Book review - Blood & Iron

[shadowkat]

Finished reading the book Blood and Iron by Elizabeth Bear. Not sure if I should write my thoughts on this one. It's not a bad book. The first fifty or so pages, I really enjoyed. I liked the bits on Celtic Mythology - particularly on Water Horses - which I had studied. And I loved the character of Matthew Magus - a Magi or wizard, who lives in NYC and can bring the stone lions in front of the NYPL to life (one of the more innovative bits in the novel) and who is a damaged soul due to what happened to his older brother. This bit reminded me a little of something in Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. And it is in his pov that we start the novel. It's not until about fifty pages in that I started to realize he wasn't the main character, or even close to one. No, the main character is Elaine Andraste or "Seeker" - part Fairy/part human. And unlike Matthew - she's introduced in such a way, that I felt as if I were viewing her through bionoculars. I never could connect to this character and I'm not sure why. I did not care what happened to her. And I found myself, oddly, feeling more sympathy for and even rooting for those she felt the need to fight against - Matthew, her mother, and Whiskey (before she well, changed him). Those she loved, I did not care about all that much. Perhaps the reason this happened is somewhere around the 100th page or so - the characters spent a lot of time discussing and philosophizing about their own fates, choices, war, fairy mythology, and the meaning of life. They don't really "do" anything until the end of the book and by the time they do, it feels anti-climatic. We've spent so much time discussing the pros and cons of it all - that the pay-off when it comes, comes too late. Buffy Season Seven had much the same problem - too many speeches and not enough action. For me it is the difference between "telling" and "showing". I needed a bit less exposition and a little more action. Perhaps the problem is the writer had too much to say? At any rate the talking slowed the pacing down dramatically, so that I had to really work to get through it, often scanning bits of it.

My other difficulty with the novel is something that many writers including myself are guilty of - and it is what editors are for - the repetition of an item that a writer thinks is great but after a while to the reader feels like nails against the chalk-board. Was discussing this tendency with my father recently - he said his editor caught him doing with spartina grass. He kept describing spartina grass. His editor told him it was annoying and to stop it. You only need to describe it once. Bear keeps quoting the same lines of Tam Lin and Greensleeves.
To the point in which I found myself thinking if you quote Tam Lin one more time I'm going to scream. Why do writers do this? Is it that we don't trust our readers? I know I do it. I know I've done it on this blog (shudders in embarrassment). Overstate my point. I think it's because we forget what we've written or we fall in love with it or we become obsessed with something. Writing can be a compulsive habit after all.

At any rate, by the time I finished the book - I was sick to death of the tale of Tam Lin. I think the only book I've read that tells it well may be "The Perilious Guard" which was out of print the last time I checked and tells the story rather subtly never letting us know that in truth is it. The young man on the pale horse dragged off it by his lady love as he goes to pay the tithe. In Perilious Guard - the story takes place during the age of Henry I, I think, can't quite remember, and in Wales at a castle. The heroine is fighting a mysterious group of women that are never explained. It's a children's dark fantasy story. And unlike Pamela Dean and Bear's accounts, haunts me. I think, for its subletly and deftness of tone. It is told entirely in first person pov and remains fairly focused on the plot. No subplots. No sideline issues. And I'm starting to wonder if there's something to be said for that. And it is something I need to work on in my own writing - to keep things simple. My most recent novel - the one I submitted to a contest, I did that. I tried to keep the plot focused on one thing. It still got a bit convoluted towards the end but nearly as badly as the first two. Perhaps that is what bugged me here in this book - the feeling that the writer was *trying* too hard. Pushing her points. As opposed to merely letting the story unravel. Some of the metaphors feel a bit forced - the dragon=earth metaphor certainly does. It is clever, don't get me wrong, but at times, I felt that it had been done to death.

Overall? Not a bad book. But a disappointing one, partly because of the potential. I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if the writer had told the story from one pov - Matthew Magus' as opposed to the multiple pov. Would that have helped simplify it? Would it have removed some of the many references to Tam Lin? Don't know. Thinking about what didn't work for me in the work - does in an odd way help me in my own writing.

Comments

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

That repetition thing? I can't tell you how many times as a copy editor I've advised a nonfiction writer to "trust your readers" and stop telling them the same thing over and over. As a reader, I find it even more irritating in fiction.

[fresne.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know about other writers, but one of the reasons I find myself repeating things (other than that as a technical writer I have to assume that the reader skipped directly to a section and hasn't read the last 30 times I told them something) is because I write something. Realize, actually, it would be better for the reader to learn that in this section. No, wait, over there. But I don't want to delete the old one until I'm sure. Then I'm wandering through the story trying to remember/notice all the places I told them X.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

LOL! I think I do the same thing. I tend to edit as I write normally, but will often forget that I stated something in the prior paragraph. Also in business writing - you do often repeat certain things as a matter of course, because in business people don't always read all of it - and well, if you repeat it - it's for emphasis.

I think it depends on what it is. Usually.
Metaphors are tricky, as are quotes or lines from songs - less is always more. Same is true in tv and film - a filmmaker or tv writer will often get obsessed with something and hit the viewer over the head with it, until the viewer screams at the screen and says, I got it! Then of course there's the opposite problem - where you are too subtle or too vague, expecting the reader to pick up on some obscure metaphor or idea. (This I'm also unfortunately guilty of. I've had more than one reader state - "I don't get that" and I'll go - but it's obvious, see? And realize just because it is obvious to me, doesn't necessarily mean it is to anyone outside of my head. Hee.)

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Here via Matociquala, who likes to link to bad reviews of her work. Or at least thoughtful, well-written ones. (I liked Blood and Iron, but I take your point about repeating the verse too much.)

But I'm commenting mainly to nitpick. The Perilous Gard is set in the reigns of Mary, and early Elizabeth I. It's relevant enough to why the main character is where she is that you rather surprised me by setting it at Henry I. It recently got rereleased by one of the new YA imprints, though it doesn't always show up in stores, and it stands up strongly to rereading.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I figured I was off, just not by how much. And far too lazy to look it up on the internet. (Can't look it up in the book since my copy is in South Carolina at my parents house.)

For whatever reason - I Could not for the life of me remember if it was during Henry's time, Mary's or Elizabeth I. Just that it was somewhere during one of those periods - where people lived in castles and women were called Lady and somewhat at the mercy of men.

I did read it over 20 years ago. And for whatever reason the time period in which it was set did not make much of an impression on me. I can't remember that portion of the book at all. ;-) It's odd. The Great Gatsby which I read more than 20 years ago - I can remember the time period and everything about it quite vivdly. So maybe the time period just wasn't written in a manner that would make a lasting impression or maybe it really isn't that essential to the story to make it memorable? (Shrugs) I don't know.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

After 20 years, I'd be inclined to forget about 90% of the plot, never mind the setting. I remember the time mainly because it's Elizabeth's effective imprisonment by her sister that sets off the whole chain of events, and because of the conversations about building or restoring a manor all the way through which wouldn't be valid for too much earlier an era. These may not stick in the mind after decades of not-reading the book

The Great gatsby is set a great deal closer to our own time, and the ways it differs are easier to remember as they're not that far form living memory, and well-recorded besides. By contrast, The medieval/renaissance, while pretty widely varied by region and century, are far away, less well documented, and tend to blur together until all we can recall, without a lot of enthusiastic reading, is the comonalities - people live in castles et al.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Hee. I'd forgotten all about the manor bit and the politics. The part I remember was the people under the hill, the heroine being held prisoner by them and eating what they did, and learning about them - until she manages to find the strength to pull the hero from his horse.

I think the reason I remember that - is that aspect of the novel was the part I focused on when I wrote a paper on the novel for a college Children's Literature course. My minor at the time was mythology and my focus "ancient religions". The rituals the writer describes are similar to the Druidic rites. I guess if my minor had been *history* - I'd have remembered that portion of it. But hadn't really studied history since high school or at least that period in depth. (Ironic - since I was a huge history buff in high school and had intended to major in history, much like my father before me. But life never takes us in the direction we expect.)

There's another thing about Gatsby. It was written by a writer living at that time period as opposed to a writer attempting to imagine a time period they have only read about it. I don't know if that might have an effect. I only say that it might - because I've read books by writers who wrote during the 1930s and one's attempting to visualize them, and there is a big difference. The one's who wrote at the time seem to capture a texture, a feel, that well the others can't quite hit.