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So, I just finished reading The God Engines, by John Scalzi. Way too much horror and not enough fleshing out for my taste, but he did some interesting things in there too that I want to ramble about.
When I say the book needed more fleshing out, I mean it seriously needed more fleshing out. It's a novella of less than 200 pages, and that meant that a lot of things that really needed to be fleshed out weren't. Part of that was the deliberately limited viewpoint of the main character, since he was in a cult that had been lied to his whole life, but...every part of the book felt like it could have used more fleshing out. Sometimes wanting more is a function of the book being really good! Sometimes wanting more is a function of the book actually needing more to tell it's story right. In this case, I think it was the latter. And the dialogue and narration that felt lifted straight out of the most cliched, ponderous fantasy I have ever read way too often.
Another thing that I'm still working out my feelings on is that this is the second book where Scalzi's refused to gender one of his characters. No attention is drawn to it in the narrative, and I have absolutely no doubt that most people who don't notice that kind of thing will read Shalle as female, especially with the sex scene with the male main character. Theoretically, I really like nongendered characters! I mean, I read them both as preferring not to identify themselves with a gender, whether that's in the modern genderqueer view in Sam's case or in a completely different setting where I got the strong impression that it was part of a culturally defined thing as in Shalle's case, and I enjoyed that part of it.
But the problem is, that isn't what Scalzi wrote. Writing characters who aren't ever tagged with a gender on the page could be the same thing as writing a character who, themselves, don't identify with a gender, but it's not necessarily. The first time he did it, it felt like a clever trick that hopefully made people think a little. The second time, it's starting to feel like a way to try to get praise from the people who notice that kind of thing, while avoiding squicking out the homo- and transphobic asshats of the universe. And that I really don't like. Part of that too I think is that my gut feeling with Shalle is that Shalle's ungenderedness is part of Shalle's role in the ship (which my first reaction to Shalle's introduction was "it's like Amberdrake in space", for everyone else who's read way too much Lackey), and so unlike Sam, not addressing Shalle's gender feels like an absence where there should have been text. Especially at the end, when I started questioning what the role of a rook actually was, since it obviously wasn't Amberdrake in space at that point, and didn't get any answers whatsoever.
So yes! idk where I'm going with this, really, except to sleep after I hit post.
When I say the book needed more fleshing out, I mean it seriously needed more fleshing out. It's a novella of less than 200 pages, and that meant that a lot of things that really needed to be fleshed out weren't. Part of that was the deliberately limited viewpoint of the main character, since he was in a cult that had been lied to his whole life, but...every part of the book felt like it could have used more fleshing out. Sometimes wanting more is a function of the book being really good! Sometimes wanting more is a function of the book actually needing more to tell it's story right. In this case, I think it was the latter. And the dialogue and narration that felt lifted straight out of the most cliched, ponderous fantasy I have ever read way too often.
Another thing that I'm still working out my feelings on is that this is the second book where Scalzi's refused to gender one of his characters. No attention is drawn to it in the narrative, and I have absolutely no doubt that most people who don't notice that kind of thing will read Shalle as female, especially with the sex scene with the male main character. Theoretically, I really like nongendered characters! I mean, I read them both as preferring not to identify themselves with a gender, whether that's in the modern genderqueer view in Sam's case or in a completely different setting where I got the strong impression that it was part of a culturally defined thing as in Shalle's case, and I enjoyed that part of it.
But the problem is, that isn't what Scalzi wrote. Writing characters who aren't ever tagged with a gender on the page could be the same thing as writing a character who, themselves, don't identify with a gender, but it's not necessarily. The first time he did it, it felt like a clever trick that hopefully made people think a little. The second time, it's starting to feel like a way to try to get praise from the people who notice that kind of thing, while avoiding squicking out the homo- and transphobic asshats of the universe. And that I really don't like. Part of that too I think is that my gut feeling with Shalle is that Shalle's ungenderedness is part of Shalle's role in the ship (which my first reaction to Shalle's introduction was "it's like Amberdrake in space", for everyone else who's read way too much Lackey), and so unlike Sam, not addressing Shalle's gender feels like an absence where there should have been text. Especially at the end, when I started questioning what the role of a rook actually was, since it obviously wasn't Amberdrake in space at that point, and didn't get any answers whatsoever.
So yes! idk where I'm going with this, really, except to sleep after I hit post.