Reading Wednesday
Aug. 17th, 2022 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyJust finished: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. My post last week about how a book by the most popular fantasy writer of recent years was bad, actually, was one of the more engaging posts I've written in awhile, at least judging by the comment count. It was a fun discussion so if I may beg your forbearance, let's continue it.
So this was a terrible book on many levels, some of them kind of surprising. I expected some amount of toxicity in the underlying ideology, but I expected the craft to be actually competent, given that Sanderson is often praised for his structure and style and surprising twists.
NOPE! That's bad too.
If you will indulge me, I'd like to examine the many ways in which this book sucks at every possible level. Because it's funny and negativity drives engagement.
I talked a little about ideology last week, and if you stumbled over my post at the end of the day, you might have seen an excerpt where Sexy Lamp #2 literally quotes broken window theory like she's goddamn Rudy Guiliani, and this is written with gravitas meant to wow the reader with her insight as if she's Sam Vimes talking about boots. This same reflexive conservative ideology pervades what should be a fairly simple and fun story, from our nobleman cop Wax and his stuffy moral compass to Sexy Lamp #2 witnessing the absolutely gruesome execution of the villain, Miles, at the end. (Miles has superpowers that make his wounds regenerate, so when he's brought before the firing squad, he keeps healing until they basically blast him to bits faster than he can heal. Sexy Lamp #2 is a ghoul.) Do I expect progressive mores from a Western? I don't know. I expect there to not be fantasy Indigenous people who are "dangerous" because of their blood.
"But Sabs, they're not supposed to be Indigenous, they were magically created in the previous series by—"
I don't give a fuck. They're fantasy Indigenous people who are dangerous because of their blood.
How about those gender roles? Well, Sexy Lamp #1 is the closest this book gets to an interesting character, and she gets abducted early on, so there are only a few scenes with her. Sexy Lamp #2, despite being half of Wax's age, is a fangirl with a huge crush on him and blushes every time he opens her mouth. She's also a girly-girl who likes dresses and flowers and is quick to shit on less feminine women, including apparently one of the protagonists of the previous esries. There is one more gender nonconforming woman in it but she basically just builds the special guns, threatens to shoot our protagonists and alas doesn't, and then fucks off when it's time to get back to the plot.
Then there is the actual Evil Plot, where these women are being abducted from the trains because they have magical bloodlines (a different kind from the fantasy Indigenous people) and they're going to be forcibly bred to create a magical army. This is dealt with the sensitivity you would imagine. Well, it's not the full Evil Plot, it's just a distraction from the actual Evil Plot (which is insurance fraud...or is it???), but there were so many Evil Plots that I lost track.
Oh also naturally Wax likes Sexy Lamp #2 but he turns her down for Sexy Lamp #1 because he is so angsty and Sexy Lamp #2 deserves better than a damaged man twice her age. He's also twice Sexy Lamp #1's age, but she is an Ice Queen who writes up a 30-page marriage contract about when they get to have affairs, so her feelings don't matter I guess.
Now it's time to discuss the class politics, which are about as good as the gender politics. There is ONE (1) working class protagonist, Wayne, who was a teenage criminal reformed by Wax. His POV chapters feature shorter sentences, simpler words, and a single-minded obsession with his hat. You know. To show that he's a poor incapable of complex thoughts, because only nobles are smart. Everyone knows their place except the bad guy.
The villain, Miles, is a former lawman disgusted with how law and order tactics favour the elite and don't help the people. So he goes to work for a rich guy who funds his group of bandits to rob trains and kidnap wealthy women for their magic baby-making factory. He gives a few speeches that wouldn't be out of place at an Occupy rally, and given that this book was written in 2011, were probably lifted from a New York Times article on Occupy. He'd be very sympathetic if it weren't for the kidnapping and forced-breeding thing.
This is very bad of course, but look. I am a fan of Problematic Art. I like the Smiths ffs, though not so much that I'd read Morrissey's terrible book. Had this book only had reactionary politics but skilled storytelling, I could have maybe gone along with it.
You guessed it—the storytelling also sucks. The plot is a mess. To give an example, here's how the villain reveals are handled.
The beginning of the story has Wax, working with only one partner, his girlfriend, out in the Roughs. A rando serial killer forces him to accidentally kill his girlfriend. So he returns back to the city to take his place as a noble after his uncle and sister die off-screen and gets engaged to Sexy Lamp #1. But on his first date with her at a fancy wedding, bandits attack. One of the bandits looks familiar to him, and he's like, "oh, that looks a lot like this guy Miles I know" but then he shoots him, and Miles can't die. Then the next chapter it turns out it's just Miles, who knew that Wax knew he couldn't die and was just playing dead. Then it later turns out that the uncle isn't dead and is behind the whole thing, which Wax suspected the whole time but never told the audience despite being a POV character. It would have been a relatively simple thing to at least introduce Miles in the first chapter and establish some character relationship and camaraderie, since they know each other from back then, but that would have required writing a second draft and not just shitting this thing out as fast as possible.
Oh and there's a literal deus ex machina. Yeah God talks to Wax and gets him out of a sticky situation. He's not been shown to be particularly devout or anything, he just suddenly prays and God talks back and gets him out of the plot problem.
I have recently and against my will learned that the hot new trend in fantasy writing is called "progression fantasy" and "LitRPG" and it's basically novelizations of video games where the character starts out weak and gains power and skill over the course of the series to defeat the Final Boss. Obviously I hate this. Alloy of Law isn't quite that, in that the character starts badass, slides briefly into being a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and then goes back to being badass, but it does feel highly influenced by video games.
Which is to say that characters basically call out their moves and I expected to see little floating health bars in every fight scene. Thanks, I hate it.
The metal-based powers make no sense. Where are the mines? How are they getting so much metal constantly? Once again, the master of worldbuilding and magic systems fails to account for how economies work.
Lastly, the prose sucks. I know this is written for 14-year-old power gamers but if so, why put so much rape in it? Presumably this is a book for adults. And yet we are treated to action sequences that have lines like, "Unfortunately, the bullet missed."
This critique is a bit subjective, but I am given to understand these days that switching POVs during a chapter is generally frowned upon in commercial fiction, though still used in literary fiction. I am resentful about this because I was told not to do it in my book by the same people who recommended Sanderson to me as master of craft. That said, as this is a book meant more to be filmed than to be read, I can't say I'm that surprised.
I did a bit of a search for how often Sexy Lamp #2 blushes, and it turns out to be a lot.
Literature!
In conclusion: This book is fucking terrible. Why were people recommending this guy's writing to me for so long?
Thank you for going on that little journey with me. Let's read a better book, shall we?
Currently reading: Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman. Oh yes, this is much more my thing.
Sol is an archivist who is also a vampire. And trans. And a fanboy. When the widow of a semi-famous TV writer delivers her papers to the archive, the two of them begin a prickly, complicated romance over their shared grief and eccentricities.
Everything about this so far is great. I'm sorry I don't have as much to say about good books as I do about bad ones, but I think you'll like this one. It's hilarious but also poignant, as it explores dysphoria both literally and metaphorically through the metaphor of the "vampire illness." Sol is a year into his transition when he becomes a vampire, and the tension between changing and unchanging bodies is fascinating.
When Elsie and Sol bond over the TV show that Elsie's dead wife wrote, it's a tenderhearted tribute to early 2000s fandom and what it means to fall in love with fiction that isn't maybe very good, but hit you at a time in your life when you're in need of obsessive passion.
This book is funny and messy and relatable and I'm absolutely loving it.
So this was a terrible book on many levels, some of them kind of surprising. I expected some amount of toxicity in the underlying ideology, but I expected the craft to be actually competent, given that Sanderson is often praised for his structure and style and surprising twists.
NOPE! That's bad too.
If you will indulge me, I'd like to examine the many ways in which this book sucks at every possible level. Because it's funny and negativity drives engagement.
I talked a little about ideology last week, and if you stumbled over my post at the end of the day, you might have seen an excerpt where Sexy Lamp #2 literally quotes broken window theory like she's goddamn Rudy Guiliani, and this is written with gravitas meant to wow the reader with her insight as if she's Sam Vimes talking about boots. This same reflexive conservative ideology pervades what should be a fairly simple and fun story, from our nobleman cop Wax and his stuffy moral compass to Sexy Lamp #2 witnessing the absolutely gruesome execution of the villain, Miles, at the end. (Miles has superpowers that make his wounds regenerate, so when he's brought before the firing squad, he keeps healing until they basically blast him to bits faster than he can heal. Sexy Lamp #2 is a ghoul.) Do I expect progressive mores from a Western? I don't know. I expect there to not be fantasy Indigenous people who are "dangerous" because of their blood.
"But Sabs, they're not supposed to be Indigenous, they were magically created in the previous series by—"
I don't give a fuck. They're fantasy Indigenous people who are dangerous because of their blood.
How about those gender roles? Well, Sexy Lamp #1 is the closest this book gets to an interesting character, and she gets abducted early on, so there are only a few scenes with her. Sexy Lamp #2, despite being half of Wax's age, is a fangirl with a huge crush on him and blushes every time he opens her mouth. She's also a girly-girl who likes dresses and flowers and is quick to shit on less feminine women, including apparently one of the protagonists of the previous esries. There is one more gender nonconforming woman in it but she basically just builds the special guns, threatens to shoot our protagonists and alas doesn't, and then fucks off when it's time to get back to the plot.
Then there is the actual Evil Plot, where these women are being abducted from the trains because they have magical bloodlines (a different kind from the fantasy Indigenous people) and they're going to be forcibly bred to create a magical army. This is dealt with the sensitivity you would imagine. Well, it's not the full Evil Plot, it's just a distraction from the actual Evil Plot (which is insurance fraud...or is it???), but there were so many Evil Plots that I lost track.
Oh also naturally Wax likes Sexy Lamp #2 but he turns her down for Sexy Lamp #1 because he is so angsty and Sexy Lamp #2 deserves better than a damaged man twice her age. He's also twice Sexy Lamp #1's age, but she is an Ice Queen who writes up a 30-page marriage contract about when they get to have affairs, so her feelings don't matter I guess.
Now it's time to discuss the class politics, which are about as good as the gender politics. There is ONE (1) working class protagonist, Wayne, who was a teenage criminal reformed by Wax. His POV chapters feature shorter sentences, simpler words, and a single-minded obsession with his hat. You know. To show that he's a poor incapable of complex thoughts, because only nobles are smart. Everyone knows their place except the bad guy.
The villain, Miles, is a former lawman disgusted with how law and order tactics favour the elite and don't help the people. So he goes to work for a rich guy who funds his group of bandits to rob trains and kidnap wealthy women for their magic baby-making factory. He gives a few speeches that wouldn't be out of place at an Occupy rally, and given that this book was written in 2011, were probably lifted from a New York Times article on Occupy. He'd be very sympathetic if it weren't for the kidnapping and forced-breeding thing.
This is very bad of course, but look. I am a fan of Problematic Art. I like the Smiths ffs, though not so much that I'd read Morrissey's terrible book. Had this book only had reactionary politics but skilled storytelling, I could have maybe gone along with it.
You guessed it—the storytelling also sucks. The plot is a mess. To give an example, here's how the villain reveals are handled.
The beginning of the story has Wax, working with only one partner, his girlfriend, out in the Roughs. A rando serial killer forces him to accidentally kill his girlfriend. So he returns back to the city to take his place as a noble after his uncle and sister die off-screen and gets engaged to Sexy Lamp #1. But on his first date with her at a fancy wedding, bandits attack. One of the bandits looks familiar to him, and he's like, "oh, that looks a lot like this guy Miles I know" but then he shoots him, and Miles can't die. Then the next chapter it turns out it's just Miles, who knew that Wax knew he couldn't die and was just playing dead. Then it later turns out that the uncle isn't dead and is behind the whole thing, which Wax suspected the whole time but never told the audience despite being a POV character. It would have been a relatively simple thing to at least introduce Miles in the first chapter and establish some character relationship and camaraderie, since they know each other from back then, but that would have required writing a second draft and not just shitting this thing out as fast as possible.
Oh and there's a literal deus ex machina. Yeah God talks to Wax and gets him out of a sticky situation. He's not been shown to be particularly devout or anything, he just suddenly prays and God talks back and gets him out of the plot problem.
I have recently and against my will learned that the hot new trend in fantasy writing is called "progression fantasy" and "LitRPG" and it's basically novelizations of video games where the character starts out weak and gains power and skill over the course of the series to defeat the Final Boss. Obviously I hate this. Alloy of Law isn't quite that, in that the character starts badass, slides briefly into being a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and then goes back to being badass, but it does feel highly influenced by video games.
Which is to say that characters basically call out their moves and I expected to see little floating health bars in every fight scene. Thanks, I hate it.
The metal-based powers make no sense. Where are the mines? How are they getting so much metal constantly? Once again, the master of worldbuilding and magic systems fails to account for how economies work.
Lastly, the prose sucks. I know this is written for 14-year-old power gamers but if so, why put so much rape in it? Presumably this is a book for adults. And yet we are treated to action sequences that have lines like, "Unfortunately, the bullet missed."
This critique is a bit subjective, but I am given to understand these days that switching POVs during a chapter is generally frowned upon in commercial fiction, though still used in literary fiction. I am resentful about this because I was told not to do it in my book by the same people who recommended Sanderson to me as master of craft. That said, as this is a book meant more to be filmed than to be read, I can't say I'm that surprised.
I did a bit of a search for how often Sexy Lamp #2 blushes, and it turns out to be a lot.
Literature!
In conclusion: This book is fucking terrible. Why were people recommending this guy's writing to me for so long?
Thank you for going on that little journey with me. Let's read a better book, shall we?
Currently reading: Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman. Oh yes, this is much more my thing.
Sol is an archivist who is also a vampire. And trans. And a fanboy. When the widow of a semi-famous TV writer delivers her papers to the archive, the two of them begin a prickly, complicated romance over their shared grief and eccentricities.
Everything about this so far is great. I'm sorry I don't have as much to say about good books as I do about bad ones, but I think you'll like this one. It's hilarious but also poignant, as it explores dysphoria both literally and metaphorically through the metaphor of the "vampire illness." Sol is a year into his transition when he becomes a vampire, and the tension between changing and unchanging bodies is fascinating.
When Elsie and Sol bond over the TV show that Elsie's dead wife wrote, it's a tenderhearted tribute to early 2000s fandom and what it means to fall in love with fiction that isn't maybe very good, but hit you at a time in your life when you're in need of obsessive passion.
This book is funny and messy and relatable and I'm absolutely loving it.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 01:46 pm (UTC)I have, ironically, played this character concept in a tabletop RPG before.
Sounds like a really fun book! I've put it on hold at my library. :)
no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 01:53 pm (UTC)Dead collections
Date: 2022-08-17 03:14 pm (UTC)also
She's also a girly-girl who likes dresses and flowers and is quick to shit on less feminine women,
Hey Misogynist Sexy Lamp, get off the girly girl side, you make us look bad. From one dress wearer to another, no love, me.
Re: Dead collections
Date: 2022-08-17 03:20 pm (UTC)It's all bad just fucking write a normal female character holy shit
Also apparently all of this guy's female characters are hot barely-legal girls or underage girls, and he considers women in their mid-20s "past their prime."
no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 09:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 09:46 pm (UTC)https://celadonbooks.com/book/the-viral-underclass
https://twitter.com/thrasherxy
I just dipped into it at first but it had me riveted like it was a great novel.
no subject
Date: 2022-08-17 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-18 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-18 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-20 03:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-08-20 11:58 am (UTC)I just finished Dead Collections last night—absolutely loved it. There is some weird shit going on in the Goodreads reviews over it, in a crabs-in-the-bucket way, where people are one-starring because I guess it doesn't match their exact Trans Experience(TM) or something? and I'm curious as to how much it's an age divide. There's no way to find out but I want to find out.