Victorian Fantasy
Dec. 31st, 2006 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mtvesselNov 2006
Victorian Fantasy
Shaman’s Crossing - Robin Hobb - Voyager, 2006
* * * *
Due to the continuing inadequacies of Robin Hobb’s editor, there is some preparation to be done before reading this volume. I’m afraid it involves book mutilation, which is not something I would normally recommend, but trust me, it will really improve your appreciation of it. So, take a pair of scissors or a sharp blade and excise chapters 1-2 and 5-7 (3 and 4 are actually relevant to the plot, so you should probably keep those). This will get rid of most of the first two hundred pages. Once you’ve done that, the book that remains is not bad at all.
It will help if you have an interest in Victorian history, because Gernia, the setting, is essentially nineteenth century midwestern America with added magic and slight twists to the religion and history. Its interior consists largely of prairies inhabited by fierce nomadic plainspeople whom the Gernians are conquering and “civilising”, following a war with the neighbouring state of Landsing which resulted in the loss of their sea ports. The Gernian religion, based as it is around “the good god” and a holy book called “the Writ”, is clearly Victorian Christianity, with the one major difference that the birth order of sons determines the careers that they will take up (daughters, of course, only have one possible career, which is to be a dutiful wife and mother). In keeping with its inspiration, and as usual with fantasies by American authors, Gernia’s history only appears to go back about a hundred years, despite the text stating that the capital city of Old Thares has been occupied for generations.
The viewpoint character, Nevarre, is a classic Dickensian hero in the mould of Nicholas Nickleby or David Copperfield and is therefore pious, moral, conventional, obedient and implausibly asexual for a teenager (like many female writers - J.K. Rowling for instance - Hobb does not fully appreciate just how much boys are bags of hormones at that age). He is the second (soldier) son and is therefore destined to be in the army. After the largely scene-setting and pointless first two hundred pages, the book finally gets going when he is sent by his father to the Cavalla Academy, a sort of military Hogwarts where he will learn to be a cavalry officer. Unfortunately for him, all is not well. For he and his (well-delineated) companions are the sons of a new set of nobles created from soldier sons by the King as a reward for their conquest of the plainspeople, and this has fomented tension with the existing Council of Lords (a nicely logical development from the idea that primogeniture is divinely ordained - it doesn’t take much of a leap to say that social class must be as well). Needless to say the new head of the Cavalla sides with the old blood and has made changes to favour them. Cue much unpleasant hazing, arbitrary and unjust expulsions, rigged examinations and so forth. This plus the nicely detailed and plausible depiction of daily life at the cavalla and the antics of Nevarre’s unconventional female cousin Epiny (injecting an obvious but necessary element of female emancipation) take up most of the book, until an act of moral cowardice comes back to haunt Nevarre and triggers an effective and dramatic climax which for once in a Hobb novel is in the right place, just before the end.
It’s true that the various elements of the story don’t quite mesh into a satisfying whole (the climax relates to only a small part of the bulk of the novel) but nonetheless there’s lots to like about this book. The magic (essentially “natural” Shamanism vs “technological” iron-based magery) follows the same simplistic dualism as the Skill and the Wit in the Assassin books but works well, and the Speck, the dappled humanoids dwelling at the edges of the land, are intriguingly mysterious and fortunately stay that way. There is a romantic sub-plot involving Epiny and Nevarre’s downtrodden but noble friend Spink to maintain a soap opera-style will-they-won’t-they interest (Nevarre’s love story is of course courtly, refined, sincere and passionless and therefore not very interesting), which is resolved satisfactorily.
Indeed, one of the problems with this volume is that it ends a little too well. Apart from a few minor niggles, all the narrative hooks are resolved - in fact, I can’t help wondering if Hobb originally intended this to be a one-off story, and it can certainly be read that way. Getting the narrative momentum going again in book two is likely to take some time and unless Voyager has employed a more effective editor will probably involve readers getting out the scissors again. Still, there are plenty more potentially interesting places and things to be seen in Hobb’s Victorian fantasyland, so it should be worth the effort.
Victorian Fantasy
Shaman’s Crossing - Robin Hobb - Voyager, 2006
* * * *
Due to the continuing inadequacies of Robin Hobb’s editor, there is some preparation to be done before reading this volume. I’m afraid it involves book mutilation, which is not something I would normally recommend, but trust me, it will really improve your appreciation of it. So, take a pair of scissors or a sharp blade and excise chapters 1-2 and 5-7 (3 and 4 are actually relevant to the plot, so you should probably keep those). This will get rid of most of the first two hundred pages. Once you’ve done that, the book that remains is not bad at all.
It will help if you have an interest in Victorian history, because Gernia, the setting, is essentially nineteenth century midwestern America with added magic and slight twists to the religion and history. Its interior consists largely of prairies inhabited by fierce nomadic plainspeople whom the Gernians are conquering and “civilising”, following a war with the neighbouring state of Landsing which resulted in the loss of their sea ports. The Gernian religion, based as it is around “the good god” and a holy book called “the Writ”, is clearly Victorian Christianity, with the one major difference that the birth order of sons determines the careers that they will take up (daughters, of course, only have one possible career, which is to be a dutiful wife and mother). In keeping with its inspiration, and as usual with fantasies by American authors, Gernia’s history only appears to go back about a hundred years, despite the text stating that the capital city of Old Thares has been occupied for generations.
The viewpoint character, Nevarre, is a classic Dickensian hero in the mould of Nicholas Nickleby or David Copperfield and is therefore pious, moral, conventional, obedient and implausibly asexual for a teenager (like many female writers - J.K. Rowling for instance - Hobb does not fully appreciate just how much boys are bags of hormones at that age). He is the second (soldier) son and is therefore destined to be in the army. After the largely scene-setting and pointless first two hundred pages, the book finally gets going when he is sent by his father to the Cavalla Academy, a sort of military Hogwarts where he will learn to be a cavalry officer. Unfortunately for him, all is not well. For he and his (well-delineated) companions are the sons of a new set of nobles created from soldier sons by the King as a reward for their conquest of the plainspeople, and this has fomented tension with the existing Council of Lords (a nicely logical development from the idea that primogeniture is divinely ordained - it doesn’t take much of a leap to say that social class must be as well). Needless to say the new head of the Cavalla sides with the old blood and has made changes to favour them. Cue much unpleasant hazing, arbitrary and unjust expulsions, rigged examinations and so forth. This plus the nicely detailed and plausible depiction of daily life at the cavalla and the antics of Nevarre’s unconventional female cousin Epiny (injecting an obvious but necessary element of female emancipation) take up most of the book, until an act of moral cowardice comes back to haunt Nevarre and triggers an effective and dramatic climax which for once in a Hobb novel is in the right place, just before the end.
It’s true that the various elements of the story don’t quite mesh into a satisfying whole (the climax relates to only a small part of the bulk of the novel) but nonetheless there’s lots to like about this book. The magic (essentially “natural” Shamanism vs “technological” iron-based magery) follows the same simplistic dualism as the Skill and the Wit in the Assassin books but works well, and the Speck, the dappled humanoids dwelling at the edges of the land, are intriguingly mysterious and fortunately stay that way. There is a romantic sub-plot involving Epiny and Nevarre’s downtrodden but noble friend Spink to maintain a soap opera-style will-they-won’t-they interest (Nevarre’s love story is of course courtly, refined, sincere and passionless and therefore not very interesting), which is resolved satisfactorily.
Indeed, one of the problems with this volume is that it ends a little too well. Apart from a few minor niggles, all the narrative hooks are resolved - in fact, I can’t help wondering if Hobb originally intended this to be a one-off story, and it can certainly be read that way. Getting the narrative momentum going again in book two is likely to take some time and unless Voyager has employed a more effective editor will probably involve readers getting out the scissors again. Still, there are plenty more potentially interesting places and things to be seen in Hobb’s Victorian fantasyland, so it should be worth the effort.