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Jan. 9th, 2008 07:47 pmDecided to give Jacqueline Carey another chance and finished reading Kushiel's Scion.
It wasn't all bad. The setting is interesting (no less so for being based on the RL world) and a lot of the individual episodes were also interesting. But it really needed more to hold it together. It felt something like this: 'Imri does some stuff, he gets cross with people, he decides to go off and do unrelated stuff somewhere else, he meets people there, they get into a scrape, and then he goes home again and gets started on something else.' A few things are set up - the Guild and Melisande will no doubt make a showing again in later books - but my feeling is that in over nine hundred pages the plot needs to go a little further than 'just finished warming up, maybe'.
The first three Kushiel books didn't do this - while they had some ongoing stuff that was developed from one book to the next, they each had a genuine plot of their own. They certainly rambled a lot, but at least the rambling had a definite goal in mind.
Unfortunately, it did repeat their failings...
- Padding. In particular, the insistence on recapping. It wasn't as bad as Kushiel's Avatar that way, but as I recall the recapping built up and up in that trilogy because there was more and more to recap. (And also because the decreasing story-to-recap ratio meant that one's attention started waning, and one needed more recaps to remember where things were up to.)
- Constant harping about how wonderful Phedre is and how she's so clever and everybody loves her and her friends are the bestest in the world. This got irritating enough in the books that were supposed to be about her. In a book about somebody else, where she's not even physically present for most of the story, maybe we could tone down the Phedre-love-fest just a little bit? Speaking of which, why is she the person on the cover, rather than the guy it's supposed to be about? Also, vaguely creepy Oedipal overtones. Given that she looks like being around more in the next book, I have a bad feeling about this.
All in all... not a complete waste of time, but I feel no urge to read the next one.
It wasn't all bad. The setting is interesting (no less so for being based on the RL world) and a lot of the individual episodes were also interesting. But it really needed more to hold it together. It felt something like this: 'Imri does some stuff, he gets cross with people, he decides to go off and do unrelated stuff somewhere else, he meets people there, they get into a scrape, and then he goes home again and gets started on something else.' A few things are set up - the Guild and Melisande will no doubt make a showing again in later books - but my feeling is that in over nine hundred pages the plot needs to go a little further than 'just finished warming up, maybe'.
The first three Kushiel books didn't do this - while they had some ongoing stuff that was developed from one book to the next, they each had a genuine plot of their own. They certainly rambled a lot, but at least the rambling had a definite goal in mind.
Unfortunately, it did repeat their failings...
- Padding. In particular, the insistence on recapping. It wasn't as bad as Kushiel's Avatar that way, but as I recall the recapping built up and up in that trilogy because there was more and more to recap. (And also because the decreasing story-to-recap ratio meant that one's attention started waning, and one needed more recaps to remember where things were up to.)
- Constant harping about how wonderful Phedre is and how she's so clever and everybody loves her and her friends are the bestest in the world. This got irritating enough in the books that were supposed to be about her. In a book about somebody else, where she's not even physically present for most of the story, maybe we could tone down the Phedre-love-fest just a little bit? Speaking of which, why is she the person on the cover, rather than the guy it's supposed to be about? Also, vaguely creepy Oedipal overtones. Given that she looks like being around more in the next book, I have a bad feeling about this.
All in all... not a complete waste of time, but I feel no urge to read the next one.
