Where the Fiction Happens
When I was still living in Puerto Rico, I worked at a call center for GE Money (before the financial crisis almost nuked it from orbit). There was an informal book club on the floor. A handful of employees, shift leads, and supervisors rotating amongst themselves the Dan Brown novels that had been released in paperback at the time. They would read between calls, and could often be heard discussing plot points, or expressing surprise about this or that reveal. Harmless stuff, if perhaps a bit annoying at times. But having read exactly ONE Dan Brown book* and been almost offended at how ubiquitous those books had become, rest assured - I was dead-set on putting a stop to their fun.
Not my finest moment, but there you have it.
So, I approached my own shift lead one day, not so much to ask as to demand a justification for why he would read that type of thing. I didn’t say that, but it was the tone, and whatever reasons he gave me, I was mostly waiting to unleash my own opinion on whether reading more than one Dan Brown book was necessary, how I’d been somewhat baffled that the top mind in the field of “Symbology” (I know, I know. . . he probably meant semiotics) and his partner, who is a CERN scientist couldn’t recognize a prime suspect if he literally stood in front of them, and so on. I did have some strong points, I felt. So my shift lead took it all in, shrugged, and sent me sputtering back to my cubicle with five words:
“That’s when the fiction happens.”
And the thing is: he was absolutely right.
He was also absolutely wrong.
I’m not proposing the world needs more Dan Browns (gods forfend!), but that we should understand how much detail readers need to buy into your premise. This may vary with genre or subgenre. Obviously, thrillers need a fast-paced plot to hook them. Character, description, lyrical or poetic prose aren’t necessarily what readers are looking for in their beach reads. In fact, using those techniques may actively hamper reader engagement.
As one might imagine, I’m not very interested in writing thrillers. However, it’s still important to understand and accept that each genre has its conventions, its rules of thumbs, if you will. Knowing what these conventions are can help understand how to subvert or even breaking those rules.
That’s how my coworker was right. How he was wrong was - well, that’s not how I read, and it’s not how I expect my work to be read, either. He was willing to let a lot slide just to get to the next action set-piece, so if anything didn’t make any sense he didn’t see it as a big deal. For me, tension must feel both plausible and earned, so this is how I write. Sure, big events can push characters into odd situations, but they should react in ways that feel real to who they are and what they want to accomplish (short and long term).
You might think I dislike thrillers as a whole, but I loved reading the newest Crichton. Hell, even King dabbles in the thriller format, and I’ve read a lot of his stuff. It can work! I think it’s an interesting genre of novel to study if you’re looking for any type of commercial success.
And if anyone gives you crap about plot holes, just tell them that’s where the fiction happened.
Review: The West Passage
In Which Karlo Says Many Nice Things About The West Passage by Jared Pechaček
Imagine if Heironymous Bosch had been tasked with populating the vast and sprawling carcass of Gormenghast Castle, and you would be in the right frame of mind for The West Passage.
According to Pechaček, it started with a simple question: “What if there were an epic quest fantasy about someone walking down a hall?” But there’s more to it than that, much more, and it’s by turns charming, horrifying, and uncanny in the way only the best fantasy novels can be. How delightful.
The story opens with the death of the guardian:
“With the guardian dead, the question remained: Who would do it? There was talk among the women of sending to Black Tower for someone, or of the old woman’s apprentice taking over, but he, a pale youth who looked more used to handling books than beasts,. Turned paler when it was mentioned to him, and they would not shame him, nor distress themselves, by speaking of it further. But in the meantime, the West Passage remained unguarded.”
Absent its guardian, the Beast will once again emerge from the West Passage to shatter what order the eldritch and godlike Ladies have forged - which we learn includes the very movement of the seasons. In fact, when Kew - the old guardian's apprentice - notice snow drifting down upon Grey House, he understands it's a sign that the Beast's mere stirring from slumber has already sent cracks running through the foundations of his world. Impatient with the grey womens’ lack of urgency, he sets off to seek an audience with the Lady of the Black Tower. There, he hopes she will grant him the title of new guardian.
Our other protagonist, Pell, is an apprentice to Lady Yarrow of Grey House. As a result of the unseasonable cold, her own mistress suffers a fall and dies, naming Pell her successor. This means that Pell sheds her apprentice name as she assumes not only the name, but also the role of Yarrow.
This mutability of identity is a fascinating thread running throughout the book. Roles and titles can change one's identity - and in fact, much later in the book we learn some may even change one's gender. Even before that point, however, we're given hints that gender may be likewise fluid. Kew meets girls with beards amongst the beekeepers, for instance. On her way to petition the Black Tower for a new guardian, Yarrow (neé Pell) meets one of my favorite characters, Three Peregrine Borealis, Butler Itinerant:
"He was much taller than her, wearing a white hood and close-fitting garment of iridescent green that wrapped his legs and made his breasts and hips bright and prominent. . . "
It's akin to a certain slyness to how a scene will be described, depending on the reader's assumptions, only to throw them a curveball at the end. For example, a cloud of beautiful butterflies descend on the remnants of the sky burial. . . to sip up any traces of blood. A character later on is wary of a chicken that stalks a chamber, which sounds funny - until the chicken lashes its scaly tail. It introduces a playful ambiguity that's a delight to read.
Another thing is how often the narrative is funny. Not in the jokey, winking fashion that's become rather common, and oh so tedious, but in the idiosyncratic ways things are written. For example, when Kew befriends the beekeepers in the Black Tower's outskirts, we find that beehives are merely the heads of some kind of elk-like creature (again, there's that playfulness) that produce honey in a certain way:
". . . She was headed for the tree, where a fat dappled hive was spreading its back legs.
'Bucket bucket bucket bucket," Twenty-Nine was saying as she got behind the hive. She cupped her hands below its rear. 'Bucket bucket bucket.'
'Bucket bucket bucket," came an answer from behind Kew, and he dodged aside just as Thirty ran up with a wooden pail in each hand. 'Bucket bucket bucket.'. . ."
However, for all the funnier and more whimsical parts, there's a running theme about how systems require power; the more rigid their order, the more and more power must be exerted. Until the very ticking wheel of the seasons groans and cracks under its grip. Fealty to Black Tower, with its ancient, intricate customs, is rewarded; even the implication of defiance is punished. So much so that when winter descends upon Grey House out of season, they suspect they've done something to displease Black Tower.
After a mishap on his journey along the West Passage, Kew finds the way forward rough, things crunching underfoot until he finds himself climbing.
". . . Though the road seemed to keep going down, he had left it behind and was walking up a garbage heap. It was as if the residents of Black Tower had been throwing out banquets for year upon year. . ."
This is before he meets the previously-mentioned beekeepers. Once he's within the Black Tower proper, he's forced to lend a hand in the very kitchens that cook the banquets as part of his quest:
". . . Whole chickens were slipped out on trays, basted, and put back in to become crackling and golden. Fish were nestled among onions and lemons and broiled. . . Upon the age-polished surface [of the table] were set he finished dishes, all in fine porcelain or upon gleaming silver. . ."
At last, the time has come to serve the lavish meal. All that's missing is that the Lady give the signal for dinner to be served. However, one of her servants informs the kitchen staff the feast will not be required today. Kestrel, the head cook,
". . . pulled the lever. The table tilted toward the window. All the fabulous dishes slid out, cascading down, down, down into the West Passage. The wind of their going blew back into the kitchen, delicious and sad. Where anything still clung to the table or windowsill, the cooks swept it off. . ."
If these images of consumption to excess bring to mind issues with equitable distribution of resources, if the iron grip Black Tower holds over the turning of the seasons evokes our own climate catastrophe, you're not alone. However, like the best allegories they aren't a simple one-to-one comparison (Pechaček is, after all, an avid pupil of Tolkien). Pell later has her own encounter with the frogs under Blue Tower. Larger than cows, each frog has been tasked with not spawning tadpoles, but all manner of objects Blue Tower is stockpiling in preparation for war:
". . . All around them in the water were huge clusters of jellylike eggs. Except for the size of everything, this was no different from the little frogs in the pools of Grey. Until Yarrow looked more closely, and saw that in each egg was a lamb. . ."
Other eggs contained saplings (complete with a ball of earth cradling their roots), wheelbarrows, and so on. Uncanny but also profoundly sad, the frogs cannot help but sing a lament for their once-simple lives: the warmth of the sun, the flowing of the river, the cycle of birth and life and death and birth again. And for what? To become factories down under the earth, hidden from the sun and the river they so loved. If that resonates, it's only because it's what so many of us do: trade our time among our loved ones in favor of working for others. To allude to the old cliché, when the vultures circle overhead, not one frog will lament not having squeezed out one more wheelbarrow.
I could go on, but this review must come to a close. There's much, much more to love in The West Passage, but if you're still wavering, may I mention: interior illustrations. These include banner images for each chapter head, as well as full-page ones for each "book" (there are eight). Designed to look like something you'd see in an illuminated medieval manuscript, they are refreshingly strange. So, if it wasn't abundantly clear. . . go get it as soon as you can. Oh, and shout out to Steve West, whose narration of the audiobook is excellent.
If you do pick it up (or have done so already) feel free to yell at me on Twitter @kjy1066
One More Thing. . .
Reminder: if you have a pitch for an essay that fits the anticapitalist vision of Seize the Press, send it my way (karlo@seizethepress.com)
Over at Podside Picnic, our limited series, The Chronicles of The Chronicles of Riddick will continue after a brief sojourn to France, in The Visitors (1993). Never figured Jean Reno as a comedy guy, but his portrayal as Count Godefroy de Montmirail is quite funny. There was - as they say - much rejoicing when we recorded our upcoming episode. Sometime in the Fall, J.T. Greathouse (author of The Pact and Pattern series) will return for some more Gene Wolfe! This time, we’ll be reading The Wizard Knight. If you want to follow along with us, feel free to subscribe.
However, if you’re not interested in a monthly commitment, you can purchase some of our more popular individual episodes under Podside’s shop.
And that’s all she wrote!