bluegargantua (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bluegargantua) wrote2006-11-16 09:40 am
bluegargantua) wrote2006-11-16 09:40 am
Entry tags:
Bad Author! No biscuit!
Hi,
OK, so here's the thing:
It is commonly accepted that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is also expected that most stories will follow that progression. Some stories have flashbacks or flashforwards, but they still generally hold to the above format. Only a very few books completely break down this structure and generally they're doing it to desperately differentiate themselves.
Now, when you read sci-fi/fantasy, you often have the problem where a story is part of a larger narrative arc that spans multiple books. Fair enough, that means that at the end of a book, there will be plot elements left unresolved. And this can be acceptable so long as the book your reading has a story arc that gets resolved. The book gets you up to speed, brings a set problem into focus, and then resolves that problem (which helps advance the larger plot that's going on).
Ordinarily, I'd say that The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld is a very good book. While not quite as far-future, hi-tech, gee whiz as say Neal Asher or Ian Banks, there's still a lot of very fun tech and lots of high adventure. The characters are interesting and the book had no trouble keeping me engaged.
Until the "end", when I realized that it wasn't.
The book not only ends on a cliffhanger, it doesn't resolve anything. Oh, that's not entirely true, the opening problem gets resolved about 50 pages in and there's a mini-thriller at the end that gets spoiled a bit early and then wraps up neatly. But anything that you really care about gets left flapping in the breeze. What's worse is that if the next book in the series clocks in at under 350 pages like this one, it's going to spend about a third of the book regurgitating what happened in the first book (or else it'll compress everything down into 20 pages which makes the first book kinda pointless).
Very, very annoying.
later
Tom
[EDIT: I am informed by my Minister of Sci-Fi Scuttlebutt that this was not a deliberate choice by the author, but something forced upon him by the publisher. If true, my scorn is hereby retracted and retargeted at his publisher, editor and agent, all of whom should've gone "this is crap yo". I still think the story (at least the first half) is pretty good -- but you're committing to buy both of them if you want to pick it up.]
OK, so here's the thing:
It is commonly accepted that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It is also expected that most stories will follow that progression. Some stories have flashbacks or flashforwards, but they still generally hold to the above format. Only a very few books completely break down this structure and generally they're doing it to desperately differentiate themselves.
Now, when you read sci-fi/fantasy, you often have the problem where a story is part of a larger narrative arc that spans multiple books. Fair enough, that means that at the end of a book, there will be plot elements left unresolved. And this can be acceptable so long as the book your reading has a story arc that gets resolved. The book gets you up to speed, brings a set problem into focus, and then resolves that problem (which helps advance the larger plot that's going on).
Ordinarily, I'd say that The Risen Empire by Scott Westerfeld is a very good book. While not quite as far-future, hi-tech, gee whiz as say Neal Asher or Ian Banks, there's still a lot of very fun tech and lots of high adventure. The characters are interesting and the book had no trouble keeping me engaged.
Until the "end", when I realized that it wasn't.
The book not only ends on a cliffhanger, it doesn't resolve anything. Oh, that's not entirely true, the opening problem gets resolved about 50 pages in and there's a mini-thriller at the end that gets spoiled a bit early and then wraps up neatly. But anything that you really care about gets left flapping in the breeze. What's worse is that if the next book in the series clocks in at under 350 pages like this one, it's going to spend about a third of the book regurgitating what happened in the first book (or else it'll compress everything down into 20 pages which makes the first book kinda pointless).
Very, very annoying.
later
Tom
[EDIT: I am informed by my Minister of Sci-Fi Scuttlebutt that this was not a deliberate choice by the author, but something forced upon him by the publisher. If true, my scorn is hereby retracted and retargeted at his publisher, editor and agent, all of whom should've gone "this is crap yo". I still think the story (at least the first half) is pretty good -- but you're committing to buy both of them if you want to pick it up.]
From the author's mouth:
He was pretty damn annoyed by this.
Re: From the author's mouth:
Re: From the author's mouth:
/Sigh
Re: From the author's mouth:
There's an omnibus edition out now that I think restores it to one volume.
Re: From the author's mouth:
What I contend is that publishers and the like should do their homework before hand and avoid eleventh hour shit. I mean isn't that what they are paid to do?
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You are so Aristotle's bitch.
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The Sun goes around the Earth!
Heavier objects fall faster!
Women aren't really people!
"Yeah, I roll with Aristotle and the Philosophers. We be straight up like a Doric column, yo!"
Tom
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*snorfle*
Since I can't figure out a way to memory-tag a comment thread, would you two mind if I repost this as an entry in its own right?
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I don't care.
Tom
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What I can't -- and won't -- forgive is an author wasting two thousand pages across two volumes, resolving nothing across either volume and finishing the latter with a "there's no way he could have survivied that!" ending. For that? Robert Jordan can kiss my scrawny white ass. :)
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Getting back to back to Moby Dick...
Which run-on sentence in The Scarlet Letter were you referring to? The one at the start of The Custom House or the one at the start of The Scarlet Letter proper? Neither seems to me to be especially long run-on sentences.
Also, the Scarlet Letter isn't 100 years before Moby Dick. It's 1 year before:
Scarlet Letter - 1850
Moby Dick - 1851
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Why did I think that Scarlet Letter was older...
I mean that was a typo! Yeah, that's it...
I'm talking about the sentence at the start of Scarlet Letter. From my high school memory, the thing ran to like a page. And I know that I'm probably exaggerating for effect, but at the time I was thinking "Dude! Use a freakin' period!".
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"A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, inter-mixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes."
Maybe because you were smaller, the sentence appeared larger. That's probably it.