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[skygiants]

I finished Ann Leckie's The Raven Tower!

As I said on Twitter: massive respect for Ann Leckie's mineral protagonist progression from 'passive-aggressive AI' to 'literally just a very sulky rock.'

I'll admit it took me some time to come round on the sulky rock, but then the rock insisted on being hauled halfway across the continent in a large unwieldy carriage out of sheer bloody-mindedness despite several protestations from annoyed divine friends, and suddenly I loved that rock. We are all what we are.

I also have a slightly more confused respect for her decision to plant her flag firmly on the Horatio/Ophelia rarepeair while vehemently refusing to support all the more common Hamlet ships. Bold choice! Little out of left field, but bold!

As with Ancillary Justice, I found this a slow build and an increasingly rewarding one as it went on. Things that Ann Leckie clearly likes and is good at, in combination with mineral protagonists:
- unusual and somewhat deliberately distancing narration
- non-human entities moved to action by feelings of affection and responsibility towards specific humans
- very long-game revenge plots
- careful plot-relevant linguistic exploration! MY FAVORITE PART


As much as I liked the book overall, I did not find the ending as satisfying as I wanted to. I think part of that is just that I care more about Hamlet than Ann Leckie does. And, I mean, Hypercompetent Trans Horatio is very much a character who's written for me to love, but by 2/3 of the way through the book it's pretty clear that the whole Hamlet side of the plot is just an unstoppable rolling stone set in motion by the Strength and Patience of the Hill, and the ending is very much just that stone landing where it has to, and I kept waiting for Eolo's presence to ... maybe shift the path of the stone a little in the final pages? For the Strength and Patience of the Hill's interest in Eolo to be relevant to the endgame, other than 'Eolo lives', which we know is going to happen anyway because that's what Horatios do. So when that didn't happen, and the ending just thunked itself right into place, it felt slightly anticlimactic to me.

Also, Mawat feels like a Hamlet written by someone who doesn't much like Hamlet-the-character, and I didn't think I was a person who much liked Hamlet until I found myself becoming vaguely indignant on his behalf as I read through the book. No, that's not the right kind of drama queen-ing! Hamlet is more genre-savvy than this!

Comments

[sovay]

I also have a slightly more confused respect for her decision to plant her flag firmly on the Horatio/Ophelia rarepeair while vehemently refusing to support all the more common Hamlet ships. Bold choice! Little out of left field, but bold!

I didn't realize this book was a retelling of Hamlet.

I approve of the rock.

[skygiants]

I definitely knew at one point that was Hamlet, but I'd forgotten until I started reading and our non-rock protagonists were riding into town to confront an uncle about a ruling father's untimely disappearance and then it all came back very fast.

[kate_nepveu]

it is also a retelling of a couple other stories that are generally less well-known to USian audiences! GIANT SPOILERS: https://annleckie.tumblr.com/post/183303749411/three-links-presented-for-no-particular-reason

my most recent feeling about Hamlet are via Ryan North's choose-your-own-adventure version, which also does not like Hamlet much or think he's very genre-savvy, so I did not feel very indignant on his behalf.

[kore]

I read the opening pages of this, but got distracted. I totally want to read it now!

[skygiants]

I found it really hard to focus on for the first couple chapters and then suddenly it all clicked! Just about the time the linguistics started kicking in >.>

[cahn]

I honestly didn't like it much for the opening pages (the first 10-20 pages?) -- try reading the first 50 and see what you think at that point; that was when I bought the book from the bookstore (which I never do; I usually am able to wait and check it out from the library first).

[troisoiseaux]

Frankly, I was won over almost immediately by the general concept of a sulky and extremely stubborn rock as a protagonists, but then it turned out to be a Hamlet adaption ft. "non-human entities moved to action by feelings of affection and responsibility towards specific humans" and linguistics and the urgency of my need to get my hands on this book grew about 10000x!!!!

[skygiants]

AN APPROPRIATE REACTION; this book has for sure the best rock protagonist I've ever read!

[starlady]

Aw, I loved it. I love Hamlet, but I appreciated him being called out for his drama by the narrative in this version. And I appreciated that the sulky rock was actually the book's protagonist the whole time.

[skygiants]

Oh, don't get me wrong, I very much love and support sulky rock protagonist!

(Hamlets are always dramatic and should absolutely be called out for it, but I think the most interesting Hamlets also have ... not just self-doubt about their bizarre situation, but also a weird sense of humor about it? ... which is absolutely not evident in Mawat, and maybe is what I missed the most.)

[conuly]

I'm going to have to object to your view of Breq as "passive-aggressive".

[skygiants]

I mean it as a compliment, but I stand by it, at least in the first book! I first loved Breq for the way in which her narrative is frequently like "I'm perfectly chill, I'm not mad about it" while the other person in the room is like "YOU CLEARLY ARE THOUGH".

[vass]

I agree with much of this, although in fairness does Horatio's presence change the plot of Hamlet?

I do like Hamlet-the-character, and was initially prepared to just go with "well, this is just going to be one of the Hamlet adaptations where I don't care much about him, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead," but I did warm to Mawat a little because of the fucked-up family dynamics and how it was clear that while he's never been great at regulating his emotions, he is also someone whose skill at doing is inversely correlated with proximity to his family (both in time and geographic distance.)

Mainly I was there for the rock.

[kate_nepveu]

yes, it was interesting how my rooting interests shifted over the book, the way it used my expectations about narratives, and also the way Mawat so clearly devolved over the course of the book (alas).

[st_aurafina]

Omg, Mineral Protagonists, omg. Hypercompetent Trans Horatio, I'm dying.

I felt the same about the ending - it did thunk into place like one of those balls in a puzzle box. I loved the journey (and also the literal journey, and how mad the Myriad was at big old rock frand) but the ending fell a little flat for me.

But language! And long games! So good.

[skygiants]

I forgot to say how much I loved the Myriad! Myriad showing up again in full force as ANOTHER giant annoyed rock friend was actually my favorite thing about the ending, despite my complaints.

[rmc28]

I am still laughing at myself because I was UTTERLY GRIPPED by this story all the way through and Spouse and I enthused at each other when we'd both finished it, and I completely failed to notice it was a Hamlet story.

(I twigged to the Hamlet about a week ago after reading a couple of other people's reviews.)

[skygiants]

looool, I cheated, because I'd read somewhere it was Hamlet beforehand and while I had indeed mostly forgotten about that fact when I started the book, I was very primed to remember it again as soon as Hamlet-ish things started happening!

[kate_nepveu]

Becca. Becca, the real crossover here is not Marielda, it's . . .

STEVEN UNIVERSE.

Imagine the mutual uncomprehension at such different ways of being a rock person!

[skygiants]

A CONVERSATION WITH GARNET. Who is perfectly capable of stating untruths, but cannot ask a question or phrase anything that's not a statement!

[asakiyume]

I'm carefully not reading your spoiler cuts, but I love your bullet list of things that Ann loves, and I **agree** My heart skews toward the non-human entities moved to action by feelings of affection, but **they are all good**.

[skygiants]

I'm so glad that Ancillary Justice was so much of a success that Ann Leckie can just do this thing all the time! ALL THE GRUDGINGLY LOYAL ROCK PROTAGONISTS HER HEART DESIRES.

[aria]

Hamlet is more genre-savvy than this!! I absolutely loved that book, but you just put your finger on the thing that bothered me that I couldn't articulate (as well as the thing that bothered me that I already could, which is that Eolo's presence doesn't actually materially change anything). God, what a delight, though. When R&G show up (I cannot for the life of me remember their names in this, heh) and the narration is all "They were sent for" I was just HOWLING; Ann Leckie's Hamlet feelings are not mine but gosh to I respect them.

[skygiants]

Hamlet might be an asshole but you can't say the man has no jokes! Mawat has no jokes. :(

R&G, OMG. Literal twins and everyone so uncomfortable about it!! (I'm real excited for the inevitable "[Raven Tower Rosencrantz whose name I can't remember] and [Raven Tower Guildenstern whose name I also can't remember] Are Dead" fic this Yuletide.)

[ellen_fremedon]

I loved this book, but I twigged that the rock was the sampo/Grótti during the first conversation with the dog god, and that really colored my experience of the rest of it.

[skygiants]

I had no context for the sampo until I went through and was reading people's reactions afterwards, so it was all a surprise to me! I'm curious what changed expectation-spoiler-wise, knowing that was the influence? (I did spend a lot of the book not paying any attention to Mysterious Grinding Noises and completely convinced that Strength and Patience of the Hill had been built into the stones of the tower.)

[cahn]

Heh, I didn't mind at all that Mawat/Hamlet wasn't genre-savvy! I mean, I totally agree he's more thoughtful and genre-savvy in the original, I think I'm just not emotionally invested in it. Whereas I think I am emotionally invested in Horatio, so I would have been really upset if Eolo/Horatio had been messed with the way Mawat/Hamlet's character was. I guess maybe what I'm saying here is that my id pretty much exactly lines up with Ann Leckie's!

Speaking of ids matching up, I did also really like the thudding finality with which everything thunked into place at the end -- I guess I have a weakness for that kind of thing. And I think I have a lot of feelings about SAPotH being quite fond of Eolo but that fondness being a god's fondness, and so extending to saving him and matching him up to Ophelia (I never shipped this before reading this book and now I ship it like burning, well played Leckie) but not to totally using him to wreck everything.

[skygiants]

I do really like how, like, a god-rock feels fondness in the way that a god-rock does, and not in the way that a human does -- Leckie is very good at that and I appreciate it!

I think the thing that I really wanted was for something to come, narratively, of the fact that The Strength and Patience of the Hill was telling this story -- either for there to be something about Eolo that they didn't know or predict and/or couldn't say that impacted the ending, or for the very act of telling the story to change the storyteller in some way. But the narrative thump is definitely very much in line with the genre of story that she's pulling from, so I can't complain too much about it!

[dhampyresa]

the rock insisted on being hauled halfway across the continent in a large unwieldy carriage
Like the Emenese baetylus?

[skygiants]

INDEED VERY MUCH LIKE in a number of respects ....

[alchimie]

I too finished this recently and upon doing so became somewhat indignant on Hamlet/Mawat's behalf -- I would not have said prior to this I had much sympathy for Hamlet, but apparently I do. He's not just being difficult, he has legitimate concerns! He does not assume people are lying to him for absolutely no reason, most of the time they are actually lying to him! And etc.

I agree also about the plot, once I was convinced it was really Hamlet, I wanted it to do something that was not-Hamlet -- for Eolo to shift it, as you said -- not for the plot to just hit all the Hamlet beats with the regularity of a hammer.

The AI/stone had not occured to me before and now I cannot stop laughing.

[skygiants]

It's funny because the common joke about Hamlet is that he takes too long to think about and commit to a course of action, and here's Mawat CONSTANTLY IMPULSIVELY DOING THE WRONG THING ALMOST ALL THE TIME. Like, Hamlet absolutely makes MANY bad decisions, and also he's an extremely strange human no matter who's playing him, but he's also genuinely proactive about figuring out what's going on in a way that ... in this book is mostly displaced onto Eolo, Eolo is the one Going Out and Investigating and Mawat is mostly just having constant histrionics.

[aella_irene]

I started this but didn't enjoy it enough to read it sustainedly, because, I must confess, I wanted to know what Eolo was thinking, and didn't care that much about the rock.

(Also I have Hamlet feels which I need to dispose of via another production, because the one I have seen had a crap Hamlet, but a really good everyone else, and I don't think, from the comments, that I would have enjoyed, say, the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern bits in this.)

Aargh, I wish I could get on better with Ann Leckie.

[skygiants]

It took me a while to start caring about the rock, but, as always, Ann Leckie eventually reeled me in by revealing her calm and serene protagonists to me in their pettiest moments ...

(I don't have, like, a formative Hamlet particularly, but I've seen various Hamlets I've been fond of over the years -- the ones I like best tend to be on the younger side, because I find Hamlet's entire everything way more comprehensible and sympathetic when expressed by a nineteen-year-old.)

[umadoshi]

My gosh, I love your reviews. *^^*

I remembered while reading it that it was adapting/playing on a Shakespeare play, but I know so few of the plays well and couldn't remember which it was. (And then forgot to actually look it up afterwards.) So this was helpful as well as delightful.

[skygiants]

Aw, thank you! :D The Hamlet stuff was pretty easy for me to get, but I had no idea about the sampo or Death and the King's Horseman (a play about which I have heard, but never read or seen) until other people showed up here to talk about it, and now i want to read it to see what else I get from having that context too ...

[asakiyume]

Oh Skygiants, seeing this now, I'm just laughing and laughing. I need to find that tweet of yours and retweet it to my daughter who also read/loved the book.

massive respect for Ann Leckie's mineral protagonist progression from 'passive-aggressive AI' to 'literally just a very sulky rock LOVE IT

And I share your love for plot relevant linguistic exploration!

What you say about the ending--I'm really colored now by what my daughter said: that S&P basically is willing to make this whole country, and all its sundry humans, fall completely apart for its revenge. Which means that it hasn't really grown very far away from its original self-centeredness. It cares, now, about a select few humans. Who are important--tautologically--because it cares about them. But that's it.

I felt sad when my daughter pointed this out to me, because I really had come to love S&P ... but she's right.

I think one thing Eolo's competence coming to naught really shows, in a chilling way, is human lack of power in the face of the actions of gods. Eolo had will, Eolo had agency, Eolo was intelligent and made intelligent decisions--but all of that was Very Small in the face of what S&P had in mind and was able to accomplish.

(so where is that tweet of yours--how can I find it?)

[skygiants]

Yeah, you and your daughter are both absolutely right on this -- the rock has learned to appreciate some humans, perhaps, but that doesn't mean it's either benevolent or compassionate. Strength and patience unfortunately do not encompass these traits. One roots for the rock because one has spent a lot of time with the rock and the long game is satisfying and there is a justice to it, but not compassion.

(ha, I had to use advanced search but I found it! https://twitter.com/ryfkah/status/1120731839776292865?s=20)