The Vicky Pollard approach to blogging
Dec. 14th, 2006 08:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysI seem to have fallen into a "yes but" mode when recording my reading. Mention the good stuff and then throw in the caveats. It is a structural formula which is OK once in a while but I shouldn't keep doing it every time. So we come to Temeraire by Naomi Novik and I just want to go "yes but" again. The "yes" is big. This book has gained a lot of good reviews and I can see why. It is very engaging. Great characterisation and great page turning writing. It is just rollicking good fun - dragons in the Napoleonic wars what could be better than that.
So where is the down side. The hints of concern for me started with the battle sequences. They just don't work as fighting for winged creatures. What the do work for is fighting between small frigate sized sailing ships. Then the whole deja-vu comes flooding in. This book more than just borrows a bit of setting from the naval story genre, it borrows the whole structural formula. Now that isn't exactly a bad thing - I love those naval sailing ship stories and have read a lot more than you may suppose. Nor do I object to the adding of fantasy elements - quite the contrary. I think I am concerned because these naval stories have a rather limited depth to them. The characters are interesting but never get all that deep even across a span of many books. For example, there is never huge jeopardy for the main characters across any long arc - its all tactical short term fights. The main character is almost always correct to the point of appearing infallible when all around him are making mistakes. These stories becomes very predictable as a result.
I see these same limiting factors in Temeraire. Therefore I see a long line of very readable books which never really go anywhere. OK, so maybe that isn't a problem. Heck I have read enough Stephanie Plum stories to show that it isn't a bad thing at all. I think the problem is that once the realisation hit me fully, there was a bit of a let down because the initial potential seems so great. But I could be wrong - this world could become deeper and less predictable and surprise me. I intend to find out.
So where is the down side. The hints of concern for me started with the battle sequences. They just don't work as fighting for winged creatures. What the do work for is fighting between small frigate sized sailing ships. Then the whole deja-vu comes flooding in. This book more than just borrows a bit of setting from the naval story genre, it borrows the whole structural formula. Now that isn't exactly a bad thing - I love those naval sailing ship stories and have read a lot more than you may suppose. Nor do I object to the adding of fantasy elements - quite the contrary. I think I am concerned because these naval stories have a rather limited depth to them. The characters are interesting but never get all that deep even across a span of many books. For example, there is never huge jeopardy for the main characters across any long arc - its all tactical short term fights. The main character is almost always correct to the point of appearing infallible when all around him are making mistakes. These stories becomes very predictable as a result.
I see these same limiting factors in Temeraire. Therefore I see a long line of very readable books which never really go anywhere. OK, so maybe that isn't a problem. Heck I have read enough Stephanie Plum stories to show that it isn't a bad thing at all. I think the problem is that once the realisation hit me fully, there was a bit of a let down because the initial potential seems so great. But I could be wrong - this world could become deeper and less predictable and surprise me. I intend to find out.