Sunday, March 18, 2012

Musings on Anne Bishop

3 comments Posted by Unknown at 4:44 PM

Once upon a time, I stumbled accross The Black Jewels Trilogy by Anne Bishop. I thought it was dark, gritty, well written, compelling, and just all around awesome. So I lent copies to friends, bought them copies for their birthdays, and just promoted the hell out of the series in my social network. Not that we thought of it that way then, in the days before Facebook. Every book of Bishop's that I've picked up since then has in some way dissapointed me, with the exception of The Invisible Ring. Her most recent books I've actually been disdainful of. I just picked up Bridge of Dreams (sequel to Sebastian and Belladonna) and had to fight with myself to try and like this book.

It's not badly written. The mechanics are top notch, no complaints. The characters are thoroughly fleshed out and believable. The world building is also fully fleshed out and consistant accross all three books in this series. Why then was I not connecting? Why was I just waiting for the book to be over? Why did I think the book needed to be over about at least fifty pages earlier than it was? Maybe even a hundred, if you edited out unnessary plot lines.

My first realization is that Bishop has decided to pull her punches. It looks like something horrible is going to happen, but wait! It's either not as bad as advertised, or it's mendable in some way that takes little effort. Or both. For example, the main character Lee is held captive by the villians, tortured, and blinded. This is hefty stuff! But almost all of the details aside from his blindness are glossed over. What happened to all the bruises, cuts, infections, malnutrition, and other physical trauma? He also appears to not be suffering from PTSD after this experience, and he should be! This book should be littered with his mental issues stemming from the first quarter of the tale, and it's not. In fact, they are so seldom there that the few times they are mentioned they've lost believability.  Finally, there's this magical potion that can reverse his blindness! Huzzah! Bad things happened, and then they all got cleaned up. By the time we get to the point of no return in the story, he's even regained enough sight to wander around by himself. Subconciously, I've pulled away from the story by this point because I know that nothing bad is really going to happen. And if bad things happen, the suffering will be temporary, and at the end everyone walks away into the sunset. The conflict needs to be real, needs to matter to me, the stakes need to be suitably high (and I need to believe that they are high and that victory is not garanteed), and I need to have doubts as to how the characters are going to pull it all off. I have to want to know just how they possibly could.

Another problem is that Bridge of Dreams doesn't really have a main villian. It's a group of villians who are never directly on the page long, those who are are flunkies who are then gone longe before the point of no return, and are given no motivation beyond their action other than 'this is what they do.' I don't care about Lee's struggle against them because I don't care enough about the villians. For that I need at least basic characterization done.

Finally, sheer predictability. By the time we've reached the point in the book where the characters are piecing everything together, I already know how they are going to solve it. There's a few curveballs, but nothing I'm deeply surprised about. The first two books in this series set up the world so well that I found myself reading along, adding everything up, and getting the correct answer. As a reader, I shouldn't be able to do this. If I know what's going to happen, and mostly how it's going to happen, why would I finish reading it?

A Bridge of Dreams is a weird little love story trying to be dark fantasy. It doesn't committ enough to either tale to be really successful. On one hand, it's mechanically well written. Descriptions are well done and even compelling. On the other, there are so many basic, amateur mistakes in the storytelling that I'm really dissapointed. I know Bishop can do better; her debut book was better! If she had tried to debut with this, I'm not sure she'd have made it out of the slush pile. Not because it's badly written, but because the story is poorly set up. It's missing too many of the hallmarks of craftsmenship that I expect a writer at her level to do all the time, every time.

Please, Ms. Bishop. Take some time to really craft your next tale. I'll love you for it! Because at some point I'm going to stop hoping you've remembered how to write, and just leave your books on the shelf.

 

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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Review: Shalador's Lady

0 comments Posted by Unknown at 8:18 PM

Shalador's Lady by Anne Bishop
A Dark Jewels Novel

This is the eighth book in the Dark Jewels Universe, which debuted with Daughter of the Blood.  The books are set in an original, fantastical universe where some people have magic (the Blood) and other’s do not (the landen).  All of the books focus on the ruling class, the Blood.  Shalador’s Lady is the second book with the protagonist Lady Cassidy, who was introduced in Shadow Queen.  At the open of the book, Lady Cassidy is the ruling Territory Queen of Dena Nehele, with a full court.  However, Prince Theran Grayhaven, the Warlord Prince who instigated Lady Cassidy’s move to Dena Nehele, isn’t happy with the bargain he made.  The book is about Lady Cassidy’s growth as a ruler, and Theran’s attempts to remove her and find someone more to his liking.

Let me start off by saying that I did in fact enjoy this book.  I make it a point to only blog about books I did enjoy, so if you see something listed here, it’s because I don’t see it as a complete waste of money.  I started this book last night, and read it straight through.  That being said, the book has some major issues.
First of all, this book is likely the lightest, fluffiest book in the entire series.  The tone of the book is a lot closer to Bishop’s Tir Alainn trilogy than it is to any of the other Dark Jewels books.  What initially captured my attention, and caused me to pass along the original trilogy, was Bishop’s dark sensuality.  Everything had a hidden horror about it, and a sense of desperation.  This book utterly lacks all of the above.  Now, I read a lot of books that aren’t like this, so it wasn’t exactly a problem, but I did feel somewhat disappointed because I expected something else.

Next: plot holes you could drive a semi through.  Old characters march through in vignettes that have nothing to do with the main plot, and don’t fit together to make a subplot.  It’s like Bishop wants to write about her original characters, but she can’t bear to torture their lives further.  So every once in a while, for no real reason, we see the SaDiablo family (and a few others) peek in and say hi for the sake of saying hi, I’m still here, life’s good, how are you?  On top of that, the main plot doesn’t feel at all plausible.  I know, I’m talking about a fantasy novel here, but the characters had so many options, so many ways to gather information, use said information, and they don’t.  They don’t explore their situation, they simply react to it.  Motivations are impressionistic brushstrokes on the page, and it feels like Bishop thought that this was a good story arc and then didn’t take the time to ask the hard questions and make it solid.  It’s just there for the characters to hang off of and look pretty.  There’s also that I felt this plot could have been thickened, fleshed out, and used to create two solid books.  The bones are there, the dedication to it is not.

To top that off, the characters, while enjoyable, are not well developed.  While Bishop had her initial three lengthy books to develop the SaDiablo family, she’s tried to fit the same amount of character building and growth into two much shorter books for Lady Cassidy, and one for two other main characters.  And, let’s not forget that a decent proportion of the shorter books has been given over to the SaDiablo family, who we already know.  So not only are the main characters of Shalador’s Lady competing with the SaDiablo family in my mind, they have to do it right there on the page and the SaDiablo family wins.  Except the book isn’t about them, it’s about the other guys.  By the end of the book I was fighting mild bemusement at the changes in character interactions, because I didn’t feel that Bishop had substantiated them.  Most of the growth was happening back stage.  This is a prime example of ‘show, don’t tell’ because the telling wasn’t enough to support everything else.

Again, I should end this by re-iterating that I did enjoy the book.  Bishop still knows how to string words together in a highly pleasing manner.  I just wish she’d remember how to write a novel, and not just tell a story.  There is a difference.  If you have read the Dark Jewel’s Trilogy and other supporting books, you’ll likely enjoy this book for what it is.  If you haven’t, do yourself a favor and read the original Trilogy first.  You’ll be much less lost, and they’re better reads anyway.

 

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