#Ash reads silly pulp fantasy novels

[centrally-unplanned]

I finished the book! Thoughts ahead:

I was wrong about Catti-brie being a major character, she barely does anything in the story; she isn't even part of the crew that leaves on the quest for Mithril Hall in the end! She exists only as a sort of "explanation" for Bruenor's willingness to take in Wulfgar, and as genre-mandated token "hot girl" to give the book some level of romantic tension - tension it honestly does not need, it goes nowhere. This book would be improved by just excising that entirely; let it be the story of Four Dudes, being Men and having Adventures In The North. In later books Drizzt tells that Catti-brie was one of the first to ever trust him when he arrived at Icewind Dale, and one of his closest friends. Which is very amusing because in this book they do not speak to each other. You would not be amiss assuming they have never been alone in a room together before. Which to be clear I think is cute, this is the Early Installment Weirdness I love - their relationship was clearly retconned.

Speaking of EIW, Drizzt is a bit of a prideful dumbass! He has a strong rep as the stoic warrior type, and he is that on the surface, but then he goes off on cocky vengeance missions, taunts enemies, and loves the thrill of battle. He also runs in without a plan half the time, openly assuming he is going to die but like, whatever man. I think this again is the 80's of it all showing; fantasy characters were supposed to have this sort of Tolkeinesque, faux-medieval-warrior feel to them, loving the glory of combat and all that. In the 90's tortured anti-heroes rise up, and Drizzt is easy enough to fit into that as the series evolves so he changes.

The worldbuilding is really good, definitely the best part of the book. You learn about the economics of Ten Towns, its history and governance, how like this or that road project changed the dynamics of this or that town's growth and created border disputes, and so on. It has that "Ten Towns are the REAL protagonist" vibe to it. And the wider world, while never really entering the story, is fully present - Drizzt in particular will often be like "oh yeah this reminds me of this one time" and details some incredibly specific story from Menzoberranzan and his past, he feels incredibly lived. Regis & Bruenor do the same to a lesser extent. Wulfgar's barbarian tundra people do not get this treatment; they are incredibly shallow, a glaring exception and real problem.

The villain, Akar Kessel, is terribly uninteresting, partially by design. The book does actually set up a decent dynamic where, as a stumbling apprentice who lucks into the titular powerful sentient artifact, said artifact likes that he is an incompetent nothing because it can control him (and needs a vessel to function). So in the first half of the book you actively see the Crystal Shard doing that. And then that...just stops being seen. In the back half its voice almost entirely vanishes. Which is weird because his death comes from the Shard rejecting him due to fucking up too many times! Which you see mechanically, but not narratively, there is no depiction of the evolving dynamic. Real dropped ball there, the Shard should have been the main villain ofc, but it just wasn't executed on.

TONS of ass-pulls to resolve plots and stuff. Too many to detail, luck bails these guys out of 50% of their problems.

We have a classic "security for the enemy wizard tower is a riddle you can solve!" THAT ISN"T SECURITY why would anyone do that? If your door can be unlocked by passing a Knowledge Arcana check, it's not a secure room it's a party game, set a fucking password.

Regis is kind of great, he obviously gets the least amount of respect and page count in future books and such as he isn't a fighter, but he is funny and far more relatable than most. Get them riches my dude.

Anyway, overall the book is incredibly mid, no surprises there. It does have a lot of charm to it, and there are likeable characters and the level of detail is impressive at times. But it is incredibly trope-laden and not a lot of thought was put into making a solid narrative arc. An "events happen, fighty fighty, next adventure" kind of deal. In particular, as a squad the main characters lack any real chemistry, so it is an awkward start to a Companions Adventure series.

Still, it shows talent, and I enjoyed reading it as historical curiosity that it is. Maybe try researching what a "female character" is next time though, just for kicks.

On a recent trip home I picked up my dog-eared childhood copy of The Crystal Shard, the first-ever appearance of trope-defining dark elf Drizzt Do'Urden:

As my partner remarked on seeing the cover, "do you really need the whole wolf? The pelt ain't enough?" Darn right it ain't, when I was ~10 and playing basement D&D every weekend with my friend circle I fucking loved Drizzt, like all nerd kids back then did. Even better, this book was one of those things where he isn't even the main character, no one thought this would become the "IP" that it did. It is pure Early Installment Weirdness. So I was curious how cruelly the passage of time would affect this 1988 fantasy pulp novel.

Anyway we are 112 pages in and our first named female character has finally appeared. I am not exaggerating or even ignoring bit characters for that point. Women as a concept do not appear in the first 30 pages, until this line:

"Fetch the wenches!" he commanded.

And you occasionally get some mind-dominated sex slaves who are, again, unnamed, until Catti-brie (the named girl) shows up. As barbarian boy Wulfgar's romantic interest by the by.

This isn't, like, a gigantic bash or anything - Catti-brie herself is a primary character and well-realized and all that, and as always you can tell a story about a group of guys if you want. But back then the pulp fantasy landscape was just fucking rough my dude; this book spends a lot of time on the "societies" of Icewind Dale, governance & trade and war, and women just do not contribute to that society, in any way, beyond token references to mothers-and-lovers as a concept.

There is a line Wulfgar, someone from the "barbarian" nomadic tribes, makes - as a comparison to Catti-brie - about women in his society:

Barbarian girls were raised to keep their thoughts and opinions, unimportant by the standards of men, to themselves.

And I get it, like Catti-brie is headstrong and wilful and Wulfgar is Learning to Respect Women. I grok that this is an arc moment and depiction is not endorsement. But I think that idea works a little better if the author had put a single female character from the barbarian society on the page to help with that point! The book shouldn't agree that they are unimportant, right? I'm looking at George R.R. Martin's portrayal of the Dothraki in A Game of Thrones - published in 1996! - and seeing it for the progressive act it is now lol, that is a low bar. I have read later R. A. Salvatore books and he would never do this today of course; it was just how the genre worked back then.

Progress is just good sometimes I guess!

[tachyonpub]

PIRATE UTOPIA overflows with cool technology and occult intrigue

At the B&N SCI-FI & FANTASY BLOG, Sam Reader discusses Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA in Why “Decopunk” Deserves to Be Bigger than Steampunk.

A couple decades and a few art movements down the road from steampunk lies the world of decopunk. Drawing from the sleek, streamlined, futuristic aesthetic of the art deco movement, decopunk takes the glitz and glamor of the Roaring ’20s in science-fictional directions, frequently sprinkling in glittering elements of the weird and pulp fiction of the era.

Decopunk worlds are sleek and stylish, full of danger, awesome gadgets, strange magic, and high-flying action. More than that: the best of them go beyond the glimmer and gloss to provide elements of satire and social commentary that drawn a line between the world of today and a past that walked the line between social and scientific revolution and a fearful attempt to maintain the status quo at any cost.

Bruce Sterling’s raucous, satirical alternate history has a leg up on most decopunk novels, seeing as it’s both set during the rise of art deco, and focused on the futurist movements that invented the aesthetic in the first place. But while he makes use of the trappings of the genre, his aim is more to demystify the time period and deconstruct the usual gee-whiz trappings of super-science. Instead, Sterling presents the terrifying, still slightly comic and cartoonish fable of Fiume, a tiny post-World War I republic whose quick rise to power as an anarcho-syndicalist nation leads them first to form a military dictatorship, and then get swept up in the worldwide rise of fascism. The result is a ruthless, pinpoint satire that keeps the “punk” in “decopunk,” and overflows with cool technology and occult intrigue.

In January for the third consecutive month, the book appeared on the Borderlands Books best seller list.

Hardcovers 1. KINDRED: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL by Octavia Butler and John Jennings 2. BABYLON’S ASHES by James S.A. Corey 3. EMPIRE GAMES by Charles Stross 4. MINIATURES: THE VERY SHORT FICTION OF JOHN SCALZI by John Scalzi 5. INVISIBLE PLANETS edited by Ken Liu 6. PIRATE UTOPIA by Bruce Sterling 7. THE COLD EYE by Laura Anne Gilman 8. REJECTED PRINCESSES by Jason Porath 9. LOVECRAFT COUNTRY by Matt Ruff 10. EVERFAIR by Nisi Shawl

On his site IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE RIGHT…, Ian Sales writes about maintaining a positive balance on the TBR.

I try to read more books than I buy each month – or buy less books than I read, I guess it depends on how you look at it. Otherwise, the To Be Read pile would just continue to grow, and it’s already stupidly large. And this month, I’ve actually been quite good, and not bought a silly number of books.

Four recent sf novels. They were actually published in 2016, but I only got around to buying them this year. PIRATE UTOPIA is the first novel-length work from Sterling since 2009’s The Caryatids (which I liked a lot). The Corporation Wars 2: Insurgence is the, er, second book in a trilogy. Daughter of Eden is the third book of a trilogy. And Survival Game is the sequel to 2014’s Extinction Game.

For more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and illustrations by John Coulthart