Nifft the Lean, by Michael Shea
Feb. 20th, 2016 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethAccording to the cover this was the winner of the world fantasy award for best novel.
I find that rather depressing.
It's not just that there were so few female characters, it's that there are so few characters at all. Stuff just happens. The camera of the book wanders through grotesque landscapes while things occur. And okay, sometimes Nifft has to throw something with natural 20 accuracy, or actually come up with a plan for a few pages, but it was all so distantly described that I just didn't feel like it was things people were doing, it was just a travelogue that was happening to them, with added violence.
Maybe unfair, but reading this was another multi day slog while I pondered not bothering to finish.
The story is in four sections. In the first there is an undead lady who wants her ex lover dragged down into death like they'd sworn. Also a few female-ish caricatures to enliven the background. In the second there was a vampire queen who was a fair queen as queens go but has to kill someone every year to stay immortal. They extort from her a large amount of money and think they're clever. Think she was the only female in that quarter of the book. In the third there were no women, just a bunch of demons and thralls with female body parts. They got dead a lot after doing grotesque things. And then in the last story there was definitely a woman, a priestess who was leading her whole community around, more vividly described than anyone else in that section... but the reader could clearly see it coming, and the title character did absolutely nothing.
I think maybe the author can only muster up one character at a time? And a bunch of nasty background details.
The back of the book says "Welcome to Shea's 'Inferno'".
If this was trying to be Dante it failed utterly. There's no moral lessons here, because there's no good alternative. Everything is nasty everywhere always.
Plus the Inferno was a series of character portraits, iirc, whilst this is just a series of grotesque deaths and undeaths. There's no sense of cause and effect, no sense of choice or better choices they could have made, so there's no impact.
Nifft takes a turn through the realm of Death, through a swamp with a vampire queen, through the demonic plane below, and through a city that turns out to be claimed by a being from the stars. It goes poorly for humans in all of those places.
And I'm pretty much just bored of it. I mean, if there's no good to attain, there's no clever tricks to get there. Nifft repeatedly gains stupendous amounts of money but we never see what he even wants it for. On that front I miss Master of Whitestorm, which at least made the man make sense, since he wanted to build a safe haven. Nifft just... does difficult things for teh lulz and then runs out of money off screen.
If you want a travel documentary of realms of obscene grotesqueries, this might be a book for you.
If you want to read about people then I don't think it is.
Bored now.
I find that rather depressing.
It's not just that there were so few female characters, it's that there are so few characters at all. Stuff just happens. The camera of the book wanders through grotesque landscapes while things occur. And okay, sometimes Nifft has to throw something with natural 20 accuracy, or actually come up with a plan for a few pages, but it was all so distantly described that I just didn't feel like it was things people were doing, it was just a travelogue that was happening to them, with added violence.
Maybe unfair, but reading this was another multi day slog while I pondered not bothering to finish.
The story is in four sections. In the first there is an undead lady who wants her ex lover dragged down into death like they'd sworn. Also a few female-ish caricatures to enliven the background. In the second there was a vampire queen who was a fair queen as queens go but has to kill someone every year to stay immortal. They extort from her a large amount of money and think they're clever. Think she was the only female in that quarter of the book. In the third there were no women, just a bunch of demons and thralls with female body parts. They got dead a lot after doing grotesque things. And then in the last story there was definitely a woman, a priestess who was leading her whole community around, more vividly described than anyone else in that section... but the reader could clearly see it coming, and the title character did absolutely nothing.
I think maybe the author can only muster up one character at a time? And a bunch of nasty background details.
The back of the book says "Welcome to Shea's 'Inferno'".
If this was trying to be Dante it failed utterly. There's no moral lessons here, because there's no good alternative. Everything is nasty everywhere always.
Plus the Inferno was a series of character portraits, iirc, whilst this is just a series of grotesque deaths and undeaths. There's no sense of cause and effect, no sense of choice or better choices they could have made, so there's no impact.
Nifft takes a turn through the realm of Death, through a swamp with a vampire queen, through the demonic plane below, and through a city that turns out to be claimed by a being from the stars. It goes poorly for humans in all of those places.
And I'm pretty much just bored of it. I mean, if there's no good to attain, there's no clever tricks to get there. Nifft repeatedly gains stupendous amounts of money but we never see what he even wants it for. On that front I miss Master of Whitestorm, which at least made the man make sense, since he wanted to build a safe haven. Nifft just... does difficult things for teh lulz and then runs out of money off screen.
If you want a travel documentary of realms of obscene grotesqueries, this might be a book for you.
If you want to read about people then I don't think it is.
Bored now.