Shaman's Critiquing

Shaman's Crossing

I read this book pretty swiftly for me. Only... three weeks? And I only read two other books at the same time. Go me! Seriously, I looked forward to picking it up and didn't like to put it down. The last couple of hundred pages were devoured in just a couple of days (which to me sounds amazingly fast). I enjoyed it a lot. Slipping into a Hobb book is so easy and delightful.

Of course I can't say that I loved it to bits and cried and laughed and went through a rollercoaster of emotions. It was just nice to read.

The main thing that struck me about this book was the poor standard of writing. The question is in my mind whether this was intentional or just a poor piece of work on her Hobbness' part. As the book wore on, I began thinking that it was more the former- that she intentionally wrote badly as that is how Nevare, not her brightest creation, would write.

At the beginning I was struck by the number of tautologies and useless paragraphs. It isn't like her Hobbness to waste words and I feared that she had started to just write for the sake of it- because a bestselling author need not worry about being concise anymore and besides, the longer a book is the better, right? I maybe should have made notes as I read it and so I could stun you all a la Myopia with examples but the idea didn't occur to me until I had got past the worst cases.

Vocabulary also started off as tiresome. He said "behoove" twice in one page. Once was more than enough for such an odd word. Twice says "I learnt a new word today, see me use it and be in awe".

Nevare has favourite topics to wax lyrical about including being a Soldier Son and being semi-promised to Carsina and how fat Gord was. I often had deja vu while reading this book wondering whether her Hobbness was just padding while she worked out where to go next... though it dawned on me on the umpteenth repetition that Nevare was just a bit stupid.

This was reinforced by him "learning" new things and being all excited about learning them and then when it crops up again, he acts as if it is all fresh and new (Gord not being a glutton, Trist not being a good leader, the political situation, Epiny's seances for crying out loud...). And of course ignoring the blatently obvious such as Caulder talking about the stone after it was stolen and Spink talking about "we" when he claimed not to meet with Epiny.

So I have a lot of things here, the bad writing and repetition and Nevare's stupidity, which together imply that her Hobbness has not lost the knack to write well, she was doing it on purpose. Which is genius- to alter your own level of writing to reflect character.

Except... is it really a good idea to have such a dumbass as your lead?

As I read, I was always thinking "when and why is this being written?". The tone is supercilious. A Gentleman Diaryist that thinks too much of his own importance and tells you nothing. I think that Nevare thinks more of himself than he should. He thinks he has skill and the ability to write and be published. I got the impression that he was writing this at a future date but not for the same reasons as Fitz wrote his biography- not to heal and purge himself of a great hurt- but to show off. He was not impressed with his father's diaries. He thought he could do better. Nevarre is a hopeless romantic with the emphasis on hopeless and I can see him fancying himself as a bit of a writer (who was it that said a Soldier Son was lucky that he could be both a fighter and an artist?).

Of course much of what he wrote would harm his and his family's reputation so I find myself more wondering how the country could have got to a place where it was socially acceptable for Nevarre to put such things onto paper. Even if he was meant to be the only audience, he shows no guilt at what he writes and I think he would if society hadn't changed (or his society changed). And there is no doubt in my mind that this is a retrospective telling not a simple story told in the first person. It is often far too removed and... romanticised... not to be his own piece of work.

Throughout, I had a problem with the women in Shaman's Crossing. I kept on waiting for a knowing wink or rolling of the eyes and yet none of the nice and subservient women ever gave me a clue that they were play-acting. How could Carsina actually go along with dumb and bland Nevare? Flirt with him in the garden and not find his naivete completely irritating. I thought that we were only getting half the story thanks to Nevare's biased retelling and behind closed doors she and his sister would bitch about the stupidity of boys and the inconvenience of skirts.

But no. The book made it quite clear that it wasn't just Nevare not reading the girls properly. It was a real Stepford Wives attitude.

Sure on the flip-side we had Epiny and her mother (and the peach lady... who for all we know could be Epiny's mum as that would serve the Uncle right for laughing at the notion of women being on the street...) but in general we were presented with limp, ineffective female figures with absolutlely no evidence that they are anything to the contrary. They are the mothers. The sisters. The sweethearts. Utterly sexless and totally simpering.

What is going on here?

Oh there was an utterly priceless quote that just made me mad... near the end I think Nevare says something like he didn't think women were stupid... just that they were like dogs or horses.

I wouldn't mind if there was a hint that this wasn't true. But it seems to be true in that world.

I was struck by how this book was a lot like Harry Potter with the mind-numbingly tedious school system but then I realised it was worse- it was Americans Only. Hazing is American. It feels distinctly wrong... rather unnerving... to have it in a fantasy book. I almost felt like I was being told "sorry- this book isn't for you. No book please, you're British".

Fair enough, we have many series of books about schooling and it is distinctly British and maybe other nationalities feel like we are excluding them... But I didn't expect to feel left in the cold by her Hobbness.

But other than that, I thought it didn't work well. We rarely got to step outside the year-group/house Nevare was in and so the "bad doers" of the book were strangely faceless (if not nameless). Without seeing the other half, I grew to doubt that they existed and I didn't care about why they were doing it and how they were motivated by outside politics... It was all tell and no show. I didn't care about his subjects especially not bloody "exponents". Really, did anyone need a few pages lecturing us about the basics of mathematics? Is anyone fooled into believing that Gord had a magical way of viewing it so suddenly it was beautiful? Worst of all the description of cramming for exams and taking them. Not really an entertaining experience. Next thing you know we'll be told all about Nevare's bowel movements.

So as something interesting to read about, the Academy failed me. As something to make me feel included in his life/world, the Academy failed me.

But even though I complain, it was a nice read.