The Scar by
China Mieville
I make no secret of my utter and complete admiration for the author’s previous work – “Perdido Street Station” and consider it possibly the best book I have read in the last couple of years. So as you can imagine, I am somewhat biased in his favour and was looking forward to “The Scar” with more than usual anticipation. However, after 795 pages, my main feeling was of complete disappointment.
First a brief précis. The story revolves around the adventures of a minor character from the previous novel who flees the city of New Crobuzon and gets captured and confined on a huge floating amalgam of ships called the Armada. There is a mysterious quest that she is pressganged into participating in and….errr…that’s about it. So why did I fail to warm to this book?
Firstly, the central character, Bellis Coldwine is hard to engage with. I have read books where the main character is amoral, fatally flawed, downright evil or mad. These can all be overlooked as long as they are
interesting. Bellis Coldwine is a shallow self-obsessed neurotic idiot who could not have been less engaging if she just sat in a corner and sobbed her way through the whole novel. Some of the supporting (but important) characters are interesting enough, for example, Uther Doul, possessor of the Probability Sword, Tanner Sack, the remade man and the wampir Brucolac, but they are often set aside for another bout of Bellis’s navel gazing.
Then there is the pacing of the novel. To me it’s a bit like I’ve heard World War One described – long periods of tedium punctuated by short bursts of action. I suspect that somewhere in the 795 pages there is a much pacier 300 page book that’s been submerged in excess verbiage.
Finally, I don’t like the clumsy artifice of using the scar as a central theme to tie disparate threads of the narrative together. Bellis and Tanner get scarred by their experiences. A giant sea creature is caught and suffers terrible scars. Two more of the central characters called “The Lovers” scar each other in a perversion of genuine love. Even the goal of the epic quest is called “The Scar”. Everyone carries mental or physical scars. So clever, and just so contrived.
This could be the result of an author who has read his own publicity and thinks he can do no wrong. I hope he gets hold of a decent editor, reins in his excesses and produces something approaching the genius of “Perdido Street Station” next time.
The Nameless Day by
Sara Douglass
This is the first book by Sara Douglass I have ever read, but from reading the jacket quotes and having seen some reviews of her work, I have formed an impression that she is generally regarded as being a few notches above run of the mill pulp fantasy.
So it proves. This is the first of a trilogy set in an alternative history. This is a well worn fantasy/science fiction sub-genre and this novel fits into the Mary Gentle “Ash” range of the spectrum rather than say Harry Turtledove. By that I mean, historical events are skewed just slightly rather than radically altered. In this case, medieval Europe is menaced by real and tangible demonic forces as well as the usual wars, famine and the like. Into this setting comes Thomas Neville, a thoroughly nasty (but interesting
) religious bigot and zealot. This first book in a trilogy suffers a bit as do most such first books with a little too much scene setting and character introduction, but there is more than enough meat on the bones of this first course to make me eager to taste the rest of the meal.