Book Reviews: Equations of Life, A Once Crowded Sky, The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox
Equations of Life
There was a time, while I was reading this, that I thought it was everything I’d ever wanted from a novel. It was about the point where (spoilers!) the hacker hero and his ladyfriend, a warrior nun, were dodging AI mechas on their way to rescue a yakuza princess.
I know, right? There are books I describe as “the kind of thing you will like, if you like that kind of thing”—it’s what I try to write myself—and Equations of Life is a perfect example of the form.
Strangely, though, as exhilarating as the novel was while I was reading it, it faded from mind almost immediately. I know there are sequels out there: I haven’t sought them out, and I probably won’t. That’s a weird place for a book to occupy. I enjoyed it very much and now I am done, thank you, I don’t want any more. Usually when I find an author I like I devour as much of their work as I can get, so I can’t explain my strange antipathy towards the subsequent books in this series…except to say that maybe I felt a little sugar-sick afterwards, as if I’d eaten a cupcake with too much frosting.
A Once Crowded Sky
Superhero novels have become their own subgenre. A few of these books—Flyboy Action Figure Comes with Gasmask
But A Once Crowded Sky didn’t hit for me. I was never persuaded by the storytelling, which is self-consciously “meta” and (for me) rendered much of the characterizations and setting false. I think a superhero story has to work on the first level, the tights-and-capes level, before it can go deeper: and this one didn’t.
The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox
These books I almost didn’t want to review, because now I’m going to have to admit how much I enjoyed them.
I feel I would be on firmer philosophical grounds delivering a critique, as this is a case of a Western author writing “Chinese-flavored” material that combines well-researched and sourced material with a lot of stuff that was just, you know, made up. We’re talking here about everything from words, names, and phrases that were supposed to be Mandarin but patently weren’t, to spoof Confucian deities and texts. And I’m not comfortable with it—I think it’s stereotyping, I think it’s caricature—but the stories are really good, and really fun.
My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao and I have a slight flaw in my character. This is my esteemed client, Number Ten Ox, who is about to hit you over the head with a blunt object.
It’s delightful stuff, it really is. I can only shrug helplessly and say the material is clearly dated (it was first published in the Eighties) but retains a great deal of its charm.
July 3rd, 2013 at 8:30 pm
I really enjoyed Bridge of Birds, but read the next two books right afterward and was disappointed. “Fun romp” is not always sustainable, even for the length of a novel. (Something like Bimbos of the Death Sun, hardly a doorstopper, was pushing it.) Then again, I’ve noticed that effect with books that are weightier (in terms of theme, goal, and physical size). I devoured the first half of Spin, and then never picked it up again. Which sounds like your Equations of Life experience.
July 3rd, 2013 at 9:21 pm
I got the book that had all three in one, and while I agree that Bridge of Birds was the best self-contained novel, I was fully on-board for the other two as well. The ending to the third book is somewhat abrupt, but it still basically worked for me.
July 3rd, 2013 at 11:42 pm
Interesting comments on Bridge of Birds. It didn’t bother me at all when I read it and I’ve been trying to work out why.
I suppose part of it is that to me the characters in the book (I’ve only read the first) seem like comicbook characters rather than attempts to represent real people. That is: yes, there are stereotypes all over the place, but not in a context which feels like they’re making claims about real cultures or people.
I don’t think it’s automatically bad to write what is effectively a form of fanfic based on on the fiction of another culture. It can be – and often has been – done abusively, but it seems needlessly limiting to fictional works to apply a blanket rule that it’s never OK.
July 4th, 2013 at 10:22 am
“it seems needlessly limiting to fictional works to apply a blanket rule that it’s never OK.”
That’s not at all what I think and I hope it isn’t what you thought I said!
I think there’s great stuff that’s written across cultures, or imaginatively cross-pollinates using seeds of real myths or folklore. HOWEVER, I think that this kind of thing always needs to be done carefully, because the dangers of stereotyping and caricature are very real. And I do think making up “Chinese-sounding” language and then inventing translations (from your fake language) is the kind of thing that’s pretty much impossible to do respectfully.