#and the untangled dialogue is just a convenient way to avoid saying said

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Not Quite a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Wardog

Friday, 26 December 2008

Wardog would have been impressed with The Pearls That Were His Eyes if she hadn't paid for it.~

The Pearls That Were His Eyes - a yarn of mythology and politics set in a baroque fantasy world, partly inspired by Shakespeare and partly by T.S. Eliot - is vanity published, which should have warned off any sensible person but since it's Xmas and I was feeling generous and it's creating something of a small-scale stir on LJ, I decided to give it a go, just on the off chance it was a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Sigh. When I am I going to learn?

The thing is ... it's not ... bad ... actually. It's just the problem arises in that I paid money for it (and, yes, I know I that did voluntarily). It's probably symptomatic of my conventional nature or something, but I actually believe that books that don't get published don't get published for a reason. The Pearls That Were His Eyes is not a work of undiscovered genius that the publishing world is just too hidebound to recognise/appreciate - it's a promising book that needs a lot of work and a good editor. If someone (by which I mean the author, friend of the author, me - not a pirate, if you even get literature pirates) should ever giveyou this, then I heartily suggest you read it. It's well-written, imaginative, original and atmospheric. Do not, however, think about buying it because, in its current state, it's an amateur work with nothing to recommend it but potential.

The Pearls That Were His Eyes is set in the partially drowned, fog-wreathed city of Cittavecchio, which is, like most fantasy cities, a little bit of this, a little bit of that (in this case, London and Venice). It's a city with a dark, legend-shrouded past, suppressed and half-forgotten in the current Age of Reason. Needless to say the mythology of the city doesn't stay suppressed for long and rises up to consume the lives of, well, some dudes. I can't really summarise the plot much beyond that because ... it's not so much that it's incoherent as it's rather muted: there's a web of intrigue, there's a conclusion to the web of intrigue, but it's hard to really get a grip on what's going on.

Oh for God's sake: spoiler-time, let's try to untangle this:

So the City of Cittavecchio was drowned by the Old Gods for reasons not entirely specified except that they evidently didn't like it much. And The Tattered King, the Last King of the City, wanders around the edges of reality waiting for a moment to reclaim the city for himself again. And all the rich people go to parties and gossip all the time and wear masks and have masquerade balls and festivals. And all the poor people live in the Rookeries and are beggars and get killed. God knows how this city supports itself. And the Duca who rules the city is mad and corrupt - except we never really see this, so it's a bit hard to see why people are so down on the guy. And there's also a secret senate who are supposed to be the true power in the city. And there's a dude going around killing people in a particularly gruesome way. And there's this deck of tarot cards, right, called the Re Stracciati (the Tattered King) deck, that had been originally created to contain and control the spirit of the very city itself and was capable of drawing forth the spirit of the Tattered King. Wrap this all up in a motley of Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot and you get, if you'll forgive me, a heap of broken images: in short A Big Pile of Awesome with no actual structure to it.

What works about the Web o' Intrigue that leads, as you may suppose, to the very-near resurrection of the Tattered King is that it's a genuinely intriguing blending of huge political plots, personal vendettas, cruel coincidences and base human pettiness. It all comes together very satisfyingly indeed, except the journey to the point where it does is just a little bit tedious. For fantasy, it's a remarkably slim volume (weighing in at a mere 300 pages), so really you'd think, with all the necessary world and character building, it wouldn't have space to be dull. But somehow it manages. Part of the problem lies with the need to acquaint the reader with an already complicated personal/political background that has been created long before the story itself begins; therefore the book kicks off with an awful lots of "as you know your father the king" style exposition, which is both blatant and extraordinarily clumsily executed. Characters can tell other characters information they presumably already know for pages at a time. Let me quote you a chunk to demonstrate the magnitude of the problem:

'Is it worth taking [this quite significant information we've just gathered] to the Lord Seneschal yet?' 'No. Cittavecchi society is riddled with secret societies, clubs, political movements and the like. Masks breed them like flies. For the moment we have nothing more than my disquiet and a series of coincidences that seem too convenient to go on - that is not enough for any kind of legal process. If we have nothing but innuendo and we take it to the Seneschal, then he will take it to the Duca, and the first thing the Duca will do is order another round of hangings and gibbetings for no better reason than it is you and I who raise the matter. And if he executes any more members of the nobility on our say, it will probably trigger the very open revolt we seek to avoid at the moment and, worse, it will make our own position untenable. Everything is finely and I do not want to try and provoke and other of the Duca's funny turns. They are inevitably bloody in consequence.'

Aaaand breathe.

This problem is particularly marked at the beginning of the book, which is, you will agree, a particularly bad place for it to be marked. Although it eases off a bit as the plot (finally) picks up, the pacing as a whole remains awkward throughout. This isn't helped by shallow characterisation. The characters are painted in broad strokes but since they're all some variation on "courtier" (ruthless courtier, party courtier, naive courtier, hot courtier, woman courtier etc. etc.) and they all have extravagant Italianate titles, it's actually quite difficult to untangle them and their agendas. They all talk pretty much the same way and although they do have relationships with each other, it's hard to know why they think and act they way they do. Gawain, Lord d'Orlato and Xavier, Lord di Tuffatore are, apparently, in love but I never had any particular reason to believe in it or care about either the relationship or the inevitable shocking betrayal that accompanies it.

Actually since I've already spoilered this to oblivion and back, I may as well clarify. It turns that Gawain is the friendly neighbourhood serial killer, acting out of what he sees as being his "love" for Xavier, taking out those who threatened or inconvenienced his lover (handy). Their confrontation is genuinely arresting and dramatic, except it's got no context to it so it has no emotional resonance to it. Why does Gawain love Xavier enough to turn himself into a monster for the sake of it? And what on earth does Xavier see in Gawain?

This afflicts most of the characters in the book, although it seems less important for the others since they don't carry as much of the story. Essentially they're all cool but not interesting: little more than a parcel of bon mots and extravagant costuming. I know they're probably meant to be like that but it does leave the novel without any kind of emotional dimension. I think Xavier is meant to be the least psychotic of them and that we're maybe meant to like him, or at least be sufficiently invested him that his eventual fate is tragic ... but although I was sensible of the mechanics of said tragedy I didn't actually feel it.

This is not to say there's nothing to like about TPTWHE. There is good stuff in there. The city of Cittavecchio is trying very hard to be cool and, well, I have to admit it is pretty cool:

It's said ... that every night the Tattered King throws his cloak over the ancient and crumbling city, his constant lover and royal consort. Centuries ago ... the old Gods tried and failed to wash her iniquities away with the great deluge; she endured, half-drowned, half-dead, knee deep in silt water and floodwater, a sunken shadow of her Imperial past.

The whole brooding atmosphere of the book is excellent. And, despite having more than a whisper pretension about it, the Shakespeare / Eliot / tarot card motifs really contribute to it. Also Andrews writes well. I was rather taken with: "in his eyes, hysteria hovered like a solicitous relative, ready to take him by the arm and guide him into the gentle uplands of shrieking madness." And when it isn't bogging down in exposition, the rhythms of his dialogue are equally stylish:

'I have given a commitment to my brother ... and matters of policy must come before my own amusement.' 'It gratifies me nonetheless that you regard me as an amusement and not as a matter of policy...'

Unfortunately this isn't quite enough to pull TPTWHE together. It's a shame but a book I'd be willing to pay for is more than flair and imagination.Themes:

Books

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Sci-fi / Fantasy

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Self-Published

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Michal

at 00:52 on 2013-09-18This is an old article, but I'm gonna comment anyway 'cause that's how I roll.

I'm not sure if this restores my faith in conventional publishing as the article implies it should, since the book is, despite a shoddy cover and wandering plot, still apparently "well-written, imaginative, original and atmospheric." And this strikes me as a lot better than certain other debut novels that publishers have paid an advance for. I guess I'd want to know what the history behind this book was, if it was self-pubbed or vanity-pubbed from the get-go or if no one was interested in it or what, in that it obviously could have benefited from a professional editor or even the opinion of a good friend with an editing mind and the potential was there to make it a whole lot better. Or, in simpler terms: did Andrews simply release this book too early and should've worked on it more until he eventually found an agent, or should it have stayed in the trunk since no publisher would ever pick it up at all?

Mostly, it's a bit harsh to say "read this book if you don't pay for it" which seems to imply there some worth to the thing being printed in the first place, whereas large publishing houses have put out books where I really do wonder "what did any editor ever see in this thing?"