Review: 4 books I did not finish

For me thie last month was one of great disappointments. I played Dark Souls and watched the early seasons of X-Files, and both failed to live up to my expectations and had me quit at some point. I’ve also been trying to broaden my horizon in books instead of reading more Witcher or Robert Howard, which I already know I love. I ended up starting three different fantasy books and stopped reading all of them. For various different reasons, but also some that are very much the same. Since I have completed neither of them, I can’t do actual review of them. But I think that none of them are actually truly bad and each one has some great things about them. So what I’ll be doing is to give a short summary of each book, also including one I tried a few months back, and the reason I quit reading, as well as going into some more detail what they all have in common that had them fail in entertaining me. This is not “4 books I don’t like and the reasons why”, but instead “4 examples of novel openings that failed to capture my interest”.

Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson

When I started trying to catch up with fantasy books that have come out or become popular in the last 10 years, the Malazan series was obviously one of the biggest names I’ve regularly came across. Normally I would never attempt to try a series of 10 doorstoppers, but praise for this one is so great that I thought I could at least read the first book and then decide if I want to do the whole thing. But it turns out, I could not. I don’t think I got very far with it either. The writing was nothing objectable and the scenes presented in a quite engaging way. This one was a while back, so I don’t remember very clearly, but I think I got introduced to four different characters. And at least within the limited amount of exposure they got in my reading, they were all totally bland and forgetable. Young nobleman, young female soldier, mysterious man on some special mission. And I think some kind of weird queen. And then I lost interest. I got introduced to several characters and to several locations and situations in which they find themselves. But I did not get any information on what role these people play in the story or their world and why or how these scenes are relevant to the plot. Usually I always try to go into a story pretty much blind. Vague praise of the qualities of a work get me interested and then I want to experience it myself without knowing where exactly the story will go. But since I was already at the point of giving up on the book, I tried looking up a brief and general outline of what the story is about. Then I asked people who love the series to try and explain to me what the story is about. And they couldn’t. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand their replies or found them unhelpful for what I wanted to know. The fans themselves were not really sure what the actual story is. Aparently this behemoth of printed paper keeps on going about different people doing various things that don’t really follow any primary plot. I can appreciate abstract narratives and stories relying mostly on characterization. But I need a goal or purpose for the combined efforts of the characters. From what I can tell, this series doesn’t have that.

Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes

I got this book recommended by several people at different occasions when I mentioned my search for recent Sword & Sorcery and fantasy adventure books. So I gave it a try. It starts with an infamous fight scene in which the heroes fight off an attack by pirates. Which makes up th entire first quarter of the whole book! Let’s say this is a quite “courageous” descision to start a book with, especially by a new writer. I actually read through the whole scene and got about a third through the book before putting it away. And I think the scene did not work out. Because even though it is very long, there is very little actually happening. There is a lot of fighting, but it doesn’t rally accomplish anything. It doesn’t feel like the enemies start to get fewer, or that the heroes are running out of strength and resources. No ships are sunk or new ones arrive, and throughout almost the entire battle, the situation is pretty much the same. At some point I was flipping quickly through pages to find the point where something new is happening and skip the repetitive stuff. But the majority of the lines are not actually fighting, but characters talking and thinking. Now, I am not a person of strong negative emotions. I don’t usually hate any things, and I don’t get angry about things. But reading this book… I think anguish could be an appropriate term to describe my experience. Most of the talking is a gang of loveable rogues doing witty banter. It rally is not the fault of the author, it really is just personal preference. But I fucking hate loveable rogues and witty banter! And this book is nonestop unrestrained witty banter. Or at least it tries. Every single word that comes out of the mouth of one of the heroes is a supposedly witty insult directed at each other. And after twenty, thirty pages of this, you really start to ask yourself why these people even form an adventuring party together? They all despise each other to no end and since they are all loathsome and terrible people, it seems quite implausible that they have not all killed each other in the first scene. It was an ordeal to read, I don’t want to see anything of it ever again. Yet, I don’t outright hate the book. It does has its qualities. Something many people commented on the book is that the author really has terrific skill at using language. His sentences are great and I enjoyed the style very much. If only he would have been telling a good story. Tome of the Undergate has pretty good ratings when you look around online, and I think this skill with words is probably a big reason for it. People I talked to about my unpleasant experience with the book told me that his pacing and plotting improved significantly in later books, and as muc as I despise this one, it really makes me interested in trying out something else by him in the future. I feel even inclined to compare him to one of the three giants of Sword & Sorcery. He reminds me a lot of Fritz Leiber. I love his writing, even though his stories are terrible. ^^

The Eagle Shoting Heroes by Jin Yong

As far as I am informed, this is one of the biggest and most famous Chinese fantasy books. And fantasy is a big deal in China, just as it is in America and Europe, though the markets mostly exist pretty much isolated from each other. Movies are easily redubbed and there is some exchange, especially in recent decades, but with books this is much less the case. The Eagle Shoting Heroes was written and released in the same period as The Lord of the Rings and a massive success, but somehow it never got published in English. Chinese fans made translations of it themselves, which I found to be of pretty good quality. It has been turned into movies and TV shows many times, some of which did get English releases as Legend of the Condor Heroes. Which does’t make any sense as it takes place in medieval China where there are no South American birds. For the first few chapters I really liked the story. It begins with a taoist priest coming to a village and having a clash with two villagers who turn out to be no ordinary farmers but secretly heirs of great warrior dynasties who had to flee their homeland. And of course, they have a big kung-fu fight. Taoism is one of the big Asian religions I know the least about. But in Chinese fantasy stories, traveling taoist priests are basically Jedi. And this novel is not pseudo-historic fiction. This is full out, balls to the walls fantasy loosely inspired by historic events. It’s total awesome. Because after the initial fight is over and everyone apologizes for the unfortunate understanding, a gang of ninja show up and the action gets even more outragous. Then an evil officer screws everything up, women are kidnapped, terrible revenge is sworn, crazy flights in the night. It’s glorious. This is one of the occasions where I can use my favorite word in the English language: “Preposterous”. I really loved it. Then in the second chapter the priest has a confrontation which a gang of seven famous kung-fu masters who would best be described as superheroes. Sadly, then the story skipped 18 years into the future to introduce one of the actual protagonists. There are more fight scenes that are quite entertaining, but the plot completely loses all steam. In fact, the plot of the previous chapters has been pretty much resolved. It only served to give us some backstory on who the boy is and how he got to be trained by kung-fu masters. And I felt left hanging, wondering what’s going to happen next. The first chapters are huge action spectacle with great pacing and stuff happening. And then it’s just a boy getting trained by his masters and some bits about the career of Djingis Khan. There’s no immediate goal or sense of direction. Just a series of scenes with no real indication what it might be a buildup to. Basically the same problem that made my give up on Gardens of the Moon. And it’s very clear that the book is about two heroes whose fates are tied together, and by the point where I stopped reading the second hero had not even been introduced yet. I have the strong suspicion that after the origin story of the first hero, we probably get the whole origin story of the other one before theh finally meet each other. And this is a really big novel. I had read quite a lot by that point, but it was still just a 10th of the book. And there are actually three more books after this one. Thanks, but no. If I can get it in smaller chunks of 50 to 100,000 words, I’d really love to read more wuxia stories. But these giant mammoth books just are not for me, especially when they don’t have a tight plot.

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

When I saw how much people praise and hype this book, I assumed it was the latest breakout success enjoying its 15 minutes of fame. But turns out it’s actually already 10 years old. Now that’s something that catches my interest. I am both picky and lazy, so most books, movies, and videogames I give any attention to are things that have already become classics and proven themselves to have a quality that survives beyond the initial excitement. When people still sing praise about something that’s an old hat, that’s what catches my curiosity. And I think The Lies of Locke Lamora has become established as one such classic. This one will probably still be remembere in 10 or 20 years. And reading it, it is easy to see why. It really is very good. I like it. But it’s not really doing anything for me. It is the story of Locke Lamora, a charming young man who was born to be a thief. He is the leader of a group refered to as the Gentleman Bastards. Some people steal out of necessity, some do it professionally. But for Locke and his team, stealing is not simply a job, or even an art. It’s a religion. They all have been raised and trained by a priest of the trickster god, and stealing is their life. And for Locke in particular, it’s his instinctive nature. They don’t care much about money, as they could easily steal more than they could ever spend. They are in it for the challenge and so only the most elaborate con games are good enough for them. Which I admit is a pretty good and new concept for a fantasy book. However, as I mentioned above, I really am no fan of the loveable rogue archetype. Though I have to give it to the book, that none of the character struck me as annoying or unlikeable. But I still don’t care for them. There are certain elements and themes in fantasy stories that fascinate and interest me and that feed my personal cravings in entertainment. And even when written as excelently as here, these stories just don’t deliver in that regard. It’s nothing qualitative. It’s plain personal taste. However, there is an actual problem I have with the story, which is that I am really not sure what the plot is about. I am about a sixth into the book and there’s still no sign of an antagonist or a conflict. Locke and his crew are setting up an elaborate con to trick two rich nobles out of their money, but it still feels more like setup for the actual plot that has not been introduced yet. Which is made worse by the fact that the story uses a technique that I really dislike and consider incredibly cheap. Even though we experience the story through the eyes and the mind of the protagonist, he has a lot of information about what is going on that the author does not share with the readers, but which is critical to understand what the protagonist is doing and why he behaves the way he behaves. And we know that he knows, because it’s all his briliant plan to begin with. We read about him going through with the plan without knowing what the plan is. It creates excitement and keeps the readers attention and interest. And it almost always works magnificently. But I consider it incredibly cheap, because the author is basically lying by omission. He tells us that there is a mystery where none exists. We are in the head of the protagonist and supposed to feel with him. Yet crucial pieces of information are withheld. It may work, but it’s a cheap trick. Especially in the first pages, events are often shown out of order, showing us a dramatic scene, but not giving any context. Which I call the Breaking Bad Opening. And like Breaking Bad, the supposedly dramatic scene often turns out pretty mundane amd unexciting once you actually get the information needed to understand what’s going on. Which the characters of course had all the time. It’s smoke and mirrors, and once you see them, it becomes impossible to ignore them. But again, other than that, it’s really well written and quite enjoyable, and the only book of these four that I very much recommend. It just is not what I am looking for, and when I am reading it I am always thinking that I could instead read something else that’s more my style.

The Big Problem

What I noticed a few days back, and what really motivated me to sit down and write all this, is that even though the books are all very different and I mostly have different problems with them, te main issue that makes me stop reading them is always the same. None of these books is able to tell me within the first 50 pages what the story is about. They are stories, but they don’t seem to have plots. What is the goal? What is the obstacle? What is the conflict? Where is it all going? What kind of story is this? In many popular stories this is pretty clear. In The Lord of the Rings the goal is to end the threat of Sauron getting back the ring while avoiding his minions. In the storie o Conan, the goal is almost always to steal a treasure or defeat an evil sorcerer. Not terribly original, but you know what kind of story it will be. Even in the Witcher novels, which are quite meandering with many different characters going to different places with diffuse goals, it’s very clear that the goal is to find out what the deal is with Ciri’s powers and why the thugs are hunting her and Geralt. It’s not a tight plot, but it’s a plot. Which is all I am asking for.

Now I do love pretty artsy and ambigous fiction. But with many fantasy books of recent years, I regularly end up at a loss when trying to figure out what they are about and what kind of plot they have. Even with the danger of appearing like an illiterate brute, my preference in fantasy is clearly adventure. And at least in this one point, I do applaud Tome of the Undergate. I really dislike the characters and the plot, but it’s an old fashioned adventure story of the kind that doesn’t seem to be any popular these days. On the Fantasy Faction forum someone had been asking a few weeks ago “Does a story need to have a hook?” And my personal answer is yes, it really does. I am quite willing to go along with a highly unconventional story about nonheroic characters dealing with diffuse issues. But I need to know what the story is about, and I would like to have a general idea within the first chapter. Because at least in my own individual case, I stop reading when I don’t get an answer to that question.

2 thoughts on “Review: 4 books I did not finish”

  1. Very interesting thoughts — thanks for sharing them.

    I did really enjoy Lies of Locke Lamora — but I do like the lovable rogue archetype, and I’ve always enjoyed heist/con-artist stories, which almost always use the “bit of information held back” trick. I should go back and read it sometime and see what the early promise (what’s this story about?) felt like to me — I think I was assuming increasingly difficult heists would be instigated by a cocky thief successfully robbing the wrong people and trying to escalate his way out of trouble. (That certainly seems to be set up by the first sequence pre-temple…) I’ll grant you, it was irritating to see the end of the initial (“prologue”) story spaced out into interludes, but not enough to knock me out of the story.

    Your negative review *almost* makes me want to go out and try Tome of the Undergates — since I like lovable rogues and witty banter — but I think I’d probably hate the lack of progress or “things happening” too.

    Did you like Name of the Wind? I’ve seen criticisms of that similar to your criticism of Tome of the Undergate — that it’s well-crafted language and witty banter disguising the lack of an actual story.

    Smaller thoughts:

    I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who couldn’t get excited by Gardens of the Moon.

    Re: Jedi and the Tao… I’m pretty sure that’s where Lucas got the idea for the Force and the whole Jedi order. (By way of Kurosawa, I guess.)

    1. I have not read anything by Rothfuss. While I feel certain that he is terrific at the kind of fantasy he writes, based on everything I’ve heard from other people, he seems to be the posterboy for exactly this branch of fantasy that isn’t doing anything for me. I am after problem focused adventure stories that go at a steady pace. There seems to be a very strong trend to extended somber self-reflection, and that just isn’t satisfying to me as a reader.

      I know that Star Wars is 50% Kurosawa Movies, 30% A Princess of Mars, and 20% The Dam Busters, and it’s immediately obvious when you watch or read any of those. But Chinese fantasy is actually very different from Kurusawa movies and none of them have any real overlap with wuxia movies and novels. I’ve seen mentions before that Taoism influenced the concept of the Force, but to my knowledge it doesn’t have a publically visible role in Japan. He must have gotten that from somewhere else.
      The Force happens to be my favorite magic system in all fantasy. Precisely because it’s based on real world mysticism that large numbers of people have been believing in for a long time. That makes it a lot more believable as being a real part of the world and life of medieval people, compared to most other magic systems that feel more tacked on cut into conveniently sized and distinct pieces for specific applications. The Force is much more shapeless, fluid, and undefined, which I think is essential for creating a mystic or mythic atmosphere.

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