The Book Thread

[Mechalich]

Yeah, the initial friend group that I found the Locked Tomb series through was all-in on the marketing, so that was my first experience. Then as I promoted it to others, I realized that it's not really as pulpy as the cover claims, plus those friends didn't immediately respond to that marketing. Then finally, it's mostly on this forum that people have outwardly criticized the marketing or felt that it was a detriment. And as a result it's made me realize just how much the phrase "lesbian necromancers in a haunted gothic space palace!" drives people away or affects their reading experience, and doesn't even describe the parts of the book I like the most.

I happen to think that the marketing was a huge boost to the sales of the trilogy, while at the same time massively undercutting them as literary works (not that I'm a fan of them as such, but I can at least appreciate what Muir was trying to do even though I believe she failed utterly). The the actual audience for The Locked Tomb Trilogy is fans of highly literary dark fantasy, the kind of people who read Tanith Lee, and the problem is that audience is tiny. Someone at Tor.com looked at Gideon the Ninth and realized 'hey let's market this as a combination LGBT+ representational YA romance and a hyper-violent dark fantasy in the vein of Joe Abercrombie or Mark Lawrence' and that person was successful. A lot of people bought Gideon the Ninth based on the strength of the marketing and then dumped it after a chapter or two (the amazon.com review distribution, a with a high proportion of high-ranked extremely negative reviews is typical of this kind of thing). I don't what an accurate one sentence blurb describing Gideon the Ninth might be (maybe 'Misanthropic Necromantic Mystery Box?') but whatever is, it's drastically less appealing than 'lesbian necromancers in space!'

[Mx.Silver]

I happen to think that the marketing was a huge boost to the sales of the trilogy, while at the same time massively undercutting them as literary works (not that I'm a fan of them as such, but I can at least appreciate what Muir was trying to do even though I believe she failed utterly). The the actual audience for The Locked Tomb Trilogy is fans of highly literary dark fantasy, the kind of people who read Tanith Lee, and the problem is that audience is tiny.

Small point: as someone in the 'literary SF' audience, I would not say that Gideon the Ninth is in that wheelhouse. As in just not aimed at that crowd. The sequels may have been different — I wouldn't know — but Gideon simply does not read like something written with that audience in mind.


I agree with your overal point though, for what it's worth. And to be fair I don't think there's a particularly good succinct term for the actual target audience to begin with yet.

[Eldan]

Yeah, comparing Gideon to Tannith Lee is as close to a spit-take as I've come in a long time. It's not a "literary" book at all? Or particularly dark. It has trappings of darkness, but that's more like a coat of paint over a fairly standard fantasy story, which starts as a mystery and then has an action finale. Structurally, I'd almost compare it to a lot of urban fantasy stories.

[Ionathus]

What I'm taking away from this is that I should read Tannith Lee. Anyone have a good suggestion for a jumping-off point?

I see where you're coming from Mechalich, that makes sense to me. Though I'm not sure "loads of people bought the book and then hated it" should ever be the goal of a book's marketing team - even if it's a good sales tactic, I'd be pretty demoralized and upset if I was an author and my series got an intentionally misleading depiction like that.

Then again, it probably wouldn't have taken off and I wouldn't have learned about it if it hadn't gotten at least some of that buzz.

[warty goblin]

What I'm taking away from this is that I should read Tannith Lee. Anyone have a good suggestion for a jumping-off point?

Depends on how dark and inaccessible you feel like going, generally the more abstract Lee's work is, the darker it gets. I really cannot emphasize this enough, Lee's more literary and challenging works contain absolute savage abuse of all kinds, both done to and by the protagonists, often without much on the way of overt textual judgment or retribution. She did not write morality plays, and rather expects you to have the moral imagination to judge for yourself.

I also find describing Lee's work as fantasy or sci-fi is not wrong exactly, but unhelpful. Those descriptors suggest things like quests and adventures and righting wrongs and magic and the importance of friendship. Lee's work is almost entirely focused on character, emotion and aesthetic. There quite often is magic, but it's based much more in tone and feeling than a Sanderson style plot device. If you like to ask why didn't character X use power Y to solve problem Z, you will have a hard time with a lot of Lee because she generally isn't interested in that sort of mechanistic plot. It happens because it it looks and feel correct, even if that look and feel is entirely horrible.

So here's a selection of stuff that might be worth trying. I'm arranging from least dark and difficult to most, and excluding her YA stuff. I'm not saying start at the top, but I'd advise against starting at the bottom.

At the not actually dark end, we have Biting the Sun (a collection of the shorter novels Don't Bit thr Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine) and The Silver Metal Lover. These are sci-fi of a sort, though very much character pieces. I find these both pleasant, The Silver Metal Lover in particular is an exceedingly pleasant romance. The sequel. Metallic Love, is substantially darker in tone, but also a very creative piece of metatext, and I think extremely good.

At the mid level we have her Flat Earth stories, which are (sort of) sword and sorcery works about a primordial time when the Earth was, well, flat. But rather than follow some barbarian adventurer, these are focused on thr various demon lords who dwell beneath the Earth, and the things they do to mortals unlucky enough to attract their attention. These are told in a very arch, Arabian Nights style, and although they contain some really dark stuff they're overall pretty light and fun in a slightly sardonic and somewhat sympathetic way. The first, Night's Master, is almost more of a short story anthology than a novel, and I'd say a very good introduction to Lee overall. Also it had lots of descriptions of how beautiful demon junk is, possibly the most sacrilegious ending imaginable, and a subplot involving a demon having sex with a spider. This is a decent cross section of the sort of stiff that just happens in Lee novels.

At roughly the same level I'd put Cyrion, which is almost a normal sword and sorcery novel. Again, dark stuff happens, but it's also got a lot of fun adventure stuff, has some really witty bits, and it generally isn't too weird.

Also roughly here I'd put her very short novel Electric Forest. This is odd sci-fi, not hideously dark, and with a hell of a payoff.

Also at this tier is Lycanthia: Blood of Wolves, a Gothic werewolf novel. Does some really interesting things with audience and genre expectation. I really loved this one.

Maybe slightly harder, but quite interesting, is Sung in Shadow, which is Lee's take on Romeo and Juliet. This gets weird.

Moving into the actually hard and really dark, there's the Secret Books of Paradys, and the sort of sequel series The Secret Books of Venus. Paradys is sort of Paris (Venus is sort of Venice), and the Books are collections of thematically and chromatically (seriously, they're themed around specific colors) novellas. These are the first books I would say can be really disturbing, and also where the list starts to get much less accessible. That said, I really like the first few Paradys books, the first story in particular is a tonal tour de force. The second time I read it I literally went right back to page 1 and read it again, just to see if I could puzzle a bit more of it out.

Now we start to hit the really weird, the really difficult, and the super dark. I would definitely not start Lee here, see if you enjoy her ornate prose style first, because these are very ornate, and you need to read them very closely.

First up is the Blood Opera sequence. These are contemporary sort of vampire novels. The Gothic levels are pretty much off the charts here, and there's the murder and unpleasant sex that you'd expect. Worth it to soak in the atmosphere, and the utter disdain for 1990s suburbia.

These next two are basically tied. I think they are both masterpieces, but the darkness and difficulty are both maxed our for these.

Blood of Roses is a sort of vampire novel, set in not quite medieval Europe, and is very interested in ideas of religion, inherited trauma, and the fragmentation of the self. Also the first half of the book is sort of told backwards, so you will be maximally confused for the first two hundred pages or so. Then you will be less confused and more disturbed. I read this last year, and it's probably the best thing I read.

The Lionwolf Trilogy (Cast a Bright Shadow, Here in Cold Hell, No Flame But Mine) is sort of the Flat Earth books cranked up to 11. It's fantasy of a type, and mostly about the succession of gods, abusive families, the ending of eras, and maybe even a touch of justice. Also it contains the phrase "divine sexnastics" which is reason enough to read it right there. I really need to reread this one, as I think I'd get a lot more our of it on a second pass.

[Eldan]

Also it had lots of descriptions of how beautiful demon junk is, possibly the most sacrilegious ending imaginable, and a subplot involving a demon having sex with a spider.

Did it ever. I can sort of see on an abstract level why I should like Lee, but Night's Master didn't work for me. I should give her another try. Should probably get something from the really dark and very weird end of the spectrum, I've read too many straightforward and readable books lately.

[Batcathat]

I've also gotten a little interested in Tannith Lee thanks to the thread, previously I barely knew more than the name. I might give it a shot once my current pile of books is finished and I should probably fight my natural instinct to do the opposite of what people tell me and not start at the bottom of goblin's list.

There quite often is magic, but it's based much more in tone and feeling than a Sanderson style plot device. If you like to ask why didn't character X use power Y to solve problem Z, you will have a hard time with a lot of Lee because she generally isn't interested in that sort of mechanistic plot.

This might be a turn-off though, but I suppose it depends on how to interpret it and how well it's executed.

[Eldan]

It's magic of the "demon comes in, does something magical and unpleasant, mortals have to deal with the consequences" variety, at least in Night's Master.

[warty goblin]

Did it ever. I can sort of see on an abstract level why I should like Lee, but Night's Master didn't work for me. I should give her another try. Should probably get something from the really dark and very weird end of the spectrum, I've read too many straightforward and readable books lately.

I find I just don't read Lee in the same way or for the same reasons as pretty much anyone else, if that makes sense. Judged by the standards I'd use for Patricia Briggs or Margaret Weiss or any other author I'd pick up at a bookstore, Lee is generally an abject failure. Her plots are weird and nonsensical, her magic system doesn't have a system so much as an abiding emotion or aesthetic, her characters are often passive to the extreme, her works are often deeply immoral, in some cases bordering on amoral, and she completely refuses to write clearly or simply.

On the other hand nobody else, even authors I respect and enjoy immensely can manipulate and confound and enchant me with prose the way Lee can. I cannot call her works a failure because they succeed in ways that nobody else succeeds, even as they fail tests other authors of nowhere near her talent pass easily.

I mentioned that when I finished Stained With Crimson, the first story in the Secret Books of Paradys, I flipped back to the beginning and reread the whole thing again. This was because I wanted to finally understand the structure of what was going on. Ferling like I needed to do this would generally be a flaw in my eyes, but it earned here. It was both hard enough to require that, and rich enough to reward that, the immediate reread was just as spellbinding as its predecessor.

I've also gotten a little interested in Tannith Lee thanks to the thread, previously I barely knew more than the name. I might give it a shot once my current pile of books is finished and I should probably fight my natural instinct to do the opposite of what people tell me and not start at the bottom of goblin's list.

I mean go for it if you want, I'm certainly never going to tell someone to not read Lee. I'm not being flippant when I say her hard stuff is hard though, and not hard in the way that most long fantasies are, with lots of names and plot threads and 100 billion years of fake history to keep straight. Its hard in that the plots are unusual and unpredictable, which makes them difficult to extract from the prose, which is beautiful but also dense and requires careful parsing. And the plot is not the point, it's simply another layer of metaphor, given life by the metaphors of the prose itself. So you have to hold the prose and it's tone and the plot and its aesthetics in your head, then combine them to create some shimmering beautiful awful castle in the air and interpret that.

At her best, I find this intensely rewarding. But it is immensely harder work than reading standard fantasy, or even most lit fic. Really in some ways its more like poetry. And not modern here's my feelz poetry, hard poetry, the kind you need to read three times to grasp.

This might be a turn-off though, but I suppose it depends on how to interpret it and how well it's executed.

Maybe a better way to think of it is that in this mode the plot isn't really the point. It's another layer of the aesthetic, and so follows aesthetic rules rather than narrative or logical ones. This doesn't mean her plots don't have a certain logic to them, it's just less immediately discernable than figuring pit it was Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Wrench or whatever.

[IthilanorStPete]

Since we're talking about well-written, poetic prose* - has anyone here read the Wolf Hall series, by Hilary Mantel? Have I talked about how much I love those books in this thread before?


* Though not to the level of Tanith Lee, from the sound of it.

[halfeye]

I've also gotten a little interested in Tannith Lee thanks to the thread, previously I barely knew more than the name. I might give it a shot once my current pile of books is finished and I should probably fight my natural instinct to do the opposite of what people tell me and not start at the bottom of goblin's list.



This might be a turn-off though, but I suppose it depends on how to interpret it and how well it's executed.

IMO Lee is odd.

Her early books are pulp fantasy, then she gets all satanic religious, and about then I lost interest, I'm an atheist and don't believe in magic, and in that period she's writing the revenge of the pagans against the Xtians. If she's dropped the religious **** I might think about giving her another try.

By pulp fantasy I mean the Birthgrave trilogy and The Stormlord (probably the sequel Anakire, but I haven't read that).

[Mechalich]

Small point: as someone in the 'literary SF' audience, I would not say that Gideon the Ninth is in that wheelhouse. As in just not aimed at that crowd. The sequels may have been different — I wouldn't know — but Gideon simply does not read like something written with that audience in mind.

Yeah, comparing Gideon to Tannith Lee is as close to a spit-take as I've come in a long time. It's not a "literary" book at all? Or particularly dark. It has trappings of darkness, but that's more like a coat of paint over a fairly standard fantasy story, which starts as a mystery and then has an action finale. Structurally, I'd almost compare it to a lot of urban fantasy stories.

I did say 'failed utterly' didn't I? The Locked Tomb Trilogy desperately wants to be literary. It has pretensions to major themes and deep insights - Harrow the Ninth much more so than Gideon the Ninth admittedly - and while it's not written on the level of someone like Tanith Lee it is trying to hit some big dark epiphany about life, death, and bonding. Now, it's also trying to be a YA action romance, which is pretty much incompatible with the first goal and a big part of why it doesn't work in my mind. The actual works read somewhere closer to Mark Lawrence - to those who actually like the Locked Tomb books, I'd recommend Book of the Ancestor, a series about lesbian super-powered fantasy nuns in an ice age world - but lack the trademark hyperviolence of that kind of grimdark tale.

I see where you're coming from Mechalich, that makes sense to me. Though I'm not sure "loads of people bought the book and then hated it" should ever be the goal of a book's marketing team - even if it's a good sales tactic, I'd be pretty demoralized and upset if I was an author and my series got an intentionally misleading depiction like that.

Well, the goals of the author and the publisher are not the same. The publisher just wants to sell books, however possible, and in this kind of case - a new author on her first real book deal - the publishing house holds all the leverage. Worth keeping in mind is that even the most famous authors in the world don't write the book jacket blurbs on their works and have a long tradition of complaining about it.

[Mx.Silver]

I did say 'failed utterly' didn't I?

You did, I just didn't agree with it. Like, I've read plenty of failed attempts at 'literary SF' and there's enough of a difference in approach that I would not consider Gideon the Ninth to be in that category, especially if there's another category of fiction it fits in, which I think it does¹ (albeit one that probably doesn't have a clear name as of yet, maybe 'alt-pulp' if we want to use something obviously terrible as a placeholder ). To be clear, I'm not saying this as a defence of the book (I don't rate it very well, hence why I've not read the sequels), I just don't think there's enough reason to look at it that way when talking about it as something aimed for a more niche audience being marketted to a more general one (which, again, I do agree with as an assessment).
Yes, a lot of 'literary SF' is making big statements, but so are a lot of things that aren't 'literary SF'. The key factor is the approach to that, and Gideon just is not making that approach. Again, maybe Harrow is different, but I've not read it so I can't comment.

Well, the goals of the author and the publisher are not the same. The publisher just wants to sell books, however possible, and in this kind of case - a new author on her first real book deal - the publishing house holds all the leverage.

Yeah, indeed. tbh, I got the impression this filtered down into the text of the work itself: that there were a lot of points in Gideon that kind of needed another pass in the edits, but hadn't gotten them likely because the publisher felt they could already sell the book as-is.
Although, to be fair, 'book could have used some more passes in the editing' has been a pretty issue in the last decade or so


¹mind you, I'm not saying it's a very good attempt at being that either

[Eldan]

Finished The Forever War over the weekend. Definitely deserves that "Masterworks of SciFi" lable on the cover. It's short and very to the point (for a book about "forever war", there's exactly three fight scenes) and the prose is very functional, almost terse sometimes, but that really works for what the book wants to be. The short, very dry asides make the war all the more brutal. Just comments in the style of "We went out with 50 soldiers. 12 died to space accidents. 16 went psychotic. 8 were lost to enemy action. The other 14 were forcefully re-enlisted" really bring it all across very well. Some of the ideas about (homo-)sexuality read a bit weird today (I'm thinking of the parts about people switching their sexuality), but they must have been pretty groundbreaking and transgressive in the 70s. And the technical worldbuilding is on point. I'm not an engineer, physicist or astronaut, but apart from the obvious "one big change" about wormholes and later on the stasis fields, all the science reads as very believeable. Like the degree to how much warfare is automated, with automatic turrets and drone fleets reacting far too fast for humans even noticing anything is going on when the engagement starts. Special highlight was the first training section in dark space, where command is happy with only half of each platoon dying in a few weeks of training, because space is just that ridiculously dangerous. (They are on a planet that's a handful of Kelvin above absolute zero, in suits that are only a bit below body temperature and covered in radiators. If those radiators touch anything, the ground is probably going to explode from the temperature difference. So, don't stumble while walking over all that frozen hydrogen and rubble, soldier.)

[halfeye]

I don't generally read books these days.

I used to like science fiction, but I read it all (I was at least close to up to date in the '70s), so then I switched to fantasy as a second best.

Of the science fiction authors I really respect Asimov's ability to write simply (which is actually a difficult thing to do). I didn't much like Verne (which may well have been the fault of poor translators). I liked Heinlein until I read the unforgivable "Farnham's Freehold" in the '70s.

[Eldan]

Starting Harrow. Second person narration. Hate it. Hate it so much. Passionately. Incandescently. Pure exalted hate. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS wait wrong book. Hate it, though. I'd rather read a book with no punctuation or written entirely upside down. Let's hope this is just a bad decision in the prologue.

[IthilanorStPete]

Starting Harrow. Second person narration. Hate it. Hate it so much. Passionately. Incandescently. Pure exalted hate. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS wait wrong book. Hate it, though. I'd rather read a book with no punctuation or written entirely upside down. Let's hope this is just a bad decision in the prologue.

It's not, about half the book is second person. At this point, I'd say the series isn't up your alley, no need to spend more time on it.

[LaZodiac]

Starting Harrow. Second person narration. Hate it. Hate it so much. Passionately. Incandescently. Pure exalted hate. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLION MILES OF PRINTED CIRCUITS wait wrong book. Hate it, though. I'd rather read a book with no punctuation or written entirely upside down. Let's hope this is just a bad decision in the prologue.

If it helps it's because

Spoiler: Big Harrow spoilers I suppose

Show

Gideon is narrating all of this from inside Harrow's brain.

[Rynjin]

Second person narration only makes sense when it's supposed to be a literal self-insert. Which primarily means it's only good for shortform fiction.

It's definitely an...interesting choice, given I have literally only ever encountered second person narration in Choose Your Own Adventure-style novels and games, and in "adult" fiction.

[Eldan]

Welp, that book is going straight to the donation box, then. Shame, I liked the first one.

[IthilanorStPete]

Second person narration only makes sense when it's supposed to be a literal self-insert. Which primarily means it's only good for shortform fiction.

It's definitely an...interesting choice, given I have literally only ever encountered second person narration in Choose Your Own Adventure-style novels and games, and in "adult" fiction.

I've seen it used to good effect in a few other places:
- Charlie Stross has used it (at least) twice, in Halting State and Rule 34. In Halting State, it's sort of a shout-old to old school interactive fiction, IIRC, and I didn't think added much. It's more interesting in Rule 34, though, where it's related to an AI whose consciousness is sort of oriented on other people instead of being properly self-aware.
- N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth series used it for a good chunk of the series, I liked it there due to combining the intimacy of first-person with the separate perspective of an (opinionated) narrator.
- Blindsight by Peter Watts uses it for brief passages; it works well because it's integrated textually, with the first-person narrator trying to convey other perspectives to the reader.

[Ionathus]

Welp, that book is going straight to the donation box, then. Shame, I liked the first one.

I’m sorry to hear the narration POV was what killed it for you. Never heard of that being a real annoyance for anyone before, either in HtN or in other 2nd-person works. Would be interested to hear why it bothered you but no obligation.

Thanks for giving the series a try. I always appreciated your updates.

[Dragonus45]

I’m sorry to hear the narration POV was what killed it for you. Never heard of that being a real annoyance for anyone before, either in HtN or in other 2nd-person works. Would be interested to hear why it bothered you but no obligation.

Thanks for giving the series a try. I always appreciated your updates.

I love the series and even I found the 2nd person thing to be a bit of a barrier when I started the book, and the shift in the third is even weirder.

[Mechalich]

I’m sorry to hear the narration POV was what killed it for you. Never heard of that being a real annoyance for anyone before, either in HtN or in other 2nd-person works. Would be interested to hear why it bothered you but no obligation.

2nd Person narration carries with it the inherent implication that you, the reader, are making the choices of the character. This can be extremely difficult to handle in any case where the character is question makes choices that are not obvious, clear, or reasonable. When the text says 'you do something massively stupid, because you're an idiot' - which Harrow the Ninth does more or less constantly, the natural response is 'no, no I do not do that, f*** off!' Lots of people don't find enjoyment in reading a work that literally says 'you suck, dumb**' to them over and over for hundred of pages, any more than they would seek out that experience verbally.

[Ionathus]

2nd Person narration carries with it the inherent implication that you, the reader, are making the choices of the character.

…what? I have literally never heard that claim in any conversation about 2nd person.

This can be extremely difficult to handle in any case where the character is question makes choices that are not obvious, clear, or reasonable. When the text says 'you do something massively stupid, because you're an idiot' - which Harrow the Ninth does more or less constantly, the natural response is 'no, no I do not do that, f*** off!' Lots of people don't find enjoyment in reading a work that literally says 'you suck, dumb**' to them over and over for hundred of pages, any more than they would seek out that experience verbally.

Not liking 2nd person because it feels weird, jarring, or breaks your immersion? Not liking it because you think the writer was bad at it? I can understand that.

Not liking it because you felt obligated to actually take on the POV character and accept the narrative’s judgments as your own makes absolutely no sense to me though. I get that you hated the characters and writing of this series, but that’s very clearly not what most 2nd person writing is meant to do, here or anywhere else.

Junot Díaz‘s “How to Date a Brown Girl…” is a good example of 2nd person and I don’t think that’s meant at all to treat the reader like the spoken-to character — quite the opposite. The blatant specificity of the POV character’s unique upbringing, worldview, and decision-making process makes it obvious that they see the world differently than I do. Even though the word “you” is being used, I feel even more disconnected from the character. Same here with Harrow, IMO. I still get very acquainted with the character, maybe too much, but in a detached way. It’s more like looking at them through a microscope than a VR headset.

TL;DR - 2nd person usually has an alienating effect for me, more than any kind of 1st or 3rd, because the target character is so specifically the audience of the narration that you’re forced to notice that they’re not actually talking to you. So I truly don’t get where you’re taking the “I was supposed to actually feel like Harrow and accept the narrative’s insults as my own” impression from.

[Eldan]

It's just incredibly distracting. Every other sentence where the book says "You hear him say this" or "You do that", my brain responds "No! No I'm not! I'm just reading this!". Makes it neat impossible to focus on what is happening.

[Ionathus]

It's just incredibly distracting. Every other sentence where the book says "You hear him say this" or "You do that", my brain responds "No! No I'm not! I'm just reading this!". Makes it neat impossible to focus on what is happening.

Thanks for the response! Given how you seemed to find Harrow more compelling than Gideon in the first book, I was curious about your thoughts on her POV in this one.

I had some prior experience with 2nd person so it was less, but still somewhat, jarring for me. I was surprised how quickly I adapted to it though and stopped noticing it.

But yeah as StPete said, if you truly hate the style and don’t think that’ll change, there’s no reason to keep going.

[Eldan]

I've tried to read a book or two on the style before, it never worked, yeah.

[Batcathat]

I think second person narration can work if used very sparsely, like a story that mostly seems like third person but at some point it's revealed that it's being told to someone in-universe or something like that, but otherwise I agree that it's annoying.

[Sermil]

On the other hand nobody else, even authors I respect and enjoy immensely can manipulate and confound and enchant me with prose the way Lee can. I cannot call her works a failure because they succeed in ways that nobody else succeeds, even as they fail tests other authors of nowhere near her talent pass easily.

Have you ever read Patricia A. McKillip? Especially her more ... dense books like Winter Rose?