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 - "R & R" and "The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky"

Something I found interesting about the Nebula winners this time is that neither story would win any awards for their daring style. On the other hand they both take familiar themes and tell their stories very well.

"R & R"
by Lucius Shepard
1986 Nebula Winner for Best Novella

A near future war in the jungles of Central America has turned into a quagmire. Three soldiers in this desperate situation are given a week of R & R. They hold to a belief that if they keep repeating the same behaviors from the first R & R they took that they will survive to see the next one. This time things feel more desperate: one soldier wants to desert, another is unusually restless, and the third is told by a woman with psychic abilities that she has foreseen his death. The madness of war spins around them in a week that changes everything for them.

So it's another story about the horrors of war and how screwed up the soldiers are. This time I found it to be effective mainly due to how well Shepard drew his characters. So when a very ugly secret about one of them is discovered, for example, I react with confusion like the protagonist.

Instead of being shallow stereotypes the characters are conflicted in every regard. Shepard plays with that tension between fleeing and staying, cowardice in ambiguous combat and bravery for friends, superstition and reason. Even one of the ugly events that are used to demonstrate the horrors of war gets a justification that leaves things more muddied.

Perhaps that's part of why "R & R" works so well: it's not judgmental. Instead of spending his time preaching at the reader it's a story about people who are living in the situation. The terrible situation is presented as a matter-of-fact rather than as a grotesquery for the reader.

"R&R" is a common story but exceptionally told. It's well worth checking out.

"The Girl Who Fell Into the Sky"
by Kate Wilhelm
1986 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

A lawyer who is estranged from his wife is sent to the back ways of rural Kansas to pick up a player piano for his father. The player piano was the property of his father's friend who has passed away and the owner's relatives will soon show up to inventory the remote farm where he lived. The lawyer is supposed to make an offer on the piano before they have a chance to remove the possessions.

When the lawyer arrives he finds an attractive woman already at the farm examining the ruins of a commune that is hidden on the property. At night they hear the piano playing on its own despite not being functional in years.

So it's another ghost story with a haunted farm in the middle of the prairie. And just like the previous story Wilhelm makes this stand out by drawing some interesting characters. She also takes the story itself to a few different places than one might expect. The relationship between the main characters does not develop along the usual lines.

The history of the farm itself plays on the contradiction in expectations. Wilhelm's set up prepares the genre savvy reader for something big but she keeps bringing in the focus. By the end there are a few minor supernatural elements that persist but the story was a mundane one.

That's "mundane" as in lacking in fantasy, not that the story itself isn't terrific. I found it to be evocative and intriguing and I appreciated that Wilhelm could subvert my expectations so smoothly. I definitely recommend reading this one.

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 - "Sailing to Byzantium", "Portraits of His Children", and "Out of All Them Bright Stars"

For the first time in a while the Nebula short fiction list completely disagreed with the Hugos. This doesn't become a common occurrence until the late 90's when suddenly years where at least one story was selected for both awards becomes rare. Looking back at the 1986 Hugo winners (the Nebulas are dated to the year of the eligibility period while Hugos are dated by the year the ceremony occurs in) I have to conclude that it was a very good year for short stories. The only Hugo winner I didn't care for was Fermi and Frost and I liked all three of the Nebula winners.

"Sailing to Byzantium"
by Robert Silverberg
1985 Nebula Winner for Best Novella

In a distant future the few humans on Earth live in a state of perpetual tourism. Ideal forms of cities from the past are revived for a few months at a time and they journey among them to see the sights. They live in decadence and seek out novelty. Traveling among them is a man from the mid-80's. The experience with the malleable world is giving him an existential crisis. This comes to a head when his traveling companion leaves him.

For a story about aimlessly drifting from city to city Silverberg puts together a tight package. It helps that the narrator recognizes the complexities and implications of his situation. This means he spends a lot of time brooding but when the time comes for him to confront reality he is able to seize it. His concerns mirror the reader's concerns about the stage scenery world he inhabits and at the same time is not so weighed down by them to stop living among the delights.

Silverberg confronts a lot of philosophical questions in "Sailing to Byzantium" but he never confronts the reader with most of them. The questions are there as part of the setting, unspoken implications of the narrator's concerns. They help texture the story and add one more layer to it.

The setting may only make sense from a metaphorical context and the characters might be more direct than is strictly necessary but this was a fairly good story. I was uncertain where Silverberg was going to take his ideas until it ended and even then I'm not certain where things will go. I enjoyed "Sailing to Byzantium" a lot and strongly recommend it.

"Portraits of His Children"
by George R. R. Martin
1985 Nebula Winner for Best Novelette

An author who has found success by basing his characters on real people has driven his daughter away from him. She starts sending him portraits of some of those characters and after each arrives he is confronted by the character come to life.

Martin paints a portrait of his own in this story of an author who is one of the most dispicable characters I've ever encountered. A character who had a chance for one moment of redemption and bled it for his art. It's really easy to hate the protagonist.

And yet the situation is compelling. Is it a complex revenge? A attempt at reconciliation? An intervention? This is a text book example of how to take an unlikable character and make them the center of the story. I hated him and I still wanted to know what would happen to him in the end.

While I can't say much about it I also really appreciated the ending. There's a dramatic shift in tone about two-thirds of the way through the story and then one more twist at the end. The first not only goes to a place that the reader is probably expecting but takes it one step beyond that. The other throws the conclusion into ambiguity in just the right way to make it stick with you. All of that makes "Portraits of His Children" well worth seeking out.

"Out of All Them Bright Stars"
by Nancy Kress
1985 Nebula Winner for Best Short Story

This was the weakest of the three Nebula winners for short fiction in 1985. On the other hand that still means it's really good.

Aliens have recently arrived on Earth and life goes on. One of them breaks from his handlers and wanders into a small town diner to order a meal on his own. The waitress serving him gets to observe first hand how things have changed.

Kress's story is a theme that was old even when she wrote it though she tells it very well. Our perspective on the universe may have changed but people are still people. That's the real heart of the tale: life goes on just as wonderful and terrible as it did before. What made Kress's spin on this interesting was that she captured the personality of that waitress trapped in a life of quiet desperation perfectly. That narrow human focus made the story greater than its peers and interesting to read.

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.