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beccaelizabethI just finished reading the third Riftwar book by Raymond E Feist. Magician, Silverthorn, A Darkness at Sethanon. I've been reading them since I finished the Feist & Wurts Empire trilogy, and it has been a real slog. Stuff happens, and happens, and happens. I'm sure it made a very challenging D&D campaign, but it's a repeatedly unsatisfying book.
The Empire books introduced characters with character flaws tied to their intricately realised culture, and then worked through their problems so the personal was political and they revised their entire society as they became enlightened themselves. It starts with her attempting to enter religious service, continues through a greater understanding of the temples, and ends with her guiding her son in the highest religious office in the land. It's a coherent and character driven mission.
And it makes these, earlier, three all the more frustrating in comparison.
It's a series of encounters building up to a big giant fight where as far as I can see the good guys lost and then survived anyway. The ending of the third book is so unclear I can't see at what point the presence of the good guys made any difference. A mysterious magical artefact saved them. Why? It's a mystery. How? It's another mystery. Mysterious artefact is mysterious. And I just... I don't know why he bothered? With characters? They just do stuff and things.
So an example of the frustration: Arutha, who sometimes gets called Arthur, gets handed a sword of faith, to defend the entire world. Also there's a magic stone that ends up with a sword stuck in it. But it's not Arutha's sword, the religiously powered magic one. It's someone else's sword. Arutha's sword, which can face and defeat any magic as long as his faith never wavers, just gets used to poke holes in a bad guy. Wait, where's the quote... it starts with a hammer talisman of the god Ishap, melded with the sword. "That blade now holds the power of hte talisman. It will guard you from all attacks from mystic sources. It will also wound and kill creatures of dark summoning [...] But its power is limited to the strength of will within the man who holds it. Falter in your resolve and you will fall. Remain steadfast and you shall prevail. Always remember that."
Okay, so that's quite a speech. And yeah, it says will, not faith, but the hammer is a religious talisman and it matches the monk who protected a monastery through force of will as a religious duty. If this was designed as a book, it would be a sword of faith, and to successfully wield it would involve a religious realisation or a dedication to a principle held dear by that deity.
What does it do in this book? Poke holes in the bad guy.
It's a D&D campaign, and it's just another fancy magic sword.
It's deeply unsatisfying and I'm tempted to write a better version.
And that's just one of many instances where character just doesn't matter. They don't make choices between two tempting choices of different possible outcome, they just run on rails through a series of battles where they're just trying to stay alive. There's no alternate route through the adventure, and the only excitement is how many of what enemies they can cut down today. Any time something character ish does happen then it doesn't amount to anything substantive. And as for relationships, every single time it's love at first sight, a separation, and then winning the girl at the end - except that one minor character who has love at first sight and tragically loses her to motivate him to fight hard, but has a different girl by the end. They don't relate as people, just as plot coupons. And every girl is beautiful. I mean seriously, every woman is flawless and perfect and beautiful. I'm not sure what they look like, they're just women, so we only see them through how men react to their appearance. It's tedious and annoying. And even women that had character in the first book are all washed out by the third, since they've been won and tucked away in a corner while their men get on with having adventures.
I know it's supposed to be about daring heroism, but nobody ever sits on a wall facing an army of impossible might and takes a moment to think possibly they should leg it. I mean, it's human to take a moment. It's courage to consider it and set that possibility aside. But it's just plain tedious to only stand on that wall and plot how the war will play out and then describe all the dead enemies.
I mean I watched all of Sharpe and he's clearly levelling up in a wargame campaign, but he's always got some personal motive and a story involving people, not just weaponry.
In this Sethanon book there's an exiled general who we meet just hours after he lost his wife. How does that detail play into his subsequent conduct? As far as I can see it doesn't. She dies just so he can stoically ignore her loss. He fights cool, calm, rational, logical, and to the death for his adopted people without mentioning why he bothered adopting them. Apparently because they're there?
His presence in that city is part of a trend that irritates me about REF books - the locals can never sort out their own problems. They're just waiting for protagonists to turn up. So in this case there's a whole city that's democratic and egalitarian and feminist, with women commanding men if they've the talent for it, and yet they're secretly waiting for this one bloke from the kingdom to turn up and lead them, because somehow he's better. New ideas about modern warfare, sort of thing. And I'm sure it didn't intentionally set out to be epically sexist, but it sets up an entire city full of warrior damsels in distress, just waiting for the protagonist males to come rescue them by thinking of things they just weren't bright enough to think of. and I kind of want to stab it. and he did the same thing in Empire when the local Lady only thinks new thoughts because her Kingdom slave boyfriend tells her to. And in both places it starts with a situation with some voting (limited in the Empire, kind of a house of Lords, but with everyone voting in the other place) and fixes it all by putting them into an absolute monarchy where the right kind of king can make everything better. Like, the happy ending for the egalitarian feminist democracy people is the King next door says they can come and be his subjects. Why would they want to be? They just pretty much wiped out their enemies, so they don't need a mountain range between them and harm, and they had a good thing going on, albeit one entirely shaped by war. If they start living by Kingdom rules the women aren't going to get to do anything. And they can forget voting and self determination and elected leadership chosen for competence, the King arbitrarily decides who gets to be boss of which set of vassals / chain of command and we've just seen how that can go really poorly for everyone not a noble. How is it an improvement to have a King?
... I'm getting wound up and there's no point. It's old, it's a cliche partly because of building them, and it likes Kings because that's what you do in fantasy. It sounds like a write up of a D&D campaign and that's fine as far as it goes, even if it does lead to everyone getting levelled up and collecting their reward ladies at the end of every story. And it set out to create a fantasy universe of grand scope and awesome landscapes. But I kind of want to make him collaborate all the time because his weaknesses apparently can be polished away and it makes it frustrating when they aren't.
I still have like half a dozen more of these I could read. Wow is that unappealing right now.
And yet I'm going to keep giving them shelf space because of the context they give for the far superior Empire trilogy.
The Empire books introduced characters with character flaws tied to their intricately realised culture, and then worked through their problems so the personal was political and they revised their entire society as they became enlightened themselves. It starts with her attempting to enter religious service, continues through a greater understanding of the temples, and ends with her guiding her son in the highest religious office in the land. It's a coherent and character driven mission.
And it makes these, earlier, three all the more frustrating in comparison.
It's a series of encounters building up to a big giant fight where as far as I can see the good guys lost and then survived anyway. The ending of the third book is so unclear I can't see at what point the presence of the good guys made any difference. A mysterious magical artefact saved them. Why? It's a mystery. How? It's another mystery. Mysterious artefact is mysterious. And I just... I don't know why he bothered? With characters? They just do stuff and things.
So an example of the frustration: Arutha, who sometimes gets called Arthur, gets handed a sword of faith, to defend the entire world. Also there's a magic stone that ends up with a sword stuck in it. But it's not Arutha's sword, the religiously powered magic one. It's someone else's sword. Arutha's sword, which can face and defeat any magic as long as his faith never wavers, just gets used to poke holes in a bad guy. Wait, where's the quote... it starts with a hammer talisman of the god Ishap, melded with the sword. "That blade now holds the power of hte talisman. It will guard you from all attacks from mystic sources. It will also wound and kill creatures of dark summoning [...] But its power is limited to the strength of will within the man who holds it. Falter in your resolve and you will fall. Remain steadfast and you shall prevail. Always remember that."
Okay, so that's quite a speech. And yeah, it says will, not faith, but the hammer is a religious talisman and it matches the monk who protected a monastery through force of will as a religious duty. If this was designed as a book, it would be a sword of faith, and to successfully wield it would involve a religious realisation or a dedication to a principle held dear by that deity.
What does it do in this book? Poke holes in the bad guy.
It's a D&D campaign, and it's just another fancy magic sword.
It's deeply unsatisfying and I'm tempted to write a better version.
And that's just one of many instances where character just doesn't matter. They don't make choices between two tempting choices of different possible outcome, they just run on rails through a series of battles where they're just trying to stay alive. There's no alternate route through the adventure, and the only excitement is how many of what enemies they can cut down today. Any time something character ish does happen then it doesn't amount to anything substantive. And as for relationships, every single time it's love at first sight, a separation, and then winning the girl at the end - except that one minor character who has love at first sight and tragically loses her to motivate him to fight hard, but has a different girl by the end. They don't relate as people, just as plot coupons. And every girl is beautiful. I mean seriously, every woman is flawless and perfect and beautiful. I'm not sure what they look like, they're just women, so we only see them through how men react to their appearance. It's tedious and annoying. And even women that had character in the first book are all washed out by the third, since they've been won and tucked away in a corner while their men get on with having adventures.
I know it's supposed to be about daring heroism, but nobody ever sits on a wall facing an army of impossible might and takes a moment to think possibly they should leg it. I mean, it's human to take a moment. It's courage to consider it and set that possibility aside. But it's just plain tedious to only stand on that wall and plot how the war will play out and then describe all the dead enemies.
I mean I watched all of Sharpe and he's clearly levelling up in a wargame campaign, but he's always got some personal motive and a story involving people, not just weaponry.
In this Sethanon book there's an exiled general who we meet just hours after he lost his wife. How does that detail play into his subsequent conduct? As far as I can see it doesn't. She dies just so he can stoically ignore her loss. He fights cool, calm, rational, logical, and to the death for his adopted people without mentioning why he bothered adopting them. Apparently because they're there?
His presence in that city is part of a trend that irritates me about REF books - the locals can never sort out their own problems. They're just waiting for protagonists to turn up. So in this case there's a whole city that's democratic and egalitarian and feminist, with women commanding men if they've the talent for it, and yet they're secretly waiting for this one bloke from the kingdom to turn up and lead them, because somehow he's better. New ideas about modern warfare, sort of thing. And I'm sure it didn't intentionally set out to be epically sexist, but it sets up an entire city full of warrior damsels in distress, just waiting for the protagonist males to come rescue them by thinking of things they just weren't bright enough to think of. and I kind of want to stab it. and he did the same thing in Empire when the local Lady only thinks new thoughts because her Kingdom slave boyfriend tells her to. And in both places it starts with a situation with some voting (limited in the Empire, kind of a house of Lords, but with everyone voting in the other place) and fixes it all by putting them into an absolute monarchy where the right kind of king can make everything better. Like, the happy ending for the egalitarian feminist democracy people is the King next door says they can come and be his subjects. Why would they want to be? They just pretty much wiped out their enemies, so they don't need a mountain range between them and harm, and they had a good thing going on, albeit one entirely shaped by war. If they start living by Kingdom rules the women aren't going to get to do anything. And they can forget voting and self determination and elected leadership chosen for competence, the King arbitrarily decides who gets to be boss of which set of vassals / chain of command and we've just seen how that can go really poorly for everyone not a noble. How is it an improvement to have a King?
... I'm getting wound up and there's no point. It's old, it's a cliche partly because of building them, and it likes Kings because that's what you do in fantasy. It sounds like a write up of a D&D campaign and that's fine as far as it goes, even if it does lead to everyone getting levelled up and collecting their reward ladies at the end of every story. And it set out to create a fantasy universe of grand scope and awesome landscapes. But I kind of want to make him collaborate all the time because his weaknesses apparently can be polished away and it makes it frustrating when they aren't.
I still have like half a dozen more of these I could read. Wow is that unappealing right now.
And yet I'm going to keep giving them shelf space because of the context they give for the far superior Empire trilogy.