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Jun. 3rd, 2010 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI think the best way to describe my mindset for most of Alaya Dawn Johnson's Racing the Dark is 'confused . . . but intrigued!'
Racing the Dark is the first in a trilogy that, I eventually figured out about halfway through the book, is actually dealing with a fantasy apocalypse. (It took me a while to figure this out because the first half of the book spends a lot of time first pretending to be a coming-of-age narrative and then an Immigrants Crushed by the Heartless Big City narrative, which is part of the reason I was confused. If you're writing about an EPIC APOCALYPSE, I feel it is fair to make that clearer early on! People do tend to find those interesting!) The story takes place in a vaguely Pacific Island-based culture that is scattered over several islands, with dense, more industrialized cities in the center islands that think of themselves as culturally advanced by comparison to the villages around the outer edges. The worldbuilding is pretty cool and unique, and the magic system is also interesting and centers on spirit-binding, although, again, I did not actually figure out what was going on until midway through the book, and I am still kind of confused about how exactly the spirit-bindings for the different huge spirits work, but I think maybe I am supposed to be so that's okay.
Protagonist Lana starts out as a thirteen-year-old diver in one of the outer island cultures who is marked for super specialness by finding an extra magic stone on her coming-of-age diving exam. Within the first fifty pages, her whole culture falls apart due to climate change and the book goes through several abrupt genre shifts as Lana becomes, in reasonably rapid succession, an impoverished immigrant girl in the big city, tragically ill, apprenticed to a morally dubious witch, CHASED BY PERSONIFIED DEATH, [KIND OF OUT-OF-THE-BLUE BUT VERY DRAMATIC SPOILER], and [ALSO OUT OF THE BLUE BUT NOT QUITE AS DRAMATIC SPOILER]. (I should note that I was not super impressed by either the prose or the plot when it started out, but both got noticeably more interesting to me as they went along - by the time we got to CHASED BY PERSONIFIED DEATH, I was hooked. I do think the book probably could have used another few rounds of editing for pacing, though.)
Meanwhile, the POV jumps back and forth from Lana, to her mother, to her old teacher who is off having an entirely separate dramatic plotline, to various other random people who intersect with Lana's life and then pretty much disappear again. This did not help with the confusing. Also, almost all the romances in the book are very abrupt and for the most part left me blinking and going "what just happened?" I cannot decide which startled me more - when Lana's tutor takes a break from his tragic suicide mission and proposes to a sailor on a ship after three lines of dialogue, or the guy who falls passionately in love with Lana, attempts surprise makeouts in the middle of the night, freaks out, declares himself unworthy, and then dedicates his life to preaching her gospel. (It helps that Lana appears to be as boggled by this as I am, but all the same.) I mean, neither of these romances really work out . . . . but I feel like I might be expected to take the characters' pain about them a little more seriously than I am capable of.
On the other hand, between the unusual and complicated worldbuilding, the fact that many of the important relationships in the book are between women, and the plot that seems to have now settled into Awesomely Epic, I think I can deal with the abrupt POV changes and the inexplicable romances. And I am very curious to see what happens next!
Racing the Dark is the first in a trilogy that, I eventually figured out about halfway through the book, is actually dealing with a fantasy apocalypse. (It took me a while to figure this out because the first half of the book spends a lot of time first pretending to be a coming-of-age narrative and then an Immigrants Crushed by the Heartless Big City narrative, which is part of the reason I was confused. If you're writing about an EPIC APOCALYPSE, I feel it is fair to make that clearer early on! People do tend to find those interesting!) The story takes place in a vaguely Pacific Island-based culture that is scattered over several islands, with dense, more industrialized cities in the center islands that think of themselves as culturally advanced by comparison to the villages around the outer edges. The worldbuilding is pretty cool and unique, and the magic system is also interesting and centers on spirit-binding, although, again, I did not actually figure out what was going on until midway through the book, and I am still kind of confused about how exactly the spirit-bindings for the different huge spirits work, but I think maybe I am supposed to be so that's okay.
Protagonist Lana starts out as a thirteen-year-old diver in one of the outer island cultures who is marked for super specialness by finding an extra magic stone on her coming-of-age diving exam. Within the first fifty pages, her whole culture falls apart due to climate change and the book goes through several abrupt genre shifts as Lana becomes, in reasonably rapid succession, an impoverished immigrant girl in the big city, tragically ill, apprenticed to a morally dubious witch, CHASED BY PERSONIFIED DEATH, [KIND OF OUT-OF-THE-BLUE BUT VERY DRAMATIC SPOILER], and [ALSO OUT OF THE BLUE BUT NOT QUITE AS DRAMATIC SPOILER]. (I should note that I was not super impressed by either the prose or the plot when it started out, but both got noticeably more interesting to me as they went along - by the time we got to CHASED BY PERSONIFIED DEATH, I was hooked. I do think the book probably could have used another few rounds of editing for pacing, though.)
Meanwhile, the POV jumps back and forth from Lana, to her mother, to her old teacher who is off having an entirely separate dramatic plotline, to various other random people who intersect with Lana's life and then pretty much disappear again. This did not help with the confusing. Also, almost all the romances in the book are very abrupt and for the most part left me blinking and going "what just happened?" I cannot decide which startled me more - when Lana's tutor takes a break from his tragic suicide mission and proposes to a sailor on a ship after three lines of dialogue, or the guy who falls passionately in love with Lana, attempts surprise makeouts in the middle of the night, freaks out, declares himself unworthy, and then dedicates his life to preaching her gospel. (It helps that Lana appears to be as boggled by this as I am, but all the same.) I mean, neither of these romances really work out . . . . but I feel like I might be expected to take the characters' pain about them a little more seriously than I am capable of.
On the other hand, between the unusual and complicated worldbuilding, the fact that many of the important relationships in the book are between women, and the plot that seems to have now settled into Awesomely Epic, I think I can deal with the abrupt POV changes and the inexplicable romances. And I am very curious to see what happens next!
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Date: 2010-06-03 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-03 05:44 pm (UTC)- wait, what did I do?
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Date: 2010-06-04 06:42 pm (UTC)