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Son of the Return of the Book Reports
Had my last lecture of the semester today (and might I say that I am droolingly, breathlessly crushing on Sociolinguistics?), am halfway through a hard-copy revising pass on Claire de Lune, and have finished up several daily-life projects in the last few weeks at Casa del Leah. Thus, I have time to read again, and you get:
Son of the Return of the Book Reports!*
Remember that thing I mentioned about telling us when something's first in a series? Sarah Monette's (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
truepenny's) Melusine is the first in a series. Walk in knowing that, because I didn't, and I fear it has coloured how I looked at the whole book in strange and eldritch ways. Melusine follows two characters: Felix, an emotionally traumatized wizard in the magico-political court of Melusine, and Mildmay, a cat burglar who was once a kept-thief (child thieves with an older keeper, a la Oliver Twist). They're thrown together in a set of not-really-circumstancial circumstances, and travel across a large land mass to find out some things about their heritage and help Felix face both his magically imposed and came-with-the-packaging emotional damage.
Melusine's major strength is in its pure richness. Every person, place, word, and thing in this book is fully realized; it lives, it jumps off the page, it exists. The phantasms that Felix sees in his madness are no less real than the rooftops under Mildmay's feet: this speaks an intersection of careful, well-considered worldbuilding, subtle and yet tangible voice, and a skillful hand with tension. It's fitting that it's named for the city; the city is really the star of the piece. This is a thick, thick book, and yet utterly immersive. The use of voice, especially (two first-person PoVs, each very different from the other) adds a personalness to the narrative that makes you feel like you really are there, grants an immediacy to the everyday events of their lives and journey. However, there's a flip side to this: Felix's insanity and Mildmay's, well...priorities being elsewhere kept me from really feeling the impact of the bigger-picture events that were supposed to be happening. The Virtu of the Mirador, the most precious object in Melusine, has been broken; there are discussions of the city's enemies massing on the borders to make a grab; there is, frankly, a big evil turncoat wizard on the loose that nobody's bothered to chase down. All the while, Felix is busily being insane and Mildmay is pining about his girlfriend. We're told big things are happening; people do not always react to them in big ways. I suppose this is true for real life too, but it sucks that sense of immediacy and feeds into my big issue with the novel: plotting and pacing.
(Remember how this is the first book of a series and I didn't know that? Here's where it gets important.)
Not a lot really happens in this book.
Yes, things happen: there's a flight from the city and some detective work and a bit of unhaunting a tower which maybe didn't need to happen, but it was cool enough, and a lot of walking, and some political chicanery and bonding at the end. So in that strict sense, events happen. But when you look where you sit at the beginning of a big thick hardcover and then at the end, really...not a lot happened. Felix is driven insane, and then cured, with a little extra acceptance that yes, he used to be a kept-theif and a prostitute, and no, maybe this isn't so bad. So really, he gets to a point not too far ahead, developmentally, from where he started on page one. Mildmay leaves the city, puts up with Felix a lot, mostly holds everyone together through the whole thing, and is not repaid with a hell of a lot of gratitude. Essentially, his relationship with his brother (Felix) mirrors in a lot of ways his relationship with the girlfriend he's pining over: he's a caretaker. He figures out how to admit when he needs love and care too. Again, that's nice, but not functionally too different from where he started.
There is still a broken Virtu. All the wizards in the Mirador are still pissed at Felix. The people who hired Mildmay to help find Felix are still wandering around trying to convince the Mirador they screwed the pooch. There is still an evil turncoat rapist wizard running around the landscape, and somehow in all this fuss everyone has forgotten that maybe they'd better go bring his ass in for some judgement. The enemies of Melusine are still growling.
No ground has been gained. Things have been lost. Not even a small victory to tide me over. Well, so they've discovered brotherly camaraderie (I'm not actually sure when this happened, but they said so at the end). Really, I would have liked to see some foothold, some progress, something against all the shit these two boys are facing.
So really, we walked through 600 or so pages for...I'm not sure what.
I would maybe not have this lingering taste of annoyance in my mouth if I'd known there were direct sequels. Maybe I wouldn't have expected narrative arc so much. Still...dammit.
I will likely pick up the sequel, The Virtu, because I damn well want my narrative payoff.
#
Another first novel, Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania, follows a similar pattern: starts off impeccably promising, and takes a sharp left turn into structural confusion. Miranda Popescu is an adopted Romanian-born, American-raised teenager, whose renewed interest in her past leads her to discover she is in fact a Girl From Another World. She's transported to that world with her quasi-boyfriend Peter and her best friend Andromeda (who is inexplicably turned into a dog, and that's never really addressed), and one expects them to go and do some cool things, or at least undermine the trope of the Girl From Another World book. Both of these are worthy endeavours, and the worldbuilding of the alternate Roumanian Empire is precise, interesting, and thoughtful.
However...they never really leave the ground. They get about five feet, narratively speaking, on the journey. Miranda is being used as a political pawn by her aunt Aegypta, who smuggled her out of Roumania and their world, the Elector of Ratisbon, who is (like all good villains) ugly, insane, and holding Miranda's mother as a political prisoner, the (equally insane) Baroness Ceaucescu, who is an amateur magician and former nudie stage dancer (much is made of this), etc. etc. and et al. We jump back and forth between these threads, and I must admit that I never quite figure out who this book is about: it doesn't seem to be anyone's story primarily.
A lot is introduced, and not a lot is resolved: we never find out what the powers of Kepler's Eye, the tourmaline that's supposed to be magical and which is fought over a lot, are. They are talked about a lot (gun on mantelpiece) and never come into play (firing shots). Miranda is prophesied to be the white tyger, a saviour of Roumania -- we don't get the whole story on that either, nor does it really impact the plot except for having everyone look for her. The three teenagers are functionally stuck in this other world, and they don't really emotionally deal with that. Nobody looks for them at home. A budding relationship between Peter and Miranda goes nowwhere. A budding rivalry between Peter and Andromeda goes nowhere. Political maneuvering and outmaneuvering goes around in circles, and doesn't really reach a break point or boil point. There are a lot of threads to follow, and only one really comes to a conclusion (the Elector getting his).
I have a theory that this is supposed to be about Miranda reaching a point where she takes her destiny into her own hands, but...I can't really back it up.
Anyone know if this is meant to have a direct sequel too? Otherwise...I don't know what I was supposed to be seeing here.
Book reports to come include: Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night, Michelle M. Welch's Chasing Fire, Tamara Siler Jones's Threads of Malice, Gene Wolfe's The Knight, Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Kim Wilkins's Giants of the Frost, Karen Traviss's The World Before, The Outsiders anthology, etc. and more.
*(As always, all book reports have spent the last three years building up an immunity to spoilers)
Son of the Return of the Book Reports!*
Remember that thing I mentioned about telling us when something's first in a series? Sarah Monette's (
truepenny's) Melusine is the first in a series. Walk in knowing that, because I didn't, and I fear it has coloured how I looked at the whole book in strange and eldritch ways. Melusine follows two characters: Felix, an emotionally traumatized wizard in the magico-political court of Melusine, and Mildmay, a cat burglar who was once a kept-thief (child thieves with an older keeper, a la Oliver Twist). They're thrown together in a set of not-really-circumstancial circumstances, and travel across a large land mass to find out some things about their heritage and help Felix face both his magically imposed and came-with-the-packaging emotional damage.Melusine's major strength is in its pure richness. Every person, place, word, and thing in this book is fully realized; it lives, it jumps off the page, it exists. The phantasms that Felix sees in his madness are no less real than the rooftops under Mildmay's feet: this speaks an intersection of careful, well-considered worldbuilding, subtle and yet tangible voice, and a skillful hand with tension. It's fitting that it's named for the city; the city is really the star of the piece. This is a thick, thick book, and yet utterly immersive. The use of voice, especially (two first-person PoVs, each very different from the other) adds a personalness to the narrative that makes you feel like you really are there, grants an immediacy to the everyday events of their lives and journey. However, there's a flip side to this: Felix's insanity and Mildmay's, well...priorities being elsewhere kept me from really feeling the impact of the bigger-picture events that were supposed to be happening. The Virtu of the Mirador, the most precious object in Melusine, has been broken; there are discussions of the city's enemies massing on the borders to make a grab; there is, frankly, a big evil turncoat wizard on the loose that nobody's bothered to chase down. All the while, Felix is busily being insane and Mildmay is pining about his girlfriend. We're told big things are happening; people do not always react to them in big ways. I suppose this is true for real life too, but it sucks that sense of immediacy and feeds into my big issue with the novel: plotting and pacing.
(Remember how this is the first book of a series and I didn't know that? Here's where it gets important.)
Not a lot really happens in this book.
Yes, things happen: there's a flight from the city and some detective work and a bit of unhaunting a tower which maybe didn't need to happen, but it was cool enough, and a lot of walking, and some political chicanery and bonding at the end. So in that strict sense, events happen. But when you look where you sit at the beginning of a big thick hardcover and then at the end, really...not a lot happened. Felix is driven insane, and then cured, with a little extra acceptance that yes, he used to be a kept-theif and a prostitute, and no, maybe this isn't so bad. So really, he gets to a point not too far ahead, developmentally, from where he started on page one. Mildmay leaves the city, puts up with Felix a lot, mostly holds everyone together through the whole thing, and is not repaid with a hell of a lot of gratitude. Essentially, his relationship with his brother (Felix) mirrors in a lot of ways his relationship with the girlfriend he's pining over: he's a caretaker. He figures out how to admit when he needs love and care too. Again, that's nice, but not functionally too different from where he started.
There is still a broken Virtu. All the wizards in the Mirador are still pissed at Felix. The people who hired Mildmay to help find Felix are still wandering around trying to convince the Mirador they screwed the pooch. There is still an evil turncoat rapist wizard running around the landscape, and somehow in all this fuss everyone has forgotten that maybe they'd better go bring his ass in for some judgement. The enemies of Melusine are still growling.
No ground has been gained. Things have been lost. Not even a small victory to tide me over. Well, so they've discovered brotherly camaraderie (I'm not actually sure when this happened, but they said so at the end). Really, I would have liked to see some foothold, some progress, something against all the shit these two boys are facing.
So really, we walked through 600 or so pages for...I'm not sure what.
I would maybe not have this lingering taste of annoyance in my mouth if I'd known there were direct sequels. Maybe I wouldn't have expected narrative arc so much. Still...dammit.
I will likely pick up the sequel, The Virtu, because I damn well want my narrative payoff.
#
Another first novel, Paul Park's A Princess of Roumania, follows a similar pattern: starts off impeccably promising, and takes a sharp left turn into structural confusion. Miranda Popescu is an adopted Romanian-born, American-raised teenager, whose renewed interest in her past leads her to discover she is in fact a Girl From Another World. She's transported to that world with her quasi-boyfriend Peter and her best friend Andromeda (who is inexplicably turned into a dog, and that's never really addressed), and one expects them to go and do some cool things, or at least undermine the trope of the Girl From Another World book. Both of these are worthy endeavours, and the worldbuilding of the alternate Roumanian Empire is precise, interesting, and thoughtful.
However...they never really leave the ground. They get about five feet, narratively speaking, on the journey. Miranda is being used as a political pawn by her aunt Aegypta, who smuggled her out of Roumania and their world, the Elector of Ratisbon, who is (like all good villains) ugly, insane, and holding Miranda's mother as a political prisoner, the (equally insane) Baroness Ceaucescu, who is an amateur magician and former nudie stage dancer (much is made of this), etc. etc. and et al. We jump back and forth between these threads, and I must admit that I never quite figure out who this book is about: it doesn't seem to be anyone's story primarily.
A lot is introduced, and not a lot is resolved: we never find out what the powers of Kepler's Eye, the tourmaline that's supposed to be magical and which is fought over a lot, are. They are talked about a lot (gun on mantelpiece) and never come into play (firing shots). Miranda is prophesied to be the white tyger, a saviour of Roumania -- we don't get the whole story on that either, nor does it really impact the plot except for having everyone look for her. The three teenagers are functionally stuck in this other world, and they don't really emotionally deal with that. Nobody looks for them at home. A budding relationship between Peter and Miranda goes nowwhere. A budding rivalry between Peter and Andromeda goes nowhere. Political maneuvering and outmaneuvering goes around in circles, and doesn't really reach a break point or boil point. There are a lot of threads to follow, and only one really comes to a conclusion (the Elector getting his).
I have a theory that this is supposed to be about Miranda reaching a point where she takes her destiny into her own hands, but...I can't really back it up.
Anyone know if this is meant to have a direct sequel too? Otherwise...I don't know what I was supposed to be seeing here.
Book reports to come include: Frances Hardinge's Fly By Night, Michelle M. Welch's Chasing Fire, Tamara Siler Jones's Threads of Malice, Gene Wolfe's The Knight, Cherie Priest's Four and Twenty Blackbirds, Kim Wilkins's Giants of the Frost, Karen Traviss's The World Before, The Outsiders anthology, etc. and more.
*(As always, all book reports have spent the last three years building up an immunity to spoilers)
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Not as cool as psycholinguistics, but then too, I might be biased. :)
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I prefer sociolinguistics, but I'm definitely biased.
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I really, really hate this thing where they put out books and don't tell you that, and you think they're stand-alones. Did I mention perhaps hate? And trickery? And bad marketing?
Yeah. That.
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(I don't know if it is true, but it felt like one of those books that were really one book, and then it got chopped into several for some arcane reason.)