_Elantris_, Sanderson
- From: Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 21:10:12 +0000 (UTC)
This book annoyed me, because it was a mixture of quite good writing
and quite bad writing.
The characters are lively and thoroughly human (if not particularly
complex). There's a conversation near the beginning where Spunky
Princess is talking to Her Father The King, and it's a conversation.
Like two people would have. With occasional sarcasm and teasing. Why
is this something which feels incredibly rare to me in current
fantasy?
On the other hand, the politics, economics, and religion debates are
so clunky and blatant that everyone might as well be playing checkers.
Yes, as it turns out, indentured serfdom really *isn't* the optimal
economic model. Surprise.
The story is your basic puzzle plot in the middle of a political/
religious upheaval. In the middle of Generic Fantasy Kindom, there
used to be a city of demigods. Not just alien demigods, either; they
were all ordinary people who woke up one day with glowing skin,
immortality, and the ability to do magic. Having a mass source of free
food, healing, and so forth made rest of the country quite wealthy
(although the actual economic and political effects are completely
glossed over. There's a brief comment that the merchant guild
convinced the Elantrians to stop creating *luxury* goods out of thin
air, so that we can have jobs, please. This appears to be as far as
the author thought it through.)
Anyway, this was all great until the magic stopped working, ten years
ago. The Elantrians are now grey-skinned immortal weaklings who suffer
increasing levels of pain (their bodies don't heal, even from scrapes
or bruises) until they go insane. The transformation still visits
random ordinary citizens, but people don't look forward to it the way
they used to.
The government fell apart in the wake of the disaster, and the throne
was grabbed by a greedy idiot who's done a lousy job of rebuilding.
Also, the Intolerant Religious Hegemony from across the ocean has been
gulping down neighboring countries, and sees an opportunity to make a
clean sweep of the board. (Now that the filthy false Elantrian gods
have been cast down by the might of Jaddeth, don't you know. Again,
this is a mixed bag: the religion is wallpaper, but the Intolerant
Fanatical Priest they send is one of the best characters in the book.)
The book itself, of course, is a race to figure out What Happened ten
years ago, while everybody squabbles and plots over the throne. It's
perfectly readable stuff, if you ignore the basic silliness of all the
politics. The plotting is really very good -- several twisty bits at
the end caught me by surprise, despite being well set-up in advance.
There's a certain amount of Dumbledoring -- ah, people keeping secrets
from each other solely for plot tension reasons -- but the main plot
doesn't depend on that, just some of the romantic whipsawing.
Plus, big slap-bang magical finish. (With potential sequel hooks, but
the storyline is complete in this volume.)
So, I almost want to read this author's next book -- but the number of
times I smiled is balanced by the number of times I rolled my eyes and
groaned. Perhaps the comparison I'm looking for is to David Eddings,
from before you got tired of reading David Eddings. If Sanderson
manages to grow as a writer (the way Eddings didn't) he could be on to
something.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
I'm still thinking about what to put in this space.
.
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