Christopher Paolini, I owe you a coke.

Okay, it's only a couple of days until class start back again and I still haven't talked at all about teaching or what I've been reading.  Let me try and remedy both in one handy post (or ironically considering a lot of what I'm about to say, maybe two) ... "Richard Reads."  

Our story begins: It was a few weeks before Christmas holidays when a couple of kids stopped me in the hall and asked if I'd a) heard that the newest/last book in the Eragon series had come out, and b) if I had read it yet.  The answer to both questions was no, but I was still pretty pleased that they had asked.

the bookitsownself!

I was pleased because as they asked me, I remembered talking about the previous book in the cycle, "Brisingr", with these kids last year.  Clearly they had remembered, and I'm glad that I took the time to chat it up with them about it.  This isn't to suggest that it is really that much of an accomplishment for an English teacher to talk about a book with students, or that it took too much of an effort, seeing as how I love both teaching and fantasy/sci fi stuff, and thus talking with students about fantasy books we are both reading really should be something I do on a regular basis.  But still; neither student is (or has been) in any of my classes, so to have made a connection with them outside of that, well ... it makes me happy.  I'm doing my job.

Teaching in Sweden involves a lot more of what gets called "mentoring" here, and the best way I can think of describing what that means is that over here, being a teacher is a lot more similar to being a camp counselor than it is in North America.  This familiarity and style of interaction is both expected and encouraged by the Swedish system, and for those of us coming from the more 'distanced' approach to teaching in Canada or the States (where in fact such familiarity is kind of discouraged, I think) it takes a while to get used to.  It does make the balance between familiarity and respect a little harder to walk, but I can appreciate a system that encourages and requires a nuanced, often personalized approach to role modelling with the students, even though it requires a little more care and attention when you are deciding how to make that kind of relationship work for months and years, instead of a two-week camp session.  

One of my former students who moved to the States with her family at the end of last year came back to visit, and surprised her class with tales of the differences in attitude and approach by the teachers there: "They treat us like kids!" she said, eyes rolling.  I snickered only a little bit.

Anyway, back to Inheritance.  "No!" I told the kids who had asked me if I had heard and read the tale in question.  "And even though I was kind of annoyed at the last book - as you guys probably remember me saying - I'll definitely give it a read over the holidays, and we can talk about it in January."  And now I have. 

Book the First

So the Eragon series, if you are not aware, is the work of one Christopher Paolini who actually did what many of us merely wanted to do (or only did in the context of creative writing class assignments): he created and wrote his own Lord of the Rings-style saga, starting at the age of fifteen.  For actually accomplishing what I (and probably a lot of others) only tinkered at or dreamed of doing, my hat is off to him.  

Christopher Paolini - 'The Geek Who Could'

Why was I annoyed at his last book - or should I say, especially annoyed?  Well, two reasons.  First off, as happens so often in the fantasy genre, I felt as though the Eragon saga had gotten increasingly bogged down with what many fans seem to love, but has annoyed me more and more as time has gone on: pages upon pages upon pages of expositive "world building".  Yes, Tolkien did it.  But yes, it was annoying even then ... and it remains annoying, even when it is really well written.  

Now, no offense to Chris, and goodness knows I should probably put my money where my mouth is about fiction writing before I start critiquing, but I'm still going to say it: Eragon and its sequels are not terribly well written, and this makes the expositive world building that much worse.  

An example from book two: seriously?  A twelve page segue about the history of the particular dwarves who carved this tunnel that our hero is about to walk down?  What in the name of Jonathan Taylor Thomas, man!  Just walk your hero down the freaking tunnel! 

Book the Second

This was hardly an isolated incident in the series, particularly as the series moved on ... so much so that it led to the second reason for my annoyance: what was supposed to be a trilogy became, out of necessity of length, four books.  Hey, I like spending time in the worlds authors create with the characters they have created (if perhaps not quite as much as some other nerds), but I also like to have things move along and see what turns out in the end.  So when I've waited a couple of years for a book that I'm expecting will bring things to their exciting conclusion, only to find out I'm going to have to wait some more ... well, I get annoyed.  I was annoyed.  Stupid dwarf tunnels in book two, stupid prolonged sword-forging sequence in book three ... too much "it doesn't really contribute to the plot" stuff going on to the point of needing another book!  Argh!  Keep things moving along!

Book the Third (but not the last) of the 'Trilogy' ... grrr

So: why, you might ask (if you can remember all the way back to the title of this post) is it that I owe Christopher Paolini a coke (in the fine tradition of Smithers and Mr. Burns)?  The reason is this ... hailed for various reasons as the fantasy world and book "of the year 2011" by various dedicated and nerdy sources:

A Dance with Dragons ... the long-awaited fifth book in a series that even the non-fantasy nerdy amongst you have probably heard of by now, thanks to HBO: 

... Oh, Game of Thrones.  (Richard shakes his head while dealing with his decidedly mixed feelings).

Being a big nerd, I had heard news of this series for about a year and a half before it actually premiered last April - yes, the buzz has been brewing for a long time.  Yes, we watched the show.  Yes, I mostly enjoyed the show.  But also yes, as I hear accolade upon accolade heaped upon the literary series, I must object.  

prepare yourself, for my verbal winter is coming, dear Ned

There are not too many tv or movie adaptations that I think are superior to their novel originals, but they do exist.  And when I find this to be so, it is usually for the same reasons: in being adapted for the large or small screens, the tales in question are more likely to be a little more 'watered down' and palatable than their dark and nasty originators.  Game of Thrones; Trainspotting; American Psycho; off the top of my head, these are the adaptations that I feel are far better and more enjoyable than their literary progenitors.  And no, it's not as if any of them are particularly soft and cuddly in their 'moving picture' versions, but have you read the original books?!  Eeek. 

 

So right - a lot of the positive press the Game of Thrones series is getting is due to the HBO show.  No, the show would not exist without the books.  But allow me to explain what happened in my brain as I followed the buzz about the HBO program, leading up to it's premier last April:

 

(Inside Richard's brain): "The series is based upon the best selling series of novels by George R. R. Martin ... really?  'R. R. Martin?'  That's seriously unsubtle.  But the books sound familiar ... and a 'best selling fantasy series'?  I can't remember reading them, but there's no way that I haven't.  No 'best selling fantasy series' gets past me.

 

(Later on, Richard and Jennie watch the first few episodes): "Oh yeah!  I remember this story now.  Dark, gritty, plays on the usual genre conventions and expectations to surprise us - seems like good stuff!  But now that I can recall: I read the first book, but quit partway through the second novel, and that was that.  Why did I do that?"

And so this past summer, as A Dance with Dragons came out in print and on the heels of the wildly successful first series of the tv show, I decided to read all of the books, back to back, in a row.  Why was it that I had stopped reading them all those many years ago?  Kids can make some silly choices sometimes.   

Thus I read.  And read.  And as a result, I now have only one question left on my mind - and it isn't why I stopped reading these novels partway through the second book more than a decade go. Instead, my question is: for how many thousands of not-so-greatly written pages would you like to read about people doing truly horrible things to other people, in between long periods of expository world building?  Two thousand pages?  Four thousand?  Five?  If you want to make it to the end of A Dance with Dragons ... well, you've got a few more thousand to go on top of that.  And three more novels to come, theoretically, before this story wraps up to its exciting (?) conclusion. 

Also?  Playing off genre conventions and expectations to surprise your audience with gritty twists and the killing off of main characters is only fresh for the first thousand pages ... by the end of the second thousand, it becomes clear that you've simply established your own pattern and set of conventions from which you aren't going to deviate ... in fact, in keeping with another issue I have with sequels, thanks to your new pattern, your grit is simply going to get grittier, your dark will become darker still, and eventually all of it will become gratuitous to the point of being purely a kind of horrible expositive world building that no longer remotely serves to advance the story as (at least?) it initially did (more on this phenomenon in a subsequent blog post).  

 

Yes, I know, you must build tension and anxiety before you bring resolution ... things are going to get worse before they get better (at least following usual plot conventions) ... but it's become clear that Martin has just locked on to things getting worse, and worse, and worse, and quite frankly by the time I finally finished the fifth book (it began requiring effort to read on after book three) I realized that the series was so bloated with worse (and characters, and subplots, and subcharacters) that I simply did not care any more.  I can't see myself reading any more of the books - if I want to see what new and surprising (read irony here) gritty twists and deaths occur, I'll hit the ol' wiki page and read the summary write up.  Because it's just too much - and I just don't care, and can't be arsed to read about such miserableness.  It's certainly not as if Martin is at all a better writer than Paolini. 

Eragon, while by no means delivering the complex (and deeply convoluted, though kind of involving at first) plot structure of Thrones is thoughtful, and reflects on its action (and violence) with a kind and humane perspective sadly lacking from the writing of Martin.  The overarching plot and plan of Eragon might clearly be adolescent in its conception, but at least the the story is contemplative, and actually asks interesting moral questions, and is kind of sweet.  

 

Conversely, I just don't buy the idea of equating Martin's 'gritty' tale with some sort of desirable 'realism' that some readers do ... I'm reading about magic, and dragons, and people with unintentionally embarrassing names.  Realism is waking up, eating my yoghurt, teaching my classes, talking and laughing with my students.  Realism is not necessarily dark, pessimistic, misogynist, and grim.  Don't use the excuse that such things are any more 'realistic' than compassion or happy endings (or happy anything, of which Thrones has none), nor can these devices be at all novel in their ability to surprise Martin's readers any more.  

A Game of Thrones is just too much of everything that it is, none of which is nice, or compassionate, or sweet.  Sound trite?  Hey, forgive me for wanting anything remotely not dark and horrible to happen through tome after tome after tome of writing.   Speaking of which, Thrones is also likely going to stretch on a book longer than expected ... and while Inheritance followed Brisingr in a reasonably timely manner, the monster manuscript that needed to be split into the already-too-long-by-themselves A Feast For Crows and A Dance with Dragons took far, far longer to come out ... and for far more annoying, expositive world building passages than anything Paolini got hung up on ... and there's still three more books still to bloat.  There are literally several hundred pages in the aforementioned fourth Thrones novel, A Feast for Crows, that could be summarized with this sentence: "She searched fruitlessly for weeks."  And the plot would have suffered absolutely nothing for it.   

Christopher Paolini, the thoughtful conclusion to your saga came out and I hadn't heard a peep about it from any of my sci fi/fantasy sources ... and yes, I regularly check a lot of sci fi and fantasy sources.  Meanwhile, A Game of Thrones became ever longer, slower, bloated, and bogged down in nastiness and all it gets is tons of press ... and reviews that praise its "unmatched scope as a political treatise" in the same vein by which rich crazy people get called "eccentric" instead of just plain old crazy. 

I owe you a coke.  Grit and grim are overrated.  Your story ultimately far more enjoyable to read.  And when I share a coke with you, I won't even wax poetic about the history of the plant it was bottled in, or the lineage of the line workers who toil there, or anything like that. 

Tomorrow I'll see for how many expositive, world-building paragraphs I can talk about my issues with plot development in sequels ... focusing on Eragon, Game of Thrones, and the YA series The Maze Runner which I am working through right now.  And yes, here again Eragon comes out ahead.  Perhaps two cokes then.