While I'm on the subject of not recommending things, let me add to the list the book "The Mirror of Her Dreams," by Stephen R. Donaldson. Unless you happen to be a teenage girl. (I mean actually a teenage girl, not in the internet sort of "40-year old man masquerading as a teenage girl" way.)
I'm a fan of fantasy, though in practice I haven't really read that many different fantasy authors. So I get a lot of recommendations from people. Stephen R. Donaldson is one name that has come up periodically. Usually, it's in the context of the Covenant books, but a close friend and her mother (both of whom I've known for about 15 years) strongly recommended his two-book "Mordant's Need." They're both well-read, intelligent women and I had to take their recommendation seriously. I borrowed the first book, The Mirror of Her Dreams, and started in.
That was about two months ago. I have read nothing else in that time frame. For a while, I was lucky to average two chapters a week. I just found the book to be ploddingly dull. For starters, essentially nothing of consequence happens in the first half. There are at least three points where characters get together to debate a course of action, and decide to do nothing as their course of "action."
The main character is a girl snatched from our real world into a fantasy land. And she's the most spineless, helpless, worthless girl you could possibly imagine. About once every other page, there's a sentence or paragraph about how "Terisa had never done this," or "Terisa was totally unfamiliar with that." Don't get me wrong -- I understand that a protagonist should go on some sort of character journey in the course of a good story, and often that journey is the discovery of self-worth. If a character starts mighty and with a high opinion of themself and ends up in the same place, that's not a good story, that's a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. But this girl starts out so weak and so incapable that once she does actually start taking an action or two (somewhere around page 400), I found it completely unbelieveable.
While I was struggling with this book, I mentioned it to another friend of mine who works in a bookstore. Her reaction was, "The Mirror of Her Dreams? That's a chick book! I read it when I was 13." She's also quite the liberal and feminist, though, which prompted me to ask how she could possibly like the main character. She just shrugged and said, "it's a girl thing."
Anyway, the book finally picked up enough at the halfway point for me to pick up my reading pace and make it to the end. Ordinarily, I'd abandon a book I was not liking this much. But in this case, it being a recommendation, I felt a little more compelled to see it through to the end.
I'm imagining that the Covenant books must be a little better for this author to have drawn the acclaim he has. Yet still, another part of my struggle with the books was the writing itself. I know a lot of fantasy writers have trouble with long passages of exposition (though the truly good ones deftly handle the problem). SRD embarks on page-long flights of backstory and world-building, then tries to buy it back by having the character doing the explanation say something like, "oh, but I'm sorry, I'm rambling." Sorry, bud... it's still bad exposition even if you point it out yourself.
So basically, I'm prepared to avoid everything by this author unless somebody out there who has read something else of his wants to step up to the plate and defend him.
And now, of course, I'm in a bit of a dilemma. As I said, it's the first book of two. Do I want to hunt down book two? I've come this far, so I sort of have to. Maybe. One thing's for sure, though, I'm going to read something different (maybe several somethings different) between now and then.
8 comments:
I understand the Donaldson dilemma. While I did read and enjoy both books, including the Covenant series (all six titles) I admit the man is often hard to handle for long periods of a time. That said, I enjoyed all the books, despite having been in my early twenties at the time.
However, I've also searched for other Fantasy authors and one day stumbled upon Tad Williams. The "Memory, Sorrow, & Thorn" trilogy, to be precise. Couldn't put them down. Sure, most genre-fare is fairly homogenized, but there was something about the *flavor* of Williams's work that just got me going. Sure, that third book was more of a tome, topping out north of 1k pages, but what a joy ride, nevertheless!
One other book I might suggest is "Wicked" by Greg Maguire. Fabulous read and, as I'm sure you're aware, not a lively Broadway musical!
A caveat: my suggestions are biased toward character or setting, but not plot. I could care less if nothing happens for five hundred pages, provided I knew and understood the cast.
Anyway, I didn't mean to turn a single comment into a blog all its own--sorry. Just thought I'd throw in my two-and-a-half cents.
Enjoy!
Nope, I'm not going to defend Donaldson. I lumbered through the first 3 books of the Covenant series but swore blind I wouldn't go back for more. There was an interesting concept in there but it just seemed to take so long and I had no empathy for any of his characters. Did you read the Phillip Pullman "His Dark Materials" trilogy?
The Tad Williams recommendation has come up before, but I haven't got around to trying him out.
I did read Wicked. It left me in a conundrum, because I thought it was both beautifully written and truly boring at the same time. The cleverness of concept and message was enough to get me to try one more of his books, Lost. Again, some beautiful use of language. Again, I found it totally boring at the same time. So that was it for Gregory Maguire for me. But anyway who enjoys a good turn of phrase may well want to take a look at him.
I read His Dark Materials last year, on recommendation from the friend I mentioned who works in the bookstore. I really enjoyed them. I was pulled into book one almost immediately by the clever concept of children and their "spirit animals," and it became clear very early on that he was going to fully explore every facet of that concept -- it wasn't just background to the universe.
I felt very rewarded by the time I reached the third book and found out just what Pullman's real agenda with the story was, and how deliciously subversive the whole thing was. A really well done series.
Suffice it to say then that I'm pretty well horrified that they're talking about turning this trilogy into a movie/series of movies. Word is they're scouring out all the religious overtones to try to make the thing less controversial. To me, that's pretty well removing the entire point, like the original theatrical cut of The Abyss without the tidal wave.
Ug. Tried starting the first Covenant book and bogged...repeatedly.
No empathy for the characters is a good comment, though to be fair, I didn't get completely out of the starting gate before I abandoned.
I never read Donaldson but my brother did, and he was a Tolkien fan 10-15 years before me. (Not sure I'm one even now.)
But, if you hated #1 so much, don't waste time with #2. That's like thinking you have to buy every season of a TV series because you bought the first one, or you're not complete. Go for quality over quantity every time!
The prospect of the Pullman books moving to film initially excited me, particularly when I heard that Tom Stoppard was working on the script. Sadly you're right - they'll be Hollywoodised to death. That is a great shame as they had almost epic potential for the large screen.
Back to Discworld until something else pops up.
Given that Stoppard apparently spruced up the dialog in Revenge of the Sith, I'm not sure how much his influence can actually make a movie good. That series has been recommended to me so many times - I will have to get around to reading it. Maybe this August.
Stoppard? THE Tom Stoppard? About as awesome of a playwright as you're likely to find alive today. Anyone with a passing interest in Hamlet should check out Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The movie version is a bit lacklustre but its got Tim Roth and Gary Oldman in it a lot.
Post a Comment