Goldenhand: What the hell happened to Garth Nix’s editor?

Spoilers abound!

For approximately 70% of Goldenhand, practically nothing happens. An unending chase eats up pages, it’s inevitable conclusion making the whole thing pointless and boring. Where other Old Kingdom books have very few unnecessary characters, this book has an entire cast of them, a village full of people who assist a secondary character in running away. All of them are pointless.

The chapters alternate between this chase scene an an equally endless holding pattern between Lirael and Nicholas. Where the Ferin sections (the chase scenes) have too many characters, the Lirael sections have too freakin’ few. It take roughly half the book for these idiots to stop being awkward, and while there are moments of occasional charm, it is frankly quite soon.

Essentially, the first part of the book is badly imbalanced. Ferin’s sections are packed with urgency, but that urgency can’t be felt when you know she’s going to escape, because if her message delivers everyone is going to die–which won’t happen. And it’s impossible to believe it will happen, when the momentum of her plot is ritually slaughtered every time we switch from her to Lirael, who is in a cliched romantic comedy without a shred of urgency to be seen. This tonal jarring is discarded in favor of Old-Kingdom-Flavored urgency and dread and dire peril, but the goofy comedy keeps bubbling up under the surface, diminishing the whole damn book.

Roughly 70% of the way through Goldenhand, Garth Nix’s editor woke up and the book got pretty good . I know exactly how long this took because I was keeping score. I counted 21 times when the narrative literally broke.

Nix, it turns out, has a habit of stepping out of his characters’ perspective. He turns to the reader and tells you what the characters don’t actually know, telling you that the characters don’t know it. “Neither Ferin nor Young Laska knew this,” “not acknowledging to herself,” “not noticing that behind her…” etc. About 70% in, these breaks (which completely murder reader immersion) stop happening.

Another sign of editorial napping is the way big apparent foreshadowings turn up, wave, and then evaporate. The first time this happens is when Ferin tells another character the super special secret message that she has been sacredly entrusted with from before she was even born–basically her whole destiny and plot purpose is this message, and she should really probably have died trying to deliver it. But she tells another character. A woman who disappears without a goodbye and is never heard from again.

Then there’s the moment when the Disreputable Dog reanimates her statue, goes to the window of a room, looks out at a boat coming into the Clayr’s Glacier, and turns back into a statue. When Lirael finds the statue, there is a boat pulling into the Glacier.

My brain practically exploded at that point. See, the last time a boat was in the narrative, it was full of free magic creatures chasing Ferin. Ferin, who just arrived at the Clayr’s Glacier. Oh my God, the glacier is being invaded!

But nope. Turns out the Dog was just glancing in on Nick.

Worse than this, Lirael’s brain is apparently on vacation during this whole sequence. See, she once saw the Dog statue turn into the actual Dog. And when the Dog dies, she turns back into the statue. Then the statue disappears from Lirael’s hand as she sleeps, and turns up on a windowsill in a position no Sending would have left it in. Does Lirael realize that the Dog is periodically coming back and taking the statue back with her? Nope.

On top of all these issues, there are cliche-sized holes in the narrative the Nix wove (which, again, contrasts like mad with the original Old Kingdom books). A guy and a girl of roughly the same age meet, instantly fall in love, and are having sex when the book closes (which is a crazy tonal jar, but whatever). As previously mentioned, Lirael spends half the book trapped in a corny rom-com. Both Mogget and the Dog return (the Dog after a wonderfully dramatic send off, but then she is disreputable), and though both returns are in keeping with their characters and neither is actual performs the dreaded deus ex machina, both are basically fulfilling the first half of the deus ex machina cliche. Forgivable only because their absence turned out to make the books terrible. Oh, and worst of all, Nix leaps through huge hoops to keep more powerful adult characters safely out of the narrative’s way while he lets the wheels spin in the first part of the book. There’s a big terrible flu and all the Clayr are sick, oh and Sabriel and Touchstone are on vacation for exactly as long as is necessary.

Now, in spite of all my complaining, I still loved the last third of this book. And somewhere under the unedited mess, there is in fact a very good story. Lirael goes back to the place that was once her home, and it is the same but she is far more different than she realizes. While there, she is able to make peace with the sorrow that was her childhood, and to step into a future where a boy will make everything better (did I mention the rom-com problem yet?). Then she goes on a long journey to meet a woman whose life, unlike Lirael’s was defined not by destiny but by choice–but who slowly became more and more adrift from the world and from humanity, until she was lost to herself.

There were better ways to do this. Clariel could have returned earlier in the narrative, through complicated Free Magic. Chlorr and Clariel being literally two different people was cliched. The rom com did not belong in an Old Kingdom book. But I’m happy, ’cause I got to see the Disreputable Dog.

Oh, and I hate the tagline. Practically no one dies in this book!

“One Crazy Summer” and The Birth of Consciousness

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In just about every Diana Wynne Jones novel, there is a moment in which a child looks at an adult and realizes that behind that face is another person. A flawed person, a person with their own strengths, weaknesses, and failings. A complex person who is capable of anything.

It’s a moment of consciousness, and in “One Crazy Summer,” the growth of her consciousness is the subject of the entire novel. Her consciousness of herself as a young black woman, her consciousness of the historical moment she lives in–but most of all, her consciousness of her mother.

Abandonment is never an easy thing for a child to deal with. Abandonment by a mother, which is so unusual that it means constant reminders of the child’s strangeness, is perhaps even harder to deal with than a father’s abandonment. But to hold onto hate and resentment is poisonous, and it takes all summer for her to finally release her pent up frustration at her mother, to shout her blame.

That’s when she finally learns her mother’s story. That’s when she finally sees the person under “mother.” When she understands that to be a woman is not always an easy thing, and that sometimes adults have to choose between betraying themselves and betraying those who love them.

The question of names is a recurring theme in “One Crazy Summer.” Black Panthers choose new names and call each other “brother” and “sister.” Her mother has chosen a new name, and writes her poetry under it. And her mother refuses to use her youngest daughter’s name, because it was not the name she chose for her.

But her mother has to change too, and everyone must choose their own names. She makes the choice to tell her little sister what her first name was. She gives her little sister ownership of that name. And it doesn’t disempower her mother–instead, it makes them closer.

We are all who we choose to be. Those choices define us. And every kid has to learn that the adults in their lives have made choices. And to grow up is to understand why those choices were made. Why those names were chosen.

“Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack” and Delicate Webs of Relationships

The title may be bonkers, but underneath it is a surprisingly interesting and subtle story. A boy falls in love, a girl falls out of love, mothers and fathers drop in and out of their children’s lives.

Over the course of this odd little book, people walk in and out of one another’s lives all the time. They start to be something to one another, then stop, then start again. They forget to pay attention to one another, then are forced to change.

And as the novel unfolds, delicate webs of relationships are constructed. This person says this, and the results ripple through the little network. One person hijacks another, and no one is quite sure how to respond except to hijack back.

No one is unknowable in the world of a good novel–not the the all-seeing eye of the author. And through their eyes, we can see more about people than we ever expected.

The Goats and the Power of Adolescence

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“The Goats” is a camp book, a wilderness book. In it, two teenagers are marooned on an island by their fellow campers because they have been marked out as “different,” “immature.” They are stripped naked and left to have sex. This will normalize them.

It’s a horrifically disempowering situation to be in. But the two protagonists of “The Goats” aren’t disempowered. They flee the island on their own steam. They get by themselves, without compromising their senses of honesty, for days. They find power.

The be a teenager is to feel powerless. Teenagers are victims of their hormones, victims of their own fears. They live in a complicated and difficult world, where any friend can become and enemy and vice versa.

In “The Goats,” the characters take ownership of their lives. They turn their own powerlessness into independence, turn their forced relationship into a source of strength. The start as victims, but emerge victors.

Because of Winn-Dixie and the Non-Normative Family

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I live in China, and here the majority of families are two-parent. Not only that, but there is an assumption that the majority of families in America are also two-parent.

But the truth is that a very, very large minority of families in America are now one-parent. That’s not something that has ever existed in human history before. No one is quite sure how to deal with it. Political reactions range from trumpeting the value of the single parent to putting in place every possible incentive to keep parents together. And a huge source of anxiety for American society in the last few decades has been “how do we explain this to our kids?”

“Because of Winn-Dixie” isn’t explaining to kids how to deal with having one parent abandon them. It’s the story of how one girl came to terms with her mother leaving her. The idea of “family” was broken, and it feels as if it can never be repaired. Most kids can barely process the idea that their parents don’t know everything, and now they have to process the idea that their parents can not only do wrong, but can commit sin.

Her family broken, she has to find a new family. And because of Winn-Dixie, she does.

“The Wizard in the Tree”: When the Lessons Feel a Little Too Clunky

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Lloyd Alexander is not famous for subtle narratives. His style is to address fear, selfhood, and growing up in very plain language. Taran wanders through the world in search of a pool of water to show him his fate, and instead finds a plain pool of water showing his reflection. A cloth is woven by the fates but chosen by the ones who live their lives. To return home is to find that one has changed.

Sometimes this works, and when it works it works. The Chronicles of Prydain are incredible novels, classics of children’s literature. But sometimes this doesn’t work, as in “The Wizard in the Tree.”

Maybe it’s just that Alexander doesn’t earn his anvils, the way he earns them in “Prydain.” The characters aren’t as strong and interesting, the world isn’t compelling, the narrative possibilities are textbook-perfect but fall flat. A trope is nicely subverted, as a sleeping wizard proves to be complaining and useless. But when the quotes work best out of context, instead of in context, you know there’s a problem:

“Nothing ends as it does in fairy tales. I did love them so, and I did believe them. I’m sorry they aren’t true.”

“Not true?” cried Arbican. “Of course they’re true! As true as you’ll ever find.”

“But you told me–”

“I never said such a thing! How could you have misunderstood me? Those tales of yours–yes, you people amde them up. They aren’t tales about us, though you may pretend they are. They’re tales about yourselves, or at least the best parts of yourselves. They’re not true in the outside world, mine or any other. But in the inside, yes, indeed.”

 

If Arbican weren’t largely defined by his uselessness, and Mallory by her helplessness, then this all may have hit home a lot better.

Bridge to Terabithia, Little Women, and Becoming What We Love–Who We Want to Be

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Everyone sees the world a little differently. The way Leslie sees the world in “Terabithia” is so magical that Jess falls in love with it. Jess wants to be like her, to see the world she sees, but when she dies it is as if the world she saw dies too.

But he does not want that world to die. He wants it to live on. And so he must become her, in a sense. He can change the world he sees, too, and by doing that she will live on in him.

We all have our own self-image. We all believe certain things about ourselves to be true, and understand that certain behaviors are more true to our selves than others. But when we love someone who behaves differently, who has a different image of themselves and the world, sometimes we decide we want to change. We want to become what we love.

In this way, death becomes a limited thing. In “Bridge to Terabithia,” Leslie’s death forces Jess to change, makes her a part of him in a way he isn’t even aware of. In “Little Women,” when Beth dies, Jo consciously shapes herself to act and be more like her dead sister.

What is loved cannot die. Not as long as we love it.

Skeleton Man and the Borders of Myth

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It’s one of the central problems of childhood that, no matter how sure you are of something, at the slightest hint of falsehood people will dismiss everything you say. That’s the problem at the center of “Skeleton Man,” in which no one believes that Molly is telling the truth, though she knows that she is a captive and in serious danger. But such things are so far outside the realm of the ordinary that everyone is much more willing to believe her captor.

When Molly finds herself off the beaten path, the protagonist does the only thing she can think of: she retreats into stories. She finds strength in her heritage. She knows somewhere deep in her blood that she is a captive of a Skeleton Man, and she finds the strength within herself to defeat him.

Myth is Molly’s ally in this. Myth gives her a framework in which to make sense of what is happening to her. And myth empowers her to be a heroine. The borders between dream and reality grown thin in “Skeleton Man,” and it is in the realm of myth that the protagonist can find her power. As the myth gains strength in the real world, so does she. And in myths, someone always defeats the monsters.

Out of My Mind and the Power of a Single Story, a Single Voice

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When you look at someone in a wheelchair, someone who cannot talk, someone who cannot control their bodily functions, a narrative comes to mind. “This person is disabled.” “This person is retarded.” “This person will never really be a person.” It’s an old idea, that the body is a mirror of the mind. A useless body must mean a useless mind.

Because so many of these people are helpless, unable to speak or move or eat independently, it is hard for them to challenge that narrative. It is hard for them to express themselves. They are trapped in their own heads, with all their knowledge and personality.

No person contains only a single story. The maid spends her free time reading astronomy textbooks. The murderer on death row is also a loving father. The lady at the tupperware party is a world-famous psychiatrist. It is hard to accept this about the people around us, and harder to process it, so most people avoid it if possible. But the people I mentioned above each have a voice of their own with which to tell their stories. People with disabilities like the protagonist of “Out of My Mind” are voiceless.

From the very beginning, Sharon Draper sets out to tell a story that tears apart of the idea of a “single story.” Her first-person narrator loves words, but has never spoken a word in her life. She can remember a thousand facts, but cannot say any of them without the help of a computer.

Melody is a powerful, brilliant, delightful character. From the earliest part of her life, people try to fit her into a box. They try to confine her to a single story, without paying attention to all the other stories that might be true. They see her, and they think “stupid,” no matter how smart she is.

And Melody must learn what so many people learn: that a happy life is largely about how you respond to it. You cannot choose what people do to you, and often you cannot change what people think of you. But you can, to a certain extent, choose how you respond to it. And to laugh is always better than to cry.

The Many Probems of Maggie Stiefvater’s “The Raven Cycle.”

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When you have a series, conceived as four separate books forming a symphony, you need a foundation. A solid centerpiece, to bind the books together. A person, a place, and event, or a quest in almost every case.

There are a ton of problems with “The Raven Cycle,” but the worst is a lack of precisely this foundation. Four books–over one thousand pages–need something to unify them, both in terms of plot and theme. Theme is easy (growing up), but plot-wise the books are a failure. I’m going to go through the possible foundations one by one to try to get at why these books left me feeling so hollow and frustrated.

1. The Quest for Glendower.

This is the first unifier presented. Gansey (the protagonist-ish) is on a quest to find a Welsh king, whom he is convinced was buried in a Virginia town. He believes he was saved from death in order to bring this King back from the dead. The people he draws into his orbit are all united behind him in this quest.

But not only is the quest revealed to be futile, Glendower long dead and decayed but it never really works in the first place. Glendower is a wholly fictional figure, a great king of Wales who was apparently well-beloved, sort of Arthuresque. But at no point is the reader given any reason to care. There are no anecdotes about how glorious Glendower was. There are no compelling sketches of this man. He is an empty, two-dimensional figure. And because the reader has no reason to want him back from the dead, it is possible to invest emotionally in the quest to bring him back only by proxy, through the fierce desire of Gansey.  And even Gansey has pretty much lost interest by the last book, which goes hundreds of pages without mentioning Glendower.

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2. The characters.

This is what I think Stiefvater meant to be the primary unifier. The four central figures of Gansey, Adam, Ronan, and Blue are the ones undergoing the thematic journey into adulthood. In Gansey and Adam’s cases, into “kingship.”

But there is something hollow about each of these characters. They are not being led to change their fundamental selves–only their attitudes towards those selves. Blue is led to come to terms with her power, Gansey with his lack of fate, Ronan with his status as dreamed and dreamer, and orphan, Adam as one who leaves his home never to return.

While this is an interesting trick of writing, it is fundamentally unsatisfying until the very end. There is something empty about each character, something that makes them seem like actors. They are resisting themselves, faking to themselves, and so they feel fake to the reader.

There is also a structural problem to the character development. Each book has a different protagonist, really: book 1’s is Adam; book 2’s is Ronan; book 3’s is Blue; book 4’s is Gansey. This results in two serious problems: not only is there not one main character to unite the four books, but there is something strange about continuing to stay with each character after their book has ended. They have done their developing, they’ve finished, but they’re still hanging around. Continuing developments are side plots, and feel awkward and out of place when inserted into other protagonist’s books.

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3. Cabeswater

Cabeswater is a magical forest that bends itself to the expectations and desires of those who come upon it. It is later revealed to be the form of an ancient entity, dreamed into physical presence by Ronan’s power. It’s role in the first book is brilliant, an uncanny and compelling place.

But after that, it is only adjacent to the plot. Really, it works as a glorified battery up until the final pages of the final book. The promise of the first book is never fulfilled: no one is sleeping in Cabeswater.

4. Fate

Fate can work as a very, very good unifier for a series of books. Half the fantasy trilogies of the ’80s and ’90s began with a prophecy. In the first book, it seemed like Steifvater was going to use fate as the solid ground on which to build her plot. She kept dropping hints like “time is a circle,” and “we reuse time,” “past and present are one.”

In that first book, promises of fate were made to the reader. We saw scenes that must not be meant to happen until the very last book. Powers far greater than anything immediately visible were glimpsed, cloaked and eerie in the shadows. Things both terrible and necessary were promised.

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None of those things happened. There was no fate animating everything, no greater power or plan at work. There was just a kid dreaming strange dreams, and an ancient ley line that wanted its battery to work right again. Death was cheap, the dead returning in short order in one form or another.

I like a well-executed plot about how we make our own fate. After “The Chronicles of Prydain” did it so well, it’s hard for other writers to come up with something interesting to say about that plot, and Steifvater just fails.

5. Henrietta

Henrietta is the Virginia town that “The Raven Cycle” is set in. It includes three major locations: 300 Fox Lane, populated by psychic women; Monmouth Manufacturing, an old building purchased by Gansey where three out of five of the main characters live; Aglionby, the school which three characters attend and one attended before dying.

On paper, the town would make a good foundation. But in execution, the locations never intersect with each other, not really. Everyone comes to Fox Lane, but only Blue every goes to Monmouth Manufacturing. The three never unite, and they could be in three different towns spread out over Virginia just as easily. Aglionby is cliched and unremarkable. 300 Fox Way is excellent for the first three books, then gets boring and predictable by the final book.

Of the climactic events in the four books, only one takes place in the town, and that one in an anonymous parking lot. There is no sense of the town as having a personality of its own, although Gansey loves it enough to build a model of it in his house. But just because Gansey cares about something is not enough to make the reader care.

 

This is, in the end, the fundamental problem of “The Raven Cycle.” I’ll be talking in two other posts about all the other problems, but they are really just nit-picking compared to this: you must have something to ground a story spread so large and long as this one. Without it, everything feels flimsy and fragile, and difficult if not impossible to invest in and care about.