A much better book than Making Money, although still not as satisfying as his older stories. It started out as a whodunit, and then became something of a chase story. It had some magnificent moments and big payoffs, but there were other awkward contrivances: Brick in the mine seemed superfluous and bizarre, Angua and (underdeveloped) Sally always got to the right place at the right time, and by the time you got to the end, there was no real tension, but a predictable discovery and pieces slotting into place.
A good read nonetheless, with characters I’ve grown up reading about.
Thursday 16 June 2011
The Sex Offender by Matthew Stadler
A book, sad to say, not worth reading.
The narrator, an ex-teacher and fully-grown man, has been convicted for molesting a 12-year-old boy. He and the child thought it was love. The Ministry of Health mean to rid him of this errant notion by any means necessary, including a series of bizarre experiments in the vein of A Clockwork Orange.
Trouble is, this plot begins in the opening chapter but then, aside from the protagonist’s misadventures with aversion therapy and largely irrelevant chat with his ‘Doctor-General’ psychologist which mostly involves the narrator trying to get inside his doctor’s head, this plot stalls until the very final chapters. Indeed, the object of the narrator’s love affair is barely mentioned until this fact is pointed out by the doctor (which feels like the author remembering) and suddenly is put back centre-stage as we hear news of the boy which is probably meant to subtly let us know that really the boy is upset that his lover was taken away and that he is resisting thinking what he’s being told he should think, but it’s heavy-handed enough that you feel the narrator is stupid not to see it too.
Anyway, this plot is shoved aside to make way for a bizarre, flimsy sci-fi story. Set in a future society slightly reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984 but not nearly so extreme, our narrator starts to work for a ‘salon’ that performs extensive facial reconstruction surgery on politicians and other public figures, essentially erecting large masks around their faces. He becomes involved with an adolescent boy called Hakan (who just so happened to be in an erotic film shown as part of the ‘treatment’), involved both romantically and with his rebellion against the totalitarian state, and begins working on the face of the Prime Minister himself, leading to the book’s entirely predictable final twist. There’s also some adulation of a drag queen, but it’s really entirely irrelevant, a nice surreal image slipped in for its own sake.
Let us not forget the book is meant to be funny, bizarre and excessive and mannered, showing the ridiculousness of our world through the prismatic lens of another. But calling the book darkly comic is stretching the truth. There are allusions, too: to give you some idea of the level of most, here’s the Doctor-General’s name: Nicholas Nicholas.
Stadler writes well. Not so well that he’s above most of his literary peers, but well enough that I might one day pick up Stadler’s more successful book about men who love boys, this time without the irritating sci-fi setting and stabs at post-modernist cleverness and with a much more intriguing historical premise, Allan Stein.
The narrator, an ex-teacher and fully-grown man, has been convicted for molesting a 12-year-old boy. He and the child thought it was love. The Ministry of Health mean to rid him of this errant notion by any means necessary, including a series of bizarre experiments in the vein of A Clockwork Orange.
Trouble is, this plot begins in the opening chapter but then, aside from the protagonist’s misadventures with aversion therapy and largely irrelevant chat with his ‘Doctor-General’ psychologist which mostly involves the narrator trying to get inside his doctor’s head, this plot stalls until the very final chapters. Indeed, the object of the narrator’s love affair is barely mentioned until this fact is pointed out by the doctor (which feels like the author remembering) and suddenly is put back centre-stage as we hear news of the boy which is probably meant to subtly let us know that really the boy is upset that his lover was taken away and that he is resisting thinking what he’s being told he should think, but it’s heavy-handed enough that you feel the narrator is stupid not to see it too.
Anyway, this plot is shoved aside to make way for a bizarre, flimsy sci-fi story. Set in a future society slightly reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984 but not nearly so extreme, our narrator starts to work for a ‘salon’ that performs extensive facial reconstruction surgery on politicians and other public figures, essentially erecting large masks around their faces. He becomes involved with an adolescent boy called Hakan (who just so happened to be in an erotic film shown as part of the ‘treatment’), involved both romantically and with his rebellion against the totalitarian state, and begins working on the face of the Prime Minister himself, leading to the book’s entirely predictable final twist. There’s also some adulation of a drag queen, but it’s really entirely irrelevant, a nice surreal image slipped in for its own sake.
Let us not forget the book is meant to be funny, bizarre and excessive and mannered, showing the ridiculousness of our world through the prismatic lens of another. But calling the book darkly comic is stretching the truth. There are allusions, too: to give you some idea of the level of most, here’s the Doctor-General’s name: Nicholas Nicholas.
Stadler writes well. Not so well that he’s above most of his literary peers, but well enough that I might one day pick up Stadler’s more successful book about men who love boys, this time without the irritating sci-fi setting and stabs at post-modernist cleverness and with a much more intriguing historical premise, Allan Stein.
The Amber Spyglass, by Philip Pullman
(spoilers aplenty)
The whole of His Dark Materials is a great work of ideas, over and above plot and character. Some of his ideas I wholeheartedly agree with, such as the suggestion that Eve didn’t cause mankind’s downfall by eating the fruit, but our freedom and intelligence, but the truth is that there are too many unanswered questions, too many convenient plot shortcuts, too many badly-explained contrivances to explain past questions (‘Yeah, when I said, “Let’s destroy dust,” it was only ’cos I know you like lying!”) and too little character development for a really good story. Truly, as I will say one day in a monumental interview (bien sûr), Pullman’s targets are the branches, but my task is to dig up the roots – for what is the point in attacking Christianity when it is a warped, twisted Christianity to begin with? A grotesqued Church I can understand – but not basic theological points. It is right to be indirect, to show familiar ideas in new lights, but not to attack elements of Christianity that simply do not exist. Links between HDM and Paradise Lost remain vague, almost circumstantial, save in Asriel’s character, and he hardly does anything.
The book opens with Will (accompanied by two gay angels, who are hardly characters, but one reappears later, angelus ex machina!) searching for Lyra, who is being kept in a cave by Mrs. Coulter. She is drugging her, keeping her asleep, apparently because she loves her and thinks that this is the best way to stop her becoming the second Eve). He meets Iorek Byrnisson and they find Lyra; Will takes her into another world just as both the Church and Lord Asriel’s forces are coming to take her. The two of them are accompanied by Gallivespians, who are little hand-sized people who ride big dragonflies. Meanwhile, Mary Malone finds her way into another world, and finds some of the only things that inspire more cringing than fairy-sized people: deer-sized, elephant-trunked animals that ride around on wheels made of nuts from some tall trees – trees that she finds out are dying: oh no!
Because when Lyra was asleep, she dreamed about Roger, the boy she never seemed particularly bothered about before, she’s so guilt-wracked that she makes Will take her to the world of the dead. While some great moments are had in this episode – Lyra leaving Pan behind is a powerful moment – it soon becomes really daft, irrelevant to Christianity except as some vague connection to the ‘resurrection of the dead’, and sloppy. So, right, The Authority made it so that people’s souls, when they die, are taken to the world of the dead, where nothing happens. Why? No reason. Malice, maybe.
Will cuts his way out, and the dead can disintegrate gratefully. So when you die, your invisible companion (your DEATH, not your daemon) takes you to the world of the dead, then you walk to the exit, and evaporate. Bit pointless? Ah, well.
Pantalaimon, peeved at being left behind so that Lyra can go for a natter with a dead friend, has run off with Will’s own daemon, who has become tangible in the wake of her abandonment. For some reason, they’ve gone through many worlds and ended up outside Lord Asriel’s palace, where The Chariot (God’s abode) is attacking. With a little help, Will and Lyra find their daemons and escape to Mary Malone’s world. Anticlimax is done excellently as a senile, ancient God (not the creator; he lied about that) is freed by Will and Lyra only to dissolve. Anticlimax is unintentional and bathetic as Metatron, the real threat (delegated most of mad God’s power), gets horny for Mrs. Coulter, and is then dragged into a big hole by her and Lord Asriel. How glamorous.
Will and Lyra have found Mary Malone. The climax has been and gone, but there’s a feeble attempt to inject some drama by having one of the Church’s agents trying to kill Lyra. She doesn’t notice, and he’s killed by a gay angel (see, he WAS important! Um…). Pan and the other daemon are still hiding. Mary, in between worrying about how Dust is going sideways, ‘plays the serpent’ by telling the kids about how sex is great, and they get horny. Pullman is preoccupied with sex, or at least sexual desire, and presents chastity as representational of the uninhibited life the Church prohibits, even though Will and Lyra have barely changed at all, for all their songs of experience.
It seems odd that even though these two kids have somehow reached 12 without thinking about sex, they suddenly realise they want one another and become unconvincingly soppy, in a very chaste and British sort of a way, though likely going at it like rabbits off-stage. Well, they’ve been fluctuating between 8 and 15 all through the series, but never seemed 12, so why should they now? They’d best suit being around 14, I think. Anyhow, it’s no good them being without daemons, since Pullman has a weird genital-substitute thing going on with them touching each other’s furry creatures, so they come back. Meanwhile, the power of love has made Dust behave normally – hurrah! Now we can bask in Dusty cleverness!
Why have the daemons been hiding? Not just through spite – no, they don’t want to go back to Will and Lyra because they know they have to separate. Why do they have to separate? Well, because Pullman wants a sad ending – that really is about the only reason. His excuses are a mess.
They can’t live in worlds that aren’t their own, as they wither away from home. Will has to stay with his Mum, so they can’t be together without sacrifice. Okay so far. But then all the windows have to be closed – oh, except that massive one where the dead come out. Can you close up half of that and keep one? Nah. Why? Only one’s allowed. It’s THE RULES! Sheesh, I thought it was arbitrary, silly regulations this book was supposed to be railing against. So why can’t they just keep cutting through on occasion. Because that makes Ring Wraiths…no, I mean Dementors…oh no, sorry, SPECTRES, that’s it. But about a page later, the angel who’s telling them the THE RULES asserts them that they can deal with spectres. So why not the ones that result from Will and Lyra’s cutting? Dunno. Too lazy, I suppose.
By now, I’m finding the whole business rather unconvincing, but Will and Lyra tearily say goodbye and go back to their separate worlds. So lots of people are dead, the Church doesn’t have an Authority any more, the Metatron’s wicked plan to control everything is foiled and the Dust’s going the right way again. Not bad, but it really didn’t need to take over 500 pages to get there. Some utterly brilliant ideas, and some great moments, but most certainly not the classic I remembered. Ah, well. It was a good read, anyway. And Mary Malone, Lyra and Mrs. Coulter (confused motives aside) were pretty good characters.
The whole of His Dark Materials is a great work of ideas, over and above plot and character. Some of his ideas I wholeheartedly agree with, such as the suggestion that Eve didn’t cause mankind’s downfall by eating the fruit, but our freedom and intelligence, but the truth is that there are too many unanswered questions, too many convenient plot shortcuts, too many badly-explained contrivances to explain past questions (‘Yeah, when I said, “Let’s destroy dust,” it was only ’cos I know you like lying!”) and too little character development for a really good story. Truly, as I will say one day in a monumental interview (bien sûr), Pullman’s targets are the branches, but my task is to dig up the roots – for what is the point in attacking Christianity when it is a warped, twisted Christianity to begin with? A grotesqued Church I can understand – but not basic theological points. It is right to be indirect, to show familiar ideas in new lights, but not to attack elements of Christianity that simply do not exist. Links between HDM and Paradise Lost remain vague, almost circumstantial, save in Asriel’s character, and he hardly does anything.
The book opens with Will (accompanied by two gay angels, who are hardly characters, but one reappears later, angelus ex machina!) searching for Lyra, who is being kept in a cave by Mrs. Coulter. She is drugging her, keeping her asleep, apparently because she loves her and thinks that this is the best way to stop her becoming the second Eve). He meets Iorek Byrnisson and they find Lyra; Will takes her into another world just as both the Church and Lord Asriel’s forces are coming to take her. The two of them are accompanied by Gallivespians, who are little hand-sized people who ride big dragonflies. Meanwhile, Mary Malone finds her way into another world, and finds some of the only things that inspire more cringing than fairy-sized people: deer-sized, elephant-trunked animals that ride around on wheels made of nuts from some tall trees – trees that she finds out are dying: oh no!
Because when Lyra was asleep, she dreamed about Roger, the boy she never seemed particularly bothered about before, she’s so guilt-wracked that she makes Will take her to the world of the dead. While some great moments are had in this episode – Lyra leaving Pan behind is a powerful moment – it soon becomes really daft, irrelevant to Christianity except as some vague connection to the ‘resurrection of the dead’, and sloppy. So, right, The Authority made it so that people’s souls, when they die, are taken to the world of the dead, where nothing happens. Why? No reason. Malice, maybe.
Will cuts his way out, and the dead can disintegrate gratefully. So when you die, your invisible companion (your DEATH, not your daemon) takes you to the world of the dead, then you walk to the exit, and evaporate. Bit pointless? Ah, well.
Pantalaimon, peeved at being left behind so that Lyra can go for a natter with a dead friend, has run off with Will’s own daemon, who has become tangible in the wake of her abandonment. For some reason, they’ve gone through many worlds and ended up outside Lord Asriel’s palace, where The Chariot (God’s abode) is attacking. With a little help, Will and Lyra find their daemons and escape to Mary Malone’s world. Anticlimax is done excellently as a senile, ancient God (not the creator; he lied about that) is freed by Will and Lyra only to dissolve. Anticlimax is unintentional and bathetic as Metatron, the real threat (delegated most of mad God’s power), gets horny for Mrs. Coulter, and is then dragged into a big hole by her and Lord Asriel. How glamorous.
Will and Lyra have found Mary Malone. The climax has been and gone, but there’s a feeble attempt to inject some drama by having one of the Church’s agents trying to kill Lyra. She doesn’t notice, and he’s killed by a gay angel (see, he WAS important! Um…). Pan and the other daemon are still hiding. Mary, in between worrying about how Dust is going sideways, ‘plays the serpent’ by telling the kids about how sex is great, and they get horny. Pullman is preoccupied with sex, or at least sexual desire, and presents chastity as representational of the uninhibited life the Church prohibits, even though Will and Lyra have barely changed at all, for all their songs of experience.
It seems odd that even though these two kids have somehow reached 12 without thinking about sex, they suddenly realise they want one another and become unconvincingly soppy, in a very chaste and British sort of a way, though likely going at it like rabbits off-stage. Well, they’ve been fluctuating between 8 and 15 all through the series, but never seemed 12, so why should they now? They’d best suit being around 14, I think. Anyhow, it’s no good them being without daemons, since Pullman has a weird genital-substitute thing going on with them touching each other’s furry creatures, so they come back. Meanwhile, the power of love has made Dust behave normally – hurrah! Now we can bask in Dusty cleverness!
Why have the daemons been hiding? Not just through spite – no, they don’t want to go back to Will and Lyra because they know they have to separate. Why do they have to separate? Well, because Pullman wants a sad ending – that really is about the only reason. His excuses are a mess.
They can’t live in worlds that aren’t their own, as they wither away from home. Will has to stay with his Mum, so they can’t be together without sacrifice. Okay so far. But then all the windows have to be closed – oh, except that massive one where the dead come out. Can you close up half of that and keep one? Nah. Why? Only one’s allowed. It’s THE RULES! Sheesh, I thought it was arbitrary, silly regulations this book was supposed to be railing against. So why can’t they just keep cutting through on occasion. Because that makes Ring Wraiths…no, I mean Dementors…oh no, sorry, SPECTRES, that’s it. But about a page later, the angel who’s telling them the THE RULES asserts them that they can deal with spectres. So why not the ones that result from Will and Lyra’s cutting? Dunno. Too lazy, I suppose.
By now, I’m finding the whole business rather unconvincing, but Will and Lyra tearily say goodbye and go back to their separate worlds. So lots of people are dead, the Church doesn’t have an Authority any more, the Metatron’s wicked plan to control everything is foiled and the Dust’s going the right way again. Not bad, but it really didn’t need to take over 500 pages to get there. Some utterly brilliant ideas, and some great moments, but most certainly not the classic I remembered. Ah, well. It was a good read, anyway. And Mary Malone, Lyra and Mrs. Coulter (confused motives aside) were pretty good characters.
Pale Fire / Transparent Things
These are the two Nabokov books I read in the last few days. I didn’t expect to spend so long reading them, but I’m glad I savoured every moment of Pale Fire, because it was utterly brilliant – by far my favourite of his novels, though calling it such is never going to do justice to the inventiveness and the intelligence of the work.
The story unfolds in a totally unique way: the book comprises an introduction, a 999-line poem, and then a commentary on that poem. The poem is written by one character, John Shade, while the critical apparatus is the work of Charles Kinbote. It soon becomes clear that the poet has been murdered, and probably intended just one more line of his poem (to give it a symmetrical structure) before he was shot. Kinbote has snatched away the manuscript, believing himself the only one to truly understand his friend Shade, much to the horror of the latter’s wife and the other faculty members of the university that brought the two men together.
However, the notes go off on bizarre tangents and read into the poem things that are clearly not there: while Shade writes an autobiographical, philosophical poem similar to Wordsworth’s Prelude, and deeply indebted to Pope, Kinbote’s notes build up a story about a strange kingdom called Zembla, from whence an exiled king has fled.
It seems Kinbote was convinced that the subject of the poem would be this wondrous land, which he had described countless times to Shade, and despite his bitter disappointment at what he finally read, he nonetheless manages to draw out from the most tenuously linked passages elements of the story which obsesses him.
He also manages to find foreshadowed in the text the passage of the killer, Gradus, sent from Zembla after the king, only to kill Shade by accident, hence linking the Zemblan story to Shade biographically, whether or not it is present in the cantos themselves.
The genius here is the character of Kinbote, the way his lies and delusions come seeping out of his commentary like sand pouring out from between fingers of a hand that wishes to hide its contents from the world by gripping harder. Shade’s poem is a good one, far better than most of the verse published when Pale Fire was unleashed on the world.
Well-crafted, if not exactly brilliant, Shade’s fame seems a little exaggerated – idealised, perhaps – but when it becomes ravelled up with the story, you see Nabokov’s brilliance. It may not be writing verse, but the fact that he creates a whole life to be recapitulated in verse and provides avenues for Kinbote’s deranged mind to latch onto is testament to his supreme technical ability.
But Kinbote is the most brilliant part of this book. By turns powerful, idiotic and hilarious, his utter self-conviction and egocentricity is superb, and a joy to read. I laughed out loud several times, and had a little sympathy for this hopeless but totally self-convinced man, so contained in his bubble of delusions that he grows giddy from breathing only his own air.
He is very much a Nabokovian protagonist – another outsider, another pederast (this time, it’s young boys), another wordsmith, another man who can only see others in very shallow, cynical terms – but he is the best of his kind, the most horribly entertaining, and quite, quite mad.
I think that my dissertation will certainly be on the obsessions found in all, or almost all, Nabokov books, and how they relate to the man himself.
We find those themes again in Transparent Things. Alongside the peripheral things – butterflies, paedophilic tendencies (R. jokes about his ways with minors; Hugh gets excited by naked pictures of the girl he’s pursuing as a child), the way émigrés lives are changed – we have the broader Nabokovian themes, of madness, of the internal world and its unknowable strangeness, of the importance of words.
It’s a flimsy work, little more than a short story, and not especially interesting, but it has some interesting and amusing moments. But ultimately, with questions of conscience so easily dismissed, in the wake of something as masterful as Pale Fire, Transparent Things fades into insignificance, appropriately enough, given the title.
The story unfolds in a totally unique way: the book comprises an introduction, a 999-line poem, and then a commentary on that poem. The poem is written by one character, John Shade, while the critical apparatus is the work of Charles Kinbote. It soon becomes clear that the poet has been murdered, and probably intended just one more line of his poem (to give it a symmetrical structure) before he was shot. Kinbote has snatched away the manuscript, believing himself the only one to truly understand his friend Shade, much to the horror of the latter’s wife and the other faculty members of the university that brought the two men together.
However, the notes go off on bizarre tangents and read into the poem things that are clearly not there: while Shade writes an autobiographical, philosophical poem similar to Wordsworth’s Prelude, and deeply indebted to Pope, Kinbote’s notes build up a story about a strange kingdom called Zembla, from whence an exiled king has fled.
It seems Kinbote was convinced that the subject of the poem would be this wondrous land, which he had described countless times to Shade, and despite his bitter disappointment at what he finally read, he nonetheless manages to draw out from the most tenuously linked passages elements of the story which obsesses him.
He also manages to find foreshadowed in the text the passage of the killer, Gradus, sent from Zembla after the king, only to kill Shade by accident, hence linking the Zemblan story to Shade biographically, whether or not it is present in the cantos themselves.
The genius here is the character of Kinbote, the way his lies and delusions come seeping out of his commentary like sand pouring out from between fingers of a hand that wishes to hide its contents from the world by gripping harder. Shade’s poem is a good one, far better than most of the verse published when Pale Fire was unleashed on the world.
Well-crafted, if not exactly brilliant, Shade’s fame seems a little exaggerated – idealised, perhaps – but when it becomes ravelled up with the story, you see Nabokov’s brilliance. It may not be writing verse, but the fact that he creates a whole life to be recapitulated in verse and provides avenues for Kinbote’s deranged mind to latch onto is testament to his supreme technical ability.
But Kinbote is the most brilliant part of this book. By turns powerful, idiotic and hilarious, his utter self-conviction and egocentricity is superb, and a joy to read. I laughed out loud several times, and had a little sympathy for this hopeless but totally self-convinced man, so contained in his bubble of delusions that he grows giddy from breathing only his own air.
He is very much a Nabokovian protagonist – another outsider, another pederast (this time, it’s young boys), another wordsmith, another man who can only see others in very shallow, cynical terms – but he is the best of his kind, the most horribly entertaining, and quite, quite mad.
I think that my dissertation will certainly be on the obsessions found in all, or almost all, Nabokov books, and how they relate to the man himself.
We find those themes again in Transparent Things. Alongside the peripheral things – butterflies, paedophilic tendencies (R. jokes about his ways with minors; Hugh gets excited by naked pictures of the girl he’s pursuing as a child), the way émigrés lives are changed – we have the broader Nabokovian themes, of madness, of the internal world and its unknowable strangeness, of the importance of words.
It’s a flimsy work, little more than a short story, and not especially interesting, but it has some interesting and amusing moments. But ultimately, with questions of conscience so easily dismissed, in the wake of something as masterful as Pale Fire, Transparent Things fades into insignificance, appropriately enough, given the title.
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Vladimir Nabokov
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight was Nabokov’s first book in English. It’s the story of Sebastian Knight’s brother, the near-anonymous V., on a quest to write the biography of his eponymous half-brother. Another biography has been released, which is totally unsatisfactory, both short-sighted and ignorantly uncharitable. V. traces past lovers and old friends, but ultimately they reveal little about the man himself – their own biases and confusions mean the picture of Sebastian is built up only in a collection of hazy refractions.
Equally adumbrated is V., who tries to keep himself out of the biography, yet builds his picture of Sebastian through anecdotes. Nabokov himself peeps through the cracks in the text again, his life overlapping remarkably with that of Sebastian, and there is the impression that the tortured, inspired, lonely and flawed figure is the sort of person (if not the precise person) the romantic in him would like to be.
However, just like Sebastian’s novels, which are ambitious and bizarre, this is an idea that would have been better rendered as a short story. The distanced characters fail to interest, the concept grows quickly bland and the mechanisms of the plot far more blatant and clumsy than any others in Nabokov, save perhaps in Despair, where the ‘twist’ feels empty for seeming as though it should be a surprise.
Nevertheless, there are moments of brilliance, here – in the final chapters, the pace is excellent, the emotional content unsubtle but moving, the bathos (recurring in this novel) exquisitely executed and the dream sequence one of the best and most dream-like I have ever read.
In addition, Nabokov’s jarring presence is only peripheral: there are no self-allusions or anagrammatic appearances, only similarities in biographical details, which one who knew nothing of Nabokov’s life would not even register, and which are perfectly feasible.
His style is simpler, more direct than it grows. It is only a shame that there is not a better idea behind what, thusly lacking, can only be a mediocre novel, a minor work amongst monumental achievements.
Equally adumbrated is V., who tries to keep himself out of the biography, yet builds his picture of Sebastian through anecdotes. Nabokov himself peeps through the cracks in the text again, his life overlapping remarkably with that of Sebastian, and there is the impression that the tortured, inspired, lonely and flawed figure is the sort of person (if not the precise person) the romantic in him would like to be.
However, just like Sebastian’s novels, which are ambitious and bizarre, this is an idea that would have been better rendered as a short story. The distanced characters fail to interest, the concept grows quickly bland and the mechanisms of the plot far more blatant and clumsy than any others in Nabokov, save perhaps in Despair, where the ‘twist’ feels empty for seeming as though it should be a surprise.
Nevertheless, there are moments of brilliance, here – in the final chapters, the pace is excellent, the emotional content unsubtle but moving, the bathos (recurring in this novel) exquisitely executed and the dream sequence one of the best and most dream-like I have ever read.
In addition, Nabokov’s jarring presence is only peripheral: there are no self-allusions or anagrammatic appearances, only similarities in biographical details, which one who knew nothing of Nabokov’s life would not even register, and which are perfectly feasible.
His style is simpler, more direct than it grows. It is only a shame that there is not a better idea behind what, thusly lacking, can only be a mediocre novel, a minor work amongst monumental achievements.
Laughter in the Dark, Vladimir Nabokov
I have just finished reading Laughter in the Dark, a book which Nabokov himself all but abandoned as one of his ‘worst novels’ - a very poor work indeed, capped by an even worse afterword by one Craig Raine, who (despite being the only person I have yet witnessed to use my favourite buzz-word of last year’s grammar paper, ‘Aposiopesis’) seems to be attempting to mitigate the reader’s distaste by providing a flavour so inane, insane and inadequate that in retrospect, even Nabokov’s slop seems sweet – or perhaps addictively umami.
If that is his strategy, it doesn’t work. Much like the novel.
The earliest of Nabokov’s novels that I am going to read (though one day, I hope to sample King, Queen, Knave and The Gift), it was written in Russian just before Despair, and translated by Nabokov in 1938. It fails to equal that enjoyable work in two respects: the lesser that Nabokov did not bother to revise and retranslate it in the 60s, as a master, the greater that save one short sequence (a blind man living with his mistress, who is betraying him with a second man the first does not even know is there) the story is totally lacking in good ideas.
A man takes a mistress, destroying his marriage, who then horribly manipulates and betrays him. A simple plot, but with potential: potential wasted as we see that the characters are superficial and unidimensional, the relationships unconvincing, the action far-fetched. Laughter in the Dark is nothing more than a penny dreadful.
It’s somehow enervating, to see such a grand master floundering in the shallow end, when one is so used to seeing his powerful strokes easily leaving all others in his wake – but bittersweet, and also…strangely endearing.
When we see a magician preparing his tricks, we can still admire his show – while something is lost when we gain understanding, there is also an increased sense of affinity, of shared craftsmanship, of affection.
If that is his strategy, it doesn’t work. Much like the novel.
The earliest of Nabokov’s novels that I am going to read (though one day, I hope to sample King, Queen, Knave and The Gift), it was written in Russian just before Despair, and translated by Nabokov in 1938. It fails to equal that enjoyable work in two respects: the lesser that Nabokov did not bother to revise and retranslate it in the 60s, as a master, the greater that save one short sequence (a blind man living with his mistress, who is betraying him with a second man the first does not even know is there) the story is totally lacking in good ideas.
A man takes a mistress, destroying his marriage, who then horribly manipulates and betrays him. A simple plot, but with potential: potential wasted as we see that the characters are superficial and unidimensional, the relationships unconvincing, the action far-fetched. Laughter in the Dark is nothing more than a penny dreadful.
It’s somehow enervating, to see such a grand master floundering in the shallow end, when one is so used to seeing his powerful strokes easily leaving all others in his wake – but bittersweet, and also…strangely endearing.
When we see a magician preparing his tricks, we can still admire his show – while something is lost when we gain understanding, there is also an increased sense of affinity, of shared craftsmanship, of affection.
The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov, Andrew Field
I’ve reached the end of Andrew Field’s weighty biography, The Life and Art of Vladimir Nabokov...and was astonished to see that the subject I’ve chosen for my dissertation is also the major concern of his now decades-old biography. I’m not about to change now what I have firmly decided upon, but I feel as though perhaps I may be writing something a little too obvious. But then, I am a lowly undergraduate, and a well-executed, compact reiteration of a sound argument, with individualistic impressions, readings and evidence that has only recently come to light, I should be able to produce something which will be well-received.
It feels good, to have perused my way through an entire mountain of Nabokovian literature, and I hope to have the entire thing written by the time tomorrow ends, or at the latest by Tuesday. I wish I had read Invitation to a Beheading, for one, and some of his youthful poetry, but I have a very thorough grounding in his works and his major themes, and what Field calls Nabokov’s ‘Narcissism’ will form the backbone of my extended essay.
Nabokov’s life was a fascinating one, and unlike Speak, Memory, Field’s biography showed the essentially human side of Vladimir Vladimirovich. He makes mistakes, he has gaping lacunas in his knowledge and while he was a genius, he was not as flawless as he may have liked us to believe. Field’s readings of some of the novels were a little dry, often stating the obvious, but I am aware of some elements that I was not previously, and in biographical detail and sheer enthusiasm, it was one of the better biographies I have read.
I was also delighted to see Ada damned in such decisive terms. I was beginning to fear I was the only one that didn’t feel that having to invest great lengths of time in a novel was equal to it being magnificent. To read not only Field but many other critics who I greatly respect unimpressed by the bloated, distended, selfish and arrogant work was a pleasure that I feel great guilt for enjoying, but enjoyed nonetheless.
Nabokov certainly shows the possibilities of prose. Stylistically, I can’t help but be influenced by him. In terms of subject, however, I will never let my writing be so self-centred, so short-sighted, so limited.
It feels good, to have perused my way through an entire mountain of Nabokovian literature, and I hope to have the entire thing written by the time tomorrow ends, or at the latest by Tuesday. I wish I had read Invitation to a Beheading, for one, and some of his youthful poetry, but I have a very thorough grounding in his works and his major themes, and what Field calls Nabokov’s ‘Narcissism’ will form the backbone of my extended essay.
Nabokov’s life was a fascinating one, and unlike Speak, Memory, Field’s biography showed the essentially human side of Vladimir Vladimirovich. He makes mistakes, he has gaping lacunas in his knowledge and while he was a genius, he was not as flawless as he may have liked us to believe. Field’s readings of some of the novels were a little dry, often stating the obvious, but I am aware of some elements that I was not previously, and in biographical detail and sheer enthusiasm, it was one of the better biographies I have read.
I was also delighted to see Ada damned in such decisive terms. I was beginning to fear I was the only one that didn’t feel that having to invest great lengths of time in a novel was equal to it being magnificent. To read not only Field but many other critics who I greatly respect unimpressed by the bloated, distended, selfish and arrogant work was a pleasure that I feel great guilt for enjoying, but enjoyed nonetheless.
Nabokov certainly shows the possibilities of prose. Stylistically, I can’t help but be influenced by him. In terms of subject, however, I will never let my writing be so self-centred, so short-sighted, so limited.
Sabriel, by Garth Nix
The weakest fantasy I’ve read since Paolini’s Eragon (though not nearly as bad as that particular piece of cack).
Sabriel’s concept is a good one: a great land has been divided in two – the Old Country, where magic is abundant, but so are strange animated corpses and other dark forces known simply as the Dead; and on the other side of a wall, Ancelstierre, where there is little magic, but greater technology (always an interesting comparison; unexplored here).
Sabriel goes to school in Ancelstierre, but near the wall, where she can learn the fundaments of charter magic, a system based on various sigils. Her father is known as Abhorsen, but it soon becomes clear that this is a title, not a name – the Abhorsen, aided by specially created bells and a magical sword, can enter the world of death and lay spirits to a final rest by sending them beyond the ‘final gate’. The premise is a sound one, reminiscent of Bleach, but unfortunately, the story and characters – as well as Garth Nix’s writing – are a dreadful mess.
Sabriel, in her search for her lost father, goes on a uniquely dull quest, beginning by skiing through snow, before picking up a talking cat called Mogget (actually a powerful, volatile spirit) and an insipid, angsty love interest who insists on calling himself Touchstone because of his foolish actions in the past (literary allusions, ladies and gentlemen!). None of these characters are even remotely interesting, Sabriel being absolutely predictable and superficial throughout. Even the sardonic cat fails to amuse.
But most irksome of all is that Nix, who was at one point an editor, struggles with basic syntax, making a series of simple grammatical errors, or phrasing things in extremely clumsy and artless ways. The story clunks along with deus ex machina after deus ex machina, plot convenience after plot convenience, until the utterly laughable villain appears for a cartoon showdown. And it’s really very hard to take a villain seriously when his name is Rogir.
A novel of good ideas, but in the execution, deeply flawed.
Sabriel’s concept is a good one: a great land has been divided in two – the Old Country, where magic is abundant, but so are strange animated corpses and other dark forces known simply as the Dead; and on the other side of a wall, Ancelstierre, where there is little magic, but greater technology (always an interesting comparison; unexplored here).
Sabriel goes to school in Ancelstierre, but near the wall, where she can learn the fundaments of charter magic, a system based on various sigils. Her father is known as Abhorsen, but it soon becomes clear that this is a title, not a name – the Abhorsen, aided by specially created bells and a magical sword, can enter the world of death and lay spirits to a final rest by sending them beyond the ‘final gate’. The premise is a sound one, reminiscent of Bleach, but unfortunately, the story and characters – as well as Garth Nix’s writing – are a dreadful mess.
Sabriel, in her search for her lost father, goes on a uniquely dull quest, beginning by skiing through snow, before picking up a talking cat called Mogget (actually a powerful, volatile spirit) and an insipid, angsty love interest who insists on calling himself Touchstone because of his foolish actions in the past (literary allusions, ladies and gentlemen!). None of these characters are even remotely interesting, Sabriel being absolutely predictable and superficial throughout. Even the sardonic cat fails to amuse.
But most irksome of all is that Nix, who was at one point an editor, struggles with basic syntax, making a series of simple grammatical errors, or phrasing things in extremely clumsy and artless ways. The story clunks along with deus ex machina after deus ex machina, plot convenience after plot convenience, until the utterly laughable villain appears for a cartoon showdown. And it’s really very hard to take a villain seriously when his name is Rogir.
A novel of good ideas, but in the execution, deeply flawed.
Despair, by Vladimir Nabokov
It took considerably longer than I had planned – indeed, hoped – but I have finished Despair, and thoroughly enjoyed myself, despite the extended period over which the perusal came to pass.
It is the story of egocentric, obsessive Hermann Hermann, who one day comes across a tramp and is taken aback by the familiarity of the face he sees – a face he recognises as his own. Over the course of the short, convoluted but accessible story, the concept of the Doppelgänger is played upon, and a compelling but disturbing psyche cartwheels like a clown in the circus.
Of course, the least perceptive of readers is going to recognise at once similarities between this H.H. and a certain another, which Nabokov (with typically contrary lexis) pre-empts in his introduction to his English translation:
‘I am unable to foresee and to fend inevitable attempts to find in the alembics of Despair something of the rhetorical venom that I injected into the narrator’s tone in a much later novel. Hermann and Humbert are alike only in the sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of his life resemble each other. Both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a green lane in Paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year; but Hell shall never parole Hermann.’
He is correct, and Nabokov’s brush is, as far as my extending experience indicates, never one held in a way that does not point directly back at the man holding it – and though the isthmus (a brush-word of my own!) between the impassioned lover of nymphets driven to murder and the cold, callous puppet-master who murders for his own satisfaction and greed is objectively quite considerable, there are numerous ways in which Despair and Lolita are alike.
Here again is the cynical, distant but always entertaining narrator, venom or no. Here again are the characters seen through the eyes of such a man, and made pathetic, one-dimensional, weak – yet able to exert some control over the protagonist, here especially in Adalion’s letter.
Here again are the allusions to Russian texts, though less cryptic – I particularly liked Dusty and Turgy and the expertly pastiched epilogue! Here are smatterings of French, there the keen eye for nature. A little nymphet even makes a brief appearance, and – in Hermann’s mind at least – the pulchritudinous puppy plays a pivotal part in his puppetry. Why the plosives? Because there’s something of the baby-talk there.
The novel is an excellent work, darkly comic and genuinely sensitive as well as thought-provoking, it comes close to Lolita in my affections. I say ‘close’ because while it is more consistently appealing and a better-crafted piece of storytelling, it never soars to the heights of brilliance certain parts of that masterpiece reach – with waxen wings.
Objectively, it may even be a better book: even Nabokov’s obsession with making the reader aware of his authorial presence, a real annoyance in Lolita, is done in a feasible manner herein – imagining that Nabokov is only the recipient of Hermann’s manuscript, not its creator. Unnecessary, perhaps, but far less irksome.
There is also something in the quality of the pacing and the dialogue that reminds me of translations of Chekhov and Tolstoy, a certain comfortable, simplistic quality beneath the quilt of painstakingly detailed prose that appealed to me.
It is the story of egocentric, obsessive Hermann Hermann, who one day comes across a tramp and is taken aback by the familiarity of the face he sees – a face he recognises as his own. Over the course of the short, convoluted but accessible story, the concept of the Doppelgänger is played upon, and a compelling but disturbing psyche cartwheels like a clown in the circus.
Of course, the least perceptive of readers is going to recognise at once similarities between this H.H. and a certain another, which Nabokov (with typically contrary lexis) pre-empts in his introduction to his English translation:
‘I am unable to foresee and to fend inevitable attempts to find in the alembics of Despair something of the rhetorical venom that I injected into the narrator’s tone in a much later novel. Hermann and Humbert are alike only in the sense that two dragons painted by the same artist at different periods of his life resemble each other. Both are neurotic scoundrels, yet there is a green lane in Paradise where Humbert is permitted to wander at dusk once a year; but Hell shall never parole Hermann.’
He is correct, and Nabokov’s brush is, as far as my extending experience indicates, never one held in a way that does not point directly back at the man holding it – and though the isthmus (a brush-word of my own!) between the impassioned lover of nymphets driven to murder and the cold, callous puppet-master who murders for his own satisfaction and greed is objectively quite considerable, there are numerous ways in which Despair and Lolita are alike.
Here again is the cynical, distant but always entertaining narrator, venom or no. Here again are the characters seen through the eyes of such a man, and made pathetic, one-dimensional, weak – yet able to exert some control over the protagonist, here especially in Adalion’s letter.
Here again are the allusions to Russian texts, though less cryptic – I particularly liked Dusty and Turgy and the expertly pastiched epilogue! Here are smatterings of French, there the keen eye for nature. A little nymphet even makes a brief appearance, and – in Hermann’s mind at least – the pulchritudinous puppy plays a pivotal part in his puppetry. Why the plosives? Because there’s something of the baby-talk there.
The novel is an excellent work, darkly comic and genuinely sensitive as well as thought-provoking, it comes close to Lolita in my affections. I say ‘close’ because while it is more consistently appealing and a better-crafted piece of storytelling, it never soars to the heights of brilliance certain parts of that masterpiece reach – with waxen wings.
Objectively, it may even be a better book: even Nabokov’s obsession with making the reader aware of his authorial presence, a real annoyance in Lolita, is done in a feasible manner herein – imagining that Nabokov is only the recipient of Hermann’s manuscript, not its creator. Unnecessary, perhaps, but far less irksome.
There is also something in the quality of the pacing and the dialogue that reminds me of translations of Chekhov and Tolstoy, a certain comfortable, simplistic quality beneath the quilt of painstakingly detailed prose that appealed to me.
Ada, or Ardor
finished reading Ada, or Ardor in an utterly furious and uncompromising dash through the pages, though my lingering feeling is that of a man who tries to run through knee-high water. I see now why Nabokov considered it his best – it veritably drips with all the ambitions for which he stretches in his other works, and is a challenge on a par with Ulysses, a great favourite of his. With the possible exception of chess, just about every other major Nabokovian motif is represented in abundance – lepidoptera, authorial presence, Russia, time (here, its texture), obsession, cynical detachment and the adoration of barely pubescent girls (all protestations aside; I see it not as accusation, but then, am possibly biased). I increasingly fear for the scope of Nabokov’s imagination.
The joys of the book strike me as somewhat unidimensional. I soon realised I didn’t need the annotations I had found online (and they soon dried up, anyway, an incomplete project), since the references were mostly obvious, explained or dealt with events of the novel. The book is enjoyable only at a distance, only as an intellectual challenge. It is clear from very early on that neither Van nor Ada are likeable, or meant to be likeable. Lucette is sweet, but barely a character. Wish-fulfilment is much in evidence, to an almost nauseating degree. We are told Van and Ada’s story (and they live to their nineties) in great detail, with contorted sentences derived from Proust stretching accepted limits and occasionally patience, but ultimately there is nothing for the emotions, no substance to Van’s love, no reason to re-read but to understand more fully. Van’s endless sexual lust is a vacuum for emotion; therein lies the book’s major flaw.
But I cannot deny the book’s monumental achievement in the use of language. It is wrought in phenomenal intricacy, immensely challenging and thus immensely rewarding once wrestled into clarity – and I feel somewhat guilty for the speed at which I charged through it. This is the essence of Nabokov, the wish to be an artist, an artist noticed, perhaps, to the expense of his story, an artist whose writings are a vehicle for his stylistic traits, not his ideas.
It is a great book, a challenging book – a masterpiece of sophisticated, if not always elegant, writing. But it is not an especially enjoyable book: I hope the next I pick up will be better, though will relax with something light for tonight (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time).
The joys of the book strike me as somewhat unidimensional. I soon realised I didn’t need the annotations I had found online (and they soon dried up, anyway, an incomplete project), since the references were mostly obvious, explained or dealt with events of the novel. The book is enjoyable only at a distance, only as an intellectual challenge. It is clear from very early on that neither Van nor Ada are likeable, or meant to be likeable. Lucette is sweet, but barely a character. Wish-fulfilment is much in evidence, to an almost nauseating degree. We are told Van and Ada’s story (and they live to their nineties) in great detail, with contorted sentences derived from Proust stretching accepted limits and occasionally patience, but ultimately there is nothing for the emotions, no substance to Van’s love, no reason to re-read but to understand more fully. Van’s endless sexual lust is a vacuum for emotion; therein lies the book’s major flaw.
But I cannot deny the book’s monumental achievement in the use of language. It is wrought in phenomenal intricacy, immensely challenging and thus immensely rewarding once wrestled into clarity – and I feel somewhat guilty for the speed at which I charged through it. This is the essence of Nabokov, the wish to be an artist, an artist noticed, perhaps, to the expense of his story, an artist whose writings are a vehicle for his stylistic traits, not his ideas.
It is a great book, a challenging book – a masterpiece of sophisticated, if not always elegant, writing. But it is not an especially enjoyable book: I hope the next I pick up will be better, though will relax with something light for tonight (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time).
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
I finally got around to reading Mark Haddon’s phenomenally successful little book about a boy with Asperger’s Syndrome. I’d skimmed it in a book shop, and decided I probably wouldn’t like it, because the treatment of Asperger’s seemed a little condescending, and in general the prose an easy way to be excused of sloppy writing. But I was wrong, and the book was an enjoyable diversion, certainly worth reading.
Christopher Boone is a young boy who likes mathematics but dislikes being touched, jokes (because they don’t make sense), metaphors and the colours yellow and brown. When he finds his neighbour’s dog dead in her garden, he decides that in imitation of his hero, Sherlock Holmes, he will do some detective work and get to the bottom of the crime.
I don’t have any particular problems with Haddon’s treatment of Asperger’s. From knowing Graham Arding (Nikky’s brother, who, while not diagnosed with Asperger’s or autism, displayed most of the symptoms) and the people around him, I have an inkling of what it is like to have these mental problems, and really do sympathise. I’ve never encountered anyone quite like Christopher, but then, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people like him. The treatment was not sensationalised, and while the condition defined Christopher’s entire personality, that was in no way a total misrepresentation – though I did think the central character would be far more interesting if he actually had a personality outside his symptoms. I enjoyed Christopher’s writing, and his digressions, but it was the other characters who made the book a good read.
Christopher’s father’s long, heartfelt speech around halfway through the book was the best-written dialogue I have seen in any book I have ever read. It was excellently done. The relationship between his parents and the horrible things each of them do out of desperation are always utterly human; they are not surprising, which is why they work well in the broad and simple plot, but they raise difficult moral questions as to which of them was right to do what they did, if either of them. That was the thing I enjoyed the most.
The story was simple, obvious, but each successive step was taken with just the right indications of the emotional lives of those around Christopher, without his ever being aware of those emotions. The way the effect Christopher’s condition had on his parents was translated without his own understanding of it was really quite impressive.
There were one or two niggling inaccuracies that can only have been author’s blunders, like the underground gate in the wonderfully familiar evocation of Paddington Station opening before the ticket was taken, and the phone number on the letters having the wrong area code (the letters were from 1997 so the area code should have been 0181, not 0208), but these are petty things. I question Christopher’s science in places, but they are only the things he has been told.
It’s true that anyone could have written the book, and a million variations on the theme would have been equally entertaining. It’s a great book for children, a moment’s diversion, and while it’s not going to stay with me forever, or ever be on my list of favourite books, I’m glad I read it.
Oh, and something that made me smile – Christopher’s best time on Minesweeper, expert mode, is the same as my own: 99 seconds!
Christopher Boone is a young boy who likes mathematics but dislikes being touched, jokes (because they don’t make sense), metaphors and the colours yellow and brown. When he finds his neighbour’s dog dead in her garden, he decides that in imitation of his hero, Sherlock Holmes, he will do some detective work and get to the bottom of the crime.
I don’t have any particular problems with Haddon’s treatment of Asperger’s. From knowing Graham Arding (Nikky’s brother, who, while not diagnosed with Asperger’s or autism, displayed most of the symptoms) and the people around him, I have an inkling of what it is like to have these mental problems, and really do sympathise. I’ve never encountered anyone quite like Christopher, but then, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people like him. The treatment was not sensationalised, and while the condition defined Christopher’s entire personality, that was in no way a total misrepresentation – though I did think the central character would be far more interesting if he actually had a personality outside his symptoms. I enjoyed Christopher’s writing, and his digressions, but it was the other characters who made the book a good read.
Christopher’s father’s long, heartfelt speech around halfway through the book was the best-written dialogue I have seen in any book I have ever read. It was excellently done. The relationship between his parents and the horrible things each of them do out of desperation are always utterly human; they are not surprising, which is why they work well in the broad and simple plot, but they raise difficult moral questions as to which of them was right to do what they did, if either of them. That was the thing I enjoyed the most.
The story was simple, obvious, but each successive step was taken with just the right indications of the emotional lives of those around Christopher, without his ever being aware of those emotions. The way the effect Christopher’s condition had on his parents was translated without his own understanding of it was really quite impressive.
There were one or two niggling inaccuracies that can only have been author’s blunders, like the underground gate in the wonderfully familiar evocation of Paddington Station opening before the ticket was taken, and the phone number on the letters having the wrong area code (the letters were from 1997 so the area code should have been 0181, not 0208), but these are petty things. I question Christopher’s science in places, but they are only the things he has been told.
It’s true that anyone could have written the book, and a million variations on the theme would have been equally entertaining. It’s a great book for children, a moment’s diversion, and while it’s not going to stay with me forever, or ever be on my list of favourite books, I’m glad I read it.
Oh, and something that made me smile – Christopher’s best time on Minesweeper, expert mode, is the same as my own: 99 seconds!
Broken Sky by Chris Wooding
I wanted to read Broken Sky to see Wooding writing a book heavily and unashamedly influenced by anime, to see whether he could write it with the same exuberance and conviction that he wrote The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray. But while that book thrived on its clichés and its obviousness, Broken Sky is choked by them.
To be fair on Wooding, I’m only reading a third of a book. A trilogy of fairly thick books was broken down further into nine parts, so part one is really only a third of the first book. So it’s understandable that the story doesn’t have much resolution, but the trouble is that it also doesn’t really get started.
The anime influence is really rather annoying. Hair can be ‘quilled’ or green, people leap ten feet at a time, most of them can use magic and/or swords, and there’s some very ugly 80s-manga-style art between chapters and on the covers. (The childish design of the front cover must have sheared Wooding’s audience at least in half from the very beginning). The naming has a strong Japanese flavour, and the glowing balls that give people magical power sound a lot like FFVII’s material to me.
If there’s a saving grace to this story, it’s that it isn’t talking down to its audience. It’s aimed squarely at the 7-11 crowd, with big font sizes, lots of action and that dreadful manga-influenced art. But you can tell that Wooding is very sincerely and very earnestly writing his best stuff, and revelling in the freedom of the fantasy genre.
But unfortunately, in every other respect, it’s pretty dreadful. We’re in familiar Wooding territory from the off. The story is stock: a pair of twins live with their father on a wyvern farm, until one day their father brings back a mysterious little girl, who in turn is pursued by the bad guys. The farm gets burnt, the father killed, and the youngsters escape, amidst much angst. They meet some of their father’s acquaintances, who reveal that the regime they’re living under isn’t as benevolent as it seemed, and their ruler is secretly a tyrant. That’s about as far as it gets, in book one, since there’s so much padding, with slow scenes of farm life, overlong escape sequences and some extremely obvious character building. Wooding seems to think it’s clever that his male character has feminine traits (emotional, tends to cry a lot, cares about hurting others) while the girl fits the description of the stock male who lets hatred take over and turns from good guy to bad guy. Not a bad idea per se, but done with such ham-fisted obviousness that it scores highly on the cringe-o-meter. There’s next to no originality here, and I don’t see why the ideas Wooding poaches always have to be the most tired, obvious, insipid or cheesy ones.
And once more, his strange prose style deserves comment. ‘Limned’ makes its appearance, of course – I suspect it makes it into just about every book he writes. The affected Americanisms are there again, and the jarring use of modern slang (someone walks ‘on automatic’ – there ARE vehicles in this world, but it still seems incongruent).
Y’know what? It’s probably the worst book I’ve read in a very long time. It’s a good thing it was so short.
To be fair on Wooding, I’m only reading a third of a book. A trilogy of fairly thick books was broken down further into nine parts, so part one is really only a third of the first book. So it’s understandable that the story doesn’t have much resolution, but the trouble is that it also doesn’t really get started.
The anime influence is really rather annoying. Hair can be ‘quilled’ or green, people leap ten feet at a time, most of them can use magic and/or swords, and there’s some very ugly 80s-manga-style art between chapters and on the covers. (The childish design of the front cover must have sheared Wooding’s audience at least in half from the very beginning). The naming has a strong Japanese flavour, and the glowing balls that give people magical power sound a lot like FFVII’s material to me.
If there’s a saving grace to this story, it’s that it isn’t talking down to its audience. It’s aimed squarely at the 7-11 crowd, with big font sizes, lots of action and that dreadful manga-influenced art. But you can tell that Wooding is very sincerely and very earnestly writing his best stuff, and revelling in the freedom of the fantasy genre.
But unfortunately, in every other respect, it’s pretty dreadful. We’re in familiar Wooding territory from the off. The story is stock: a pair of twins live with their father on a wyvern farm, until one day their father brings back a mysterious little girl, who in turn is pursued by the bad guys. The farm gets burnt, the father killed, and the youngsters escape, amidst much angst. They meet some of their father’s acquaintances, who reveal that the regime they’re living under isn’t as benevolent as it seemed, and their ruler is secretly a tyrant. That’s about as far as it gets, in book one, since there’s so much padding, with slow scenes of farm life, overlong escape sequences and some extremely obvious character building. Wooding seems to think it’s clever that his male character has feminine traits (emotional, tends to cry a lot, cares about hurting others) while the girl fits the description of the stock male who lets hatred take over and turns from good guy to bad guy. Not a bad idea per se, but done with such ham-fisted obviousness that it scores highly on the cringe-o-meter. There’s next to no originality here, and I don’t see why the ideas Wooding poaches always have to be the most tired, obvious, insipid or cheesy ones.
And once more, his strange prose style deserves comment. ‘Limned’ makes its appearance, of course – I suspect it makes it into just about every book he writes. The affected Americanisms are there again, and the jarring use of modern slang (someone walks ‘on automatic’ – there ARE vehicles in this world, but it still seems incongruent).
Y’know what? It’s probably the worst book I’ve read in a very long time. It’s a good thing it was so short.
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