Corambis book report (spoilers)

[sholio]

So, after my flist gave me some hope that I wouldn't hate it, I went ahead and read Corambis (the fourth book in Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths series).

I didn't hate it. Actually, I really wish she'd taken the series this way back in book 2 or 3, back when I cared about the characters and actually wanted Felix to find peace and redemption. Because I kept thinking throughout the book that a couple of books earlier, I would've been really grooving on the emotional and redemptive aspects of the book. As it was, though, I guess the past couple of books brought me to the point where I don't care all that much about these people anymore. At this point, I find Felix so thoroughly unsympathetic that watching him build a healthier life for himself isn't all that much fun, and Mildmay just ... frustrates me, I guess; I really sympathize with him and at the same time his appalling lack of self-esteem and the way he keeps failing to build an independent life for himself makes me want to shake him.

I also don't believe for a minute that Felix's newfound ability to self-analyze is going to keep him from backsliding into the same abusive behavior he's engaged in before. I mean, we've seen him promise to do better before, and then he doesn't. So I kinda see this as an upswing before another inevitable downswing. There were times when the book would almost ... lure me into liking the characters and really enjoying their interactions, and then I'd yank myself back, because I've gone down that road before with these guys and it wasn't much fun. (Though Mildmay's little ways of showing affection to touch-averse Felix without freaking him out are pretty damn cute, I must admit.) I still feel kind of betrayed by the previous books and I don't think I'm ready to forgive and forget quite yet.

On the other hand, on an intellectual level, I really love what she did with this book -- well, the whole series, actually: the way she deconstructs and takes down the archetype of the abused child/orphan/child thief that fantasy loves so much. It's not romantic and it's not forgotten or ignored; her abused orphans are broken, damaged adults, and in Felix's case at least, he tends to perpetuate that damage to other people. Actually, in general, I thought she did a really good job with this book of dealing with the emotional aftermath of the damage the characters have suffered without descending to the excesses of the previous books. Felix's behavior is believable and consistent in view of his past; I felt as if she betrays her own premise somewhat, though, by continuing to treat him as a hero, and in the end I felt as if his happy ending was too easy -- it wasn't and yet it was, because as much as I thought she worked hard on making the emotional aspects of the book believable, I felt as if he'd gone too far into darkness to find the light again that easily.

As people had suggested, though, I really did like Kay. I really disliked the fact that he was there as a third narrator, though; I wished that Kay had been the hero of his own book, because on the initial reading I ended up just skipping all of his sections until the very end when his story becomes thoroughly entangled with Mildmay and Felix's, and I didn't feel like I missed anything, plotwise. I didn't like it when the Coldfire series introduced a new major narrator into the last book of the series with his own story arc, and I didn't like it here either -- Mehitabel in the previous book, at least, was thoroughly entwined in Mildmay and Felix's story, and had been there throughout much of the previous book as well. I liked Kay as an individual but he felt very ... grafted on, here, more of a distraction from Felix and Mildmay's story than a part of it.

I loved that the book didn't go towards the predictable Felix/Kay romance that I was expecting. In skimming the author's LJ, I wasn't surprised to find that she had originally planned to go in a Felix/Kay direction; it really feels like it's being set up for that. But she doesn't go the whole sexual-healing route, and I liked that -- about the closest thing that we get in the book is Felix's brief dalliance with the Duke, and that made dramatic sense to me because he kinda needed to find out that sex, and especially BDSM sex, can be about love and giving as well as pain and taking. But in general, he didn't jump into either another abusive relationship or True Love, and I was glad of that.

And I was thoroughly thrilled that the obligation d'ame got taken off -- also, on a side note, I think my single favorite world-building aspect to the books is the view of magic as a series of metaphors for something that no one quite grasps, with each magic-using society's metaphors giving them control over different aspects of it. That's cool, and it's a wonderful parallel with science, and the way that we keep learning new ways of looking at it as we learn to ask new questions. Overall, I enjoyed the steampunky vibe to this book a lot more than the high-fantasy vibe to the previous ones.

There's a part of me that really does wish I'd just skipped books 2 and 3 (well, definitely book 3, at the very least) and gone straight to this one, because I think I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if Felix's behavior over the last couple of books, and to a lesser degree Mildmay's, hadn't left me predisposed to dislike them. As a book, overall, I liked it and I liked the way that it wrapped up, though as I said earlier, I don't really believe that Felix's new leaf is going to stay turned over; based on his behavior in the past couple of books, he just totally reads as "recidivist abuser" to me. And I wish that Mildmay had built more of a life apart from Felix, as opposed to continuing to tag along wherever Felix goes. But overall I did enjoy it and I found it a pleasing and satisfying ending, not fixing everything but offering hope and the promise of a stable life that I can imagine they could both enjoy, eventually. (Also ... LIGHTHOUSE. I've got two different unfinished novels in which the protagonists live in abandoned, refurbished lighthouses, because for whatever reason, I just love the concept that much. So, "... and then they all moved into a lighthouse!" is a perfectly cool ending to me; I just wish we'd gotten to see it!)

Comments

[snarkydame.livejournal.com]

I, too, wish she'd taken this sort of tack with the previous books -- I really loved the world she'd built, and I wanted to love the characters -- and I did, in the first one, and then in this fourth one. But the second and third just took them places I didn't really want to go, and while I was much relieved by this last book, I still wish she hadn't gotten here the way she did. Although, to be honest, I never disliked Mildmay -- got frustrated with him, sure, but not that much. I just got really irritated with Felix, in the middle there. And while, as you say, the way he's been written predisposes us to believe he'd slide back into his old ways, I think Mildmay's character has matured enough that he'd be quicker to speak up, and check him. And I think Felix may have matured enough, as well, that he'd respond (so long as he's away from the poisonous atmosphere of Melusine) and strive to do better. So a sort of reducing spiral, then, rather than a true cycle. Or maybe I'm just that much of an optimist.

This book just felt much less . . . claustrophobic than the others -- I thought that the cavern, and the asylum, and the underground labyrinth and the ancient corridors of the Mirador were very cool, but felt closed in and stifling. I'm not really surprised that Felix turned out the way he did, surrounded by that. So I wish we'd gotten to see more of the university, and this new city, and the forest and the (very cool) steampunky sort of engineered magic -- the Clocks were fascinating, and deserved another look, I think. But mostly, it's the more open feeling of this part of Monette's world that makes me think that Felix and Mildmay really could develop a healthy sort of life (albeit, not one that comes as easily as the end of this last book might imply).

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I really loved the world she'd built, and I wanted to love the characters -- and I did, in the first one, and then in this fourth one. But the second and third just took them places I didn't really want to go, and while I was much relieved by this last book, I still wish she hadn't gotten here the way she did.

This, yes! I liked them so much in the first book (... I suppose, looking back on it, it's probably telling that Felix spend 95% of that book totally off his rocker and not acting like himself) and I went into the second book really expecting to continue liking them and having their relationship grow as it actually did in this book. I just kinda wish I could forget about the intermediate two books and like them again.

That's a good point about the claustrophobic feeling. Actually, that might be another reason why I liked this book so much more, because dark, gloomy old High Fantasy citadels are kind of a dime a dozen; some authors can pull them off and do something new with them (Scott Lynch! *waits patiently for next Locke Lamora book*) but in general, I do think that getting them away from the Mirador was good for both the reader and the characters.

[snarkydame.livejournal.com]

because dark, gloomy old High Fantasy citadels are kind of a dime a dozen and the Mirador was very very dark and gloomy! It had a rich, bloody sort of history, which I found very interesting, but it was not, by any means, a happy place. I thought it was a very effective mood setter, even if I didn't much like the mood it set. I would have felt more kindly toward it if the third book had been set elsewhere, giving the characters (and you're right, the readers too!) a chance to take a breath and shrug off the miasma of the place.

(Scott Lynch! *waits patiently for next Locke Lamora book*)

I know! I've been stalking sites for a release date . . .

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

Having pondered a bit more, I wonder if some of the difference between this and the other books has to do with the author growing into her skills as a writer? There is no way I can think of to phrase this which doesn't come out sounding kind of condescending towards the author *winces*, but after the previous three books, it may be that she got whatever she needed to inflict on Felix out of her system, or developed better writing skills that enabled her to pull off a more nuanced look at the characters' trauma, or something ...?

[snarkydame.livejournal.com]

possibly! I imagine after three books or horrible suffering, she might have found a new setting just as liberating as her characters did!

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Hmm, I should try it...I don't bear any ill will to the characters, because I don't remember the 3rd book. I read it, and I know that the actress was a narrator, and that Felix's destined-to-die lover went and fulfilled his destiny (sometimes characters feel to me like their author doesn't care about them, because they know they're doomed, so they just can't quite bring themselves to get attached, and therefore fail to flesh them out into real people. And that guy was a perfect example of such.) But I can't recall how he actually died, or any other details...

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I think you'd probably like it, most likely better than I did; I think you've got a higher tolerance for redeemable bastard characters than I do. In my case, the baggage from the last three books really got in the way of my enjoyment of the book, but especially if you don't remember the 3rd book (which was where I really lost any lingering vestiges of fondness for Felix) I expect you'll be all right!

... and while I've got you here, I *am* sorry that things went as far as they did on my part at that other thread on you-know-what; I should have backed out much earlier than I did. *hugs*

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Actually it's just my tolerance for bastard characters, redeemable or not! But Felix was too whiny for me; I prefer my assholes to be bold about it. I'm debating whether I want to spend time reading it or not, though, considering how little an impact the 3rd one evidently made on me...there's better* things I could be reading!

* By certain definitions of "better" *eyes box of Star Trek novels finally retrieved from the parents' barn*

(and I am so sorry myself - I shouldn't have let myself get into that again, and especially not with you, not when I know how it gets to you. It was a very poor showing on my part. Not to mention I lost a good couple nights' of sleep to lying awake, composing arguments in my head - next time I am staying out of it, dangit! *hugs back*)