Obtuse

[threemonkeys]

The way the book stuff in this blog works is that I like to find an angle. Once I have that then I can write something. Sometimes it is a proper review but more often it is just a limited comment. The angle usually occurs while I am reading the book rather than afterwards. From time to time I get more than one idea and have to pick one. Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly clever, I manage to incorporate more than one approach - but not often.

In the case of City of Pearl by Karen Traviss I considered looking at how to make an unsympathetic character work in a novel. I thought about how an author can incorporate a political point of view in their work without losing the plot (sorry). I paused briefly on the first contact approach. Then I wondered about the monoculture like nature of hard SF. That was quickly supplanted by comparing the monoculture of the American variety with what comes from authors from elsewhere around the world. That lead to considering the way environmental issues are addressed by sf authors and how that has changed recently. Perhaps most appealing I thought about tomatoes and their connection to the political language of oppressed minorities.

Instead I did this. Read the book.

Comments

[russellk.livejournal.com]

I very much enjoyed City of Pearl. What makes it fascinating is that the main character's beliefs are not those of the author: reading interviews with Traviss makes it clear that she has little sympathy with the political points of view this book (and series) espouses.

I've read the three following books. Together they add about as much as the first book does to the series. Things get spread a little thin, in other words. Still excellent stuff, though, although I thought Matriarch, her latest in the series, was more like a book fragment.

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

Ah interesting. Thanks, that helps tie "unsympathetic" and "political" together - I was wondering.

[littenz.livejournal.com]

I have read the first three books only (I have a friend who thrusts books at me, and he had bought the first three). I too found the lead character unsympathetic to the extent I wanted her to fall flat on her face every other chapter, but found the stories really good and oh so depressing. To a large extent I was pleased to see an inevitable conclusion reached without some deus ex author [very weak Latin skills] saving the day for the wonderful earthlings.

I now must track down other work by Karen Traviss. If she can write something that good about a character I dislike, what can she do with someone I may vaguely like?