pages contain more revelations and reversals for him than I can shake a stick at, which come so quickly that I felt they lost their impact.)
I did like the magic system, and what the prince finds in Elantris and how he responds, but those aren’t enough to carry me through a story. Again, I invoke YMMV, especially in light of the many and glowing blurbs that adorn the paperback.
I read this as part of my Worldcon homework, as Sanderson is nominated for the Campbell Award. I previously requested Sanderson’s next book, Mistborn, from the library, but I’m not sure now whether I will read it, especially since I still have four novels and fourteen pieces of short fiction to read for the Hugos. Anyone else read these?
I had essentially the same reaction to this, and I think for essentially the same reason. If anything, I had an even more pessimistic view of it, since I gave up reading about 150-200 pages into it, when I realized that I just didn’t care about any of the characters, and the plot and worldbuilding wasn’t carrying me along. A resounding “ehh” from me.
I felt pretty much the same about Elantris, though I liked the magic system enough to keep an eye out for his next. I did like Mistborn a lot more.
Yeah, I read it after reading Orson Scott Card’s (glowing) review, and this is one of the many places where I don’t agree with him. Like you say, YMMV.
Have you read the Attolia series by Megan Whalen Turner? I mention these just because of your comment on “distancing” prose– I enjoyed the first two books in the trilogy (though the second one has some pacing and logic issues) and absolutely *adored* the third book– but her writing style is definitely more distant and patterned than Monette’s. So I’d be interested to see what you thought. I suspect it isn’t just the writing style that turned you off of Elantris.
(And, in fact, Card really liked Attolia as well, and we agree on that 🙂 )
Trent: it’s pretty rare for me to stop reading a book, because I read fast and usually momentum keeps me going. Also, I *was* curious about what happened to Elantris.
Sherwood: thanks, that makes me more likely to read _Mistborn_ if and when the library produces it.
charlene: I have the Attolia series on my list of things to read, as a lot of people have spoken very highly of it. I wish I were able to put my finger more precisely on what I meant about the prose; it’s not that all prose must be very immediate, since, oh, _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_ or Dunnett’s Lymond books worked great for me. Just didn’t click, I guess, that’s all.
I agree that _Mistborn_ is better. Better pacing, less political cartooniness, less reliance on surprise twists at the end.
(There will be sequels to _Mistborn_, but it holds together on its own.)
I really like Sanderson, but I’m reading him for the nifty magic systems (which is clearly his biggest strength).
Your notes are quite legitimate. A book is doomed to fail, in my opinion, if the characters don’t work for you. And, well, they just can’t work for everyone. I wish they could, and I think I can certainly get better at making them work for more people, but someone is always going to just find them unappealing. Since a plot is only as effective as your ability to care about the characters involved in it, I
Brandon, it was really interesting to see your comment! It made me think: have you noticed a difference between men and women readers of Elantris? I wonder if the sorts of character-problems I have with it are at least somewhat gender-based in origin– I wonder this somewhat because of Kate and Chad’s differing reviews, as well as my own reaction to Elantris being somewhat similar to my reactions towards some books my husband loves.
You know, Sarene–the female character–seems to be very polarizing. Some of the people (women included) who write me REALLY like her, while if there’s one character people hate, it tends to be her. Raoden generally gets the ‘too perfect’ criticism, which is very legitimate.
(It was an intentional choice–Elantris was my sixth book, and I was rather tired of writing characters with deep, dark pasts and just wanted to write a hero more like some of my optimistic friends I admire. Still, the fact that it was intentional on my part doesn’t necessarily mean that people have to like that choice. You can see from Mistborn, however, that this isn’t always the way I go with my heroes.)
Hrathen–the priest character–is liked by some, others say blah, but he’s not as polarizing. Those who dislike him generally like him by the end; their dislike comes from an initial assumption that he’s a generic ‘look at my evil-ness’ type villain, rather than a third hero. Makes me wonder if I could have handled that better.
All in all, I actually (by count) find that I get just a bit more fan mail from women than I do from men, and I have a lot of fans who are younger teens. In general, people like Mistborn better than Elantris. It’s a little darker and a little more action-oriented, and the female lead is far less divisive.
Andrew: thanks.
Konrad: the magic was pretty nifty.
Mr. Sanderson: hello and welcome.
(Also, *another* useful thing I’ve learned from the Internet was almost ten years ago now, when an author e-mailed me about a review of her book that I’d posted online. It’s the authorial corollary to the Law of Internet Invocation. Reviewers, take note: say nothing about a book that you’re not willing to have the author read.)
Yeah, that’s a good warning. I