Reading Wednesday
Aug. 10th, 2022 08:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyRoll 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.
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.*Zizek voice* *sniff* Ideology!
“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.”
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Date: 2022-08-10 01:15 pm (UTC)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?)
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Date: 2022-08-10 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2022-08-10 01:28 pm (UTC)Homophobia and a very worn-out/derivative trope in one disgusting package :(
I really, REALLY don't like Orson Scott Card.
As in, when his book was adapted into a film and the film studio legally forced him to NOT do publicity for the film (because he was box office poison), I had all the schadenfreude.
And then when the film bombed anyway, I had even more schadenfreude.
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