Reading Wednesday

[sabotabby]

Roll up for a controversial one, folks!

Just finished: Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor. I don't have a lot to add beyond what I said last week. This is a tour-de-force and it's also absolutely eviscerating. I'm glad I read it and also glad to be finished it.

After that I kind of needed something to decompress with. Fortunately, Tor sent me another free book, and it was...

Currently reading: Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson.

Gather round, Readers, this is going to be lengthy. And probably lose me some followers.

So as you may know, I write what could ostensibly be considered fantasy. At least, I consider it fantasy. However, when you tell someone you write fantasy, they expect a certain thing, and what I write is not that. And I read a lot of fantasy, largely the stuff that Tor sends me or friends recommend. Most of it, for context, is not work that I'd consider very high-brow or challenging (see above for what I consider high-brow and challenging in fiction), though some of it is. It's the kind of thing that wins Hugos, however, which generally denotes a certain standard of quality at least these days.

Fairly recently in this journey of reconnecting with my childhood self who wrote fearlessly about dragons, I learned that "the kind of fantasy that wins Hugos" and "the kind of fantasy that sells an unimaginable number of books" are, in fact, two distinct categories with minimal overlap. And that I have read almost none of the latter category. And apparently it is Weird and Odd to call yourself someone who is into fantasy on either the reading or writing end of things but have never read a book by Brandon Sanderson. And that he is the gold standard to which fantasy writers aspire to, in terms of quality of writing, not just in terms of book sales.

Thing is, I'm not going to pay money for one of his books, as I learned recently that he is a raging homophobe and as a Mormon, a percentage of his book sales inevitably go to an organization that lobbies hard for things like curtailing gay marriage. I do try to separate the author from the art, but 1) this cannot be detached from real-world economics or I'd have gone to see the hilariously bad Harry Potter play for the lulz, and 2) as I'll explain in a bit, his politics bleed through pretty hard into his fiction in unexamined ways.

So Tor did me a solid and sent me this one. It's not the first one in Mistborn but it's the first one of a different series set in the same universe and looked to be a bit more my vibe so I thought I'd check it out.



OKAY SO the things I know about Sanderson besides the Mormon homophobia thing are that he is wildly popular, is really good at worldbuilding and hard magic systems, and writes books that bring readers to tears. So far, the thing about wildly popular is true.

I'm more or less unimpressed by hard magic systems. Harry Potter is a hard magic system (she breaks the rules all the time, but there are rules); Lord of the Rings is a soft magic system. Guess which one I think is a vastly better fantasy series? But, okay, the magic system is established in the first few pages. I know how it works. The problem is that I don't care a whit about any of the characters in this book.

Alloy of Law is about a sheriff-type in the Steampunk Wild West who has metalbending powers, I guess?? He goes after bandits and generally summarily executes them before they can stand trial, so said metalbending powers come in handy. He can also change his weight. He's going after some bandits with his girlfriend, who is one of those Strong Female Characters we often hear about in fiction, but whoops, the bandit holds her hostage and he accidentally shoots her. He then leaves the frontier for the big city, where as it turns out he's a lord of some sort and expected to marry in order to restore the family fortune. Alas, he misses the gruff honesty of the frontier, and when the city's economy is threatened by mysterious bandits who rob trains and take female hostages, he is compelled back into action to dispense some rough justice.

Where do I even start with this? First of all, I am being forced to accept that the names of the heroes are Wax and Wayne and this is supposed to be very clever and hilarious. Because the author is a Mormon and refuses to swear, I also have to put up with curses like "Rust and Ruin," for which I believe I am entitled to financial compensation.

I think Wax is supposed to be likeable, in that he's a rich dude turned cop who murders low-level criminals and whines about his responsibilities as a job creator. He's a Republican wank fantasy. Tory noblesse oblige ideology pervades this book like a cancer. Why are the bandits doing banditry in the first place? At one point they crash a wedding and the bandit leader gets off one line about how they are stealing from the rich because they have nothing and I'm like, okay, Sando Branderson, convince me of why I shouldn't be Team Bandit here?

Wayne, Wax's sidekick, is slightly better in that his motivation appears to be that the bandits stole his hat, which is a more interesting character motivation than "my servants depend upon me."*

Second, let's talk about the two love interests here. Wax is supposed to marry Sexy Lamp #1. We know she's a bore because she talks about their marriage in pragmatic terms, including how they are to conduct their affairs, since marriage is primarily an economic and political arrangement. But we know he is actually interested in Sexy Lamp #2, because she is quiet throughout the whole dinner until she starts spouting criminology stats, indicating that she is a smart lady and they share interests, and very secretly a Strong Female Character. Oh yes, and Sexy Lamp #2 is half Wax's age and probably Sexy Lamp #1 is as well.

Now, am I being overly harsh here because I think the author's politics suck? Perhaps. The prose is competently written. It's about three times as long as the last book I read and will probably take half the time to read because it's fast-paced and doesn't have any challenging tangles of sentences or layers of meaning to parse out. But the politics are woven throughout the book despite it superficially reading like a fun, apolitical adventure story. What are the Roughs? It's some kind of frontier where civilization is expanding. Where, then, did the bandits come from? What is civilization expanding into? It has the same problem as most steampunk, which is that it wants a certain aesthetic, so there are trains and bandits and pistols, but that aesthetic is intertwined with a history of colonialism and genocide that the author is unwilling to contend with. As Sanderson is unwilling to engage with that, it comes off as a failure of worldbuilding—the magic makes sense, the economics and the geography do not.

(And I will point out that it is entirely possible to write a steampunk Western well—China Miéville does it heartbreakingly in Iron Council and decently in Railsea; Cherie Priest has a more rip-roaring adventure take in Boneshaker.)

This is also maybe the whitest and straightest book I've read in awhile, excluding books that are written and set in Eastern Europe. Say what you will about even GRRM, he has women, queer folks, and people of colour in his books. It doesn't go well for them but it doesn't go well for anyone. I guess I'm just used to the bulk of the fantasy I read being pretty diverse, to the point where it's almost a given. There's a swath of literature under the fantasy category that's not that, but I'm always just slightly surprised when I encounter it.

Anyway, to be fair Sanderson fans do say that this is one of his weaker books, so I'm curious to know whether these sorts of issues pervade the books that are considered good. Also, I'm only a third of the way through so maybe there's a twist or subversion of something later.

* I guess this is where I have to point out that "my servants depend upon me, and bandits stole my hat" is in fact the motivation for Dream of the Endless in Preludes and Nocturnes, the brilliant graphic novel adapted for the brilliant first season of the Netflix Sandman series. The difference being that Neil Gaiman can tell a complex, multilayered story about that, and also Dream of the Endless is supposed to be a pretentious mopey git.

 

P.S. Well, that got a lot of response! Would you like an actual quote from the book? Here is Sexy Lamp #2 talking about criminology.

“Renovation,” she said with a deep smile. “This case is where a wealthy man, Lord Joshin himself, purchased several parcels of land in one of the less reputable areas. He began renovating and cleaning up. Crime went way down. The people didn’t change, just their environment. Now that area is a safe and respectable section of the city.

“We call it the ‘broken windows’ theory. If a man sees a broken window in a building, he’s more likely to rob or commit other crimes, since he figures nobody cares. If all the windows are maintained, all the streets clean, all the buildings washed, then crime goes down. Just as a hot day can make a person irritable, it appears that a run-down area can make an ordinary man into a criminal.”

*Zizek voice* *sniff* Ideology!

Comments

[redbird]

I'm not sure if that's overly harsh, or overly kind. You've hit Dorothy Heydt's eight deadly words -- I don't care what happens to these people -- and kept reading.

[sabotabby]

Well, I'm fairly compulsive about finishing books once I've started, and this one is not physically hard to read. I am also just dead curious as to whether there's a big twist, since Mistborn had one and it's one of the things that people claim is good about it.

[lilysea]

Thing is, I'm not going to pay money for one of his books, as I learned recently that he is a raging homophobe and as a Mormon, a percentage of his book sales inevitably go to an organization that lobbies hard for things like curtailing gay marriage. I do try to separate the author from the art, but 1) this cannot be detached from real-world economics or I'd have gone to see the hilariously bad Harry Potter play for the lulz, and 2) as I'll explain in a bit, his politics bleed through pretty hard into his fiction

This reminds me of when I NOPED very hard out of an Orson Scott Card book many years ago because of sexism, misogyny and racism. (This was long before I knew anything about Orson Scott Card, it was before the internet was widely accessible - 1994? 1995?)

[sabotabby]

Right? You can tell. I remember reading Lost Boys as a kid, far too young to understand the homophobia or Mormon theology that underlies it, and just thinking it was bad and wrong in ways that I couldn't quite identify. (Also, that is not a book for children, lol. But I'd read Ender's Game, which was, and made assumptions.)

[lilysea]

But the politics are woven throughout the book despite it superficially reading like a fun, apolitical adventure story. What are the Roughs? It's some kind of frontier where civilization is expanding. Where, then, did the bandits come from? What is civilization expanding into? It has the same problem as most steampunk, which is that it wants a certain aesthetic, so there are trains and bandits and pistols, but that aesthetic is intertwined with a history of colonialism and genocide that the author is unwilling to contend with. As Sanderson is unwilling to engage with that, it comes off as a failure of worldbuilding—the magic makes sense, the economics and the geography do not

Yes, if the author wanted a frontier without genocide, partially terraformed uninhabited alien planets (with no lifeforms more complex than bacteria) are RIGHT THERE.

The Roughs could be, effectively, Mars but with breathable air. Civilisation could be the bits with surface water and agriculture.

[sabotabby]

I think he's limited by setting it in a pre-existing universe. And I suppose there is no Indigenous civilization there, but why? if it's habitable.

Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy does a stunning job of examining the ethical implications of colonizing a lifeless world. I mean I'm generally of the opinion that it's fine to do and you can skip over the ethical implications in that scenario, but now I'd hesitate to do it because he does grapple with these things, and does so spectacularly.

[lilysea]

I guess this is where I have to point out that "my servants depend upon me, and bandits stole my hat" is in fact the motivation for Dream of the Endless in Preludes and Nocturnes, the brilliant graphic novel adapted for the brilliant first season of the Netflix Sandman series. The difference being that Neil Gaiman can tell a complex, multilayered story about that, and also Dream of the Endless is supposed to be a pretentious mopey git

Also, Wax's servants can in fact get another job. (Possibly even a better job, with a better boss/better wages/better conditions. Maybe even form a workers co-op!)

Dream's servants are dream creatures THAT HE CREATED that may well disintegrate if The Dreaming is left empty for too long.

Wax can buy another hat, and there is a pretty low limit to how much damage anyone can cause with Wax's stolen hat.

Dream's helm can literally RESHAPE REALITY ACROSS ALL UNIVERSES.

[sabotabby]

Don't make me write fanfic in the Mistborn universe. I have other things to write.

[frenzy]

nothing wrong with reading problematic stuff if you dont pay for it. and, yanno, dont base a personality on it

[sabotabby]

I base my personality on being an elitist curmudgeon, is that okay?

[oracne]

I learned that "the kind of fantasy that wins Hugos" and "the kind of fantasy that sells an unimaginable number of books" are, in fact, two distinct categories with minimal overlap.

SO TRUE. I have not read any Sanderson but enjoyed your review anyway. It is not up my alley, so no danger of me running off to read any.

[sabotabby]

Which is not to say that everything that wins the Hugos is good and everything that is a commercial success is bad. I am not that elitist. But this does seem to fall into that pattern so far.

[lcohen]

well, you are not suffering in vain--now i know that i don't need to read anything by sanderson. so thank you for that! (and if there's a twist, i'll be interested to hear it and yet still not feel bad for not reading it.)

[sabotabby]

Hah well, I am just one person's opinion, and definitely not in the majority here.

[minoanmiss]

And apparently it is Weird and Odd to call yourself someone who is into fantasy on either the reading or writing end of things but have never read a book by Brandon Sanderson.

I kind of wish for your sake that you had left that particular swamp unplumbed but I guess you had fun mocking this ridiculousness? I forget which Sanderson book I threw against the wall, it was so long ago. Ugh.

[sabotabby]

Oooh well now I am dying to know.

[eller]

"whether these sorts of issues pervade the books that are considered good"

Yes.

To be clear here: that would not keep me from reading them if they were, indeed, good novels. I don't believe in the kind of mental self-restriction that comes with only reading authors whose views on life I agree with. (On the contrary, I believe this is a stance that generally causes more problems in the world than it solves.) But, also: I don't think they're particularly good books. From what I've seen (though I never read a full novel, only skimmed them in the bookstore), the characters are flat, the language is okay-but-sort-of-simplistic, the worldbuilding and plot have more holes than Swiss cheese. It's not the worst writing I've seen, but, as a fantasy reader, I'd say this is nowhere near the gold standard of what fantasy writing should be. Unless, of course, your idea of "fantasy" is the ultimate Republican wank fantasy of women in their "proper place" as sex objects, and people of color and *gasp* queer people not existing at all - in that case, of course, you may even be tempted to put up with bland writing... Look no further: it's perfect!

[sabotabby]

To be clear here: that would not keep me from reading them if they were, indeed, good novels. I don't believe in the kind of mental self-restriction that comes with only reading authors whose views on life I agree with. (On the contrary, I believe this is a stance that generally causes more problems in the world than it solves.)

Yes this. I mentioned LOTR on purpose. I do not agree with Tolkien's politics and I'm sure we would have had very loud disagreements if I were around back then. Doubly so for C.S. Lewis. And G. K. Chesterton. Etc. Toryism pervades all of those works too, in ways subtle to overt. But they are good stories that make convincing arguments for what I think is an incorrect political stance, versus stories where the politics are reactionary but largely unconscious and unconsidered but nonetheless affect the storyteller's ability to convince me of the characters and world.

[lilysea]

One of my favourite fantasy writers is

Ursula Vernon/T Kingfisher.

The villains are usually kings/queens/aristocracy; rich people or religious fanatics

the heroes are usually ordinary people like bakers who can make gingerbread golems or nuns who are were-bears.

There's humour and wit and charm and wry social observations and feminism.

[sabotabby]

Yeah, she's been on my list for awhile.

[dewline]

Thanks for the warnings. I think I'll skip this author completely and not worry about it.

[sabotabby]

I'm told its his worst one, but it sounds like a lot of the issues are found in all of his books.

[ioplokon]

I'm similar to you in that I know of him, but haven't read any of his books.

It's a pity bc "Magneto meets the Justice Riders" could be a lot of fun in different hands...

[sabotabby]

Right? Like, magic powers are cool. I like Westerns (albeit not uncritically). I like steampunk (also not uncritically). He seems to know it's cool and think that he's writing something light and fun and yet.

*

[minoanmiss]

But they are good stories that make convincing arguments for what I think is an incorrect political stance, versus stories where the politics are reactionary but largely unconscious and unconsidered but nonetheless affect the storyteller's ability to convince me of the characters and world.

*puts in my writing files*

Re: *

[sabotabby]

I'm sure I also have a lot of unconsidered ideology in my writing. But I at least try to imagine where people I disagree with or who are different than me might be coming from? There doesn't seem to be much curiosity here.

[springheel_jack]

I've never heard of him

[sabotabby]

I hadn't either before people kept going on about how he was the greatest living fantasy writer. He has the kind of books with embarrassing covers that I wouldn't pick up normally.

[china_shop]

Wayne, Wax's sidekick, is slightly better in that his motivation appears to be that the bandits stole his hat, which is a more interesting character motivation than "my servants depend upon me."*

LOL!

(This is so fascinating to me, as someone who's been listening to a ton of Writing Excuses (where Sanderson's one of the core hosts). I mean, he and two of the other hosts are open about being Mormon, but they do make a point of talking about inclusion and doing your homework to represent people of other backgrounds well, and they have queer and BIPOC guests and guest hosts (and also, there's a great episode about magic without rules/soft magic systems), so... it sounds like either he's terrible at putting his own advice into practice, or he's a hypocrite? (I haven't actually read books by any of the hosts. Mostly because I'm not super interested in their genres. I just want the writing theory, and I tend to naturally filter out the bits that don't apply to me... but I had been lulled into thinking they weren't homophobic, so that's good (ie, annoying, frustrating, disturbing) to know.))

[sabotabby]

My sense is that he's very much a Professional Writer, no doubt has lots of queer and BIPOC colleagues and maybe even friends and definitely a lot of queer fans, and doesn't want to alienate large swathes of his fanbase the way Rowling and Card have. And quite possibly that he considers himself a thoughtful deep thinking type with nuance who takes reasonable centrist positions.

That said, to quote a Discord acquaintance: "Do you support same-sex marriage?" is a question that can be answered with a simple yes or no 100% of the time. Anything in between is just a long-winded way of saying no.

This post has evidence on both sides of the "is Brandon Sanderson homophobic" question, which is less straightforward. Do I think he should be cancelled? No. I hope said friends and colleagues can help to lead him away from LDS, which I think is a dangerous cult that actively harms queer people, and cancelling is contradictory to that. Do I want him to get money from me while he's still in the cult? Nope. That money goes to line Republican pockets, regardless of how he individually votes.

And I think there's a fundamental conflict between what he probably believes as an individual ("these individual queer people I know are good and worthy of civil rights") and the theology that he's soaking in ("they all going to hell though"). This results in some very muddled thinking.

Which is somewhat a separate issue from the issues that I see in the writing itself. I suspect the main reason why I don't much care for hard magic systems is that arbitrary rules don't much appeal to me. I like hard SF because physics has demonstrably real rules and it's interesting to constrain a story to the realm of the fictional-but-possible. Magic, on the other hand, feels like it should be something harder to understand, more mystical, or it becomes science. The more interested a fantasy novel is in telling me all about the completely made-up rules of its magic, the more likely I am to bounce off of it. (This is my problem with a few of Seanan McGuire's books, even though overall I love her writing.)

So teal dear version, I guess I don't fault the guy for his beliefs, but his lack of perspective on his own beliefs tends to creep into his writing, and also economically he continues to support an organization that is harmful.

[maeve66]

Oh, this was a fun entry of yours to read. I would probably never have even encountered Brandon Sanderson (even the name is horrible, really) because I barely ever read male sci fi or fantasy authors, because the vast majority of them cannot write women characters. This was an unconscious thing I think, at first, and then became a stance sometime in my teens. There are exceptions for me (though I wonder whether other people would argue with me about them) -- I read Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson, though I think the first ISN'T great with his women characters at all, and the second ... isn't that great with characters, period, much though I love his work (with the exception of the California trilogy and Aurora.) As far as male sci fi authors I read even though I detest their (in this case, libertarian) politics... I like John Varley, and have actually thought he's done okay with women characters and with questions of gender fluidity, though from a very, very... biological or medicalized standpoint.

Let's see, why did I START this comment? Oh! Patricia C. Wrede! I was never much a fan of her dragon books, but, oh, her other magic books I have loved, all of them. I think her most recent trilogy, though, called, appropriately enough, The Frontier Trilogy... although it is magic set in an alternate history United States, and deals with Aphrikan-Columbians well (ha, part of its shtick, that it takes place in North Columbia, and South Columbia has an interestingly alluded to history of slave revolts) something you wrote twanged my unease-o-meter "it wants a certain aesthetic, so there are trains and bandits and pistols, but that aesthetic is intertwined with a history of colonialism and genocide that the author is unwilling to contend with. As Sanderson is unwilling to engage with that, it comes off as a failure of worldbuilding—the magic makes sense, the economics and the geography do not." Wrede built her alterna-world as if the Bering land bridge never existed, so there are no indigenous people to deal with in her magical frontier, just magical beasts, some of which are so inimical to humans (trappers and farmers and explorers) that they have to be hunted, possibly to extinction?

This sort of cheat, on her part, bothered me. If Aphrikans, why not indigenous people, with their own kind of magical tradition? (The three books deal with the Avrupan tradition (white folks' European magic, descended from the Greeks -- individually focused with elaborate spellwork); Aphrikan magic (world sensing magic); and Cathayan magic (group magic, with sort of tai chi aspects)). Okay, I've gone kind of far afield now.

[sabotabby]

I can think of a bunch of male SFF authors I like. Agreed with Stephenson and Robinson, to the extent that either of them are really all that interested in writing characters at all. I was just in a conversation about Seth Dickinson. China Miéville obviously. It is a wee bit surprising that I just had a glance over this year's reading list and the majority of fiction I read and enjoyed was by women, so I guess me too?

I think I vaguely did hear about Patricia C. Wrede. I've enjoyed some of her books and yeah. That kind of setup is just. You tried but you missed? Which sucks b/c I have actually seen a lot and read some Westerns that engage in interesting ways with colonialism and genocide. They are pretty much all bleak though. I think Sons of the Great Bear and Upright Women Wanted are the least depressing ones I can think of, and the former begins with an Indigenous man being murdered and the latter begins with a lesbian being murdered. So. Maybe it's possible to do a fun Western that is still responsible but I can't really think of any.

[radiantfracture]

We call it the ‘broken windows’ theory

He didn't even change the name?

She smiled so deeply that her mouth vanished into the shadow of her magnificent cheekbones. "There is no society." she said, patting her bouffant

[sabotabby]

Sexy Lamp #2 now looks like a 20-year-old Margaret Thatcher, so thanks for that.

[lilysea]

I just remembered

Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

which is the first in a series of Western fantasy novels

where a treaty has been brokered with the Native Americans in the West [not the East of America, the East of America is a seperate country with a seperate government that is in a cold war with the West of America]

and every individual European settler who wants to settle in the West

has to broker their own additional fair deal for land with the relevant tribe, or jog on

and this is enforced by:

a) Native American magic users;

b) travelling magic users who act as sheriffs upholding the treaty;

c) the ruler of the territory, who is the magic user who first brokered the treaty.

[sabotabby]

Oooh! That sounds pretty rad. And an interesting worldbuilding idea.

[dagibbs]

I've read no Sanderson -- I got the feeling he was producing extruded fantasy product, and just avoided it.

[sabotabby]

People seem to think he's brilliant. I don't understand at all.

[kingtycoon]

Yeah, I can see this. I keep trying to read fantasy & it turns out that I just don't like it. I write nonstop encyclopedia entries about imaginary places but imaginary encyclopedia isn't a well served genre. Gaming makes it a viable product but it's hardly the point is it?

Dialectical materialism maybe? People (consequently stories & characters) are consequences of the physical reality. It breaks verisimilitude to put contemporary, terrestrial behaviors into the people living in an altogether other world. When the fantasy characters act like men's adventure heroes or video game avatars it stops being fantastical, it's just a dressing for the story that's meant to be told.

If you ever hear of a fantasy non-fiction genre - maybe you'll remember to mention it.

[sabotabby]

There's loads of great fantasy out there. And loads of worldbuilding with no plot, but I'm not really interested in that (if you like it, though, the Silmarillion exists).

This isn't it.