Pawn's Dream, Eric S Nylund
Feb. 28th, 2016 05:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethOkay, so, the first thing to say about this book is pretty much all it says on the dude's website is that this was his first book. Started in college. Because he read a book and was like, I can do better than that.
Crit is therefore of very limited usefulness, because mostly you're going to be saying first book reads like a first book.
But there's one aspect that makes me think the actual problem with it was it never went anywhere near a woman at any feedback inducing stage of its existence.
It spoils the big reveal at the end to mention this, but it makes the whole book kind of stinky in retrospect, so, you know,
The whole book ends up being a setup for a big climactic scene where he uses magic to forcibly abort his girlfriend's pregnancy.
It turns out that she was using him for his super potent seed in order to make herself super magical. So he has her shot and then ends the pregnancy. And a woman who exists solely in this scene thanks him for his sacrifice.
The girlfriend doesn't get to say anything, because shot. It was never established that she was going to use the power for evil, just that it made her powerful. And the whole thing turns out to not be her idea, but some kind of scheme of her uncles.
But the big hero moment at the end of the book is to force an abortion on a woman, and really, that is so much of a huge problem the rest of the book is retroactively one big problem.
I liked the setup, the characters were... adequate, but the big moment at the end where he 'saves' the world is a really big problem.
And everything in the book is there just to set up this moment where he 'has to' do the thing.
Except, actually? The biggest plot hole in the book is also that one moment.
So the setup, the thing on the back of the book, is that this guy in a dead end job is living two lives, because he has serial dreams in a whole other world. And the other world turns out to be real. And also there's magic and so forth. Magic which can only be done by people who live in both worlds like that, because it sets up a polarity. Duality is a big deal. Which is the first problem, because there is no opposites in most of these opposites, but whatever. The big thing though that kind of breaks the ending is that it is amply established that things that happen to you physically in one world are irrelevant to you physically in the other. Eating in one world doesn't feed the other, getting injured in one world doesn't hurt the other, getting killedin one world doesn't kill the other. Which is especially notable because it's because the guy was killed in the opposite world from the one he got born in. So he got born in only one world.
Logically therefore getting pregnant in one world doesn't mean being pregnant in the other.
Protagonist gets her pregnant in the real world. He assaults her in the dream world. By the logic this book sets up she wouldn't even be pregnant in the dream.
Book is broken.
I mean book is already evil, but book is broken.
The duality thing is there so being pregnant makes her super powerful because now she is two people. So they can remove her power by making her not be pregnant. But, well, if they want her to remain depowered, that... that has some nasty implications. And flip side, it ought to mean that the women of the family are super more powerful than the men, and also spend a lot of time pregnant, if they're into power. There should probably be more women around. But no, because they burn them at the stake if they're pregnant, because otherwise they'd be too powerful.
And this is his justification for just ending the pregnancy while she's injured, because otherwise she'd be killed.
And he's supposed to be the good guy.
Except that burning thing apparently only applies to some women some of the time. Because the other woman in the book... okay there are three and that one woman in that one scene, but one of the women is his mother and she's 'insane' and in hospital sedated most of the book, there's two that get like talking at all ... there's the girlfriend, who turns out to be the femme fatale, and he meets her in the real world. And there's another woman, who turns out to be the good one, and he meets her in the dream world. His dream girl hits things with swords a lot. He heals her a lot. Healing involves killing other people but he's still somehow the good guy. But ANYway, they only very nearly kiss, because she's the good one??? It's messed up.
... that paragraph got away from me. Try again.
The burning thing apparently only applies to some women some of the time, because the other woman in the dream world? She's referred to as 'Grandma'. Because she is someone's grandma. As in she had babies. Or baby, at least.
... she also looks 20 and is conveniently unattached, because this book has issues.
So the internal logic is pretty broken.
But wait, the burning thing only applies when the pregnancy is by two dreamer-mages! That neatens it up!
Okay, but, since it is the being pregnant that gives the extra duality, that boosts her power, that should always apply. Especially since being a dreamer is a dominant trait so she will always be pregnant with a dreamer. Doubling up on that makes a super child, ie the protagonist, who is that much stronger than everyone all the time. But nobody burns him at the stake. Because reasons. They just burn women at the stake for maybe making such a super human. Because reasons.
... there is no angle where this is not both creepy and broken.
After all that it's pretty daft to complain further, but he also skips right past the most interesting part of his setup, the thing where his character is initially two characters with different life experiences, priorities, and moralities. I mean he mentions that in plain words and wonders what will happen next, but what happens next isn't particularly interesting compared to that dilemma. There's never any moment where he's of two minds about something. No payoff.
Plus making your protagonist the most ultra super powerful one is kind of beyond the point when you're already inventing magic. Like, he's a healer/necromancer dealing with the duality of life and death, he's pretty badass already. Why then give him a dozen demons as familiars/allies/power sources? Why give him an ability nobody else alive has? Why make him able to bring whole valleys back to life via dead trees but have him wander around a wasteland being all sad that it remains a wasteland? I mean either his initial feat of magic is too badass for the ruleset or he's being a stupid. His limits and potentials were never clear, so what was the point of all that messing around to make him especially special?
And, also... wow there's so many ways this book doesn't quite work... but also, there's a Disability Doesn't Work Like That moment that involves him being epic stupid. I mean it's magic, so it works however the hell they want, but he accidentally kills one of his hands and has no sensation there anymore. It has gone dead. Because he was careless with death magic. So, okay, symbolic. But going dead on one side doesn't actually impair him in any way. He just sometimes notices it. He isn't any clumsy, he certainly doesn't lose use of his hand, he just can't feel anything yet remains perfectly in control of it. Also? He tells no one, never asks for help, and never tries to fix it. He's like, oop, fucked up, magic hand is dead now, what do? Guess I'll just ignore it!
... I mean I'm not saying there's no human stupid enough to ignore a major health issue, I'm just saying it's an odd trait in a protagonist.
Also I'm fairly sure the dead hand thing was added late in the book, because there's paragraphs later when he's all, phew, not dead, can still move and feel all my limbs! ... Except the dead one!
The writing is... first book. College first book.
So why am I even having to think about if I'm keeping this book?
The setup is far far better than the payoff.
The mechanics of the world is that there's the real world and the world of dreams, where those who remember who they are in the waking world can do big magic. Each mage can sustain about a hundred sleepers, people who exist in the dream world but don't lead a double life as far as they know. Some of those might be people they're in regular contact with in the awake world, who might start remembering their dreams.
... some of them are actually physically born in the dream world and 'dream' in the real world, which screws up the idea of treating it as a mechanic for some really interesting dual layer games.
As does the other weakness of the setup, time. How long are they sleeping and how long awake? Do they have some kind of sleep disorder in one world or the other? Why does nobody in the dream world notice that people who can't be woken 16 hours a day tend to be able to do magic? And what happens in the dream world when they're abruptly woken in the real world? The book starts by explaining that he sleeps like a log except for if there's fire, so okay, he won't sleep through something life threatening, but does that mean he just kind of faints in the dream world? It's never addressed even slightly.
But if I just ignore how he wrote it and go with the setup of every lucid dreamer holding down a world open to like 100 other people, that's got some potential.
Still, this particular book can go in the Away bag.
Crit is therefore of very limited usefulness, because mostly you're going to be saying first book reads like a first book.
But there's one aspect that makes me think the actual problem with it was it never went anywhere near a woman at any feedback inducing stage of its existence.
It spoils the big reveal at the end to mention this, but it makes the whole book kind of stinky in retrospect, so, you know,
The whole book ends up being a setup for a big climactic scene where he uses magic to forcibly abort his girlfriend's pregnancy.
It turns out that she was using him for his super potent seed in order to make herself super magical. So he has her shot and then ends the pregnancy. And a woman who exists solely in this scene thanks him for his sacrifice.
The girlfriend doesn't get to say anything, because shot. It was never established that she was going to use the power for evil, just that it made her powerful. And the whole thing turns out to not be her idea, but some kind of scheme of her uncles.
But the big hero moment at the end of the book is to force an abortion on a woman, and really, that is so much of a huge problem the rest of the book is retroactively one big problem.
I liked the setup, the characters were... adequate, but the big moment at the end where he 'saves' the world is a really big problem.
And everything in the book is there just to set up this moment where he 'has to' do the thing.
Except, actually? The biggest plot hole in the book is also that one moment.
So the setup, the thing on the back of the book, is that this guy in a dead end job is living two lives, because he has serial dreams in a whole other world. And the other world turns out to be real. And also there's magic and so forth. Magic which can only be done by people who live in both worlds like that, because it sets up a polarity. Duality is a big deal. Which is the first problem, because there is no opposites in most of these opposites, but whatever. The big thing though that kind of breaks the ending is that it is amply established that things that happen to you physically in one world are irrelevant to you physically in the other. Eating in one world doesn't feed the other, getting injured in one world doesn't hurt the other, getting killedin one world doesn't kill the other. Which is especially notable because it's because the guy was killed in the opposite world from the one he got born in. So he got born in only one world.
Logically therefore getting pregnant in one world doesn't mean being pregnant in the other.
Protagonist gets her pregnant in the real world. He assaults her in the dream world. By the logic this book sets up she wouldn't even be pregnant in the dream.
Book is broken.
I mean book is already evil, but book is broken.
The duality thing is there so being pregnant makes her super powerful because now she is two people. So they can remove her power by making her not be pregnant. But, well, if they want her to remain depowered, that... that has some nasty implications. And flip side, it ought to mean that the women of the family are super more powerful than the men, and also spend a lot of time pregnant, if they're into power. There should probably be more women around. But no, because they burn them at the stake if they're pregnant, because otherwise they'd be too powerful.
And this is his justification for just ending the pregnancy while she's injured, because otherwise she'd be killed.
And he's supposed to be the good guy.
Except that burning thing apparently only applies to some women some of the time. Because the other woman in the book... okay there are three and that one woman in that one scene, but one of the women is his mother and she's 'insane' and in hospital sedated most of the book, there's two that get like talking at all ... there's the girlfriend, who turns out to be the femme fatale, and he meets her in the real world. And there's another woman, who turns out to be the good one, and he meets her in the dream world. His dream girl hits things with swords a lot. He heals her a lot. Healing involves killing other people but he's still somehow the good guy. But ANYway, they only very nearly kiss, because she's the good one??? It's messed up.
... that paragraph got away from me. Try again.
The burning thing apparently only applies to some women some of the time, because the other woman in the dream world? She's referred to as 'Grandma'. Because she is someone's grandma. As in she had babies. Or baby, at least.
... she also looks 20 and is conveniently unattached, because this book has issues.
So the internal logic is pretty broken.
But wait, the burning thing only applies when the pregnancy is by two dreamer-mages! That neatens it up!
Okay, but, since it is the being pregnant that gives the extra duality, that boosts her power, that should always apply. Especially since being a dreamer is a dominant trait so she will always be pregnant with a dreamer. Doubling up on that makes a super child, ie the protagonist, who is that much stronger than everyone all the time. But nobody burns him at the stake. Because reasons. They just burn women at the stake for maybe making such a super human. Because reasons.
... there is no angle where this is not both creepy and broken.
After all that it's pretty daft to complain further, but he also skips right past the most interesting part of his setup, the thing where his character is initially two characters with different life experiences, priorities, and moralities. I mean he mentions that in plain words and wonders what will happen next, but what happens next isn't particularly interesting compared to that dilemma. There's never any moment where he's of two minds about something. No payoff.
Plus making your protagonist the most ultra super powerful one is kind of beyond the point when you're already inventing magic. Like, he's a healer/necromancer dealing with the duality of life and death, he's pretty badass already. Why then give him a dozen demons as familiars/allies/power sources? Why give him an ability nobody else alive has? Why make him able to bring whole valleys back to life via dead trees but have him wander around a wasteland being all sad that it remains a wasteland? I mean either his initial feat of magic is too badass for the ruleset or he's being a stupid. His limits and potentials were never clear, so what was the point of all that messing around to make him especially special?
And, also... wow there's so many ways this book doesn't quite work... but also, there's a Disability Doesn't Work Like That moment that involves him being epic stupid. I mean it's magic, so it works however the hell they want, but he accidentally kills one of his hands and has no sensation there anymore. It has gone dead. Because he was careless with death magic. So, okay, symbolic. But going dead on one side doesn't actually impair him in any way. He just sometimes notices it. He isn't any clumsy, he certainly doesn't lose use of his hand, he just can't feel anything yet remains perfectly in control of it. Also? He tells no one, never asks for help, and never tries to fix it. He's like, oop, fucked up, magic hand is dead now, what do? Guess I'll just ignore it!
... I mean I'm not saying there's no human stupid enough to ignore a major health issue, I'm just saying it's an odd trait in a protagonist.
Also I'm fairly sure the dead hand thing was added late in the book, because there's paragraphs later when he's all, phew, not dead, can still move and feel all my limbs! ... Except the dead one!
The writing is... first book. College first book.
So why am I even having to think about if I'm keeping this book?
The setup is far far better than the payoff.
The mechanics of the world is that there's the real world and the world of dreams, where those who remember who they are in the waking world can do big magic. Each mage can sustain about a hundred sleepers, people who exist in the dream world but don't lead a double life as far as they know. Some of those might be people they're in regular contact with in the awake world, who might start remembering their dreams.
... some of them are actually physically born in the dream world and 'dream' in the real world, which screws up the idea of treating it as a mechanic for some really interesting dual layer games.
As does the other weakness of the setup, time. How long are they sleeping and how long awake? Do they have some kind of sleep disorder in one world or the other? Why does nobody in the dream world notice that people who can't be woken 16 hours a day tend to be able to do magic? And what happens in the dream world when they're abruptly woken in the real world? The book starts by explaining that he sleeps like a log except for if there's fire, so okay, he won't sleep through something life threatening, but does that mean he just kind of faints in the dream world? It's never addressed even slightly.
But if I just ignore how he wrote it and go with the setup of every lucid dreamer holding down a world open to like 100 other people, that's got some potential.
Still, this particular book can go in the Away bag.