Fiction Book Reviews

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I started reading Flesh and Spirit, but I didn’t get that, whatever it was–instead I was pleasantly surprised, on the whole, and wondered why I’d put off reading it so long. A friend loaned it to me along with some other books, and due to a lack of anything else to read, I brought it with to England. And then it sat in a drawer for three months the whole time I was there before I finally started reading it on the trip back. Something about it–I can’t say for certain what–seemed to put me off, and I was reluctant to start it; thought I wouldn’t like the protagonist, maybe, I don’t even know.

Turns out it’s a rather rewarding, fast-paced novel with thorough characterization of a protagonist who could easily come off as unlikable and unsympathetic in the hands of an author with less skill, set in a richly detailed piece of worldbuilding considerably better than what you get from most fantasy novels. Valen stays at the monastery a lot longer than I expected him to, but it’s not just some weird random stopping-point; it becomes critical to the plot, of course, as I probably should have trusted the author to ensure. It’s a dark, gritty sort of world he and the reader find themselves in, but Valen is well versed in the fine art of survival and desperate to stay free. He’s also got a bit more in the way of a sexual preoccupation than I’d prefer, but it’s not a major down point.

Oddly, one of my favorite parts was the characters’ speech patterns–I do love a good fictional dialect (Firefly is the best example, of course), and while there wasn’t as much of that as I might have liked, there was still enough to make my inner linguistic geek happy–especially the little bits of slang a couple characters used, like “You’ve been juped” and “You’re twinking me,” phrases that aren’t quite the way we talk, foreign enough to sound like a fantasy dialect, but still similar enough to modern slang and to the words’ meanings that they’re readily understanable from context. (Which reminds me: I still need to read A Clockwork Orange. Among many others.)

The biggest problem was that I didn’t realize until about two pages from the end of the book that Flesh and Spirit is the first of a two-parter, I have no idea how soon I can get Breath and Bone, and the first book ends on a cliffhanger. Of course.

In case anyone’s wondering, no, I did not just now read this. In fact I read, and loved, The Hobbit and LotR before any of them were made into movies…and was then scornful and dismissive of said movies for the changes they’d made before I’d even watched FotR. So there. :p No, actually I just happened across FotR recently and ended up reading the whole first chapter, which reminded me why I’d fallen in love with Tolkien’s writing in the first place. Reading about Bilbo and Frodo and Gandalf was rather like visiting old, comfortable friends. I miss that fandom, especially since it was the first that really introduced me to fandom. Ought to make a point of delving back in over break.

But the real point is, I recently read Orson Scott Card’s  How To Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s quite good, for what it’s worth–highly readable with lots of useful information and instruction on craft. The only thing is, he was talking about prologues at one point, saying that beginning SF/F writers often feel a need to write a lengthy, boring prologue explaining the entire history of their world so that readers know what’s going on, and that said prologues are not only unnecessary but damaging because they turn readers off. And then he makes a point of saying this:

Notice that Tolkien does not begin with a prologue recounting all the history of Middle Earth up to the point where Gandalf tells Frodo what the ring is. He begins, instead, by establishing Frodo’s domestic situation and then thrusting world events on him, explaining no  more of the world situation than Frodo needs to know right at the beginning. We only learn the foregoing events bit by bit, as the information is revealed to Frodo.

Wait a minute, think I, doesn’t FotR have a prologue that’s something like 30 pages long? In fact, when I first read it, didn’t I spend about a week struggling through said prologue before getting to the story itself? Well, maybe…the edition Card read didn’t have the prologue? No, he’s writing this in 1990, so that can’t be it. Maybe the prologue isn’t called a prologue, then?

Nope. I looked. It’s 30 pages of prologue about Hobbits, the Shire, and pipe-weed. And in fact I remember having the exact problem Card warns against: the prologue bored me to tears. When I later re-read the books, I did find it interesting, because I’d already been introduced to the world at that point–but not on my first read.

So that was odd. And then, in my spontaneous re-read of FotR’s first chapter, which I did quite enjoy, I came across this line, talking about Gandalf’s fireworks: “They all ducked, and many fell flat on their faces. The dragon passed like an express train, turned a somersault, and burst over Bywater with a deafening explosion.”

Um. What? Middle-earth doesn’t have trains, express or otherwise. This sort of simile is…exactly another thing Card warned about, actually–breaking out of the text to put something in terms readers will understand but that characters will never use. Since it’s Tolkien, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and say that, well, the entire trilogy is technically a translation, I mean even Frodo’s name isn’t actually Frodo, and so on and so forth, so I suppose it’s like…the translator/editor used that phrase for the sake of modern readers.

But it was still weird–almost a little like the first time you realize your parents are human.