Author: katenepveu

Posted on

Valente, Catherynne M.: Orphan’s Tales, The: In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice

The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden and The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice, by Catherynne M. Valente, are a complete sequence of astonishingly immersive and transformative fairy tales, nested within and wound into each other to create a complete mythology and an overall narrative. I read them now because the second volume is eligible for a Hugo nomination, and unless I read an improbable number of mind-blowing books between now and the end of the month, it’s going on my ballot.

In the gardens of a Sultan lives a girl who has been shunned since infanthood because her eyes are surrounded by a dark birthmark. One day, one of the Sultan’s sons seeks her out and asks her about the mark. She tells him,

“On an evening when I was a very small child an old woman came to the great silver gate, and twisting her hands among the rose-roots told me this: I was not born with this mark. A spirit came into my cradle on the seventh day of the seventh month of my life, and while my mother slept in her snow-white bed, the spirit touched my face, and left there many tales and spells, like the tattoos of sailors. The verses and songs were so great in number and so closely written that they appeared as one long, unbroken streak of indigo on my eyelids. But they are the words of the river and the marsh, the lake and the delta. They comprise a great magic, and when the tales are all read out, and heard end to shining end, to the last syllable, the spirit will return and judge me. After she vanished into the blue-faced night, I spent each day hidden in a thicket of jasmine and oleander, trying to read what I could in my bronze mirror. But it is difficult, I must read them backwards, and I can only read one eye at a time.” She stopped, and the last was no louder than a spider weaving its opaline threads.

“And there is no one to listen.”

Fascinated, the boy asks her to tell him one of the tales . . . and we’re off. A restless prince kills a goose and is caught by a witch, who promises to make him understand what he has done by telling him of her life, which includes the story her grandmother told her, and the story her grandmother was told, and . . .

The series is structured as four books, collected into two volumes for publication purposes. Sometime during the first book, I surfaced and found myself thinking in terms of falling down rabbit holes or dazzling kaleidoscopes—and then immediately rejected them, because to my surprise, I was having no trouble remembering who was speaking, what their relationship was to the broader tale, and what cross-connections were being created. Other people have experienced the text differently, of course, from making no effort to keep track of the interrelationships to purposefully cataloguing them all, or at least wanting to [*].

[*] A substantial effort toward this end has been made over at the Feminist SF Wiki, all of which is deeply spoilery.

My favorite reading experience of the four books was the first, precisely because of the interrelationships: I reveled in the feeling that a web was being created in my mind, with every new tale lighting up a new point or illuminating a connection between existing points. The other three books felt more linear, for though they also link back to past tales, the density of these links is less because so much of the groundwork was laid in the first book. On the other hand, if one finds the first book strenuous, I’d recommend at least trying the other book in the volume to see if it is easier going.

What of the content of these books? Well, they’re fairy tales, of something like the kind found in the Datlow-Windling anthologies of fairy tales for adults; but by virtue of their number, they are far more diverse and complex. The work shuffles a whole deck of fairy-tale roles and deals them out over and over again: witch, princess, woman in a tower, mother, monster, wizard, brother, king . . . each time taking a look at the possible person and reality behind the role. Other themes that I particularly noticed were bodies, their variants, transformations, and mutability; ways of relating to power; and the birth and death of cities, of which I was especially struck by the one at the start of the third book. (The first volume received a Tiptree Award, which was well-deserved, as the tales are particularly interested in and relevant to ideas of gender.)

The cumulative effect of these many tales is the creation of a complete underlying mythology and a wide portrait of a world. More, it’s one drawn from many different cultures, without the wholesale importation of any. Occasionally the resulting juxapositions were slightly jarring, but I prefer the diversity of sources and of characters to the alternatives. Lately I’ve been craving, above almost all else, something different in my fantasy reading; and this is very far from being Extruded Fantasy Product and fit the bill admirably.

These weren’t perfect reads. Once or twice I felt the themes were more obvious than necessary, and I’m not satisfied with the final revelation. But they were richly imaginative reads, with more narrative momentum than I expected given the format and plenty of lingering wonders and marvels. Strongly recommended.

No Comments

Posted on

Tan, Shaun: Arrival, The

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is a wordless graphic novel about immigration. It’s surreal, beautiful, heartwarming, and one of the best things I read in 2007. (I liked it so well that I’ve been having trouble booklogging it.)

Tan displayed a number of prints from The Arrival in the World Fantasy Con art show, and when I saw them, I immediately went into the dealer’s room looking for a copy of the book. Alas, too many people had the same idea before me, so I had to wait for Amazon to send me a copy. You can see a number of images from the book at Tan’s website by clicking on the cover for The Arrival, and if you like those at all, you need this book.

The book opens with a sad, domestic scene of a husband and wife packing, which includes “The suitcase” (direct link). It seems ordinary enough, until they and their daughter walk along an empty street with a strange shadow above them . . . and then the wider context is revealed in the double-page spread “The old country” (direct link), showing the huge spiky tails that loom over the city streets.

The husband travels across an ocean to a city vastly strange in large ways, as seen in, for instance, “The City” (direct link), which I regret not buying a print of even if I’m not sure where I would have hung it. And strange in small ways, such as the animals that pop out of jars; this leads to one of my favorite sequences, when something like a spiky-tailed raccoon badly startles the protagonist. He explains his reaction by sketching the huge spiky tails of the old country; ohhh, realizes one of his companions, we knew something like that too . . . and we fall into his memory of “The story of The Giants” (direct link).

Not only does this sequence show Tan’s ability to depict emotion, but it demonstrates how the book is built around many immigrants’ tales. More, it’s an example of the fundamental kindness that pervades the work. The protagonist’s companions in this episode are people he met on the street when puzzling over the food-delivery system; they help him figure it out and then invite him home for dinner. I kept waiting, rather anxiously, for something bad to happen—for someone to take advantage of the new immigrant or to display prejudice—and it just never happened.

The Arrival is a deeply sympathetic portrayal of the humanity of immigrants and the universality of their experiences. According to Tan’s comments in the book and on his webpage, it draws from a number of different sources, such as the experiences of his father, a Chinese immigrant to Australia; his own experiences as a traveller to foreign countries; and historical documents like pictures of New York in the early 1900s. This is a rich brew that keeps the book grounded despite all the surreal images, but—to digress slightly—I wonder if it might be less than optimally effective over the widest range of readers. That is, the book has a somewhat historical feel, because of the sepia-toned art, the evocation of Ellis Island (in, e.g., “Inspection” (direct link)), and the fact many people would identify the protagonist as white [*]. And there’s a substantial portion of the American population [**] that sees historical immigration (of white people) as good, but current immigration (of scary brown people) as bad. As a result, it seems possible that people could read this book as a historical tale confirming this attitude, without recognizing the universal nature of its depiction.

[*] I did, but since then I’ve spent some time looking at portraits of mixed-race people and so am freshly aware of other possibilities.

[**] I know that Australia has a bad history when it comes to race and immigration, but don’t know much about its current state.

To be very clear, this is not a criticism of the book, which includes a number of characters of obviously non-European ancestries and which, fairly read, does not in any way support prejudice. More, this is not a suggestion that it’s an explicitly political work, because it’s not. It doesn’t need to be: the beauty of its art and story says more, and more effectively, than any overt statement. Rather, I love this book so much that I want everyone to appreciate it as well and fully as possible, and so was sensitive to aspects that might diminish that. End digression.

The final thing of note is the book’s ending, which shows the adoption of new culture without the abandonment of the old, and has a lovely paying-it-forward moment. Overall, this is a rich and satisfying book, and unless you are completely unable to parse sequential art, I strongly recommend it. I will be nominating it for a Hugo in the Best Related Book category (as it has no words, it’s not eligible in any of the fiction categories) and hope it gets due recognition in the Hugos and other awards.

9 Comments

Posted on

Kirstein, Rosemary: (01) The Steerswoman

I finally got around to reading Rosemary Kirstein’s The Steerswoman (recently reprinted as the first half of The Steerswoman’s Road) because the collective wisdom of LJ agreed, quite rightly, that it was the cure I needed for readerly blahs.

Steerswomen are a professional organization who gather knowledge about the world, mapping, charting, and analyzing as they travel. They must answer any question put to them—as long as the asker has not refused to answer a steerswoman’s question and thereby come under a lifelong ban. Wizards are the only group to scorn steerswomen en masse, and as a result the steerswomen know little of magic. And when a steerswoman named Rowan begins investigating some peculiar, possibly-magical jewels, she discovers that the wizards are willing to kill to keep their secrets . . .

For some of the potential readers of this book, all I have to say is “protagonist whose vocation is the scientific method.” (Watching her gradually work out the idea of orbit is one of my favorite parts of the book. Lest I give the impression that it’s all dry and intellectual, I also really like the swarming dragons.) For others, I could add the words “strong female” to the beginning; or “and whose principal relationship is a straightforward friendship with another woman” to the end. And then there’s the spoiler, but one that’s reasonably well known about the series and also the kind of thing that (I hope) tells you whether this is a book for you (ROT-13, see sidebar): gur jvmneqf ner npghnyyl hfvat grpuabybtl.

This book has fascinating worldbuilding, excellent control of its tight-third point of view, good pacing, and interesting and engaging characters. I have only a couple of small quibbles: I would have liked more lead-up to one aspect of the ending, and the introduction of a new point of view after about a hundred pages is startling (and I’m not sure if it was necessary). It broke the readerly blahs perfectly, and though I’m putting the series aside to read some potential Hugo nominees, I look forward to getting back to the other three published books. (A total of seven are projected.)

9 Comments

Posted on

O’Brian, Patrick: (15) The Truelove (audio)

After a long hiatus, I resumed listening to the Aubrey-Maturin series with The Truelove. This was originally published as Clarissa Oakes, and with good reason: she is a Botany Bay convict smuggled aboard the Surprise by a midshipman, and the turmoil she causes in the ship is the subject of the vast majority of the book.

It’s always lovely to hear Patrick Tull’s deep growly comfortable voice, but I was disappointed to feel that he didn’t do justice to one big important speech. I was also disappointed in the book itself, not because much of it was tense in the unhappy-ship way, but because it felt like it was built around an artifice. I think this is the first time I’ve had this reaction to one of O’Brian’s books, and I hope it doesn’t signal a decline in the series, here on the fifteenth of twenty complete books.

No Comments

Posted on

Wright, Helen S.: Matter of Oaths, A

I put Helen S. Wright’s A Matter of Oaths on my look-for list thanks to this LJ recommendation, and found it recently in our local speciality shop. I didn’t like it as well as the recommender, but found it interesting regardless.

Over five thousand years in the future, a war between two immortal emperors is partly limited by a web of oaths between the emperors, the Guild that controls FTL travel, and the members of the Guild. As part of this structure, Oath-breakers are identity-wiped. Except that one officer’s identity-wipe seems to be unraveling, much to the interest of the canny old commander of his new ship and other less savory individuals.

While this is indeed nicely SFnal, I found myself inordinately distracted by the plot’s dependence on two whopping huge coincidences. I think that one of these was not actually necessary to the plot, as opposed to the angst quotient; but the other is necessary, and unfortunately I can’t see any way to categorize it other than “whopping huge coincidence.” This was large enough and close enough to the end that even the nifty last-page reveal couldn’t keep me from feeling dissatisfied.

The other thing I noted about this book is its fanfic-compatible feel: I immediately imagined exploring certain aspects of the book through fanfic—other people’s, that is, as I have no creative talent whatsoever. I don’t think this would affect the reading experience of non-fanfic readers, but it may be an additional point of interest to certain of my audience.

1 Comment

Posted on

Barnes, Jonathan: Somnambulist, The

I received a manuscript copy of Jonathan Barnes’ The Somnambulist, which will be published on February 5, through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program. I was engaged and entertained at the beginning, but ultimately frustrated at the unfulfilled potential. It’s a book that will have its friends, but I’m not one of them.

The Somnambulist opens audaciously:

Be warned. This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and willfully bizarre. Needless to say, I doubt you’ll believe a word of it.

Yet I cannot be held wholly accountable for its failings. I have good reason for presenting you with so sensational and unlikely an account.

It is all true. Every word of what follows actually happened and I am merely the journalist, the humble Boswell, who has set it down. You’ll have realised by now that I am new to this business of storytelling, that I lack the skill of an expert, that I am without any ability to enthral the reader, to beguile with narrative tricks or charm with sleight of hand.

But I can promise you three things: to relate events in their neatest and most appropriate order; to omit nothing I consider significant; and to be as frank and free with you as I am able.

I must ask you in return to show some little understanding for a man come late in life to tale-telling, an artless dilettante who, on dipping his toes into the shallows of story, hopes only that he will not needlessly embarrass himself.

One final thing, one final warning: in the spirit of fair play, I ought to admit that I shall have reason to tell you more than one direct lie.

What, then, should you believe? How will you distinguish truth from fiction?

Naturally, I leave that to your discretion.

It then relates the bizarre death in 1901 London of an insignificant walk-on, which will eventually be investigated by Edward Moon, one of the book’s central characters. He is a stage magician, a possible mind-reader (the book raises this possibility dramatically and then does next to nothing with it), and a private detective of the Sherlock Holmes type. His companion is the Somnambulist, who is freakishly tall and completely hairless; communicates only through a chalkboard; and, during their show, is pierced through with six swords without spilling a drop of blood or showing any discomfort. (And, of course, he walks in his sleep, but the story does nothing with this either.)

Neither of them is the first-person narrator, who conceals his identity for 80% of the book. And though I was already losing patience, the narrator’s self-revelation was the point when the book fell apart for me. Put simply, a secret concealed that long had better have a damn good payoff, but this one was just stupid.

More, it was stupid in a way consistent with my other problems with the book, which I did indeed find “convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, [and] frequently ridiculous.” It’s full of fantastic things, but none of them are ever explained, put in any kind of context, or set against a rounded character or underlying theme. The net effect is of artifice piled on artifice, of weird things tossed in just because the author thought they were cool [*], with nothing substantial beneath. I liked some of the weird things. I would have been happy if some of the weird things remained unexplained. But as the book went on and the weird things accumulated, I began to lose patience. And then all the weird things, including those central to the plot, were left unexplained, and I felt that the book hadn’t kept its bargain with me as a reader.

[*] I attribute a couple of jolting throwaway phrases to the author being cute, specifically “bored now” before violence, and “Mister ____, he dead” (which is not quite anachronistic, but nevertheless improbable as an intentional reference by the character). There are probably others that would bother those more attuned to prose than I.

The publisher’s blurb compares this to Susanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman, presumably hoping to invoke Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Neverwhere, respectively. As far as I’m concerned, the blurb would have done better to leave these authors out, as The Somnambulist suffers in comparison. Neverwhere is a light but satisfying coming-of-age adventure tale, while hardly any of The Somnambulist‘s characters are likeable or develop a satisfying arc. (Also, it contains a laughably bad depiction of a particular archetype that Neverwhere does well.) JS&MN is an ambitious look at the restoration of English magic, tackling class, race, gender, and their intersections, and ending with vast changes on the horizon. The Somnambulist has a much narrower scope. It contains not one female character who is more than a pawn or a victim, and its most central treatment of race is a short joke that undercuts a racial stereotype—by removing from the page characters from the race in question. And more fundamentally, although the book creates an unpleasant London, it doesn’t offer any hope for change. (The last pages attempt an uplifting note, but make no sense to me on logical or thematic grounds, and besides are on a different subject.) In short, don’t go into this book expecting either Gaiman or Clarke.

If you read this book, it should be because you are willing to be carried along by an inventive narrative, or perhaps because you have an unshakable love for unreliable narrators. If those wouldn’t be sufficient for you, I can’t recommend it.

6 Comments

Posted on

Shimizu, Aki: Qwan vols. 1-4

Qwan, by Aki Shimizu, is a fun and energetic manga that makes good use of Chinese history and mythology. Set in the later Han dynasty, it follows the mysterious child of the title, who has no memory and eats only demons. In the first volume, he falls in with a petty swindler; confronts a girl with control over insect demons and an unpleasant father; and is taken in by a prostitute who seems to know his forgotten nature and sends him after a sacred scroll, the Essential Arts of Peace—which also seems to be the focus of plots against the declining emperor . . .

As I said, I like the energy of the art. I also enjoy the way the story keeps unfolding Qwan’s backstory and the accompanying mythology, sometimes in some very weird (but fun) ways. Through four volumes, the pacing has been good, even with a fair number of fight scenes.

This is still ongoing in Japan, and will probably be the kind of series that I’ll catch up on several volumes at a time, as bookstore sales come around.

No Comments

Posted on

Pullman, Philip: (02) The Subtle Knife

I was getting ready to re-read Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife when I saw Claire Light’s negative and spoiler-filled comments. They seemed the kind of things that I might also object to, and I barely remembered the book, so I went into the re-read warily.

I regret to say that I mostly agree with her: this is a much weaker book than either The Golden Compass or the book in my memory. First, I was immediately distracted by the way the omniscient narration veered from character to character. The head-hopping within scenes was notably bad, but for me the shifting among separated characters also weakened the book: I like Lee Scoresby and Serafina Pekkala, but I didn’t find their strands of the story very compelling (again like Light, I am puzzled by Scoresby’s sudden abject devotion to Lyra), and the prose style seemed less suited to the adults than to Lyra.

The other major change is the introduction of Will, of course. I have a lot of sympathy for Will, but I found myself unhappy with the balance the book struck between him and Lyra. For all that my first reaction was “hey, cool line,” when Lyra immediately trusts Will because he is a murderer, now that I stop and think, it doesn’t actually make much sense, even for her. And as a result, Lyra eventually effaces herself in an out-of-character way that makes me twitch, especially when combined with her growing feelings for Will (which either are not reciprocated, or are not discussed in the same way) and with the portrayal of the witches; they collectively hint at a system of gender relations that I dislike.

This book also explicitly introduces the idea of a war in heaven. I remember that when I first read it, I couldn’t tell which side I was supposed to root for, and even now that I know which side the story takes, I still can’t see it: so if I’m supposed to be taking a side by this point, the book has failed. (I can’t remember if the third book is actually convincing in this regard, and I’m not going to re-read and see.) Bad things are again done by all sides, with nothing obvious for me to choose among them. They further lack the ferocious impact of the end of The Golden Compass, I think because they stem from the subplots that didn’t engage me as much.

But on the bright side, having been disappointed by this book, there’s no way I’m going to waste my time with a re-read of The Amber Spyglass.

4 Comments

Posted on

Gaiman, Neil: Stardust (audio)

I listened to Neil Gaiman reading his novel Stardust a few months after seeing the movie.

I’ve previously reviewed this, so I’ll just say here a few things I noticed about listening. First and unsurprisingly, it is much better than the movie, to the point where the movie looks considerably worse to me in retrospect: kinder, more sensible, less predictable, sadder, and less sexist. Second, it’s nice to be reminded that Tristran is pleasingly clever after not too long on the road to sharpen him up; the movie takes the arc of his development as its backbone and lengthens it accordingly, making it less interesting. And a spoilery comment: I dislike the decision Yvaine makes in the market on insufficient information (ROT13: gb pbzzvg fhvpvqr, rssrpgviryl), because it felt out-of-character.

(Oh, and I completely failed to notice that the character’s name is Tristran-with-a-second-r, rather than Tristan, on the page.)

As for this as an audiobook, Gaiman is a enjoyable reader, though female voices are not his strength. And I think this is my first audiobook with a sex scene, even a short and non-explicit one, and I found it almost too embarassing to listen to. I’ll definitely be sticking to paper for more romance-oriented books.

2 Comments