When good authors go wrong
Jun. 30th, 2005 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pbrayStill very hot here, and forecast is for one day of relief on Saturday followed by more heat. Final week of training for the bike trip, so I'll be testing out the hot weather gear again, and giving thanks to the scientist who invented the technical fabrics.
Last night I went to the mall. Stopped by Waldenbooks, met the new store manager who seemed very personable and enthusiastic. The store is still struggling to get back to the sales level they had before last year's fire in the adjacent store forced them to close for three months for remodeling. Three months is long enough to train your customers to shop elsewhere, and the newly remodeled store suffers from a poorly designed layout. They added two overstuffed leather chairs and a coffee table at the front to make a seating area, but this blocks access to the back half of the store, especially if there are customers waiting in line at the register. The center aisle was widened, but the side aisles are narrow, and end caps make them even more claustrophobic.
Purchased a Batman graphic novel to send to my godson at camp, and picked up the last copy of CURSE THE DARK. Came home and found SCARDOWN had arrived, though for some bizarre reason Amazon.Com had used an enormous box to ship the single paperback.
Watching: Caught pieces of "The Girl in the Cafe" on HBO this weekend, and was inspired to sit down and watch it from start to finish. I liked it, though I couldn't help comparing Bill Nighy's performance as the shy, repressed civil servant to his role as the outrageous aging rocker in "Love Actually." Also watching the series of Lance Armstrong specials that Discovery Channel has churned out in preparation for the start of the Tour.
Reading: Finally finished CAGEBIRD by Karin Lowachee.
I wanted to like this book. I loved her first book WARCHILD. Her second book, BURNDIVE, was less engaging, but that can happen with writers' second novels. Despite my overflowing TBR stack, I respected her talent enough to buy CAGEBIRD and give it a try.
Unfortunately I found much of CAGEBIRD to be competently written, but not gripping. So I looked at it from the perspective of a writer, to identify why the book didn't work for me.
One of the major problems I had was the structure of the book. CAGEBIRD starts off with Yuri in prison for being a pirate, and specifically for his role in the kidnapping/attempted assassination of Ryan Azarcon (BURNDIVE). This is the present tense as it were. But almost immediately we jump back, and start the story of Yuri's childhood. Then we switch back to the present, jump back to Yuri's childhood, and jump back to another short section in the present.
I was at least one-third of the way through the book before I could connect Yuri's "present" to the timeline of the previous two books. I couldn't tell if this story followed immediately after the preceding two books, was some months/years later, or possibly overlapped the earlier books. Since the political situation provides motivation for the conspiracy in which Yuri is involved in CAGEBIRD, this would have been useful information.
Most of the middle of the book is taken up with Yuri's years after he joins Falcone's pirates and is trained by them. This section dragged because there was no jeopardy here. I wasn't reading to find out what happened next, since I already knew that, thanks to the earlier books and the scenes set in Yuri's present. I kept reading, waiting till we finally got back to the present.
When we did, about one quarter of the way from the end, it immediately grabbed my attention. Now, at last, we were moving forward into uncharted waters. Yuri had made a decision to take bold action, and gamble on trusting those who should be his enemies. The action heats up, and I'm hooked, eagerly turning each page, and then--
Yup, you guessed it. We now breakaway for a flashback, showing Yuri's point of view of his initial encounter with Ryan Azarcon and his father. Interesting in a way, but we're rehashing the past. And at this point as the reader I didn't care about what had happened back then. I wanted to know what was happening now with Yuri, who had just blown up his own ship and was drifting in a lifeboat, hoping to be rescued by a man who had once vowed to kill him.
Finally, the last pages of the book take us back to Yuri's predicament, and there is a resolution of a sort.
I can't help feeling that this story would have been improved by telling it in a linear fashion, rather than jumping back and forth in time. If she needed to tell the story of Yuri as a child, then make that the focus of the book. Though in my opinion, starting the book with Yuri in prison was a good starting point, but she needed to keep the story moving forward from there, opening up the action rather than keeping the focus of the story on Yuri's past.
The flaws in this book bother me so much because she is such a talented writer. She's capable of telling great stories, but this wasn't it. I hope that in her next book she moves beyond the set of characters and situations that she's already covered in her first three books, and takes us someplace completely new.
A couple of other technical notes. It is always a bad sign when every scene has to be labeled with the place and calendar date to clue the reader in as to what is going on. The only thing that is worse (IMO) is when the author also has to label the viewpoint character for each scene.
And I winced when I realized that Yuri's friendship with his cellmate Finch was based in large part on the tired trick "He's the only one who understands my pain since I talk in my sleep and reveal things I never would reveal consciously."
Last night I went to the mall. Stopped by Waldenbooks, met the new store manager who seemed very personable and enthusiastic. The store is still struggling to get back to the sales level they had before last year's fire in the adjacent store forced them to close for three months for remodeling. Three months is long enough to train your customers to shop elsewhere, and the newly remodeled store suffers from a poorly designed layout. They added two overstuffed leather chairs and a coffee table at the front to make a seating area, but this blocks access to the back half of the store, especially if there are customers waiting in line at the register. The center aisle was widened, but the side aisles are narrow, and end caps make them even more claustrophobic.
Purchased a Batman graphic novel to send to my godson at camp, and picked up the last copy of CURSE THE DARK. Came home and found SCARDOWN had arrived, though for some bizarre reason Amazon.Com had used an enormous box to ship the single paperback.
Watching: Caught pieces of "The Girl in the Cafe" on HBO this weekend, and was inspired to sit down and watch it from start to finish. I liked it, though I couldn't help comparing Bill Nighy's performance as the shy, repressed civil servant to his role as the outrageous aging rocker in "Love Actually." Also watching the series of Lance Armstrong specials that Discovery Channel has churned out in preparation for the start of the Tour.
Reading: Finally finished CAGEBIRD by Karin Lowachee.
I wanted to like this book. I loved her first book WARCHILD. Her second book, BURNDIVE, was less engaging, but that can happen with writers' second novels. Despite my overflowing TBR stack, I respected her talent enough to buy CAGEBIRD and give it a try.
Unfortunately I found much of CAGEBIRD to be competently written, but not gripping. So I looked at it from the perspective of a writer, to identify why the book didn't work for me.
One of the major problems I had was the structure of the book. CAGEBIRD starts off with Yuri in prison for being a pirate, and specifically for his role in the kidnapping/attempted assassination of Ryan Azarcon (BURNDIVE). This is the present tense as it were. But almost immediately we jump back, and start the story of Yuri's childhood. Then we switch back to the present, jump back to Yuri's childhood, and jump back to another short section in the present.
I was at least one-third of the way through the book before I could connect Yuri's "present" to the timeline of the previous two books. I couldn't tell if this story followed immediately after the preceding two books, was some months/years later, or possibly overlapped the earlier books. Since the political situation provides motivation for the conspiracy in which Yuri is involved in CAGEBIRD, this would have been useful information.
Most of the middle of the book is taken up with Yuri's years after he joins Falcone's pirates and is trained by them. This section dragged because there was no jeopardy here. I wasn't reading to find out what happened next, since I already knew that, thanks to the earlier books and the scenes set in Yuri's present. I kept reading, waiting till we finally got back to the present.
When we did, about one quarter of the way from the end, it immediately grabbed my attention. Now, at last, we were moving forward into uncharted waters. Yuri had made a decision to take bold action, and gamble on trusting those who should be his enemies. The action heats up, and I'm hooked, eagerly turning each page, and then--
Yup, you guessed it. We now breakaway for a flashback, showing Yuri's point of view of his initial encounter with Ryan Azarcon and his father. Interesting in a way, but we're rehashing the past. And at this point as the reader I didn't care about what had happened back then. I wanted to know what was happening now with Yuri, who had just blown up his own ship and was drifting in a lifeboat, hoping to be rescued by a man who had once vowed to kill him.
Finally, the last pages of the book take us back to Yuri's predicament, and there is a resolution of a sort.
I can't help feeling that this story would have been improved by telling it in a linear fashion, rather than jumping back and forth in time. If she needed to tell the story of Yuri as a child, then make that the focus of the book. Though in my opinion, starting the book with Yuri in prison was a good starting point, but she needed to keep the story moving forward from there, opening up the action rather than keeping the focus of the story on Yuri's past.
The flaws in this book bother me so much because she is such a talented writer. She's capable of telling great stories, but this wasn't it. I hope that in her next book she moves beyond the set of characters and situations that she's already covered in her first three books, and takes us someplace completely new.
A couple of other technical notes. It is always a bad sign when every scene has to be labeled with the place and calendar date to clue the reader in as to what is going on. The only thing that is worse (IMO) is when the author also has to label the viewpoint character for each scene.
And I winced when I realized that Yuri's friendship with his cellmate Finch was based in large part on the tired trick "He's the only one who understands my pain since I talk in my sleep and reveal things I never would reveal consciously."
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-30 04:08 pm (UTC)Flashbacks are tricky. I've read books in which I felt they were done well, and contributed enough to the present-day action that their appearance didn't distract me. In THE NIGHT MANAGER, iirc, Le Carre has flashbacks in which characters describe events in the first person, which I felt worked well to make them seem more immediate/less of a speed bump.
Deciding how to structure a story can be difficult. I admit I would be reluctant to employ extended chunks of flashback if the primary story was fast-paced adventure. You can break up such a story here and there to build tension, but getting the proper fast-slow balance can be challenging.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-06-30 04:47 pm (UTC)I don't have anything against skillfully done flashbacks, or stories that are told in a non-linear fashion, but in this book the techniques got in the way of the storytelling, rather than enhancing it.
It didn't work for me, but I know my tastes aren't universal.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-07-08 01:21 pm (UTC)Also, being a newbie my journal focuses on the journey. I am curious to know what you think of my most recent post (http://www.livejournal.com/users/jlawrenceperry/13328.html). From one author to another. (Can I call myself 'author' if I'm not published? It feels wierd.)