"A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Sandman #19: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Written by Neil Gaiman; Art by Charles Vess
1991 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Short Fiction

Cover by Dave McKean
1991 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Artist

No, I didn't typo that award.

Despite the fact that I was a comic reader at the time and I was making somewhat regular trips to my local comic book store "A Midsummer Night's Dream" was the first time I heard about Sandman. Since it was the early 90's there wasn't same level of nerd support network around; I wasn't reading the fan press so I just wasn't aware of the book's existence. Then there was a newspaper article about this comic book that won an award for prose and the uproar that surrounded it.

Let's get a plot synopsis out of the way first. Dream made a deal with a minor playwright who had only written one particularly bad play titled "Two Gentlemen of Verona". In exchange for penning two plays about dreams the writer will gain phenomenal skill and immortality through his words. This issue picks up with that writer leading his theater company to a meadow where they will put on the initial performance of the first play for their patron. Their patron also happens to bring along with him the people the play is about.

The preamble to this award is that it wasn't the first time something strange happened. The Dark Knight Returns garnered ballots for Hugo nomination across multiple categories. To resolve this in the Hugo awards structure they placed it as an art book in the non-fiction category. This is what lead to Watchmen's Hugo award in the one off "other" category. So in the late eighties the cross over between SF fans and comic fans was starting to blur things together. This came to a head at the World Fantasy Convention.

Gaiman was not some unknown comic book writer to the panel that selected this issue of Sandman for the award. That year he was also nominated in the novel category along with Terry Pratchett for Good Omens (Thomas the Rhymer and Only Begotten Daughter tied for the award that year). So Sandman's nomination was a surprise but it wasn't completely out of the blue. Of course everyone thought it was an interesting gesture that wouldn't go anywhere.

When the awards were announced things exploded and battle lines were drawn. On one side were the comic fans who said that they were finally vindicated that comics could be mature and a medium for great storytelling. The opposition were outraged at the idea that a funny book could hold the same significance as something created by a "real writer". That's when fuel was added to the fire by changing the World Fantasy Award rules so that a comic could not win again.

Obviously I don't have much sympathy for those people who denied that a comic book could be well written but at the same time I think the committee that sets the rules for the World Fantasy Awards was right. The medium is part of the work and while it may come across as spiteful (many people have interpreted it that way) changing the rules limit the category to prose was the right thing to do based on the scope of their awards. And it wasn't as though they hated comics; Moebius won the best artist award a few years later for his comics work and Vess won a second World Fantasy Award for himself a few years after that. There may have been some appeasement in the rule change but since it occurred the day after the award ceremony I'm sure it was something in consideration immediately after Sandman was nominated. What it comes down to is that a comic book and a short story are too different for direct comparisons to be made fairly.

Moving past the controversy the World Fantasy Award did go to one of the best issues of the series. Throughout Sandman Gaiman's short stories were more effective than his long ones. It may be my love of Shakespeare speaking (I've actually seen "Two Gentlemen of Verona" performed; it's like an Elizabethan playwright doing a bad parody of what Shakespeare would become) but I adore this issue. The poetic balance of Shakespeare burning brightly at the height of his career while losing touch with his family and the fairies about to leave the world behind only to stop to catch a show on their way out leaves an impression. Even if you don't like Shakespeare Gaiman avoids becoming too entangled in the words of the play itself and instead relies on a Greek chorus of goblins who comment on the action. It's the story of a strange, magical night; exactly the kind of thing that fits the tone of Sandman.

As for myself, the newspaper article made me award of comic's existence for the first time but it would be another a while before I started reading it. I read the earlier trade paperbacks first and because of the lead time between the issue and the award it wasn't until over twenty issues later that I was buying the comics. Still it was the World Fantasy Award that let me know that Sandman was out there and it was something I'd have to read at some point.

Review - Tender Morsels

Tender Morsels
by Margo Lanagan
Tied for 2009 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

There were several times while reading Tender Morsels that I had to stop and double check the dust jacket and the publisher's page. I had to make sure I wasn't mistaken when I saw that the jacket identified it "a junior library guild selection" and it was published by Random House Children's Books. I kept checking because I could not conceive how Tender Morsels could have been published as a YA book; it's far more mature in every sense of the word than a vast majority of novels I have read targeted for adults. It's also an exceptional book partially for that reason.

A young girl who has been raped retreats into a dream world made physical in order to raise her daughters. They have an idyllic existence there until the bubble of their reality is punctured by a a man seeking wealth. After that things leak into their world from outside and they have to start dealing with the less than perfect nature of the real world.

The first thing that I have to mention, and the thing that kept driving me to check that it was in fact a YA book, is that this book features a lot of sex. None of it is explicit but there's around a dozen rapes in the first fifty pages. Lanagan may not go into detail on the physical acts she does not shy away from the emotions. If that wasn't enough the book takes some fairly deep steps into bestiality as the blossoming girls become interested in animal companions. Lanagan is more cautious on side stepping this (laughably so at one point not involving any female characters that read more as an editor forcing a statement on the issue given the context of the rest of the scene) but the concept is just about impossible to avoid.

Sex is a huge theme of Tender Morsels and as you may guess it tends to be neither romantic or erotic. Men are bestial, women are naive, and the two often conflict violently. It makes the few times in the novel where there is a healthy relationship between a man and a woman the odd one out. (Strangely enough there's little in the way of homosexuality but then given the themes tied to sex in the novel it might be better off that way.)

It takes more than just people having (or avoiding) a lot of sex to make a book "mature". Tender Morsels is also about the raising of children and what effect a sheltering environment can have. It's about the changes that a person undergoes throughout their life and the need for companionship. Modern attitudes are crushed hard in this psuedo-medieval land and there is no comforting moral to make up for that. There's a lot of themes to the book that I think would only strongly connect with an adult making this the most adult YA book I've ever read.

I was extremely impressed at the way Lanagan has the story unfold. The book abruptly shifts focus multiple times and every time I thought I had worked out where things were heading Lanagan derailed my preconceptions and threw it into a completely different direction. And every time she did this she made me more interested in what was going to happen next.

The book is not completely without faults. The characters are a bit shallow. While I'm certain that is intentional given the themes of the book I don't like being able to wrap up someone in a few words. There is exactly one positive depiction of a man in the entire book; anyone else who is an adult with a Y chromosome is a monster.

The recent rise of YA books as a publishing phenomenon has been a problem for me with some of the recent Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award Winners. Books intended for a target audience of twelve year olds typically are disconnected from me as an adult reader no matter how well done they are (see The Graveyard Book for an example of that). That is not the case with Tender Morsels. This is a rich novel that I'd recommend to anyone. It's a light-hearted dark-fantasy; a Grimm fairy tale in a modern fantasy style. It is a gripping book and I'm glad I read it.

Review - The Shadow Year

The Shadow Year
by Jeffry Ford
Tied for 2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel

When I read Boy's Life I found that despite the fact that the concepts were overused the quality of writing made up for it. The Shadow Year is almost identical to Boy's Life except this time it lacks the interesting characterization and sense of wonder that elevated the previous World Fantasy Award winner above it's source.

Stop me if you've heard this one before. There was a small town in America where a boy on the verge of adolescence is experiencing a strange year. His family is going through hard times and he's observing the quirky neighbors around him. There's a supernaturally effective killer lurking somewhere in the town and he has knowledge of it that he is unable to share. So he along with some other children work quietly to unravel the mysteries of their town.

Well that was awfully generic so let me narrow this down more. There's a character with mental problems who is prone to strange pronouncements which appear nonsensical at first but prove to be accurate. A school yard bully whose menace is ignored by the faculty at the school is a reoccurring threat. There's a sadistic gym teacher who torments weaker children with dodgeball. And the protagonist has aspirations of being a writer.

I guess that hasn't really narrowed it down at all and that does sum up The Shadow Year well. There's no distinguishing marks, nothing that stands out. It's a bland, flavorless mush of a novel that succeeds only in being completely inoffensive. I finished reading it only a few days ago and I can barely remember it. If you were to ask me a year from now to describe the novel I'm reasonably sure I couldn't.

Part of that is the protagonist isn't interesting. He floats through the book never taking action on his own. Typically it is someone else who pulls him into the next zany scheme that will become a childhood anecdote and the rest of the time he's just running in fear from a not particularly threatening or ominous man. That's not the kind of behavior that results in a protagonist you can care about.

That's a major failing since The Shadow Year is, as I implied, just some childhood anecdotes strung together and they're not very interesting ones. It's almost all completely mundane average things. The experiences may be universal but if they're not told in an engrossing way then I could get the same experience sitting around the dinner table with family at Thanksgiving.

While I prefer to avoid spoilers I also have to add that Ford created one of the most abrupt and pointless denounments I've encountered outside of Neil Stephenson. What little life the plot has is undercut by a conclusion that just falls flat.

The Shadow Year has a plot that's identical to dozens of other books and while Ford doesn't manage to make an awful book he goes one worse and makes a boring one. It's competently done but when you're telling the same story as a dozen other people then competent doesn't cut it.

The 2009 World Fantasy Award Winners

Well the World Fantasy Awards have been handed out and there was a nasty surprise in them for me:

Novel - Tie between The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford and Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
Novella - "If Angels Fight" by Richard Bowes
Short Story - "26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson
Anthology - Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy edited by Ekaterina Sedia
Collection - The Drowned Life by Jeffrey Ford
Artist - Shaun Tan

A tie! Well I'm looking forward to reaching each of those books and have my fingers crossed for something special from both authors.

Review - "The Night We Buried Road Dog", "Graves", and "A Defense of the Social Contracts"

There's one oddity that's worth noting before I get started. The 1994 Nebulas were the last time that the Hugos and Nebulas for short fiction shared two or more awards. In addition it would take until the 2001 Nebulas for the two awards to agree on any story. At the same time in the novel category there was a ten year long disagreement. So after here it is territory where the SFWA and SF fandom didn't agree.

1993 was a year for light fantasy; both of the unique winners that year could have easily dropped the fantastic element in the tale and still had most of the same concepts...

"The Night We Buried Road Dog"
by Jack Cady
1993 Nebula Award for Best Novella

On the lonesome Montana plains during the early 1960's lived eccentric men who swear by their automobiles and pass rumors between them about a legendary wanderer who is only known by the name "Road Dog". One of these men starts an auto graveyard for burying beloved cars. When another has a strange face to face encounter with the Road Dog he flees the region but finds himself being drawn back for a confrontantion.

The plot itself in this story isn't much but Cady does a great job with character and mood. Instead of just being a collection of quirks Cady doesn't forget that they need to be interesting characters first. So while one of them may love cars so much he sets up memorials to them that isn't the only thing there is to him.

As for mood a big part of that is how well Cady establishes his own kind of Americana folklore. The souls of those who died at the roadside appear just off the headlights to distract weary drivers. Ghost cars roam the lonely highways late at night appearing from nowhere and vanishing in the distance. The mysterious Road Dog communicates through obscure messages left on rest stop toilet stall walls. The story borrows liberally from urban legends and uses them to good effect.

For a story about fast cars this is a very leasurely story. I think that works for its purpose, though. It's about men leading a lonely existance in the wilds of Montana where time passes slowly. Cady was so evocative in "The Night We Buried Road Dog" that I think it easily overcomes the less interesting plot. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

"Graves"
by Joe Haldeman
1993 Nebula Award for Best Short Story
Tied for 1993 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Short Fiction

During the Viet Nam was there was a soldier assigned to body recovery and identification. An officer too flush with his own power demands that he go into the field to a firebase for immediate removal of corpse. Once there the soldier finds two bodies, an American and a strange looking tribesman and before he can investigate further he becomes caught in a firefight.

I know that he's just drawing on his experiences but Joe Haldeman captures the feeling of the military better than any SF writer out there. "Graves" puts that on full display and though it uses a lot of familiar cliches Haldeman can tell those and make them interesting.

This is a very short story and in this case it barely qualifies as fantasy. In fact the fantasy element is so light that I suspect it was applied just to sell the story to a magazine. Still it is well integrated; it doesn't feel like a bolted on monster thanks to the resolution in the last few paragraphs. I have my own theory about the nature of the story and since it would spoil things I won't go into it; I will, however encourage you to read "Graves".

"A Defense of the Social Contracts"
by Martha Soukup
1994 Nebula Award for Best Short Story

In the future civilization has changed so that everyone registers their preferred sexual habits. The idea is so that there could be no deception when, for example, a polyamourous person meets someone looking for a committed relationship. When one woman falls in love with a man registered for in discriminant sex she schemes to force him to be monogamous.

This is classic SF in the "posit a strange thing about a society and explore the consequence" mold. I've got to say a society where sexual behavior is both incredibly open and enforced is an interesting one. The concept includes how the story is told; it is done as a cautionary tale that is remote and passionless. It results in one of those interesting situations where things the problems of our world are replaced with a new set of complications.

I understand what Soukup was doing with the style she chose for this story, I just found that it made it hard to be interested in the characters. I suspect that she wound up doing this because that main character is fairly unpleasant and disconnecting the reader from them would avoid "taking sides" in her argument. Either way the prose wound up being technically interesting but dull to read.

For that reason I cannot just recommend "A Defense of Social Contract". If you're like narratives with unique styles then you may enjoy the story but I think that it will fall flat for most readers.

World Fantasy Award Special! The Winning Novels in Five Words or Less!

And now because one person demanded it (or something like it)! I'm giving myself five words to categorize each of the World Fantasy Award winners. The first is the broad box I'd put the book in, the last is my general reaction to the story, and between is what comes to mind.

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld - Traditional, Fairy Tale, Charming, Enjoyed
Bid Time Return - Modern, Victorian, Time Travel, Disliked
Doctor Rat - Allegorical, Anthropomorphic, Screed, Preachy, Annoyed
Our Lady of Darkness - Urban, Horror, Lovecraftian, Creepy, Pleased
Gloriana - Elizabethan, Sexual, Gormenghast-esque, Intrigued
Watchtower - Traditional, Psuedo-medieval, Commune, Quest, Bored
Little, Big - Urban, Fairies, Generational, Memoirs, Ambivalent
Nifft the Lean - Traditional, Pulpy, Lieber-esque, Novellas, Reviled
The Dragon Waiting - Traditional, Historical, Name Dropping, Okay
Bridge of Birds - Historical, Quests, China, Humorous, Loved
Mythago Woods - Allegorical, Metatextual, Post-WWII, proto-Gaiman, Positive
Song of Kali - Urban, Horror, Indian, Disturbing, Squeemish
Perfume - Historical, European, Meandering, 1800's, Dreary
Replay - Urban, Time Travel, Growth, Curious
Koko - Urban, Vietnam, Suspense, Non-Fantasy, Irritated
Lyonesse: Madous - Traditional, Coming-of-age, Fairies, Idiots, Shoddy
Only Begotten Daughter - Urban, Allegorical, Religious, Quirky, Likable
Thomas the Rhymer - Historical, Fairies, Folk Tale, Ecstatic
Boy's Life - Urban, Memoirs, Boomers, Southern, Wistful
Last Call - Urban, Games, Epic, Rollicking, Playful
Glimpses - Urban, Time Travel, Boomers, Despised
Towing Jehovah - Allegorical, Religious, Preachy, Mixed-messages, Cold
The Prestige - Historical, 1800's, Tesla, Magicians, Taken-in
The Physiognomy - Urban, Insanity, Psuedo-Victorian, Odd, Confounded
Godmother Night - Urban, Memoirs, Deadly, Coming-of-age, Satisfied
The Antelope Wife - Urban, Generational, Memoirs, Passive, Hurled
Thraxas - Traditional, Stereotypical, Unfunny, Painful, Murderous
Galveston - Urban, Post-apocalypse, Coming-of-age, Inconsistent, Weary
Declare - Historical, Espionage, Lovecraftian, Religious, Hungry
The Other Wind - Traditional, Earthsea, Wrapping-up, Fans, Indifferent
The Facts of Life - Historical, Memoirs, Coming-of-age, Family, Interested
Ombria in Shadow - Traditional, Gormenghast-esque, Intrigue, Layered, Shocked
Tooth and Claw - Other, Psuedo-Victorian, Dragons, Lifeless, Insufficient
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell - Historical, 1800's, Stylistized, Fairies, Sequel
Kafka on the Shore - Urban, Quirky, Coming-of-age, Fated, Pondering
Soldier of Sidon - Historical, Twisty, Mind-bending, Thoughtful, Impressed
Ysabel - Urban, Coming-of-age, YA, Unpleasant, Dissatisfied

My Top Five World Fantasy Award Winners

I have a rule for myself to never comment on my own posting history but I had intended for this to get done yesterday. Something very important came up, though.

Movie? What movie? I don't know what you're talking about.

Anyhow, rather than running down a list of five novels placed in somewhat arbitrary order I am keeping the list in publication order. All five of these books are well worth anyone's time.

Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart fits nicely into the mold of classic adventure fiction. There's a quest and a powerful villain and monsters and a lot of other elements that you'd expect to find in the interchangeable Tolkien knock offs that fill shelves. What it does differently is dramatically overturn the point of view. Shifting the setting to ancient China and capturing the cultural attitudes are part of that. Giving one of the "heroes" "one small flaw in his character" is another. If you read the book then you probably giggled at that previous sentence and the light hearted tone that Bridge of Birds maintains also sets it apart. Finally Hughart is exceptional at fitting words together beautifully. It adds up to a magificent book that cannot be missed.


Song of Kali by Dan Simmons is a work that leaves me uneasy in ways that horror novels rarely can. It's built on fear of the others, those dirty foreigners who are beyond our borders are have their own strange ways. It's the kind of thing that rational men are supposed to be beyond and Simmons plays with it better than any author I have encountered. Other authors who use that fear are typically politicians trying to enflame their people against others which adds a deeper layer to the fear that Simmons is envoking. Also he manages to capture the poisonous atmosphere of a densely populated city that exists in the worst conditions.



Replay by Ken Grimwood is notable for the use of a simple scenario (reliving one's life over and over) and playing with all of the myriad of implications. If that was all it had I wouldn't have mentioned it here; Grimwood also focuses on how these events both change and fail to change a man. No punches are pulled with the protagonist as he does some great things and many less than noble ones over his lifetimes. And even when he is at his worst Grimwood makes sure that the reader can understand the character.




Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami is the most maginal of my five selections but I think that it was successful as an allegorical novel in a way that many mainstream authors dabbling in speculative fiction are not. The theme of fate might be the single most ancient literary concept and somehow Murakami manages to find a unique take on it. Rather than simply being a a set of quietly magical events events occurring among a cast of quirky characters Kafka on the Shore strives for deeper meaning. I think it achieved it since I doubt I'll ever forget this book.




Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe is worth reading for one major reason: the writing. The story is good enough and the characters are interesting enough but what really makes this novel stand out from the rest is how magnficent the writing is. The unreliable narrator has never been more unreliable than in Soldier of Sidon and so Wolfe turns the reader into an active participant in the story. The reader along with the narrator is working from information that is fragmented; the reader might have a better point of view but the narrator could be dishonest on some points. It makes the book incredibly compelling and Wolfe manages to make the rest of the work support that.

I haven't changed my logo to feature the World Fantasy Award winners since with all of the Hugo and Nebula winners it is already a bit large. However I still missed the mosaic image of all of the covers...

(Click to giant size it)

That's better, though I wish I didn't have to keep doing this when the number of award winners were at prime numbers.

World Fantasy Awards Recap

Looking back at the World Fantasy Award winners the thing that surprised me most was how homogeneous in broad concepts they were. I consider science fiction to be a subset of fantasy and despite that the Hugo and Nebula novels showed much more variety. With the World Fantasy Awards there are:

• Nine traditional fantasy novels (Western, pre-industrial societies with magic and quests)
• Eleven historical fantasies
• Six novels that use or explicitly mimic the nineteenth century
• Sixteen books that might be called urban fantasy
• And seven of those where novels that were essentially memoirs with an occasional odd thing happening
• Only three books looked to the horror side of fantasy
• And five novels focused on fantasy's traditional partner allegory
• And zero direct Tolkein-esque knock offs.
  

But enough about how people repeat themselves. With regard to the actual books I disliked sixteen and enjoyed twenty-four which definitely made it a set of books worth checking out.

Review - Ysabel

Ysabel
by Guy Gavriel Kay
2008 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

It would be the last novel that's the hardest to write about. It's not that I hate it; it's really easy to articulate exactly why I despise something. And it's not that I loved it. I just... kind of disliked Ysabel and I can't completely figure out why.

A teenager spending a few months in France encounters a mysterious man in a cathedral who warns the teenager to stay away. The teenager begins to sense things like the fact that the man is centuries old and when the teenager visits an ancient battleground he can feel the deaths of thousands. This leads the teen and his friends to become entangled in a mismatched love story that has been repeating itself for more than two thousands years and inevitably ends in bloodshed.

Part of my problem with the novel is that I didn't care about the protagonist. It might be to Kay's credit that he captures the voice of an overbearing teenager so well but it's a really unpleasant narrative voice to spend a book with. His extremely clumsy sexual advances might be accurate but they're also creepy to read about. His childishness in dealing with people is true to life and makes him difficult to relate to as an adult reader. It's a case where doing something well repelled me as a reader.

On the other hand Kay created some interesting antagonists with his ancient people trapped in a story cycle. They're all pulled by forces beyond their control and they could be friendly with the hero in the right circumstances. When the reader is feeling some sympathy for them is usually when Kay drops a reminder that they are men who did terrable things of their own free will as part of it. I would have much rather read a book about them without the teenager involved.

It didn't help that the protagonist kept acquiring superpowers over the story that weren't really clear. He can do poorly defined stuff that changes depending on the need of the story. Kay uses these powers for exposition and development rather than resolution of problems so it isn't constantly becoming a magical deus ex machina. It's clear he's trying to tie these abilities into adolecent development but that doesn't make it interesting.

I do have to compliment Ysabel for being a fast paced novel. You could almost split the book in half between the development of one mystery and the start of a larger problem and neither portion ever gets dull. Any time the plot threatens to slow down Kay throws in another confrontation.

One of the odder things in the novel to grate against me is the constant name dropping. The protagonist is quick to mention then current technology products by name and does it all the time. I understand that Kay is attempting to root the story in present day but it came across to me as a middle aged man name dropping to seem hip. It's just a little thing but it throws me out of the story to be told that the situation is like Guild Wars or what band is playing on his iPod.

One more oddity in Ysabel is the fact that it ties into Kay's Fionavar Tapestry series. A pair of characters from that fantasy triology turn up in this book. It's not necessary to read the fantasy trilogy to follow Ysabel but there are several references that knowledge of the other books will make clear.

Trying to pin down exactly what I don't like in Ysabel is rough for me. I clearly did not like the protagonist and found him both unpleasant and uninteresting. I also wasn't really drawn in by Kay's prose which feels dead to me (both in this book and others he has written). It's not a specific problem I could point to; it comes down to I don't care for how Kay writes. That means I can intellectually aknowledge Ysabel as an average novel that I couldn't bring myself to care about. I'm sure it has its audience (that's obvious from its selection as a World Fantasy Award winner) but that audience does not include me.

Review - Soldier of Sidon

Soldier of Sidon
by Gene Wolfe
2007 World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel

I mentioned when I talked about Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series that I can tell how effective a book in a series is based on how eager I am to read the rest. Even if I like a book I may not be that eager to read more. Soldier of Sidon is the third book featuring the ancient warrior Latro and it ends on an ambiguous cliffhanger. I've already ordered the first two and I'm impatient for as yet unreleased fourth.

Latro received a head injury a long time ago and since then he forgets everything within a few hours. To help him keep track of events he obsessively writes down what he can remember. The injury, however, gave him the ability to see the divine around him and that ability has made him the pawn of gods.

He awakens on a ship in Egypt that is owned by a man he rescued at the start of this record. The captain of the ship is contracted by the Persian ruler to locate the source of the Nile river and Latro accompanies him on this trip. Along with them are their prostitute-wives arranged at the start of the voyage, a worshiper of Set who has his own agenda, a scribe protected by his own god, and a woman who is not always there.

What's really magnificent in Soldier of Sidon and has made me pursue the other books is how well Wolfe uses Latro as an unreliable narrator. The reader only sees the records that Latro has written down and we don't know what he has forgotten or obfuscated. In addition it is uncertain how much he knows at any given moment since he doesn't always review his writing. Wolfe's narrator gives the reader a bewildering confused view and as a result I was much more involved with the story.

I have to mention how Wolfe makes the narrative a scattering of disjointed notes. He often jumps into something in media res as Latro has to write down the important details quickly before he forgets while not being able to recognize what could have been important elsewhere. On top of that Latro's moods shift as the journey progresses and how he reacts to his lack of memories and the tone and style of the writing change as a result. We're viewing the story through a filter that has to be read carefully. Soldier of Sidon features exceptional storytelling due to this.

The book dedicated to Richard Burton and opens with a quote from Herodotus. Wolfe does a spectacular job living up to those inspirations. The cues from Burton include the trip to the source of the Nile and from Herodotus he took the explorations distant, near mythical lands. Soldier of Sidon takes advantage of the history of Egypt and Wolfe drew me into the period.

With an unreliable narrator it's hard to judge how the characters behave but I was interested in what they would do. Given the situation I always has to consider the possibility of hidden agendas and false identities when Latro spoke of someone (that's part of what makes the cliffhanger so ambiguous). Latro himself is rewritten every time a new chapter begins so it is impossible to get a grip on him.

It is the writing that carries this book and Soldier of Sidon was one of the best written fantasy novels I've ever encountered. Since the narrative is about a man with no memory the fact that I have not read the first two books in the series made no difference in the story to me. I can't recommend starting at the beginning until I have read them but I strongly recommend reading this book; it is exceptional.

Review - Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore
by Murakami
Translated by Philip Gabriel
2006 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

I went into this novel with high hopes for two reason. The first was that I had never read a Japanese novel before; not even Tale of the Genji. I've read more than my share of manga but using it get a perspective on novelists is like looking at current superhero comics and trying to work out what the US literary scene is like. I have read novels from other Asian cultures so I was interested in how Murakami would use the medium and how it would compare. The other is that Haruki Murakami is one of the big names in literature at the moment. Big enough that I've heard some people seriously suggest a Nobel prize in literature could be in his future. Consequently I expected something special.

I have to say that I did get something special. Kafka on the Shore is a strange, dreamy novel. I was left at the end puzzling over it; trying to come to grips with the how and why of the story. It's going to stick in my mind for a long time to come. It's definitely not a novel for entertainment (though there are aspects of that); Kafka on the Shore is there to be interesting and intriguing. It is something to be examined and pondered.

Kafka is a fifteen year old boy with a pronouncement of doom hanging over his head. To escape his fate he runs away from home to hide on the far side of the country where he hides amid a special library. Nakata is an old man who lost part himself in his childhood. He lost his intelligence and literacy but gained supernatural abilities. Kafka's fate puts the two of them on a collision course dragging those around them along with them.

There's a lot of literature and mythology mixed up in their story. Fate in particular as a mythological theme is deeply engraved in it. This does mean that it helps to know your mythology when reading Kafka on the Shore. In particular there is an aspect of Japanese mythology which is important to understanding the conclusion and it never explained in the book. I wouldn't have even remembered it myself to put everything together except for the fact that I've run across the story in four different places in the past two months.

The novel rests securely on the shoulders of its characters. I almost called them "quirky" in my plot description but that doesn't do Murakami justice. There's a few off the wall characters but only the minor ones push the "Isn't that strange?" button. The others are simply richly drawn people each of whom is struggling with fate: recognizing it, running from it, accepting it, or dealing with its consequences.

Kafka himself is not a pleasant protagonist. He's a lost, confused child trying to grow up and often doing it the wrong way. At the same time he's interesting to read about because he is so broken. I never got the impression that the reader was supposed to sympathize with Kafka beyond his desire to escape a bad fate and his confusion. That makes it more effective in my view than trying to justify his behavior to the reader.

The plot itself left me bewildered at the end. It drifts through the book giving the reader moments where the direction is clear but for the most part things happen and run together. I have to give the weight to the character arcs for making the Kafka on the Shore interesting instead of the plot developments which play out as afterthoughts.

I have to mention Philip Gabriel's translation as an exceptional peice of work on its own. It is a monumental achievement to take the Japanese text to English and giving the work a distinctive tone that helps carry the reader through it's strange landscapes.

Kafka on the Shore is a strange book. I can't propperly describe it and do it justice. It is an exceptional novel that I am going to be left considdering possibly for the rest of my life and it has definitely left me with a desire to read more from Haruki Murakami.

Review - Tooth and Claw

Tooth and Claw
by Jo Walton
2004 World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel

There's a lesson to be learned in books like Tooth and Claw. This novel is a book about a society of dragons and how their biology drives certain behaviors. It takes its plot from nineteenth century romance novels and justifies the strange behaviors as part of dragon biology. That's an interesting concept and yet Walton doesn't managed to turn it into an interesting book. The lesson is, of course, that ideas are not novels.

A family of dragons gathers for the death of their patriarch where a misunderstanding over the inheritance leads to conflict between most of the family and the in-laws. One unmarried sibling must live with her social climbing sister and wicked husband while another is shamed by the sexual advances of a priest. One of the poor sons sues his rich brother-in-law over the inheritance and the other son cannot reveal the truth that would resolve the case without shaming himself. Naturally all of these plot threads collide.

I suppose I should say at this point that I didn't hate Tooth and Claw. My problems with the book essentially come down to it being as bland as a saltine cracker. There's nothing that terminally annoyed me but at the same time there was nothing that thrilled me. Most of what I would consider flaws in it can be excused since they develop from the form that Walton is mimicking but at the same time she never manages to draw me in.

The prose is a good example of what I mean. Walton tells the reader directly that the plot of the novel comes from nineteenth century literary conventions but she is half-hearted in using that influence. She uses completely modern prose that's very terse and is completely lacking in poetry. That's a fine style for some stories but Walton is mimicking romance novels (that's "romance" as in the literary style not "romance" in terms of love story). Compare Tooth and Claw to Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell which won the World Fantasy Award next year and you'll see how the latter book completely embraced that style and was a better book as a result.

Without completely embracing that style it makes the limitations of the plot stand out. There's lucky coincidences, multiple deus ex machinas, and a leisurely pace that completely lacks tension. Those are things that Walton took from her source along with other things that are plot contrivances with humans that she incorporated into her dragons. I can't hold these problems against Tooth and Claw since they were intentional and yet they clash due to the fact that Walton chose to use a modern style for so much of the book.

There are other problems with the plot separate from Walton's mixed signals. There's a particularly ugly attack of expository dialog at the beginning that's just terrible. Walton avoids making the rest of the exposition as bad as a son explaining dragon society to his own father lying on his deathbed but there's a lot of clumsy exposition. At a few points Walton puts out the idea in the narration that Tooth and Claw is a book by a dragon written for dragons which makes these pieces of sloppy exposition worse.

The formula that Walton chose to follow also interferes with the reader's ability to connect with her characters. Again this is not necessarily a flaw since she chose to depict dragons in a society that is very different from humanity. The problem is that she doesn't manage to connect her biologically driven caricatures back to the human reader. I can overlook character development I would consider abrupt and jumpy in a human but I never cared about any of the characters.

So with Tooth and Claw I'm left looking at a book that was an interesting idea that the execution never managed to match. It's a book that I just couldn't care about one way or the other. While my criticisms may be deflected by Walton's concepts she doesn't manage to put anything interesting beyond that concept into the book.

Review - The Facts of Life

The Facts of Life
by Graham Joyce
Tied for 2003 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

I think I'm getting a grip on modern urban fantasy. All you have to do is take an innocent protagonist, send them on a spiritual journey (particularly if it's a coming of age story), and have them encounter a series of strange things which you assemble by randomly selecting adjectives and nouns. You can pad things out by giving the protagonist a dysfunctional family life.

Of course it helps if you tell this story as well as Graham Joyce does. It's just that this structure has become almost as rigid as the epic fantasy quests and that's not a healthy thing for a genre.

Our protagonist is a boy born into a large family living in Coventry just after the end of World War II. The family is touched with magic that lets some of them be aware of spirits around them. His mother is flighty and prone to vanish for days at a time so it is arranged that he will be passed from family member to family member. As he grows the child encounters the strange quirks of his family members and learns to appreciate each of them in their own way.

What makes The Facts of Life really stand out in the crowd is that Graham Joyce gives the book an impressive voice. For the first ten pages I thought it was going to annoy me. There's a shift after the first chapter to a different style that Joyce uses through the rest of the book. It's a style that is colloquial to the 1950's UK and it gave the book a very friendly tone. It turned the narrative voice into one of the extended family that is at the heart of the book and by extension brought me as the reader in closer.

The family itself is a mix of familiar archetypes and unusual breaks in convention. The negligent mother, for example, is not negligent due to any of the usual reasons (though that might be expected given that this is a fantasy novel). On the other hand the benevolent dictator of a matriarch who keeps the family together is an archetype that will be very recognizable even when Joyce adds his own tragic spin on it.

The only real misstep in this that I found was an unfortunately heavily cliched trip to a commune where college intellectuals attempt to put their radical beliefs into practice. It fits the novel's themes but this group of characters is about as interesting as dishwater.

The city of Coventry itself places a large role in the novel. It grows from the ashes at the same time as the child grows and the history of the city is often referenced. I'm sure it is something that will be familiar to any readers in the UK though American readers might have some trouble with the references.

One more positive thing about The Facts of Life is that Joyce never loses the thread of his novel like some urban fantasies do. The book is a collection of vignettes from the protagonist's childhood and Joyce remembers that it is the story of that child growing up which means they flow into each other. Even the digressions exist to illuminate what happened to this family. It's a shame that I have to mention that but too many books I've read lately are a random assortment of anecdotes that drift around until the book ends. I can't say that The Facts of Life really builds to a climax since there is no moment of revelation or dramatic confrontation; what it has is an ending that let's the reader know that life has changed and it will be better.

The Facts of Life is a familiar story told very well and for that reason I recommend it. Graham Joyce painted a picture of a family that will be instantly recognizable to anyone and at the same time has their own unique quirks. The result is a very enjoyable book.

Review - Ombria In Shadow

Ombria In Shadow
by Patricia A. McKillip
Tied for 2003 World Fantasy Award Winner

I have become convinced that Patricia McKillip ranks among the greatest authors in the world. That's not because Ombria In Shadow is a brilliant novel; I just found it to be interesting. It's not because I'm impressed with her body of work; I've only read her World Fantasy Award winning novels. It's not even any particular aspect of her writing. The reason is simple: twice she has over the course of a book taken me from something I hate to something I enjoyed.

Here's the arc I followed when reading Ombria In Shadow:

Starting out: Generic fantasy? Ugh... this is going to be terrible.
Half way through: Well the novel's skillfully done but it's not really my thing.
At the end: That was pretty good.

Any author who can do that to me twice is brilliant.

Ombria is a kingdom in chaos. It's old ruler died leaving a child as his heir. An ancient witch has worked her way into power and is acting as the regent. Those who care about the child have been separated from him: the old ruler's mistress dumped into the harsh streets of the decaying city and a bastard who might have shielded the child has been threatened into inactivity. There is a legend of two Ombrias existing, one in shadow and one in light, and when the kingdom is broken they switch places.

There are two things I found effective in that story that managed to win me over. Neither of those was the setting which was yet another psuedo-medieval thing. In fairness to McKillip she kept the focus narrow enough that I was constantly rubbed the wrong way by modern concepts in her setting. At the same time it wasn't drawn in great detail at the broadest level. So I wasn't pushed away but neither was I pulled in.

Similarly McKillip's villain isn't really villainous for the bulk of the novel. People talk about her like she's a monster but this is a novel of intrigue. What people say could simply be rumors, deception, or general dislike. The villain does turn nasty at the very end of the book though for the majority of the book I was wondering why everyone hated her.

What worked for me were the rest of the characters. In McKillip's previous World Fantasy Award winner The Forgotten Beasts of Eld I was impressed with how well her characters were developed. She has continued that in Ombria in Shadow where the majority of the small cast was effectively developed. The protagonists in particular are exactly what I appreciate: they're flawed, they grow, and most importantly of all they are interesting. An illigitamate son divided between his desire for peace, an offer for the throne, and family loyalty is inherently interesting and McKillip plays up the conflicting drives. While I had no doubt as to what would be done in the end the journey was interesting because of how it was internalized.

The other thing is McKillip's prose. She has an interesting style that pulled me along. Occasionally I found it be obscure; "Was that metaphorical or not?" and then I'd have to reread that section a few times until I worked it out. That just emphasized how well McKillip did with the atmosphere of the novel. Her world is an uncertain hazy thing and this style emphasized the magic in the setting.

I can't say that I'd seek out more books by McPhillip. She writes novels that as a rule I shouldn't like and the subject matter doesn't interest me. So with Ombria in Shadow I'll depart on good terms, appreciating the book and recommending it. Perhaps someday our path will cross again and I hold out hope that when happens that I am once more similarly impressed.

Review - The Other Wind

The Other Wind
by Ursula K. Le Guin
2002 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

Earthsea. I can't believe I'm back in Earthsea.

The first Earthsea book, A Wizard of Earthsea, is an exceptional piece of fantasy and a tight story. The next two sequels aren't quite as good but have their charms. And then there was Tehanu, a book about how all men secretly plotted to destroy women. That wasn't subtext; it was overtly stated repeatedly and at length.

After Tehanu I never wanted to see anything by Le Guin and particularly Earthsea related ever again. And yet here I am with The Other Wind. I considered dodging it and just pointing to the Tehanu review but if I can muster the will to read a second book by Robert J. Sawyer I can manage to fight through another Earthsea book.

My diligence was... well I can't say "rewarded" since it wasn't really a good book. How about, "My diligence did not condemn me to a painful literary hell."

A young man who has some natural talent in the ways of magic is left in perpetual mourning after his wife dies in childbirth. He begins dreaming each night of the division between life and death where the dead are pressing against the barrier and begging for release. The dreams haunt him and he is driven to seek help from Ged, the former archmage of Earthsea who lost his power when he repaired the barrier between life and death. At the same time dragons are entering Earthsea and terrorizing its inhabitants and the return of dragons may be tied to the dreams.

The Other Wind could have been retitled Earthsea: Wrapping Up Loose Ends. It's mainly a mashup of left over plot threads from the previous few Earthsea books. This isn't the first time that an author has returned to their creation much later to wrap things up for fans and like the vast majority of those The Other Wind is only going to appeal to people who are already fans of the series. It's not a novel that stands on its own; it cuts corners in both plot and characterization due to its connection with the previous books.

The initial plot line vanishes suddenly in the middle of the book so that Le Guin could pick up storylines from earlier books and give other characters resolution. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing but it feels clunky in the novel. It's like several short stories were welded together and the reader can see the seems between them since characters wander in, suddenly become the center of a large chunk of story, and then vanish off stage only to be mentioned in passing.

In the novel's favor the "All men hate women" theme is almost completely absent from The Other Wind only arising in one character's thoughts. Men as a whole are not portrayed at patronizing jerks (though one character does learn a valuable life lesson about it) and there aren't even villains who are out to get women just for being women.

Which isn't to say that The Other Wind is completely lacking in philisophical zaniness. There's a digression in the middle on politics that is so disconnected from human nature it left me boggled. It doesn't overwhelm the book but it is exactly the kind of thing I hate in speculative fiction: the author positing a "perfect" social structure where the real world analogues are dysfunctional.

I do have one more nice thing to say about this book. It had a decent conclusion that wrapped up Earthsea in a pretty bow. Given the number of long running series that have conclusions that leave the reader more annoyed than satisfied I have to compliment Le Guin on ending the series well.

As I said this book is only for people who are already fans of Earthsea. If you haven't read at least all of the other novels then you won't be able to understand The Other Wind. It's dependent upon the reader already having an emotional connection with the characters rather than establishing one of its own. So I can't recommend The Other Shore, though if you're already deep into the novel series then you might as well finish it off. You won't find anything horrible in the series conclusion either.

Review - Declare

Declare
by Tim Powers
Tied for 2001 World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel

Stop me if you've heard this one. There's this kid with a mysterious powerful father that he doesn't know who is initiated into a shadowy world of people playing for high stakes. He becomes involved in things he shouldn't have meddled in during his youth and twenty years later is called back to the life he left behind and the mentor who abandoned him because the events that were set in motion two decades before are about to start again. A hand of poker where the pot contained things far more important than cash. Magic lurks behind the mundane and invisible enemies stalk our protagonist through the desert.

Last Call or Declare? You decide.

Okay, it's both. I can't fault the judges too much for this since I read Last Call only a few weeks before reading Declare. That made those similarities very obvious. However instead of mixing poker and magic Declare is about mixing espionage and magic.

Andrew Hale was born to a life in espionage. His childhood was guided by shadowy figures in high places who groomed him as an operative. His career collapsed when Operation: DECLARE went bad one dark night on Mount Ararat. Twenty years later he's called back in to an organization that should not exist and is told that the Soviets are moving on the mountain with the help of one of the most infamous traitors in British history. Hale is assigned to act as a double agent to infiltrate the new operation with little opportunity for preparation before being sent into the maw of danger.

That's a decent foundation for an espionage novel. Powers adds to his novel through flashbacks to Hales career where it is slowly revealed that his cold war is not simply a conflict between governments. Supernatural forces have taken a side in the great game and many factions wish to use them or destroy them.

One thing that Powers gets exactly right in Declare is the atmosphere of paranoia. How much can anyone be trusted? I was constantly guessing and second guessing at what could be really happening and Powers plays fair with the reader. There's no shadowy conspiracy that knows far more than it should; all sides are working with imperfect knowledge that they could have reasonably gathered and agents can't even be certain of how far they can trust their superiors.

Declare is also wonderfully paced. That's one of those things that are hard to appreciate in novels until you can see the difference between someone who has a deft handle on slowly dribbling out knowledge that changes the reader's perceptions and someone who plops infodumps on readers and moves the plot in a jagged fashion. Powers dumps out a jigsaw puzzle for the reader and fills in pieces at just the right point to pull you along. He drops hints and resolves them in a timely fashion; there's only a few things hinted at in the early chapters that the reader doesn't understand by the mid-point of the book but in those revelations new mysteries have been raised. Being able to structure a plot that smoothly is Powers's greatest skill.

Unfortunately I think the paranoid atmosphere and espionage structure harm characterization. When the reader can't trust any characters, even the narrator has to be suspect in this kind of book, it makes it more difficult to connect with them. I was interested in what they were doing but not in who they were.

So what we have in Declare is an interesting espionage novel attached to some not quite as interesting but still very well done fantasy elements. The overall effect I found to be good but your reaction is likely to be determined by your reaction to cold war novels. I recommend it since after this and Last Call I've added Powers to my list of authors who I want to read all of their output.

Review - Galveston

Galveston
by Sean Stewart
Tied for 2001 World Fantasy Award winner for Best Novel

I used to live in the wastelands southeast of Houston. I was also close enough to Galveston that I went to the island town about twice a month. I used to know the city reasonably well and I can tell you that Stewart description of the setting did not grate against my memories. I can't promise you that if you're a current resident of the island that it'll match but then when has any author ever tried to get more than the general atmosphere of a town correct.

Magic has stormed back and overwhelmed the world causing innumerable deaths and toppling civilization. On Galveston however magic has been cordoned off; it runs free in an eternal night of carnival ruled over by a moon faced god while those who are not affected by magic work to maintain their isolated town. However the leader of the town who has kept it running for decades is now dying and her large breasted daughter turns to magic to save her life. This sets off a chain of events that will overthrow the stability of Galveston.

Sorry about the breasts thing; every other character in the novel mentions them repeatedly and I would have felt left out if I didn't.

I will give Stewart credit for wrapping up old stories in new concepts and making them feel fresh. Eternal parties, dichotomous societies, parental conflicts, and so on are old themes and Stewart's view of them in Galveston isn't bad. The problem is that when it comes to execution of those concepts he's seriously flawed.

For example, there's a theme in the novel of class conflict between one of the protagonists and those he lives among. It's vital to understanding the characters, their interactions, and ties into the divided society theme. Oh, and the first time it's mentioned is about two hundred pages into the novel in the middle of a trial. Since we never see this character interact with anyone other than his friends and family to that point there's no sign that these problems exist. Then they're forgotten about for a long time only to be suddenly raised again for a few paragraphs much later. Finally this gets an extensive conclusion at the end of the novel.

This is not the only plot thread that this occurs with. Stewart's story moves in jerks and spurts. Key elements are poorly established. They're picked up and discarded as the novel progresses. Characterization is whatever is necessary for the plot at that moment and once that moment has passed it can shift again on the reader.

A perfect example of this if the woman who goes to bargain with a god for the life of her mother. Now Stewart does introduce the complications that a person can only speak the truth in the god's presence and is terrifying enough that someone might not think straight. Still I would hope that a person bargaining with supernatural power would know that "I don't want to see her die" is the absolute worst possible way to word such a request. Even if they do phrase it that way the character, who the reader is constantly being told is smart, shouldn't go on thinking that they've gotten what they wanted from the bargain. It goes beyond simple the simple foolishness of most characters that make bad deals with supernatural beings to outright stupidity when she can't recognize the problem with her request.

All this adds up to a story that runs on authorial fiat; things happen with the obvious hand of the author pushing them that way instead of developing characterizations and situations which flow naturally. It makes for a frustrating reading experience.

Galveston is a good example of what I find flawed in so much fantasy and science fiction: a lot of good ideas that can sound interesting in summary with weak execution. High concept with low quality. Stewart isn't nearly as bad as some authors but that doesn't make Galveston a good book.

Review - Thraxas

Thraxas
by Martin Scott
2000 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Novel

I've got to say this right at the top: "Wow! What a hideous cover!" I especially like how the front half and back half of the woman's torso in the foreground don't connect together behind her left arm.

I can't hold cover art against Martin Scott. There are, however, these quotes on the cover:

"Blindingly funny!" - The Guardian
"Funny and engaging. I laughed aloud." - Starburst
"Wonderful plotting, and the jokes come thick and fast.... This is funny. Really funny." - Black Tears

Apparently Thraxas is supposed to be a comedy. If it wasn't for those blurbs (and the plot description which describes it as "hilarious") I would have completely missed this fact. What's actually there in the novel just isn't very good.

Thraxas is the cheapest detective in a generic fantasy city. With the assistance of a part-elf, part-orc, part-human, part-time barmaid tough woman he investigates the theft of an incredibly valuable magic-proof cloth and attempts to recover embarrassing materials. Along the way he fights an assortment of evil wizards, assassins, and orcs.

I feel a need to first defend myself as someone who is not a completely humorless, "literature must be serious!" drone. I can point to two authors who I don't like and yet I can recognize as publishing comedic fantasy novels: Robert Asprin and Piers Anthony. I have a complete set of the works of Terry Pratchett and even have a few of them signed. I know that humor is subjective but I'd like to think that I'm at least capable of recognize a joke even if I don't find it funny.

And there's the problem with Thraxas: I couldn't even recognize it as an attempt at humor. The pulp detective influences were obvious but as far as I could tell they were played straight. I've read enough blending of noir and fantasy that it was not inherently humorous. Scott stretches for an occasional poking of some very basic fantasy cliches like the chainmail bikini but does it in the exact same ways that the cliche has been subverted for decades. Making things worse is that the entire setting, plot, and characters are common cliches. The setting might have been pulled straight from AD&D; that can work if it's done for laughs and yet in Thraxas it isn't.

There was one sequence in Thraxas where it started to approach funny for me as several factions pursuing the big treasure pile up in a room like the sailors in Groucho's stateroom. Fortunately Scott difuses this near humor by explicitly telling the reader that this section is funny and the novel returns to it's completely unfunny state.

Okay, enough harping on the "comedy"; perhaps Thraxas is simply the victim of bad marketing. So let's take it as a blend of pulp detectives and pulp fantasy. It does that poorly as well. The fantasy elements are what I hate most in fantasy novels: a world that runs on authorial fiat. Don't even think about any of the setting elements because none of them hold together if examined (again, not a problem if it's funny but...). The detective story is less of a mystery and more of a set of strung together events. Scott never managed to raise my interest in the mystery story.

Scott doesn't even manage as a compelling wordsmith. If there's one aspect to pulp detectives that is memorable and effective it's the unique voice of the characters. Scott makes an occasional half-hearted stab at it and never manages to capture the hard-boiled style that he's looking for.

The best thing I can say about Thraxas is that it is completely unoffensive as a novel. It's a light, bland, forgettable nothing. A twinkie of a book without even the novelty of creamy filling. If I set out to create the most generic fantasy novel possible I'd wind up with something like Thraxas. This book is hard to acquire in the United States and it is not worth the effort.

Review - The Antelope Wife

The Antelope Wife
by Louise Erdrich
1999 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel

I've read a few of slice-of-life, magical realism novels as I've worked my way through the World Fantasy Awards. It seems like a simple formula for authors: you tell some anecdotes, apply a bit of magic, and let the book just wind down at some point. Boy's Life and Godmother Night did this well enough and managed to give the reader a thread to follow. The Antelope Wife, on the other hand, fails completely.

In The Antelope Wife there's some... a... uh... a family maybe (depending on how you define family, I guess) and they... maybe... who have things happen to them... and then the book ends.

There are events but no thread of theme, structure, character, or plot for the reader to follow. It never comes together and events seem arbitrary since the book jumps around so much. Why are these characters acting different in this chapter than how they were two chapters before which was set some ambiguous time before it? Don't look to the text for any answers since by focusing on a few moments arcs don't develop. It reads like a pile of family rememberences which might make sense when you're talking with people who have common experiences with those stories. From the perspective of the outside reader it just doesn't make sense.

Which isn't to say that the individual stories don't make sense. They're simple enough anecdotes that are just clumsily told. It's not hard to understand the ten pages where a story is told as a self-contained unit; it's in the context of the whole where I'm constantly saying, "Wait, wasn't he the rapist who sold things at a flea market?" or "Weren't they angry at each other over this a few chapters ago and never had it resolved?"

I think the story was supposed to mysteriously tie together with events from the past given how name dropping and references to events are dropped into the novel. That didn't work for me because the connections were arbitrary; it didn't matter that their ancestors had known each other or did some horrible thing because it happened a hundred years before.

One of the true unpardonable sins in The Antelope Wife is that none of the characters are interesting. It's populated by people who are effectively inert whether by being "mysterious" or are just do nothings. The few characters who do take actions visible to the reader are bores at best and vile monsters who brutalize people with no compelling elements to them.

One reason for the problems with the characters is that the novel's voice is weak at best. Most portions are recounted as a legend from the distant past and the prose is structured like that. This can work for broad sweeps of legends and for human stories such as Erdrich is trying to tell the near complete lack of dialog and the remote voice harm the characterization. The reader is constantly told what characters say in generalities rather than in dialog, conversations simply don't exist.

Which makes The Antelope Wife a novel of fluff about characters that I couldn't care about told in such a way to make it as uninteresting as possible. It's flawed on every fundamental level and improving any single element still would not have saved the book. Avoid this one, there's better options out there.