Pushing buttons carelessly
28 October 2005 09:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
larryhammerAs a work of science fiction, Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price is intensely aggravating. The worldbuilding is, um -- well -- . Spencer usually elaborates her decisions past their second consequences, but there are places here she doesn't make it to the first. This world that isn't ours has Stetson hats, six-shooters, rifles, derringers, paddle-wheel riverboats, and yet there's apparently no steel to be mentioned -- the alternative to brass for cannons is "cast iron," described to mean just that. One wonders what those rifles and knives are made of. Microscopes are apparently recent inventions (possibly a couple generations ago). There's gunpowder, but nothing stronger for blasting. No railroads, despite the steam engines -- do their mines lack carts? In other words, the technology level seems a bit of a mess -- and that's aside from the astonishing convergent evolution of cultural details. To pick the most egregious,* there's foolscap like ours with a fool's cap watermark like ours. This with no hint of actual fools, nor of a court culture that would support one.
There's other bits of sloppy. The largest is an elaborately staged episode starting a plot thread that vanishes utterly, but there's many small ones: in one early scene, two characters are coyly described as what we would call making out -- getting to third base is the implication, but it's vague. Later, we're told that cunnilingus was involved -- the male POV's first; if true, the description and emotions would have been shaded differently. There are some "Jim, this is a phaser" speeches, some blocking problems (one time, someone who's firmly restrained whirls around freely), and scattered unrevisiana (a sword-belt and scabbard is mentioned once as if standard kit, then no swords appear again).
And so on. And despite this, I immediately reread the book, something I've done only once before. I like the attempt to write a polygamist romance with a male ingenue, including the negotiating between sister/wives, though the attention given to the less interesting intrigue plot make the treatment a bit shallow. The ways the society deals with a very low male birthrate (roughly 1:12 or more) have been thought out in interesting ways, though I have trouble believing some details (such as a man's marriage being controlled by his sisters, rather than his mothers -- not when there's so much money involved in his sale). Despite maddening flaws, it pushes several of my buttons.
Califia's Daughters by Leslie Richards b.k.a. Laurie R. King is a better, and more intelligent,** book though.
* One that bugs me more than it ought to: no playing cards. Or at least, they're never on the table, omitted when amusements and pastimes are twice enumerated. I mean, come on -- paddle-wheels and derringers, and yet no poker or equivalent. If you're going to be silly about convergence, go all the way.
** Richards has a much richer and more varied world, though to be fair it's set a few generations after the man-killing Plague instead of in a society stable for centuries. But also, she works out third and fourth consequences I didn't even consider until she revealed them.
---L.
There's other bits of sloppy. The largest is an elaborately staged episode starting a plot thread that vanishes utterly, but there's many small ones: in one early scene, two characters are coyly described as what we would call making out -- getting to third base is the implication, but it's vague. Later, we're told that cunnilingus was involved -- the male POV's first; if true, the description and emotions would have been shaded differently. There are some "Jim, this is a phaser" speeches, some blocking problems (one time, someone who's firmly restrained whirls around freely), and scattered unrevisiana (a sword-belt and scabbard is mentioned once as if standard kit, then no swords appear again).
And so on. And despite this, I immediately reread the book, something I've done only once before. I like the attempt to write a polygamist romance with a male ingenue, including the negotiating between sister/wives, though the attention given to the less interesting intrigue plot make the treatment a bit shallow. The ways the society deals with a very low male birthrate (roughly 1:12 or more) have been thought out in interesting ways, though I have trouble believing some details (such as a man's marriage being controlled by his sisters, rather than his mothers -- not when there's so much money involved in his sale). Despite maddening flaws, it pushes several of my buttons.
Califia's Daughters by Leslie Richards b.k.a. Laurie R. King is a better, and more intelligent,** book though.
* One that bugs me more than it ought to: no playing cards. Or at least, they're never on the table, omitted when amusements and pastimes are twice enumerated. I mean, come on -- paddle-wheels and derringers, and yet no poker or equivalent. If you're going to be silly about convergence, go all the way.
** Richards has a much richer and more varied world, though to be fair it's set a few generations after the man-killing Plague instead of in a society stable for centuries. But also, she works out third and fourth consequences I didn't even consider until she revealed them.
---L.
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Date: 28 October 2005 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 October 2005 07:58 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 28 October 2005 06:38 pm (UTC)Funny how it's not necessarily the best books that cause me to do this, too. Last one was Suzanne Brockmann's Hot Target. Button-pushing can override flaws.
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Date: 28 October 2005 08:06 pm (UTC)I've been thinking hard about buttons this week, as I reread Time Enough for Love for the first time in 15 years. Leaving aside the discovery of how much unconscious borrowing I've done over the years (I hadn't realized the heroine of "Her First Affair" shadows Minerva quite so closely), my reactions are ... well, let's just say there's reasons it pushes my buttons -- it programmed some of them.
"The Tale of the Adopted Daughter" gets me every time.
---L.
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Date: 28 October 2005 10:04 pm (UTC)I can't even think what book I might have done this with last, yet at one time I was an inveterate flip-and-rereader. (Either my buttons have changed or I'm just reading books that don't push them.)
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Date: 28 October 2005 11:51 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 28 October 2005 08:05 pm (UTC)The author is responsible for writing like a slob, but the publisher doesn't have to print crap.
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Date: 28 October 2005 08:10 pm (UTC)I wonder whether it's an early novel dusted off for resale, rather than simply quickly written and turned in one draft too early. Either way, under-editing was involved.
---L.
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Date: 28 October 2005 08:34 pm (UTC)And under-thinking, judging only from your comments not having read the book. (God forgive me for slagging someone on such slim acquaintance, but the target looks large and safe.)
As a knock-on, I wonder: is it really safe to turn in, or even to shop, an unready draft? Suppose you'd written that and turned it in, and the editor said "Great! I'll buy it! We have a slot in ten months!" but if you said you wanted to do a rewrite (and edit the sucker) the slot wouldn't be there for, oh, twenty-four months. What would you do?
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Date: 28 October 2005 08:41 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 28 October 2005 08:52 pm (UTC)Your scenario is not as impossible as it may seem.
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Date: 28 October 2005 09:07 pm (UTC)BTW, when picked up Blood of Kings last night, it was face-out at Borders. Dramatic cover, that. Should catch a few eyes.
---L.
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Date: 28 October 2005 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 28 October 2005 11:52 pm (UTC)---L.