Dusk Witch's Book Club Book Report (Part 2)
Read the introduction and the “Excellent Reads” in my first post here.
Alright, time to start getting controversial. We read a lot of books for the book club, but unfortunately only a few made the top cut. Of the rest, some were decent, some were terrible. I’m not interested in ranking them either way, except in the big buckets I’ve put them in.1 I’ve tried to keep my descriptions concise, but I think the nature of these categories means I can’t be as concise as I was. With great books, all I need to do is communicate how they made me feel and what I took from them. Here, I have to explain why these books aren’t good or didn’t land, often with context. A good book can simply be good; a bad book is bad for a reason.
Decent Reads
First up, the also-rans.
This group of works are those which are interesting or engaging, but had some element or issue that prevented them from being great. A lot of these books are probably good reads on their own, but may not work for a book club/review and discussion. Still, a lot of these books had valuable lessons for me about writing and what I actually like in stories.
All Tomorrows - An interesting book from a speculative evolution perspective, a little less interesting as literature. A truly fantastic view of the possible futures of the human species in a very alien universe. It’s probably of interest mostly to those wanting to dive into speculative evolution or interested in some real cool art.
BONE – A charming, delightful, fun romp with a couple of goofy guys that is unfortunately dragged down when it turns into just another generic epic fantasy. The first three to four books are fantastic: good stories and cute art; the struggles of the Bone family being far from home take center stage. Then, the group moves out of the Valley and the whole thing loses a lot of its charm. I also don’t think it has a ton of depth. Most of the early part is earnest but relatively simple. This isn’t a bad thing, but it might not provide a lot of material for discussion. The latter parts have much more “story” and certainly pay more attention to themes, but those themes aren’t executed upon in an interesting way. On the other hand, if you have a book/comic club that’s eager to discuss the nuances of sequential art and indie publishing, it will be sufficient.
The Call of Cthulhu – It’s always fascinating to go back to the influential work that was source material for so many others (as you can probably tell by some of the books we read.) There is something refreshing in cutting right to the core of something that’s been riffed on or memed for nearly a century. I don’t think Call of Cthulhu is amazing in the context of modern cosmic horror fiction, but it’s clearly got a core that works. Given the core theme of “the horror of context”, I think a modern author using a modern, web-based, hyperlinked method to tell essentially the same story would be far more effective. It is unfortunately just as racist as you might expect, if not moreso, and worse still that racism is pretty central to the text. However, I’ve said to friends that I think Lovecraft’s naked, obvious racism is valuable – because it uses the same patterns of thought used by later, more subtly racist authors of fantasy and sci-fi fiction. I imagine if you’re reading it with a proper, critical eye, it can almost be a vaccine against those same patterns in later fiction – or your own writing.
Children of Dune – Dune takes a turn for the worse. The worldbuilding is less compelling, the plot feels more contrived, and Leto is somewhat annoying as a protagonist. Frank Herbert’s sexism comes to the fore. Still, it’s got some good ideas in it, and it maintains tensions as the various plots play out (even though they feel less impactful than Dune Messiah.)
Colour Out of Space – Probably my favorite Lovecraft work. I think the suspense and sinister air lands the best in this one. There’s not much too it in terms of “big ideas” and for Lovecraft, that’s a good thing, because his big idea is usually racism (or a subsidiary bigotry like interracial marriage.) It’s just a fun, spooky story that shows off Lovecraft at his best.
The Dark Forest – The sequel to Three-Body Problem. Bigger swings, bigger misses. Its big idea is not necessarily all that novel, and the whole book has a insufferable “I’m telling the BIG TRUTH that NO ONE WANTS TO HEAR” energy that makes its message a little grating. Cixin Liu’s hobbyhorses come out to play: rants against women, “feminized” men, decadent and delusional modern society, and the necessary sacrifice of humanity to great works. Still, an intriguing follow-up to the Three-Body Problem with a tense and tight conclusion. If the books ended here, I’d might rank them higher.
Good Omens – A charmingly provincial story about heaven, hell, and what makes us human. Unfortunately its provincial nature means it’s merely a pleasant read, not necessarily a profound or great one. Gaiman and Pratchett do good work setting up a very British version of Christian cosmology while riffing on other stories and modern trends. Yet a lot of that isn’t in service to anything deeper than “Maybe God really does have a great plan, and if you’re a middle-class British kid, you’ll get to live it out.” When the book sticks to comedy and laughing at sticks-in-the-mud trying to control everything, it’s great. Whenever the book starts trying to say Big Things, it just veers into cringe-worthiness.2 Aziraphale and Crowley are fun, the little interludes with the Four Horsemen are fun, everything else is just okay and very British.
The Princess Bride – It’s a very fun and delightful read, but it’s not that deep. I do think most people should read this book, but for pleasure, not dissection. Goldman’s character work is excellent – Buttercup, Wesley, Fezzik, Inigo, the Count, and Prince Rupert will live in my head for a long time. I think lots of discussion can be had about metafiction techniques Goldman uses, because the work is essentially half metafiction by volume.3
I, Robot (short story collection) – Aasimov’s first collection of his “Robot Stories”, featuring some of the concepts and characters that would go on to be the subject of later works. It was very interesting to read the origins of a lot of common sci-fi tropes. Unfortunately, the stories suffer from the flaws of a lot of sci-fi of that era, having minimal characters and little interest in culture or human-machine relations outside of a “gadgeteer” perspective. This might have had more impact as part of a broader reading of early science fiction.
The Thrawn Trilogy – Competently written military-sci-fi novels with a dash of fantasy and intrigue. If you’re not familiar, you might think that sounds fine, maybe not your cup of tea. If you’re a Star Wars fan, however, you may recognize the damning by faint praise. The last time I was still regularly interacting with the Star Wars fandom, the Thrawn Trilogy was widely touted as the peak of all Star Wars novels. It is telling, then, that these novels feel… just okay. The characters, the driving force of the narrative, just feel less compelling and more staid than their film counterparts. The prose is workable but nothing special. The action in abstract is fine and exciting enough, but never really fully translates the effect of Star Wars on screen. Star Wars was never a particularly deep or thoughtful series of films, but the films were emotive and mythic. A lot of those aspects of Star Wars are stripped away or compressed to fit into the writing of the novels. At the heart of all these issues, tying them all together, is the character of Thrawn. If you’re not particularly widely read,4 Thrawn appears very much the genius mastermind and unique threat the text claims he is. I certainly thought that when I read these the first time. At age 10. Then I spent twenty more years broadening my horizons. When I went back to it, it was easy to see the artifice behind Thrawn’s construction, the tricks Zahn used in the writing. Thrawn is interesting as a rational, calculating villain, but only in the Star Wars context, where such a villain hadn’t really appeared.5
The novels are interesting if you’re examining the evolution of Star Wars. Timothy Zahn had room to play around and develop context for ideas that were only offhandedly mentioned in the films (e.g. the Clone Wars). It presents a very different vision of the stock Star Wars elements that are so calcified now after another thirty years of “more canon” films and the Disney reset. That vision isn’t necessarily more compelling than what we got, but it is an interesting contrast.Silmarillion (Ainulindalë, Beren and Lúthien, and Akallabêth)6 – Tolkien’s legendarium maintains the poetry, the imagery, the themes, and the truly epic sweep of the Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, it somewhat lacks the grounding humanity and mundanity (provided mostly by the Hobbits) that made the original work truly great. Still, the stories themselves are suitably mythic and compelling. Certain themes present in Lord of the Rings (nature of evil, hope, cyclical/spiral history and decline, love, tragedy) are echoed and reinforced in these narratives. I feel like it is a good companion to the Lord of the Rings, but at the same time, I understand why many of these simply remained notes for most of J.R.R.’s life. Beren and Lúthien deserves special mention. As I understand it, this story was one of the few that were mostly or entirely complete during Tolkien’s lifetime. It has a developed narrative full of pathos, action, and tragedy. The story starts at a good clip and doesn’t slow down for a minute, right up until the end.
Tress of the Emerald Sea – Okay I said I wasn’t gonna put Sanderson on here, but we read this story pretty late in the club’s life, long after we had read most of the other Sanderson works. It starts off promising, seeming to diverge from Sanderson’s usual beats. Oh sure, a few Cosmere influences pop up here and there, and my little hate-blorbo Hoid is here narrating the whole thing and occasionally interfering, but it builds towards a neat climax where the emotional arc is resolved, our heroine proves herself, and completes her self-discovery. And then the novel continues, to a second, much less satisfying climax featuring lots of the technical magic and setup-payoffs that Brandon Sanderson is known for. I also think that if you aren’t already quite familiar with the Cosmere deep lore, the ending is going to land with a dull thud. I recall my book club came to the conclusion that it was an echo of the Princess Bride. Read it if you love Sanderson and you want something different but the same.
The Three-Body Problem – A novel about two things: why someone would choose to destroy the world, and what a “realistic” alien invasion would look like, given the vast gulf of space and the limitation of physics. Cixin Liu is at his least Cixin Liu-iest. Also has DA SHI, ONE OF THE GREATEST GENRE INVADERS OF ALL TIME. He came straight out of a police action movie, dunks on the nerds, and handles half of the climax.
Terrible Reads
I have to end on an ignominious note. These are the books that were genuinely unpleasant, with few redeeming qualities. Some of these were even a struggle to finish reading, and my book club only managed to moan its way across the finish line. Our reactions ranged from boredom to active, outright, gleeful hate. Some books couldn’t even must gleeful hate, and we were left with fuming rage at our wasted time. Some of these books are readable, but all of them have some odious element (or a few!) that earned them a spot in the mudbucket down here.
Death's End – All of Cixin Liu’s problems come home to roost. The sexism is blatant, the former tone of the universe is violated to make women look stupid, the whole plot goes off the rails in fifty ways in the third act. Some interesting visuals and maybe interesting ideas and a banger prologue, but otherwise a miserable time with a bitter old man. This book retroactively ruined the series for me, because things that I could have brushed off (the fact that it is woman and their womanly essences being placed in leadership roles that destroy mankind, for example)7 as one-off things become patterns. Also, practically no Da Shi.
Dragonflight – Dragonriders of Pern sucks. It blends the most milquetoast science-fantasy with the blandest plot beats of epic fantasy and wish fulfillment only a mother could love. I detested the protagonist; she was annoying and insufferable right to the finish. The prose was like chewing on cardboard paper. Books about people riding dragons and doing time travel should not be boring but here we are.
Eye of the World (Wheel of Time) – Wheel of Time sucks. The aping of Tolkien is transparent. The overwrought prose is agonizing to read.8 The only way this could be enjoyable is if you’re an eleven-year-old nerd with too much time and not enough life experience. Gender essentialism is here and frankly it’s not even the worst thing about the series. Robert Jordan wanted to have a “realistic”9 medieval world, but it just makes the story drag and bumps awkwardly into all the ~mysterious and profound~ mythic things Jorden is mixing into the pot. There’s just so many elements, so much stuff going on that there is no cohesive thematic or emotional core to follow. By the end things were just happening, new elements being continuously introduced for no seeming purpose other than later payoff(?) and with no consideration for how the story stood on its own.
We read this as part of the Branderson Sanderson Inspiration Sampler, and I complete understand how he got his start rewriting chapters and writing alternative viewpoints. This book could use it.God Emperor of Dune – Dune sucks now. I don’t like Herbert’s politics, I don’t like his grumpy old man energy in the text, I don’t like Leto, I don’t like the weird creepy-uncle-level male gaze, and none of the other characters are particularly interesting (because they’re there to show how smart Leto is). One long didactic ramble about tyranny and freedom and how everyone except
Frank HerbertLeto is stupid, occasionally interrupted by some of the limpest “intrigue” in the series.Splinter of the Mind's Eye – Interesting as a historical artifact and Wikipedia plot summary only. A fundamental devolution of Star Wars, and a regression to the mean for characters (Luke is far more of a standard Sci-Fi Competent Leading Man and Leia becomes a whiny, spoiled woman unfit for the frontlines.) The ending is hilarious in how wishy-washy it is. It’s about two hundred pages long, and like five things happen, at most. After reading this book I was finally able to look at the Star Wars Expanded Universe and say
Ranking these is made way harder by the fact I read some of them 2+ years ago. A lot has happened since then! And since these are the “just okay” and “bad” books, they are necessarily going to leave much less of an impact (emotional and/or intellectual) than the ones I loved.↩
Of particular note is the apocalypse rider Famine, representing an issue still plaguing the modern world to a heartbreaking degree, being introduced by… encouraging people to go on diets where they don’t eat and go to restaurants which don’t serve any food. Meanwhile, War is introduced actually, ya know, causing wars. The divergence was stark, especially upon this second reading. Very much an “Old Man Yells At Cloud” moment, and not the only one in the book.↩
And of course, be sure to read all the prologues and asides, or you’ll miss out on some very funny stuff.↩
Especially if you haven’t read the stories of Sherlock Holmes.↩
I don’t think Tarkin counts. Tarkin’s defining trait (since everyone in Star Wars is archetypical) is his arrogance, not his intelligence. Tarkin thinks that he has an invincible ultimate weapon and can’t lose. Thrawn, by contrast, would never have ignored messages from his subordinate that there was a critical flaw in his plan.↩
We only read these three portions, not the whole Silmarillion. For those not familiar, those three in order are: the creation myth and description of the Valinor; a story in the Second Age that is referenced and paralleled by Aragorn’s romancing of Arwen; and the story of the Fall of Númenor. I haven’t read the rest but I’d like to.↩
I mean for God’s sake, a woman can’t pull the trigger on a MAD device because she has a vision of a baby and is overwhelmed by her motherly instincts to not bring harm to hypothetical children. Women are presented as essentially weak creatures fit only to be guided by rational, reasonable men. It’s as blatant in this book as Lovecraft’s racism in his own works.↩
I think it might be the reason Brandon Sanderson writes in the anodyne way he does.↩
I know it’s not realistic realistic, but I think there’s a clear influence of actual medieval history on the text. The cities are surrounded by farmland, most of the world is small farming villages (and actually pretty dense sets of farming villages), and much of the plot takes place as Rand and his friend are performing for their room and boards in village inns and taverns. Nevertheless, Robert Jordan does not have the depth of knowledge or the skill to make these medieval influences interesting. I find myself contrasting it to other fantasy books, especially Between Two Fires, where elements from real history and mythology elevate the story, not drag it down.↩