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rushthatspeaksThis review is of a book I read on September twelfth.
I picked this up at Myopic Books in Providence, RI, over the weekend, withsovay. It's a very good bookstore-- I also got a copy of Alan Garner's The Stone Book Quartet, which I've wanted for a long time.
This is not a Lee I'd heard of, although it is one of the MagicQuest line of YA reprints from the eighties, and I tend to like those, as they did things like Patricia McKillip's The Throme of the Erril of Sherril and Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Sherwood Ring. Dragon Hoard turns out to be Lee's first novel, and if I had been given a copy without a cover and asked to guess the author, she would not have been in the top twenty-five guesses.
When I think of Tanith Lee, I usually think of lush language, a certain kind of passionate and sometimes perverse sexuality, a way with single images and set-pieces, and occasional lapses into the pointlessly depressing (as opposed to the pointfully depressing, which she also engages in).
Until this book, I had never actually, when considering Tanith Lee, thought the word 'twee'.
Okay, so. I have, I am told, a pretty high cute tolerance; that is, there are many things other people find nauseatingly adorable that I do not find annoying. Usually when I am told that something is cutesy or twee I either don't see it or don't particularly care, and I dislike many things that are apparently over-cute not because of that aspect, but because the cute is used to disguise there being nothing of any substance actually present. I don't cut things any slack because they're cute, I don't particularly like cute, but I also don't mind it and it would not usually occur to me to describe it as either a positive or a negative trait. I think of it as a style choice, most usually an ill-advised one.
There have been a couple of exceptions to this rule. I want the CLAMP manga Wish taken out and shot, because it seems to be intentionally covering terrible metaphysics and brain-breakingly bad logic under a film of it's-so-cute-no-one-will-care. And there's a Bruce Coville novel about unicorns that gave me the feeling of having overdosed on cotton candy, or at any rate on cotton-candy-resembling adjectives.
But this Tanith Lee novel is new to my experience, for just about every sentence in it would be perfectly fine if taken separately. The book has in some ways a rather intelligent style of humor; it's one of those classic-medieval fairylands where everyone goes around pointing out the logical inconsistencies and everyone behaves like a civilized person while going through the motions of the plot, a plot they know perfectly well is completely ridiculous. (In this particular iteration, the evil fairy curses the prince with being turned into a raven for an hour a day, and never knowing when to expect it. He realizes that that is actually useful if you are going on a magical quest and goes off to find a famous dragon hoard: very sensible. Cue the usual romantic and travel complications.)
It might even have been funny if toned down about one hundred and fifty percent. The excerpt on the back was amusing enough to make me buy the book. But every single encounter is a joke in the same style and by the three-quarters mark, I had the distinct feeling that I had now got the hang of it and could, if I wanted to, write the rest of the book accurately myself. I have never experienced anything like it. No single part of the book is incredibly objectionable, but the sum is profoundly and desperately irritating. One wished for a toad that did not have domestic quarrels, a princess whose name was not a comment about her greatest virtue, a dragon who was not at the dentist's. By the end, it was like being nibbled to death by ducks, a simile I shudder to use in relation to this work because in it the ducks would only explain politely to you that they are vegetarians and invite you to tea. What was it Dorothy Parker said? Tonstant Weader fwowed up? I get it. For the first time in my life I understand what she was driving at.
I am not saying that this is, necessarily, a bad book. It is not stupid. It has a plot that does not entirely do entirely as you expect on page one, though it does do entirely as expected once you understand how the book thinks. It accomplishes, as far as I can tell, exactly and precisely its aims in its existence. Persons with a higher cute tolerance than I have might well enjoy it, and I have no quarrel with them.
In fact, if any of you want it, get in touch with me and I'll mail it to you. I cannot see myself rereading it, and I am very happy that Lee went off in a different and to me at least far more interesting set of directions.
(And if you want a great Tanith Lee YA, my recommendation is Black Unicorn.)
I picked this up at Myopic Books in Providence, RI, over the weekend, with
sovay. It's a very good bookstore-- I also got a copy of Alan Garner's The Stone Book Quartet, which I've wanted for a long time.This is not a Lee I'd heard of, although it is one of the MagicQuest line of YA reprints from the eighties, and I tend to like those, as they did things like Patricia McKillip's The Throme of the Erril of Sherril and Elizabeth Marie Pope's The Sherwood Ring. Dragon Hoard turns out to be Lee's first novel, and if I had been given a copy without a cover and asked to guess the author, she would not have been in the top twenty-five guesses.
When I think of Tanith Lee, I usually think of lush language, a certain kind of passionate and sometimes perverse sexuality, a way with single images and set-pieces, and occasional lapses into the pointlessly depressing (as opposed to the pointfully depressing, which she also engages in).
Until this book, I had never actually, when considering Tanith Lee, thought the word 'twee'.
Okay, so. I have, I am told, a pretty high cute tolerance; that is, there are many things other people find nauseatingly adorable that I do not find annoying. Usually when I am told that something is cutesy or twee I either don't see it or don't particularly care, and I dislike many things that are apparently over-cute not because of that aspect, but because the cute is used to disguise there being nothing of any substance actually present. I don't cut things any slack because they're cute, I don't particularly like cute, but I also don't mind it and it would not usually occur to me to describe it as either a positive or a negative trait. I think of it as a style choice, most usually an ill-advised one.
There have been a couple of exceptions to this rule. I want the CLAMP manga Wish taken out and shot, because it seems to be intentionally covering terrible metaphysics and brain-breakingly bad logic under a film of it's-so-cute-no-one-will-care. And there's a Bruce Coville novel about unicorns that gave me the feeling of having overdosed on cotton candy, or at any rate on cotton-candy-resembling adjectives.
But this Tanith Lee novel is new to my experience, for just about every sentence in it would be perfectly fine if taken separately. The book has in some ways a rather intelligent style of humor; it's one of those classic-medieval fairylands where everyone goes around pointing out the logical inconsistencies and everyone behaves like a civilized person while going through the motions of the plot, a plot they know perfectly well is completely ridiculous. (In this particular iteration, the evil fairy curses the prince with being turned into a raven for an hour a day, and never knowing when to expect it. He realizes that that is actually useful if you are going on a magical quest and goes off to find a famous dragon hoard: very sensible. Cue the usual romantic and travel complications.)
It might even have been funny if toned down about one hundred and fifty percent. The excerpt on the back was amusing enough to make me buy the book. But every single encounter is a joke in the same style and by the three-quarters mark, I had the distinct feeling that I had now got the hang of it and could, if I wanted to, write the rest of the book accurately myself. I have never experienced anything like it. No single part of the book is incredibly objectionable, but the sum is profoundly and desperately irritating. One wished for a toad that did not have domestic quarrels, a princess whose name was not a comment about her greatest virtue, a dragon who was not at the dentist's. By the end, it was like being nibbled to death by ducks, a simile I shudder to use in relation to this work because in it the ducks would only explain politely to you that they are vegetarians and invite you to tea. What was it Dorothy Parker said? Tonstant Weader fwowed up? I get it. For the first time in my life I understand what she was driving at.
I am not saying that this is, necessarily, a bad book. It is not stupid. It has a plot that does not entirely do entirely as you expect on page one, though it does do entirely as expected once you understand how the book thinks. It accomplishes, as far as I can tell, exactly and precisely its aims in its existence. Persons with a higher cute tolerance than I have might well enjoy it, and I have no quarrel with them.
In fact, if any of you want it, get in touch with me and I'll mail it to you. I cannot see myself rereading it, and I am very happy that Lee went off in a different and to me at least far more interesting set of directions.
(And if you want a great Tanith Lee YA, my recommendation is Black Unicorn.)
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 09:58 pm (UTC)I kept Wish around for over a year out of a nagging feeling of CLAMP completist loyalty. Then I realized life was too short and dumped it, with all the Rincewind Discworld books.
Big box of books finally sent your way today, in varying shades of good and suck! (Emphasis on the hooks for hands book.)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-18 12:39 am (UTC)We have a copy of Wish somewhere, but it's stuffed into a Box of Doom with, I believe, the single disc someone gave us at a con of Little Snow Fairy Sugar, and the box is very clearly labeled Never Open Again and also wrapped in a cloth with, I think, zombies on it.
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Date: 2010-09-20 01:20 am (UTC)I would love to read "Dragon Hoard." Your review makes me think it would be very much improved by reading in small doses (whimsy often is.) It might even be a good thing for Stephen to read to me...we're always looking for episodic books that are are engaging without being too scary or complicated.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-20 02:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 12:13 pm (UTC)Magnificent rant.
Oh, that is a good bookstore, if you found The Stone Book Quartet. I so love it.
Nine
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:55 pm (UTC)Fascinating. I had been under the impression The Birthgrave (1975) was her first novel, but it must have been her first novel for adults. And it's instantly recognizable as hers, even if she doesn't come into what I would consider her characteristic style until Don't Bite the Sun (1976) or Night's Master (1978). No wonder I'd never heard of The Dragon Hoard.
By the end, it was like being nibbled to death by ducks, a simile I shudder to use in relation to this work because in it the ducks would only explain politely to you that they are vegetarians and invite you to tea.
Ow.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 03:23 am (UTC)The very first fantasy novel I ever read was a MagicQuest YA novel, "The Seventh Swan." I remember it as a terrifiyingly sad and atmospheric book; it wasn't when I reread it a decade later, but the plot didn't make any sense either, so I can't figure out what I saw in it. The "Seventh Swan" in my imagination is much more amazing than the one in reality. I since picked up "Grimbold's Other World," which has some fantastic moments and fantastic language, and then you realize the entire structure of the book was made of pudding just as you get to the end.