New author: Ian Irvine

So I've been reading very much of female writers recently - Robin Hobb and Diana Gabaldon, to be exact - and even though they are both truly truly excellent writers, one can get a certain emotional overload... I'll elaborate later :P Anyway, I felt like a change of perspective. That was why I went to the ABC and picked up the gloomiest-looking male-author book I could find. That happened to be Geomancer by Ian Irvine.

As far as fantasy goes, this is very good. In some ways comparable to Tad Williams' Otherland in that sometimes you're not quite sure whether your're reading Fantasy or Sci-Fi (for clarification: I generally don't like pure sci-fi, I tend to find it much too far-fetched, whereas the whole point of fantasy is to be far-fetched). Irvine's world is gloomy, dark, cold and exciting. The pace of the story is good and I actually kind of like that he doesn't delve into the intricacies of HOW the magic actually works. That's why it's magic ;)

He also has none of the childish Edding-style copy-paste of Tolkien. You know: hero starts in a small village, different... ehm... races of people/creatures in different habitats (e.g. horse-people on the plains), through a very convoluted and unfeasible string of events (and/or genealogy) hero ends up as king of the world and all is well.

Now, that is not to say that the plot of Irvine's Well of Echoes series is straightforward. Especially not where the main characters are concerned. And I could wish for the heroine to be a BIT more prudent every now and then, but whatever. Her impulsive recklessness propels the plot and the plot is good so :)

The thing is though, that Irvine's work is rather gory - there's maiming, boiling, blood, rolling heads all over the place. But at the same time it's all a little numb. Which, I guess is a good thing, because if every scene with a little blood was like the the one where the boy cuts off his finger in the Liveship trilogy or like the one by Gabaldon where Claire and Jamie discover the murdered slave girl with the blood still dripping onto the floor then I don't think people like me would not be able to read Irvine's stuff at all. (And I should know, I almost fainted in the tram reading that murdered slave girl scene).

Thing is, I like tempo but at the same time I like to feel some empathy towards the characters and in most cases male writers are not as good as female writers to convey that empathy. Irvine does try, he has some love-interest plotlines in there but... I don't know... they don't "feel real". Then again, since almost all the characters are in pretty much mortal peril almost all of the time, you can't really have all those shades of emotion in there. It just wouldn't make sense.

However, when it comes to main characters, some emotional heartwrenching gutchurning torment wouldn't be amiss. In that sense, I think Irvine quite neglected the possibilities of *SPOILER* when Tiaan broke her back or even deepening the sense of betrayal and hurt when the Aachim turn up with their fleet of constructs. *SPOILER* Those are horrible-horrible things to happen to the main character but they are treated kind of in-stride "ah, yes, and that happened, and she was a bit upset about that" or very one-dimensionally... with endless references to her sense of betrayal-anger-revenge without actually exploring the depth of the feeling. Kind of makes the main character feel rather "teenage" and flat.

Ok, enough about that now. I just thought it was funny how I wanted some rest from the emotional rollercoaster and immediately started missing it.

The Well of Echoes series is very haunting, it gets stuck in your head and doesn't let go. Just like Ender's Game, A Song of Ice and Fire, all of the Robin Hobb series, the prehistoric world of J.M. Auel, Siddharta by Hermann Hesse, Silk by Alessandro Barricco, almost anything by Umberto Eco... listed in no particular order ;)

I feel a bit silly for not getting the first tetralogy by Irvine first but I most definitely will read it after I finish with this one.

Robin Hobb

Am now almost halfway through Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb. Oh the bliss and agony because this means I've read everything by her so far and there's nothing new coming out any time soon.

I like reading (especially fantasy) in English, it just seems the proper language for it. Usually I swallow books: a day or three and I'm done. But with Hobb... Reading Hobb is like reading Dostoyevski: it's heavy and dispiriting but you just CAN'T put it away and keep it away. The characters get so much crap heaped on them that you think: surely, this kind of injustice cannot keep up? And it then it gets worse.

There's nothing better for the soul than wallowing (in other people's) misery. I suppose this is also why I like Battlestar Galactica so much. The ideas that reflect reality so precisely that were it not SF, there would be a serious chance for it to be banned from air. Suicide bombers among the Good Guys, moral and ethical bogmires around Monotheism and religious zeal, seriously flawed characters that you ju can't help but cheer on (Starbuck!) and characters that start out as good but keep sliding and spiralling down the sippery slope of Good Intentions (Roslin) versus characters that start out thoroughly evil but little by little become... almost good (the Sixes). And somewhere along the way you realize that it's the suffering that defines humanity. Without feeling you are not really human. Even if you are. Which is why I'm always puzzled at people with little empathy: don't they realize how much they hurt other people by not feeling? But that is another story and I was writing about Hobb.

In this latest trilogy by Hobb, her focus is different - it is a whole new world, after all. The obsession with body image and what it can do to a person's mind is a very intresting point for me. As well as the confrontation of "progress" and "tradition"... Although, maybe it should be Civilization very similar to the Western world about a hundred years ago and a culture much older and closer to nature. Not primitive, although that is how it is shown from the "Civilized" point of view, much the same as native cultures were a hundred years ago here. We only realized our error when it was all inescapably ruined or corrupted. So this is a study on what it might have been like if one of the native cultures had had real magic. Strong, throbbing and alive.

I don't know yet how the story ends. Is "progress" really inevitable? Change is, undoubtedly. But change is not always for the better. And change in one area always triggers change in another area. This is something that Hobb understands so well.