I am trying to read The Bone Season, by Samantha Shannon. I was drawn to it by reviews which made her out to be the next JK Rowling and Tolkein and Phillip Pullman all rolled into one. Quotations like 'Truly extraordinary and thrilling' or 'filled with horrors, wonders and charm' even persuaded me to get it in hardback. What a mistake!
It's rank. And it breaks lots of my rules for good fantasy. So, as the self-appointed fantasy writing police I have to make an arrest and prosecution. Here are my grounds.
First of all, it inhabits an alternative future world which just doesn't hold together well, and which has so many invented elements that it might as well be happening on Planet Zug, or the Deathly Wastelands. It never feels like a real world, it doesn't have the physics and rules of a real world, it doesn't have a landscape that works. It's a Czarina's cottage, a false front, hollow behind, designed to look shiny on the surface but lacking depth and realisation. In particular I don't think that the characters interact well with their world. They seem to be in it but not of it, resident like lodgers, not inhabitants.
Second the characters. Flat, one-dimensional, one-speed. The thing that strikes me most about them is that I can't imagine a life for any of the characters, bar one central one, outside of the pages of the book and the scenes they inhabit. To me that is the test of a good character - could you imagine what they do when they're not in those pages? Okay, not all characters will be like that. We all write ciphers now and then - second guard, evil wizard, selfless friend. But you have to try to avoid that and where possible invest even bit parts with some of the essence of life. Dickens could do it, and I think he achieved it by giving even the smallest of characters something memorable about them, something you then hung on to and recalled. Samantha's characters (I can call you Samantha, can't I?) don't feel like they have that life essence. The litmus test is the dialogue. Her characters speak to advance the action. They don't speak to interact and tell us about themselves, they speak to tell us things we need to know and move the plot on.
Third. Lists of bloody words. I know this isn't one of my Fantasy Rules, but it is now. I hate books with lists of countries or words or terms that we need to learn and get familiar with before we can read. I remember, way back, it was a major stumbling block for me with A Clockwork Orange, and only gradually did I get to feel comfortable with the patois that the characters used between themselves. I hated Game of Thrones for the same reason, and never got past the first fifty pages of the first book (subject for another blog - bad book makes good TV, often. I love GofT on TV). There are 7 Orders of Clairvoyance at the beginning of the book that we have to learn, and of course the book then tests us on them. Why 7, why not 8? Because the author says so. Crap. I can accept a character saying there are 7, they have their world and their limits, but the author? Surely the world is big and wondrous and full of the unknown. Watch Supernatural to see how you can make up rules and then break them all the time as a writer.
Fourth. Plot. I said plot was crucial to good fantasy. And I meant good plot. The plot is thin, ropey, tangential and without substance here. It lurches, it takes leaps, it doesn't build. One of the things I dislike about this book is that it is one paced. It jumps into frenetic and never gets out of it, but never goes higher either. Where are the highs and lows? Don't characters ever do anything ordinary? I hate the idea that in Fantasy writing every character is always slaying, magicking, fighting, rebelling or making speeches. Why can't they just be eating their dinner? Don't elves have dinner? Don't clairvoyants watch the TV for relaxation? If your plot is all at one speed then to me it's not a plot, it's a flatliner.
I could go on. There's lots more I dislike about this book, but it would be unfair to rant much further. Clearly there's an element of jealousy here. Yes, I'm jealous she has got this much attention for this tiny amount of quality writing and story telling. But more than that it depresses me, that this is what is getting hyped. To be fair it's not bad, it's just inadequate.Therefore to see the inadequate praised as the superlative depresses me. Still, if there's hope for Samantha (we're still on first name terms arent' we?), then there's hope for us all.
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