Missing Old Friends

I’ve been musing on just why A Feast for Crows was disappointing compared to the other books in the Song of Ice and Fire series.

I realised it was because of the lack of familiar characters. As the story changes and grows, the characters have changed and gown too. Some have died, and their points of view replaced by others. One major achievement of A Storm of Swords was making Jaime a character to care about.

This fell down in A Feast for Crows. While it was important to have a character to let us readers know what was happening in the Iron Islands and Dorne, this wasn’t done. Instead each of those settings had three different point of view characters across the book, making it difficult to identify with any of them. The chapters simply read like out-of-place prologues. I feel it would have been better had Victarion and Arianna been chosen from the outset and stuck with throughout the book.

The other downside was the two familiar characters to come with us, Arya and Sansa, didn’t have a lot to do in the book. Arya’s chapters were few, and Sansa’s involvement was to show us just how clever Littlefinger is.

With no Jon, Bran, Danaerys Davos or Tyrion to cling to, the book seemed detached from the rest of the series.

Style of the Times

The book has been around for centuries in its currently recognisable form. Whether cranked out of the printer by a print-on-demand publisher five minutes ago, or carefully illustrated by monks 900 years ago, the book is recognisable to all who are familiar with it.

Technology has crept in to change many aspects of books and writing, but the act of reading words printed on paper has not changed. We may have books on tape and e-books, but the book is still the common form of story transmission device.

I think the book as physical media is here to stay. Its form size and decoration will change according to the demands of the time, but as a physical objects books will remain. Only nanotechnology threatens the book. Readers of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age may be thinking of the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer here, but I am thinking of something more mundane.

An object the shape and weight of a book, with pages you turn, but those pages can display one of many thousands of books stored within the device. Wirelessly connected, you can update the stories contained within as often as you wish. That kind of device doesn’t yet exist. Current rudimentary e-book readers don’t fulfil their task very well. Who likes reading with a light shone in their eyes?

I’m imagining a device that is more like the books we buy today, with pages you turn, but one that can be set to display whatever text you wish. Pages that don’t need battery-chugging backlights, because the material itself mimics paper so well.

If nanotechnology can give us not a replacement for books, but a new type of book, one with the form and physicality of books we enjoy today, but with added functionality of a networked book, then long may technology march on.

Until then, hands off my dead tree publishing.

Battle for the Abyss by Ben Counter

I read pulp fiction. It’s something I do every so often. I don’t watch CSI: Miami or what have you, I do this.

In retrospect, reading pulp fiction like this straight after going through the four books of A Song of Ice and Fire was a mistake. This book was always going to look bad in comparison with what I’d just read.

Sadly, this book is the second weakest of the 8 so-far published in the Horus Heresy series. The other books, especially the first five, did a good job of re-creating an alternative Imperium, in it’s formative years, 10,000 years before the “present day”. That all falls down in Battle for the Abyss.

In previous books, it’s made clear that the Imperium has no idea of the true nature of the ‘immaterium’ that they travel through, and any thought of chaos gods is met is atheistic disbelief. Other books also managed to create organisations unknown to us, such as the Remembrancers of the early books, and the secret cabal served by John Grammaticus in Legion.

In this book the marines seem suddenly fully aware of the nature of the warp, of the existence of daemons and chaos gods. This makes some of the conversation jarring. It’s jarring already since much of the dialogue here is woeful, but the ‘out of time’ knowledge implicit among the various characters does not help.

Battle for the Abyss forms a weak link in the series. It’s not ‘bad’ like Descent of Angels, the story is actually advanced here, but this book is simply not as good as the others as it does not remain to its supposed time period.

A Feast For Crows by George RR Martin

The fourth book in the series was a more satisfying read for me the second time through. The first time through, I had overindulged in the preview chapters posted during the interminable wait for the book. As a result, I’d read most of the first 120 pages or so already, and found it uninspiring to read through them again.

This time, I was able to approach the book as a whole, and I enjoyed it a lot more.

A Feast For Crows is still the weakest of the four books in my opinion. In many ways this book is the indrawn breath after the shocks of A Storm of Swords. A large part of this book involves dealing with the consequences of the previous book.

Another let down for me was the splintering of the points of view. Previously each point of view chapter has been named after the character it’s centred on. This character continues with chapters until they are dead, or otherwise removed from the story. The point of view chapters also give us an idea of what is going on in a particular part of the world, whether the east, King’s Landing, the Riverlands, and so on.

In this book the points of view shatter. The Iron Islands, for example, has three separate points of view – Victarion, Asha, and Damphair. What this means is that Victarion, who eventually emerges as the key point of view, doesn’t get a fair hearing, while Damphair and Asha’s chapters read like preview chapters. Unsatisfying. Similarly Dorne is finally brought into the story, but through three separate points of view, when a single strong one (Arianna) would have been so much more powerful. In my opinion. And I’ll be honest here – I haven’t written any genre-defining fantasy series lately.

While A Feast for Crows is not as good as the others in the series, it is still a very good book. I’m hoping this doesn’t mark a tailing off of the series, but as I finished I noted an author note, expressing hope that the next book would be published within the year. It was dated 2005.

Reading Communities

Many of you may have been in reading groups, book clubs and the like. A group of people come together, read a book, and then talk about it.

Something I haven’t found yet (but maybe it’s out there) is a community site where people talk about the books they love, to people who have never read those books.

Sites, like book clubs tend to focus on drawing like-minded readers together, often based around genre. So there will be a sf reader site, where people who care about such things can argue the pros and cons of ‘hard sf’ versus ’space opera’ to their hearts’ content.

I would like a site that encourages me to seek out interesting things I’ve never heard of, with a structure that serves them up to me, since all that mouse clicking can be exhausting. A reading community, of people drawn by a love of reading, a love of stories, and a willingness to share and discover.

It’s Monday, and I’m dreaming. Realistically, if I want such a site, I should build it. Hmm.

A Storm of Swords by George RR Martin

The third and biggest book in the series so far manages more shocks, death betrayals and twists than most fantasy series manage in their entireity.

A Storm of Swords brings to a culmination the war of the kings, with the candidates being whittled down by death, but not by death in battle.

The greatest achievement in this book for me was Jaime Lannister, who in this book becomes a point of view character for the first time. Not only does this series villain become a character to care about and even support, the scenes of Jaime soberly reflecting on his life, while looking at the blank page in front of him is quite moving.

This is also the most ‘fantasy’ of the books, as Danaerys’ three dragons grow, and Jon Snow and the Night’s Watch face the full fury of the north. Giants on mammoths? Yes, please!

A Clash of Kings by George RR Martin

King Robert is dead, Eddard Stark executed, and there are no fewer than four kings claiming thrones. Three claim the Iron Throne of Westeros, Robb Stark claims the North, and Balon Greyjoy claims the Iron Islands and whatever lands his reavers can reach.

So begins A Clash of Kings. By the end of the book one will be dead, another driven off in defeat, and a third deprived of his lands by another.

The book begins with an appearance of a red comet, taken by each faction as a sign of their imminent success. Only Catelyn Stark sees concern, as the red comet matches the colour of House Lannister, her enemies.

The surviving point of view characters return in this book, along with two new ones, Theon Greyjoy and Davos Seaworth. Theon is returned to his father, his head full of plans for glory, but he has been away from home from ten years, and know little of his own people.

Davos is more interesting. Through him we see Stannis Baratheon, Robert’s eldest brother and one claimant for the Iron Throne. Davos is a commoner raised to a knight, and suffers slights from the other nobles who wait on Stannis. Davos is also a man who takes his religion seriously, and here lies the source of many of his doubts.

Stannis has turned to a new religion, worship of the Lord of Light. This is a foreign religion to Westeros, but many in Stannis’ service take up their king’s new faith. Not Davos, who finds comfort in his worship of the Seven, the dominant religion of Westeros.

Arya’s adventures take her through the war-ravaged riverlands, while at the Wall, Jon Snow is called to join in a great ranging, to go as far north as it takes to find the lost rangers. Tyrion must thwart his sister’s ambition and prepare for an attack by Stannis Baratheon.

Far from Westeros, Danaerys Stormborn, mother of dragons, gathers her small band of followers and makes plans for the future.

A Clash of Kings is a great continuation to the series, and the drama continues to unfold in unforeseen directions.

Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve

When I saw the premise for this book I knew I had to read it. London is a mobile city, and other cities are its prey. It moves around the countryside, hunting.

Mortal Engines is set in the far future, where the earth’s resources are depleted, oceans and seas dried out. Mobile cities prowl the wrecked landscape, hunting one another for precious resources. The city that stops moving, dies. Municipal Darwinism is the rule of the day.

One of London’s inhabitants finds himself cast out of the city after stumbling across a dangerous secret. Left behind the city with only a would-be assassin for company, he must come to terms with the truth about the world, and his beloved city’s place in it.

Mortal Engines is a YA book, but this 35 year-old found it thoroughly enjoyable.

Halting State by Charles Stross

Set in Edinburgh in the near future, Halting State is a police procedural that will be recognisable to fans of crime fiction. The story starts with a bank robbery, which turns out to be connected to even darker criminality.

So far so crime fiction. You’ll notice that quotes on this book’s cover come from Raph Koster, creator of Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies, and John Carmack, graphics engine writer for Id. So it’s not going to be an ordinary crime mystery.

Charles Stross is best know for sf works such as Accelerando or Singularity Sky. SF fans will be happy to know that the bank robbery takes place in an online game similar to World of Warcraft, and the company involved is one that specialising in providing space for players of such games to store their excess loot.

A company man panics and calls the police, who find themselves investigating alongside forensic accountants sent to ensure that all liability for the multi-million pound losses stays with the company and not its insurers.

It’s been over a decade since I moved to Australia from Scotland, so I enjoyed reading the Scots phrasing in Halting State. Gobshite is a word I haven’t heard for many years, as is boak.

The use of second person throughout the book is striking, and done very well. A difficult voice to write in (try it for yourself) across multiple characters involved in the story. Stross carries it off expertly.

Fans of online games will find a lot of this book interesting, tracking as it does a possible evolution of that genre from MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) to ARG (augmented reality games) that take place online and offline, though those boundaries are increasingly blurred.

Mysteries within mysteries kept me turning the pages of this one late into the night. Halting State is a great read.

Cutting the Genre Cake

To me, there are just two valid categories of books – those worth reading, and those not. I think this is how it works for everyone else too, individually. When we want to discuss books with others, as well as the breathless recommendations “oh, you must read…” there’s that grey area of “you’ll like this one if you enjoyed that one”.

This is where genre starts to creep in, at least for me. Other than as an aid to communication, I don’t care for it. So when I wanted to list off some recommended books, I decided to divide things by genre. This I thought would be a way of dividing the books into small, themed bite sized chunks that would fit easily into an article.

More fool me.

My main lesson was more of a reminder – that genre, like taste, is subjective. When I write a top 5 fantasy list and then get taken to task for not including books such as Perdido Street Station and the Baroque Cycle, I do a double take. Those aren’t fantasy as I cut my genre. Those are speculative fiction and historical fiction, respectively. But it’s not helpful to point that out. Here genre obfuscates rather than aids discussion of what really matter – books worth reading. Who cares what genre those books are – what they are above all if great books worth anyone’s time to read.

Genre, as I’ve mentioned before, is a device invented by booksellers to facilitate the selling of books. Genre tends to apply only to subsections of books – fantasy, science fiction, and crime fiction. The terms science fiction and fantasy are often used interchangeably. We know what they mean. Genre is a selling tool, not a discussion aid. I knew this, and should have approached things differently from the start.

So I’ve abandoned the lists. I will create a recommendations page and put as many books on there as I think should be on there. That will be far more helpful, and, as per the list articles, all reader suggestions for further reading are most welcome. Hopefully this time they will be made after a clear article that encourages and doesn’t narrow discussion.