Larry Hammer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
larryhammer) wrote2005-10-28 09:57 am
larryhammer) wrote2005-10-28 09:57 am
Entry tags:
Pushing buttons carelessly
As 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.