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hawkwing_lbBooks 2012: 83-84
83. M.K. Hobson, The Native Star. (Spectra, 2010.)
I believe it wasanne who described this as a slight book. I have to agree: there is little here of substance, and ultimately failed to portray its world or characters in convincing depth. Afficionados of late-19th-century fantasy Americana may be entertained by this fish-out-of-water quest-cum-love story, but it has little to say for itself that has not been said better elsewhere.
84. Ian McDonald, King of Morning, Queen of Day. (Bantam, 1992.)
An astonishing and accomplished novel, if stylistically difficult and, conceptually, very much working in a postmodernist vein. (I hate postmodernism as found in literature, normally. This? This is very much an exception.) It is also a deeply Irish book. And it treats the fantastic in an oddly slipstream/cyberpunkish/sfnal fashion. Although, hmm. I do not feel that the ending was earned.
I mean, I still have no plans to read Brasyl or River of Gods or the like. But this is a damned interesting book.
I am tired and sour and hate the world. I wonder why? Oh, right. I have work to do, and cannot conceive of how to start. (And fretting about finances and other things I cannot change is very wearing. I must wait until August to know if I have achieved funding, and backup plans cannot be set out upon without more knowledge of what shall come to pass at that time. Sigh.)
83. M.K. Hobson, The Native Star. (Spectra, 2010.)
I believe it was
anne who described this as a slight book. I have to agree: there is little here of substance, and ultimately failed to portray its world or characters in convincing depth. Afficionados of late-19th-century fantasy Americana may be entertained by this fish-out-of-water quest-cum-love story, but it has little to say for itself that has not been said better elsewhere.84. Ian McDonald, King of Morning, Queen of Day. (Bantam, 1992.)
An astonishing and accomplished novel, if stylistically difficult and, conceptually, very much working in a postmodernist vein. (I hate postmodernism as found in literature, normally. This? This is very much an exception.) It is also a deeply Irish book. And it treats the fantastic in an oddly slipstream/cyberpunkish/sfnal fashion. Although, hmm. I do not feel that the ending was earned.
I mean, I still have no plans to read Brasyl or River of Gods or the like. But this is a damned interesting book.
I am tired and sour and hate the world. I wonder why? Oh, right. I have work to do, and cannot conceive of how to start. (And fretting about finances and other things I cannot change is very wearing. I must wait until August to know if I have achieved funding, and backup plans cannot be set out upon without more knowledge of what shall come to pass at that time. Sigh.)
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Date: 2012-05-27 04:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 12:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 01:56 pm (UTC)I have to admit, Liz, that your reviews aren’t working for me. I realize that you’re studying literature seriously at university, but it seems that you judge some books by one standard. Most SF/F is strictly for entertainment purposes. If I want to read something that accurately captures the human experience, I read mainstream. Usually short fiction.
When I started reading SF/F twenty-eight years ago, I gravitated to the literary end. I used to think Delany was god. Now when I look back on his fiction I’m not so impressed. His prose looks overwrought, even pretentious at times. Nowadays, on the other end of the spectrum there’s still a lot of junk out there I don’t care to read. I’m also finding a fair amount of overwrought, pretentious “literary” SF/F―fiction that seems overly conscious of theme, ornate prose, the writer trying too hard to wow the reader at the expense of story and character. (As John Gardner said, “the good writer knows that storytelling in the end is storytelling.") Hence, I find it difficult to find much of anything I like. Still, I find a few.
M. K. Hobson’s The Natvie Star is one such book. This book isn’t even really my thing, but I found it still supplied what I’m looking for. First, the characters live and breathe on the page. Also, Hobson displays a fair amount of invention as well, in the sense that she has a few new twists on the speculative elements in a field that often recycles them without doing so. But mostly it’s her storytelling ability. Her narrative is nearly pitch-perfect. To use a Gardnerism again, she never breaks “the vivid and continuous dream.” I find very few books where the author makes this look so easy and effortless. It’s an extremely difficult thing to do. To dismiss this as slight is doing the book a disservice.
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Date: 2012-05-27 06:10 pm (UTC)Thanks, mate. That's not patronising at all.
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Date: 2012-05-27 08:02 pm (UTC)The problem (or the virtue) with much of SF/F is that it deals with Big Themes: the bravest, the strongest, the most beautiful, the most evil. It doesn’t always, but it’s hard to escape the convention. I’ve found that the larger the speculative elements―especially fiction that deals with “gods” or other omnipotent beings―the more the human characters end up being bandied about by them. Sure, there are a few themes that can be explored there, but so much of that has already been said before and it so often fails to capture the reality of the human experience.
Not that I’m suggesting the converse, as I very much enjoy the speculative element, which is why I write SF/F and not mainstream. Yet, downplay the speculative elements too much and you basically have a mainstream story in genre drag. If that’s the case, I’d rather read it as a mainstream story.
What I liked about The Native Star was that Hobson expertly played with these dynamics. In the context of an action-and-adventure setting, Emily and Dreadnought come across as real people the reader can care about as they deal with the fantastical elements of the world. Hobson, while never losing sight of the seriousness of her characters, does a delicate balancing act by having her tongue slightly in her cheek. This elevates it to “art” without becoming too heavy-handed or the slightest bit pretentious.
So you've basically stopped by to tell me I'm Wrong On The Internet, that my standards are too narrow
By writing reviews you offer critical opinion of what you see wrong with fiction. I was stopping by to offer my opinion on what I’ve been reading here.
Thanks, mate. That's not patronising at all.
What, are the only opinions welcome here those that agree with yours?
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Date: 2012-05-27 08:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-28 11:20 am (UTC)The 'speculative' stands for 'speculation'. The what-if. The offering another dimension of thought, another option that goes beyond the world-that-is-measurable. And it needs to be true to itself all the way through, not just when convenient for the plot.
The volume control is a completely different thing. Personally, I find that a lot of the stories that have the most in-your-face speculative elements appear to have been written to a non-SF protocol - you can have vampires or spaceships without touching the essence of the story, and you can have ghostly presences that *do*.
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Date: 2012-05-28 08:49 pm (UTC)I'd carry on this pissing match about our apparently UTTERLY AT ODDS perspectives about a single book (one that got up my nose for a number of reasons), but I have a thesis to write (history/archaeology, not literature, to clear that up). It would seem we both have better things to do with our time.
But I'd like to note that I'm under no obligation, in this particular space, to tolerate anyone's opinion other than mine. I'll disagree (or not) as loudly and as snarkily as I like, here. If that troubles you, feel free to use your own journal likewise.
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Date: 2012-05-27 05:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 05:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-27 06:36 pm (UTC)