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As mentioned on here before, I'm a huge fan of Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy, so I was really excited to read her newest book for adults (after she took a detour into children's spooky fiction). Warm Hand of Ghosts takes place during WWI and according to the jacket, involves a meeting with the Devil on the battlefields of Flanders....or is it in a haunted hotel on the outskirts....
In any case, I loved the way Winternight combined Russian history and folklore into a really atmospheric world people with unforgettable characters. So I delved with in great expectations. And. Well.
>! It was slow. And a lot of telling instead of showing. At first, I wondered if her sojourn in children's fiction had blunted her abilities (and I still wonder if that's part of it). The pacing was slow, the characters flat and obvious. Three chapters in a collapsed 'pillbox' where nothing really happens? And how is a German in the same pillbox with the Canadian? After 70 pages, I was no longer interested in finding out. I ended up skipping to the last 50...surely it got better? No, not as far as I could tell. No atmosphere or complexity whatsoever. Even the devil seemed boring! (and this woman studied Russian....did she not read Master and Margarita?) < Which made me wonder -- in this time when everything is subject to purity spirals and taking offense and things and a complete lack of humor -- has all of this sucked the life out of our artists and writers imaginations?
As I said, I loved the Winternight Trilogy, but then -- I'm an American (like Katherine Arden). I've seen that there's been criticism of her using Russian folktales while not being Russian, ie another 'appropriation' slam, another 'how dare someone who isn't (fill in the blank) write about (fill in the blank). And so instead of being inspired by stories and landscapes and letting her imagination run wild, it's as if she did all kinds of research to make sure she didn't get anything wrong, and then wrote a flat, slow, boring book that wouldn't offend anyone. Frankly, virtually every book I've tried to read in the last 2 years, other than by JKR, seems just as flat, virtuous and unimaginative as this one.
Has anyone else run into this?
Sorry -- tried to use the spoiler function but I seem to have done it wrong and when I try to edit it erases the whole section.
oh? I usually just type it. It's
The arrows above the comma and period with an exclamation mark on the inside. > ! Whatever ! < (but without spaces between the two symbols)
Thanks! When I did the preview, it didn't show the words blacked out and I think I saw one of the exclamation points and thought I'd missed typed.
I loved the Winternight trilogy too. Really loved it, and listened to TWHOG very soon after it came out. It didn't have the same magic for me either, although I did get more into it as I read on. There'll never be an antagonist quite as good as
I actually have not gotten into her. I had her first book on my list for awhile. I just got Novik's Deadly on my Libby last night. And i am about half way through The Voice by Le Guin.
I'm not particularly sure by what you mean by 'flat.' But, too much worrying about being perfectly accurate when you are writing fantasy is crazy. I mean big things, like GRRM not knowing how long it takes to get a fire going on, is sad and distracting. But, details of folktales--- folktales that are subverted by many authors... what is the point?
I do kind of worry. For something i am writing, i choose all biblical or Hebrew names and base their personalities and actions largely on their names. So if i am told i am not allowed to use them it's gonna change everything. I wasn't going to do too much religious stuff initially, but i do want to set up one of the countries as a theocracy now. I think i actually sort of figured out what i am going to do for the 3rd act miscommunication tho.
How long does it take to get a fire going? (The prospect of knowing more than GRRM is tempting.)
Around 20 mins. It depends of course. That's even with a lighter and fuel.
Thanks! How long does it take GRRM's characters, then? I don't suppose they have lighters.🤔
No they don't. In the first Cat chapter she starts a full on fire in order to burn a letter.
By 'flat' I mean sort of generic, lifeless. In her other trilogy, I felt the characters, they became real to me, as did the setting. This one, they just seem like 'types' who speak in cliches and generalities. They're words on a page, not people you want to spend time with.
oh okay. That is strange that you used to like her writing, but now don't.
Russian folktales now, too?
Russians are basically white, tho? I thought white people cultures were fair game? (I mean, Russia is big, some people who fall under the Russian umbrella might already be Asian looking, but ... for the most part, you can only recognize Russian immigrants in Germany from the way they talk.)
What's next? Will people be accused of appropriation for using German fairytales? French ones? I guess Disney will go out of business. No Cinderella, no Sleeping Beauty, no Beauty and the Beast ... I guess they'll be able to source some people who have a great-grandmother of the correct ethnicity (perhaps Katherine Arden should just take a gene test, perhaps she's 2% Russian, after all?), but it is all so silly.
I can't say I have noticed this particular phenomenon - I am more pissed off at books having no conflict anymore, but it could well be due to the same reasons.
I've seen rumblings of Celtic descended people angry at people 'appropriating' their culture too. But the thing about cultures -- and this goes for ALL of them -- is that they're alive and ever changing. Tomatoes are from South America, but it's hard to imagine Italian or northern Indian cooking without them. The only culture that doesn't change based on exposure to other cultures, other people, is a dead one.
Same with art (and I'm including fiction and poetry). People are inspired by what they see, what they encounter, where they go. And I realize it can be a fine line between 'inspiration' and copying another culture's art form as if it's your own creation, the way white people have done with Native American and African art. That is what I would call appropriation. But incorporating another culture into your own creation in a way that acknowledges your sources but goes beyond them into something that takes on a life of its own....well, that to me is what artists have always done. Now it feels as if everything is expected to be a faithful representation of 'reality' a la 'reality tv' -- which of course is fake as anything. And so the artificial -- gender ideology, virtual reality, cosmetic surgery -- is embraced as 'real' while imagination, creativity and fantasy are pushed out of art and fiction, which is their rightful place.
Yeah.
Copying stuff other people created is just what humans do, and it is true that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery - this, at least, holds true when the source is acknowledged .
(When it is not, then it is like that thing where a woman says something in a meeting, and is ignored, and a few minutes later a man says the same and is praised for it.)
Yeah, it’s called cultural transmission—it’s how we became human and developed language!
Argghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Truth.
But who needs conflict when there's so much lyrical description? Swamplandia. Also I felt Station Eleven dragged like crazy, felt so forced. Maybe you liked those books. But so much drag. I like to read thrillers and other commercial stuff because you learn a lot about pacing, tension, conflict.
Yeah, that was another I tried to like, but just didn't. If felt like someone trying to sew a beautiful dress and just leaving all these dangling threads and pieces of fabric pinned on. For a long time, I've felt that would be writers are learning all kinds of tricks of how to write, and absolutely nothing about how to tell a story -- or what at story even is.
Jesus frigging christ. I am weighing in at 2% Russian so I will write what I want.