Microreview [book]: The Tower Broken, book three of the Knife & Tower trilogy by Mazarkis Williams

Williams, Mazarkis. The Tower Broken. Jo Fletcher Books, 2014. Buy starting June 3rd.

The Meat

Trilogies are kind of strange, when you think about it. They’re especially odd creations in light of the need for authors to wow the audience with the first installment. Ideally, installment two should at the very least sustain readers’ interest, and the final installment should blow their minds. In other words, books (or movies) one and three have to do all of the real work, with book one as the attention-grabber and book three as the stunning conclusion complete with melodrama galore. Comparatively little is asked of book two, in order to allow expectations for book three to rise stratospherically high.

Exceptions to this pattern certainly exist, but I’d argue such exceptions thrive precisely because our expectations for the middle installment are much lower than for the first or last installments. The primacy and recency effects also help ensure the middle installment is the most forgettable, but any time it greatly exceeds our low expectations, the middle installment can capture our imaginations the same way a good underdog story is irresistible to most of us. The Empire Strikes Back just feels sooo much better than either A New Hope or Return of the Jedi, to say nothing of the prequel trilogy (another exception to the trilogy pattern, thanks to all the installments being so uniformly unnecessary and, despite being visually magnificent, such poorly told and conceived stories, though here too some can be heard saying Attack of the Clones is ‘better than I expected’). Of course, part of the greatness of The Empire Strikes Back comes retroactively, comparing quite favorably to its sequel, since Return of the Jedi is far from satisfying in most ways.

This is all by way of saying that expectations for The Tower Broken, final installment in Mazarkis Williams’ Tower & Knife trilogy, were quite high despite the slight disappointment of book two. But if Williams’ book two was no Empire Strikes Back, The Tower Broken definitely manages to surpass the underwhelming bar set by the Return of the Jedi model of trilogy conclusions (apologies to those of you out there who are still laboring under the illusion that Return of the Jedi is a great movie).

"Admiral! We have enemy ships in sector 47!" "It's a trap!" The scintillating dialogue is just one of many reasons to find Return of the Jedi pretty silly...

I must confess I was deeply concerned by the direction Williams seemed to be taking her story, partly due to the childhood trauma of having read the Earthsea Trilogy and been quite taken with Ged, only to read Tehanu and find my hero emptied of all that made him heroic, transformed into an old man, depressingly ordinary. Would Williams drop-kick Sarmin, erstwhile pattern mage, down that same dark and hopeless hole into which Le Guin dropped Ged? Fortunately, the answer is ‘not really.’ True, Sarmin must struggle to face the ever-escalating threats assailing his empire without recourse to his own pattern magic, but Williams uses this power vacuum to explore another aspect of his world, namely elemental magic, and the result is impressive indeed. Moreover, about the Empress there had always been a certain promise of greatness, and Williams chooses this apocalyptic crisis as the moment to let Mesema shine. 

All in all, Williams manages to weave all the disparate elements of his story and his world into a very satisfactory conclusion, an effort worthy of the excellent first book and far surpassing the less impressive second installment. Would this reader have been even happier had Sarmin suddenly recovered his pattern-power and whipped up an intuitive solution to the crisis? Yes…but perhaps that’s just the unhealed wound of Ged’s magical emasculation reopening again.

The Math

Baseline assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for making elemental magic kind of awesome (though it all ends in a T.S. Eliot vein, without much of a bang), +1 for developing characters like Mesema into a position of greatness

Penalties: -1 for pulling a Le Guin-like trick on Sarmin (it’s bad, but not Tehanu-bad!)

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10   Which, as a score here at Nerds of a Feather, is 'a bit of all right', as my Australian friends say!

This review brought to you by Zhaoyun, sf/f book and movie aficionado and main cast member of Nerds of a Feather since early 2013. 

Microreview [book]: Knife-Sworn, book two of the Tower and Knife trilogy, by Mazarkis Williams

Williams, Mazarkis. Knife-Sworn. Jo Fletcher Books, 2012

Buy

The Meat

Let's talk about the sequel paradox. What is the sequel paradox, you might ask? It's the catch-22 at the heart of the entire enterprise of sequel-writing. Requirement one of the sequel paradox is that any sequel must be similar to, in the sense of being logically consistent with, the original. If, for example, we have a long-suffering, mostly ordinary protagonist in book (or movie, or whatever) one but in book two the same protagonist is suddenly a lasers-from-the-eyes kind of ubermensch, that will certainly jar the audience, as the basic premise of the original has been violated, as have our expectations—this is true, incidentally, even if the radically new framework is great.

But requirement two of the sequel paradox is that any sequel must be noticeably distinct, thematically and otherwise, from the original. This is necessary mostly for artistic reasons, but also partly just to avoid the charge of unoriginality or "cashing in" on an earlier book's success by releasing the same story rehashed. I almost hesitate to give specific examples, because the evaluation of books or any other kind of popular culture product is so subjective that someone out there is bound to be incredulous/apoplectic with fury that I would dare to mention _____ as an example of a cash-in, but I'll take the plunge anyway (sorry, Molly!). I think Ender's Shadow is the go-to example of a book that fails to fulfill requirement two; it is a 're-telling' of Card's original Ender's Game, and despite its frilly accoutrements, I felt nothing significant had been added—no new story had been told. This sort of rehashing is utterly unlike the reimagining of, say, the Battlestar Galactica world, which was so radically unlike the original that fans (in the entire world, are there seriously more than like five living fans of the unimpressive original series?) complained it was too different. Starbuck and Boomer are women? Whaaat? (But of course, it was awesome; if you don't believe me, go watch the dreary, formulaic original series.)

Obviously, the two requirements are not exactly in harmony with each other, and consequently, you'll probably agree that only rarely do sequels manage to equal—and by definition can almost never surpass—the original work. Books two thru six of the Harry Potter series are examples of sequels that manage, to a greater or lesser extent depending on a variety of factors (personal taste, mostly), to fulfill both requirements. They are all very similar in framework, etc. to the original, but advance certain aspects of a larger story and represent distinct iterations of the 'schoolyard drama' story.

Now, at last, we can turn to Mazarkis Williams' Knife-Sworn, the sequel to her excellent The Emperor's Knife (I quite agree with Jemmy's assessment of said volume, or if anything think it even better than he did). Does Williams manage to walk the tight-rope between similarity and originality in his sequel? The answer, I would suggest, is a qualified 'not exactly.'

To be sure, many of fans' favorite characters and story elements from book one 'reprise their roles', so to speak, in Knife-Sworn. Sarmin is back, facing an even greater threat, and he enlists the aid of his unlikely ally Grada along with many others. The same 'palace intrigue' web of deceit and shifting alliances reappears to dominate the Emperor's court.

At this point, you're probably expecting me to denounce the book for failing the originality requirement—being too similar to the original, in other words—but if anything, Williams leaned too far the other way. Certain elements present in the first installment of the series, it may be assumed, will be back, or even enhanced, for the sequel. As I mentioned above, Sarmin is back, but in book two he lacks the very quality that so dazzled readers in book one, namely a certain (je ne sais quoi!) pizzazz, that instinctive ability to unravel problems and ravel (this probably isn't a word, but it definitely should be!) solutions with his pattern-magic. What good is a brooding princeling, now emperor, who spends the entire book failing to understand either the threat he faces, o r what to do about it?

The key to the sequel tightrope is not to lean too far in either direction, maintaining balance somewhere in the middle between similarity and originality. Williams, in my view, departed too far from the original depiction of Sarmin, making him a less effective character around which to weave a story.

Lest we end up judging Williams over-harshly, let me say that he did much better, in this sequel, than most authors can hope to, since the vast majority of sequels are markedly worse than the first volumes. And only a tiny handful manage to equal their original effort (as I've mentioned here before, this is due to many factors, first and foremost the simple fact that many authors doubtless 'use up' most of their best ideas in their first books, the ones that establish their reputations and careers, revving their engines so much on book one that they end up slogging through the sequels on empty). So Williams is in the relatively rare second-best category, in my opinion: his sequel is a bit less impressive than his first book, but remains very entertaining indeed, a worthy if not stunning successor to the magic of book one. I confess myself worried about book three, however (to be reviewed here ere long), because of the The Farthest Shore --> Tehanu kind of direction, vis-a-vis Sarmin (equivalent to Ged, more or less) Williams seems to be going. Stay tuned!

The Math

Baseline assessment: 6/10

Bonuses: +1 for making Grada totally awesome

Penalties: -1 for making Sarmin kind of suck

Nerd coefficient: 6/10 "Still enjoyable, but the flaws are hard to ignore"

[You can find out more about our awesome scoring system here.]

This review brought to you by Zhaoyun (that's "Shining Cloud" for all you hoi polloi who don't know me personally/know Mandarin Chinese), sf/f book and movie aficionado and main cast member of Nerds of a Feather since early 2013.   

Summer Reading List: Jemmy

The Nerds of a Feather summer reading extravaganza continues! I know, I know... In this era of whistleblowers, fears of government intrusion on our daily lives, and in an increasingly problematic and stress-filled world, the biggest issue on all of your minds is obviously: What on earth is Jemmy going to read over the summer? It sure has been the foremost thing on my own mind. So I'll put us all at ease with this post. So just what is on Jemmy's reading list? I've either given you 5 books, or 23, depending on how you count...

1. The Tyrant's Law, by Daniel Abraham (Book 3, The Dagger and the Coin). 

I am super excited about reading this book, and continuing with the series. The G and I have thus far had inverse opinions of Books 1 and 2. He loves Book 1, while I am more partial to Book 2. One of the things Abraham does very well with this series is that he shows the simple, childlike quality of evil and depravity... and that he makes horrible atrocities all the more disturbing by recounting them in an almost lighthearted manner, without celebrating its grit, its blood, or its gore. I am really looking forward to this installment of the series!

2-4. The Books of the South: Tales of the Black Company, by Glen Cook (Shadow Games, Dreams of Steel, The Silver Spike).

I have to admit, I am in love with Glen Cook's Black Company. I was introduced to the Black Company relatively recently, and have only worked my way through the Books of the North, the first three novels. Despite the fact that they were written almost 30 years ago, they still feel fresh as a baby's unsoiled bottom. I found it strange, yet heart-warming(?) to find myself knowingly rooting for Evil, and not caring about it... and it feels equally fresh that Cook writes of Good as just as morally complicit and depraved as their arch-enemy... I can't wait to work my way through this as well. And if you are thinking about picking up Glen Cook, it can't hurt that Steven Erikson has described the Black Company as akin to "reading Vietnam War fiction on Peyote."    

5-12. The Culture, Ian M. Banks.

I must have been living under a rock, because I completely missed the fact that Ian M. Banks was terminally ill. So it came as a shock when I learned that he passed away. I think as a proper science fiction fan, the only way I can really celebrate his life is by working my way back through all of his Culture novels. I have already read Consider Phlebas, The Player of Games, The Use of Weapons, and Excession, so I am looking forward to getting through all the rest.     

13. The Emperor's Knife (Tower and Knife Trilogy, Book 1), by Mazarkis Williams.

I actually just received a review copy of this in the mail. I have not heard much about this series, but I am more than a little interested to find out! Expect a review of this book sometime over the summer... 

14-23. Re-read Malazan Book of the Fallen, by Steven Erikson.

I literally blasted through this series a few years ago, reading every book in the span of a few months. Now, with a baby on the way and a lot of sleepless nights ahead of me, I think I'm ready to work my way back through them. I remember thinking that the Malazan Book of the Fallen was equal to, or perhaps even better than, GRRM's A Song of Ice and Fire. I plan on blogging my way through my reread of the Malazan Book of the Fallen, so I look forward to the chance to rekindle my love for the Malaz world, its powerful ideas, and its truly black yet unforgettable humor.