Anti-rec: "The Court of the Air," Stephen Hunt

[sabotabby]

"Read this," zingerella said, dropping a thick paperback on my desk. "I think you'll hate it."

(She does that a lot. In fairness, she quite frequently also gives me fantastic recommendations, as there's a pretty big overlap in our literary tastes, but it's way more fun to blog about the books that suck.)

The Court of the Air starts out properly, with a steampunk London, robots, airships, and an inventive way for dealing with the monarchy (every time a new king is crowned, his arms are cut off and publicly displayed in the parliament to ensure that he never raises them against his people; also his primary duties are to appear in front of the mob so that they can throw rotten fruit). In two separate storylines that only connect, briefly, two-thirds of the way through the book (Problem #1: The two protagonists meet a grand total of once) young orphan Molly Templar finds herself the target of a ruthless assassin and goes on the run with a robot, while young orphan Oliver Brooks finds himself framed for the murder of his uncle and goes on the run with an unsavory character from the country's secret police, known as the Court of the Air.

And then the author throws in a bunch of really cool stuff at a frantic pace. Halfway through I realized that I was only reading it so that I could tear it apart in my LJ.



So the major problem with the book that everyone pointed out is that there's too much Cool Shit, and no development of the characters or setting. One gets the sense that it's a very big world with a supposedly rich history, but everyone is too busy running around for it to get explored in any meaningful way. Also, it's a very familiar world—Jackals is Great Britain, Quatérshift is the USSR, Cassarabia is the Arab world (the whole thing), the Steamman Free State is some Orientalist vision of Tibet, the Chimecan empire is the Aztec empire, and so on. Accordingly, you get a whole lot of Unfortunate Implications—the protagonists are all white, the few characters of colour are evil, Buddhists are robots, and the Big Bads are communists who are trying to revive ancient Aztec gods. Of evil.

Did I mention that the politics are abhorrent? And not even in a "sabotabby is a communist so she doesn't like how communism, I mean 'communityism' is portrayed by someone who disagrees with it" sort of way, although that too. No, they're just muddled. The Jackalian parliamentary democrats are corrupt and cruel (we're supposed to sympathize with the young prince who's about to get his arms chopped off) and besides which have poorhouses, the communists are evil (though "Ben Carl" does a heel-face turn at the end), the Aztecs are pagan savages best left to the dustbin of history, and the Arabs are wicked misogynists who use women as ambulatory wombs to breed genetic mutants in. The only system of government that seems well-run and doesn't have a secret police? You guessed it: the monarchist robots. Granted, it doesn't end with the monarchy being restored in England, but one gets the sense that the author and most of the surviving characters think it's not the worst idea ever.

There are loads and loads of characters, none of whom I cared about. The two leads get no character development (Molly is Every Female Fantasy Protagonist Ever, right down to the fiery red hair and matching temper, and Oliver is, um, tall or something). Instead, they get levelled up in Badass to the point where by about halfway through the novel, neither of them are human per se. Also they don't actually have free will and spend most of the novel being possessed by some god or spirit or Robin Hood or whatever. (Which I guess makes them even with the villain, who spends most of the novel possessed by an evil god.) All of the other characters pretty much show up, help the protagonists along, and then get killed. A few of the robots get killed twice. The epic battle at the end is entirely between people and creatures with supernatural powers, and thus entirely uninteresting.

Which is another problem. I'm rather sick to death of resourceful orphans who turn out to be secretly special (I'm sick to death of fantasy characters who are special, period), but if one is going down that route of escapism, at least let the kids do something on their own. They have adult accompaniment the whole time, which might delight the teacher in me, but sure isn't appealing to the kid in me.

Also, it's almost Bechdel-fail, were it not for the whorehouse scenes at the beginning. All this big hoopla about the Chosen One Red-Haired Waif, but she's the only female character of note, the only one who lives, and she doesn't actually do much despite being the Chosen One.

Oh, and it's derivative, even for steampunk. The "communists want to physically make everyone the same" was kind of cool in "Harrison Bergeron" and tired by "Age of Steel." In this it just makes no sense. And China Miéville's crayfish people were better.

There, I just read it so you don't have to.

P.S. zingerella, let me know how big the fine is. Long book is long.