On this side of my college graduation for my bachelor’s, I
have had something of a realization. I was (and continue to be, despite having
earned my degree) an insufferable English major. I spent six years scrambling
to figure out what I was going to do with my degree, but I knew that I loved
and breathed books and literary analysis. I read every assignment and found
everything but the most advanced lit classes unchallenging, and I relished
every moment of it. Even when there were professors or coursework I disagreed
with, I still enjoyed the process of learning and contributing to every
discussion. Now that I’m embarking on a Master’s, I have a greater understanding
of one of my flaws: I grew arrogant as a student. I was cocky about my
understanding of critical theory, the fact that very few of my classmates took
our lit classes seriously but I did, and in a lot of ways, I became
intellectually lazy. I knew where I could cut corners on certain assignments,
where I didn’t have to structure my arguments or understand my implications
because minimum effort would earn me a top grade anyways.*
I bring up this up because I felt underwhelmed by my last
blog entry, that I was copping out on
true analysis by rehashing the plot. Instead of saying something meaningful, I
gave a childish criticism of a book and basically published a half-baked entry.
Over the last couple of days, I’ve thought about rewriting my analysis, but
have decided that if I do, it will be as a brand new entry. I just want to
acknowledge that I understand my own weaknesses as a critic, especially in my
parsing of grimdark versus epic fantasy.
In one of my next blog entries, I want to give a broader and
more thoughtful analysis of fantasy that’s being published today, and discuss
certain trends within the genre. I’d like to acknowledge now that one of my
biggest frustrations is how genre labels come across as extremely reductive when
you consider works within the labels (we’re not even going to touch on the “canon”). I’ve run into few
if any “straight” fantasies where there wasn’t some crossing with another genre
(mystery, romance, thriller), and the labels commonly used today fail to
consider that kind of diversity. I think I was mistakenly using labels in my
last entry to differentiate between fantasy I liked versus what I didn’t like—a
mistake I made quite often during my undergraduate years, that’s so canny I don’t
even realize I’m doing it sometimes. Although I will discuss this in more
detail later, I’d like to finish this point with a leaf out of Derrida’s book:
that binary oppositions are conventional (created) to highlight artificial differences,
particularly in linguistics, to construct significance. That significance is
outside of convention, and I think that, as an English major, that’s something
I need to appreciate within my love of fantasy.
On to a happier topic—Shadow’s
Son by Jon Sprunk was my reading this week, almost a precursor to our
thieves/assassins trend from its publication in 2010. I didn’t hear much about
it then, and I think I understand why. Sprunk’s writing style feels unfinished
in this novel, and it was difficult to track the protagonist Caim’s growth as a
character. It was a book I found myself unwillingly enjoying, because the
outbreaks of hokey narrative (mainly through the frequent appearance of clichés)
lightened the darkness of Caim without seeming overly silly.
There were lots of fun ideas in Shadow’s Son that if they had been pushed a little further, would
have made the book fantastic. Caim has a spirit companion in the form of an
attractive woman called Kit, and there’s some hints in the narrative that the
love Caim and Kit have might be romantic. Kit is an important character through
her significance to Caim and her ability to gain knowledge on people and places
where Caim can’t be. The first scene of SS bursts with action and mostly unforced
wit by demonstrating Kit’s capabilities, which make up for how she’s incapable
of anything else (including but not limited to touching Caim, lifting objects,
giving worth advice throughout the entire book). The relationship between Caim
and Kit deflates with the introduction of Caim’s genuine love interest, and Kit
gets reduced into a literal shade, two dimensions when there had been close to
three.
GoodReads reviewers promise that Sprunk’s other novels are
much better than SS, but I don’t think I’ll be following up. Beyond Kit’s
letdown, the aspect that diminished my enjoyment of SS was Caim’s lack of
trajectory. It would take a very fine eye to see any change in Caim as a
character from who he was in the beginning through the end, even though Sprunk
tried to use the “love changes all” idea with Caim’s relationship to his love
interest. Caim in the beginning kills for money, but he takes jobs on people
that a modern reader would consider horrible: despots, abusers of power, etc.
He sees himself as cold, ruthless, and without remorse: that’s all mostly true.
The change that’s meant to be wrought in Caim is that during the narrative, he
sacrifices his own well-being for his love interest, but in my reading, he had
sacrificed his own well-being before the novel began with his political
ideologies. Caim lives in a plain, empty shack, and it was a good symbol for
how sparse his character was. I was invested in his backstory for what it was
worth, and appreciated how Sprunk highlighted how Caim’s trauma led to his
emotional struggles during the narrative.
Caim in the end is largely unchanged from his image in the
beginning. He sets up another character on their path to greatness and then
disappears into the shadows. I almost wish this story had been told entirely
from Josey’s perspective, because in a lot of ways, Caim’s story was actually a
frame for hers. Unlike in the great frame narrative of our time, The Great Gatsby, I think this was
accidental. Caim does get to claim some personal accomplishments that actually,
well…serve everyone else, but he did achieve wiping his out competition,
dethroning an oligarchy, and avenge the crime of his childhood. And yet Caim
remains unchanged. His stony face was a little too literal—it alienated me as a
reader and I struggled to understand what was going on behind his emotionless
exterior.
I found Shadow’s Son
to be a rather fun narrative, however, the light-beach-read equivalent of
fantasy. It was short, so I zoomed through it in a couple of days, and I
definitely liked some of the other supporting characters besides Kit. However,
more than the fact that I didn’t like it, SS is just not very memorable in the
thieves/assassins line of fantasy. Lately I have taken to pretending that the
stories I’m reading are roleplaying narratives where I get to be a player,
which has helped me be more forgiving of lackluster writing. Hopefully in the
later books, Caim became a character I want to play instead of an NPC within
his own story.
I just started Ed Greenwood’s The Wizard’s Mask, which seems to be his first novel for Pathfinder
Tales. The reviews on GoodReads have eviscerated it, but I’m over 50 pages in
and still enjoying the never-ending chase Greenwood is putting his characters
through. The characters have a lot of personality and sass, and although they
have done some truly outlandish things so far, at least I know I’m back within
the realm of fun hack-and-slash rpg fiction. I’m going to a couple of panels at
Gen Con this year that Greenwood is serving on, so I can’t wait to hear the
thoughts of the creator of Elminster in a month’s time.
*There were factors in my personal life contributing to
this, like working a stressful job and a complicated family situation, but I
definitely made the choice.
