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Furies of Calderon
I finished Jim Butcher's Furies of Calderon and ... feel like griping about it.
Because, seriously, Butcher, you can do better than this! By the final third of the book, I'd gotten to the point where I was just skimming -- still kinda holding out hope that things might take a turn for the better, but ... not really engaged with it at all.
It was just so generic -- basically one of those EveryFantasy books, taking place in the standard pseudo-medieval-Europe (only, as usual, missing most of the things that make the real medieval Europe dramatically interesting, like disease and economic oppression and horrendous racial/religious injustice). The really frustrating thing is that it could have been much better -- the magic system, with its Shinto-ish idea of spirits living in mountains and rivers, is really neat and unusual, and obviously he'd put quite a bit of time into developing the world, but what came out was sort of a cookie-cutter sanitized pseudo-Europe with a cookie-cutter plot centering around your basic cookie-cutter good-hearted farmboy. And then the plot turned out to be a sprawling mess with way too little organization and too many characters. (And I speak as someone who loves complicated plots! But this was just ... too many characters to really care about anybody, too many scene-switches to get into one set of events before we'd jump to another one.)
But the worst part was the racial/sexual stuff -- and, again, I know he can do better; there are occasional things that bug me along those lines in the Dresden Files books (like his tendency to keep reminding us over and over of the characters' ethnicity if they're not white), but never anywhere near like this. I just don't know where to begin with what a fundamentally bad idea the Marat were, in pretty much every way, and the awfulness of the casual way that words like "savage" and "horde" and "cannibal" were tossed around in the book -- especially when so many aspects of Marat culture were rather blatantly patterned on Native American and African cultures. The final twist of the knife was that little bit of Aleran history that we got near the end, that the Alerans had come here from elsewhere and basically driven out or subdued all the indigenous cultures, which basically just hammers home the (accidental?) Alerans=Europeans metaphor and makes the portrayal of the Marat as savage invaders (or, at the end, naive innocents confused by the trappings of "modern" Aleran culture) even more disturbing.
On the gender side -- like I've mentioned before, I'm not especially sensitive to gender issues in general, and especially in fantasy or historical fiction, I'm very tolerant of women's social roles, status in society, and the language used by the other characters to describe them being very different from what would be acceptable in the modern world. Having said that, the slave-collar/rape scene sent my ick-o-meter right off the scale, especially combined a few other, little ick-inducing things, like the way that sadistic Odiana was always referred to as a "water witch" (in the narrative as well as by the other characters) while good-guy Isana, with the exact same powers, was always called a watercrafter. I'm not saying "Jim Butcher is a raging mysogynist!" because, well, he obviously isn't; he's always had good, well-rounded female characters in all of his books, including this one. Which makes it all the more bizarre that the book would suddenly come out of nowhere with a very squick-inducing scene of forced servitude and rape. It's not that you can't ever deal with those topics in a book, of course -- it's just, there are some treatments of that sort of scene that really emphasize how awful it would be for the victim, and some that sort of give you the idea the author's playing out a fantasy. This was ... more the latter, unfortunately.
On the surface, Isana getting to become a steadholder at the end seems to be a "yay, girl power!" moment -- but, uh, actually it's not, because I was just totally weirded out by how little resistance there was to the idea. The first female steadholder ever? And it's so casual, and nobody objects? See, I could totally see her assuming the role informally, with Bernard remaining the titular head of household while Isana takes on most of the actual power and duties, but ... formally codifying it like that just felt wrong -- it felt wrong for their society as it had been presented up to that point, it felt totally wrong for the way that rural people act and the way that gender prejudice and established gender roles work in a medieval-ish society. It's just one step removed from the king waving a hand and declaring "There shall be no gender prejudice throughout my land!" and lo, because he said it was so, then it shall be so ... and I know that's a really silly example, but that's exactly how it felt in the book.
... okay. Enough griping. At this point, I think I'd have to be really hard-up for reading material to even think about buying another book in the series. It's a good thing that I read the Dresden Files books first, because this wouldn't have left me with a particularly good opinion of Butcher as a writer. (But the new Dresden book comes out on April 1! I shall console myself with that.)
EDIT: Oh, hey, I forgot to mention another thing that drove me crazy about the book, and that's the way that (apparently) major events would happen and then have no consequences for the plot or characters. For example, Bernard coming back from the dead! I was expecting major fallout from that, like he ends up undead or something, especially since they'd made a big deal about what a terrible risk it was -- but Isana sleeps for awhile, and everyone's fine and it's never mentioned again. Or everything that happened with Isana and Odiana, and everything we found out about Odiana's past -- at the end of it, she goes back to Aldrick and, after acting like a halfway normal human being while she was with Isana, as soon as she gets back with her old circle of friends she's back to being a giggly sadist ... everything that happened with the slave collar and the connection she appeared to be forming to Isana is just thrown out the window; it didn't change her at all. AAAAAARGH.
Because, seriously, Butcher, you can do better than this! By the final third of the book, I'd gotten to the point where I was just skimming -- still kinda holding out hope that things might take a turn for the better, but ... not really engaged with it at all.
It was just so generic -- basically one of those EveryFantasy books, taking place in the standard pseudo-medieval-Europe (only, as usual, missing most of the things that make the real medieval Europe dramatically interesting, like disease and economic oppression and horrendous racial/religious injustice). The really frustrating thing is that it could have been much better -- the magic system, with its Shinto-ish idea of spirits living in mountains and rivers, is really neat and unusual, and obviously he'd put quite a bit of time into developing the world, but what came out was sort of a cookie-cutter sanitized pseudo-Europe with a cookie-cutter plot centering around your basic cookie-cutter good-hearted farmboy. And then the plot turned out to be a sprawling mess with way too little organization and too many characters. (And I speak as someone who loves complicated plots! But this was just ... too many characters to really care about anybody, too many scene-switches to get into one set of events before we'd jump to another one.)
But the worst part was the racial/sexual stuff -- and, again, I know he can do better; there are occasional things that bug me along those lines in the Dresden Files books (like his tendency to keep reminding us over and over of the characters' ethnicity if they're not white), but never anywhere near like this. I just don't know where to begin with what a fundamentally bad idea the Marat were, in pretty much every way, and the awfulness of the casual way that words like "savage" and "horde" and "cannibal" were tossed around in the book -- especially when so many aspects of Marat culture were rather blatantly patterned on Native American and African cultures. The final twist of the knife was that little bit of Aleran history that we got near the end, that the Alerans had come here from elsewhere and basically driven out or subdued all the indigenous cultures, which basically just hammers home the (accidental?) Alerans=Europeans metaphor and makes the portrayal of the Marat as savage invaders (or, at the end, naive innocents confused by the trappings of "modern" Aleran culture) even more disturbing.
On the gender side -- like I've mentioned before, I'm not especially sensitive to gender issues in general, and especially in fantasy or historical fiction, I'm very tolerant of women's social roles, status in society, and the language used by the other characters to describe them being very different from what would be acceptable in the modern world. Having said that, the slave-collar/rape scene sent my ick-o-meter right off the scale, especially combined a few other, little ick-inducing things, like the way that sadistic Odiana was always referred to as a "water witch" (in the narrative as well as by the other characters) while good-guy Isana, with the exact same powers, was always called a watercrafter. I'm not saying "Jim Butcher is a raging mysogynist!" because, well, he obviously isn't; he's always had good, well-rounded female characters in all of his books, including this one. Which makes it all the more bizarre that the book would suddenly come out of nowhere with a very squick-inducing scene of forced servitude and rape. It's not that you can't ever deal with those topics in a book, of course -- it's just, there are some treatments of that sort of scene that really emphasize how awful it would be for the victim, and some that sort of give you the idea the author's playing out a fantasy. This was ... more the latter, unfortunately.
On the surface, Isana getting to become a steadholder at the end seems to be a "yay, girl power!" moment -- but, uh, actually it's not, because I was just totally weirded out by how little resistance there was to the idea. The first female steadholder ever? And it's so casual, and nobody objects? See, I could totally see her assuming the role informally, with Bernard remaining the titular head of household while Isana takes on most of the actual power and duties, but ... formally codifying it like that just felt wrong -- it felt wrong for their society as it had been presented up to that point, it felt totally wrong for the way that rural people act and the way that gender prejudice and established gender roles work in a medieval-ish society. It's just one step removed from the king waving a hand and declaring "There shall be no gender prejudice throughout my land!" and lo, because he said it was so, then it shall be so ... and I know that's a really silly example, but that's exactly how it felt in the book.
... okay. Enough griping. At this point, I think I'd have to be really hard-up for reading material to even think about buying another book in the series. It's a good thing that I read the Dresden Files books first, because this wouldn't have left me with a particularly good opinion of Butcher as a writer. (But the new Dresden book comes out on April 1! I shall console myself with that.)
EDIT: Oh, hey, I forgot to mention another thing that drove me crazy about the book, and that's the way that (apparently) major events would happen and then have no consequences for the plot or characters. For example, Bernard coming back from the dead! I was expecting major fallout from that, like he ends up undead or something, especially since they'd made a big deal about what a terrible risk it was -- but Isana sleeps for awhile, and everyone's fine and it's never mentioned again. Or everything that happened with Isana and Odiana, and everything we found out about Odiana's past -- at the end of it, she goes back to Aldrick and, after acting like a halfway normal human being while she was with Isana, as soon as she gets back with her old circle of friends she's back to being a giggly sadist ... everything that happened with the slave collar and the connection she appeared to be forming to Isana is just thrown out the window; it didn't change her at all. AAAAAARGH.
Re: From righteous indignation to Death Gate!
Hee! I recognized the dragon in your icon, of course.
Now I'm sad, because my DG books are still in the apartment. I think I would've liked to read them again, now. (I don't think the library has them - they started translating them, and then stopped after book four. WTF, Swedish publisher, WTF. That's just mean!)
I read them because my dad reads fantasy, too, and he'd buy whatever looked interesting, and then pass the books on to me. I remember not being very interested by the beginning of book one, and giving up on them until I got curious enough to peek in the book dad was reading at the time. I'm pretty sure it was book seven, and I know I opened it on a passage that just blew me away with the depth of emotion that I could tell existed between the characters there. I've forgotten exactly which passage it was, now, but if it was the last book, there would have been plenty to choose from! ♥ (I love the end of those books so much. One of my favorite endings ever!)
"Rose of the Prophet" - I don't remember being annoyed with *googles* Khardan, and the last time I read the books I figured out that their gods were essentially the facets of a giant D20, and couldn't stop laughing. Their religion is a D20! How could you not love that? *g* And it has lovely scenes of the bad guys trying to turn one character against the others, and causing them all angst, and such. I don't really remember much of the plot, but I do remember liking the characters and their relationships.
Hmm~. The first trilogy Janny Wurts published, about the Storm Warden? Wasn't very taken with that. She also wrote a trilogy with Raymond E Feist. But her "Wars of Light and Shadow", starting with "Curse of the Mistwraith"? They're probably my favorite fantasy series of all time. I gave a copy of the book along to
Which is a stupid kind of way to sell it, because... to me, her world is one of the most original fantasy worlds I've read, in how it works, and how well thought-out it is, and how the magic works, and I love Arithon, so so much. Haplo and Arithon are totally up there on my list of favorite characters ever - before I discovered fic, I was writing drabbles for them, and drawing pictures of them, and - and now I got distracted from the books themselves again. ^^;; But - those are the books I did bring along from the apartment. My copy of "Curse of the Mistwraith" is literally falling apart, and I didn't want to leave it behind - the new edition doesn't come with the same cover anymore. (She paints her covers herself! So when she does covers that depict the main characters, that's really how they look! Which. Um. I think is cool?)
Re: From righteous indignation to Death Gate!
By the way, have you ever seen Book-A-Minute (http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/sff.shtml)? Their capsule summary of Death Gate (http://www.rinkworks.com/bookaminute/b/weishickman.deathgate.shtml) is hysterical. (Haplo: "I'm Haplo the Patryn. I'm angry because all the other Patryn are in a Sartan prison. But I have a cool dog." :D )
Which is a stupid kind of way to sell it, because...
But, alas, a fantastic way to sell it to me! *adds to Amazon wish list*
Re: From righteous indignation to Death Gate!
Hee! Same here! And I didn't like Hugh either, at first...! Which is why I got turned off by the first book. But then, having glimpsed what lay ahead, I decided to give it another go. Yay! ♥ Because I do adore the [spoiler spoiler character stuff spoiler] - and the Dog, of course.
By the way, have you ever seen Book-A-Minute? Their capsule summary of Death Gate is hysterical. (Haplo: "I'm Haplo the Patryn. I'm angry because all the other Patryn are in a Sartan prison. But I have a cool dog." :D )
I hadn't, but it made me laugh out loud! Perfect!
But, alas, a fantastic way to sell it to me! *adds to Amazon wish list*
*beams* I hope you'll like it. ♥ (The caveat is - there is angst, and if you don't like Arithon, you won't like the series. Except, apparently there are some people who don't like him and love the series, but I really don't know how that works...!)