(Spoilers Alert!)
I happily confess to what I call "author stalking", that is, having enjoyed a book, I assume that the author of said book has some skill transferable to other novels, and I presume I might like those books as well. So I tend to pursue the acquisition of new (to me) reads, which are most often fantasy and science-fiction novels, but I follow this pattern with non-fiction as well.
That being said, Mercedes Lackey has been one of my favorite fantasy novelists since high school, and has obliged me by writing dozens and dozens of novels, many of which I like, some of which I really love and have read multiple times. (Mostly, I've read nearly all of the Heralds of Valdemar books, and it shouldn't take me too long to polish them all off.) I will write about some of those later. Last week, I encountered a new-to-me set of books by Lackey, featuring the character Diana Tregarde, and thought I would give them a whirl. Part of the reason I went on the war-path to read some new novels was to study them: I'm trying to get more serious about my own fantasy writing and it helps to pay attention to what works and what doesn't work (or just what I like or don't like) in the writings of others.
Typically, I encountered the books quite out of chronological order. What I encountered was the most recent Diana Tregarde book, which was actually a novella published in Trio of Sorcery in 2010. But it was a prequel to the other novels, set years in the past, when Diana is a freshman in college and first working out what it means to be a "Guardian", that is, a magic practitioner with the special calling to aid those innocents who find themselves in the clutches of dark magic either against their will or out of ignorance. Complication: the job doesn't pay at all, and the only reward is knowing you've done the right thing. I'm fairly certain Lackey is a Kantian ethicist, she likes duty, which is only intrinsically rewarded by satisfying one's calling and one's conscience. It doesn't provide, doesn't pay the bills, duty isn't interested in your personal life, though maybe the gods remember your good deeds in the next life.
In some ways, this is a coming of age story--Diana transforms from being a lonely teenager trying to embrace her new Guardianship by herself (her parents are dead and her grandmother has recently died, too) into a capable adult with a circle of friends who want to support and help her. She learns to operate in the world "on her own"--without the support of her parental figure--but with a group of friends. She even gets a boyfriend at the end of the story, which is something she was sure she'd be denied, since everyone in high school avoided her because she was so strange. In any case, I liked the story--the characters were dynamic, most of the supporting characters contributed uniquely and interestingly, and Diana is a likable and interesting heroine who knows how to employ a good sidekick.
Thus, I decided I would go back and read some of the earlier published Diana Tregarde novels, of which there are three, published in 1989, 90, and 91. With such a heroine and a sufficiently interesting magical world, what could go wrong?
Well, lots of things, apparently. Now, I've read Lackey's Arrows of the Queen trilogy, which were published just before these novels. Those I thought rather good, so I don't think my dislike was a matter of it just being a "stage" of Lackey's writing. I read Burning Water and Jinx High and probably I will not go on and read Children of the Night. But here are the things I thought went wrong and some things that went right.
#1 Characterization. In both Burning Water and Jinx High there are at least two characters other than Diana who narrate a good deal of the story. But none of them, including Diana, are what you'd call dynamic characters. No one changes significantly. Each of the supporting characters, Mark in Burning Water and Larry in Jinx High have contributions to make to the story, but even those contributions are passive. The reader knows from the start of Burning Water that Mark is a medium and thus one assumes this will play in the climax of the story in one way or another. It does, but it isn't terribly interesting because the medium's role is essentially passive, and although Mark makes some risky decisions about the role he will pay, it isn't presented in a way that preserves the dramatic tension of those decisions. One might contrast this with a parallel role that Karal plays in the Mage Storms trilogy. In that story, Karal is revealed to be a "channel" for magic, though otherwise a very poor mage, but in those stories, Karal's role is an interesting one because of all the moral and religious discernment and decision making that Karal has to make in order to use this gift of his. He uses it at a very great risk to himself, he's also very young, which makes him more sympathetic to the reader. (Karal is probably my favorite Lackey character.) Larry is in a similar position as Mark in Jinx High, though he doesn't have near the role in that story as Mark does in Burning Water. Larry's son, Derek, is one of Lackey's narrators, and is revealed to be psychic (as is one of the other minor characters), but Derek never does a single useful thing with his gift, and other than being duped, plays no interesting role in the climax.
In both novels, you see the perspective of the "good guys" and the "bad guys" and there is at least one good guy and one bad guy other than Diana whose perspective you get to listen in-on. But none of them, including Diana, are very dynamic characters. Mark is a passive agent throughout the climax of the first book. There's some inner struggle for him about being Catholic amidst a seemingly pagan universe . . . but he confesses at the end of the book that he's happy with his Catholicism and it isn't obvious how he's learned anything. Diana herself is by no means a "perfect" character--she makes the kinds of mistakes that a normal human would translated into a supernatural setting, but she's not dynamic either--it is hard to discern how she has changed from the beginning to end of either novel. Likewise, in Burning Water, Diana encounters an interesting healer whose powers seem fascinating and different, but she is whisked off-camera before you can learn much about her. The villains in both stories are also "passive" in a way--both plots revolve around villains who are doing the same thing in the present as they have done in the past, and they aren't changed by the action of the story either.
#2 Camera-angle. Another problem of the books is that the reader sees exactly what the villains are up to, start-to-finish, and the fact that the heroes don't catch on until the end of the story makes the heroes seem incompetent. From nearly the beginning of Burning Water, the reader knows who the villain is and more-or-less what he's up to. The same with Jinx High--the readers know the gimmick, which is a great gimmick, but the characters don't, and in the case of the latter book, the characters never figure it out. This is an unsatisfying way of telling a story, or else Lackey doesn't quite pull it off here. She does something similar in the Mage Winds Valdemar series, but there I think it works, possibly because the reader has a better handle on Valdemar's world and magical system. Falconsbane, the villain, is impossibly evil, but his back story is so complex that it is no surprise that none of our characters realize what they are up against. Also, those characters have had plenty of time to have their abilities and competencies fully established by the author. With Diana, we don't so much see for ourselves how competent she is--we are supposed to take other people's words for it. Except in Arcanum 101, where I do think one gets a good feel for how good the young Diana is at her job. Oddly enough, I think Lackey does a better job showing us her villain than she does showing us her protagonists.
#3 Lecturing. Diana lectures. I suppose Diana is a writer, so maybe it is fitting that she lectures, but I find her moralizing disingenuous. I don't think people like her pause to moralize and give their personalized moral creed--what Diana calls her Ten Commandments--to their friends. Diana is neither a prophetic figure nor a philosopher, though she's intelligent and a bit of an academic, but I'm not quite sure why she lectures. Diana spends a lot of time spouting off advice for how to live in the crazy, complicated world that she and her friends find themselves in, but to a reader, her reputation as a "wise woman" hasn't been established. She still seems too young to do that sort of thing just out of a stereotype of middle-age, and I am hard-pressed to buy that as a part of her personality. Again, Lackey handles these kind of characters better in her Valdemar books. The Shin'a'in are sources of proverbial wisdom, and characters like Kerowyn aren't afraid to throw them in people's faces. But it works for them, partly because it is an established part of the Shin'a'in culture and partly because the Shin'a'in proverbs are short--it isn't annoying because it doesn't take up that much time.
But I suppose I should say a bit on what these books do well. They have fascinating backgrounds that are complicated enough for me at times to be confused as to what part Lackey made up and what part really is based on some bit of Aztec mythology or ceremonial magic. They really have a fantastic lot of detail, and are suitably complex--which is something I always love about Lackey's magic and Lackey's worlds. Her characters are readable and likable and interesting people even if they don't do interesting things (except maybe for the teenagers in Jinx High). Mark is an especial favorite of mine, which is probably part of the reason I was annoyed that he didn't get a good climax or character transformation. The Diana of Arcanum 101 is very likable and interesting, and I would really like to hear more stories about her, from her perspective, in a way that makes her dynamic and shows how she learns from her adventures. Maybe "the seasoned magician" who is neither Sherlock Holmes nor Hercule Poirot wasn't the easiest character to write.
Also, I think Lackey was trying to make a statement by the way both of her novels ended, even if it was a statement that I don't think works very well in a story. And I think the statement was something like, "No matter how good you are, you don't and you can't know everything, and you're not always going to be able to save the day." In some ways, the endings of these novels are the sort of realistic endings of everyday life. Sometimes you get a partial victory over the evil powers-that-be, sometimes you only win at great cost. Sometimes you never figure something out and you have to do the best you can and only time will tell what you didn't accomplish (which is how I interpret the ending of Jinx High). Those are worthwhile themes to meditate on . . . even if in this case, they didn't provide very effective denouement.
Author's Note: The earlier Diana Tregarde novels (by publication date, not by internal chronology) are what you'd call dark fantasy. The evil characters really are evil and they do all sorts of evil creepy things that you'd hardly want to imagine, and a lot of their evil surrounds sexual practices, which is unfortunate. This is a motif in Lackey's writing in general, so if bothers you a lot, I would be careful about these books. It's definitely possible to skip or skim over these parts of her novels, and ironically there is no sex at all in the parts of the novel about "the good guys". Only the evil people, or the occasional stupid persons, are having sex.
No comments:
Post a Comment