rrrghh, Agatha H and the Airship City
Aug. 21st, 2013 05:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silverflight8Agatha H and the Airship City, by Phil and Kaja Foglio--DNF.
This book is terrible.
It is unbelievably clunkily written. Paragraphs that don't have any connection follow each other. There are entire paragraphs are made up of sentences which are very short and simple, which make the whole thing sound choppy. There are multiple italics and CAPSLOCKED WORDS AND PHRASES on nearly every page. No one acts like a human, all the Jäger machines have their accents written out phonetically (possibly German caricature?), and the whole thing tries to be clever and arch and falls so badly short. And honestly, it's the last that really gets my goat.
The writing is just bad. There is stupid description, like this:
Or:
I feel this is a classic example of someone who has heard "show don't tell" and swallowed it without even thinking about what it means. It means don't tell everything, but we're also not interested in every single little detail. Sometimes elision is good.
To be pedantic and prescriptive and scarred by business-speak: they also used "impacted" and each time it made me grumpier.
That first paragraph has "impacted", then a fragment which actually sounds like they typed a period instead of a comma, and then a run-around, awkwardly long third sentence. There are authors who pull off long sentences elegantly, but this is not elegant. You end up holding on, wondering when the actual point will come in. In the end, prose comes down to trust--do I trust this author to be good enough to make an odd construction pay off? Otherwise it's just a slog through weird sentences.
In the first chapter we are introduced to the main character, Agatha H. This is a tortuous process, because the authors describe in exacting detail how she gets up, how she has a headache, how she tries "gamely" to get out of bed but trips, then puts on her glasses (by "slipping the brass loops over her ears"--incidentally, does that mean she has to put her ears through the hoops? All the glasses I've seen in my life have been curved half-circles, so you can slide them on and off easily.) The description annoyed me because this sort of thing is incredibly unhelpful. The description was neither vivid nor evocative, and furthermore told me nothing about Agatha except the aforementioned headaches (does she have an implant in her brain?), because all the descriptions were ordinary. It was indiscriminate, too; it was as though the authors feared the reader would see a white room if they didn't describe every piece of furniture's detailing. But that's not true. Sometimes the focus is not on décor, but instead on some event, and that's okay. Personally I'd rather have actual emotional complexity--or at least, believable human characters--than a meticulously described setting. And the description isn't even good! It's like a reeled off list of words you've seen many times before. If it's not important, or original, or beautiful, then I don't care. The setting had nothing to do with Agatha or her story. Why was it there?
This overabundance of information and description of physical objects also extends to paragraphs of infodumps. I know that establishing a secondary world requires a lot of information being passed along, but this is just lazy. In both the prologue fifteen years ago and present day, the background history and politics were dumped on the reader in huge chunks.
And Agatha makes terrible decisions. She gets mugged, and what is her reaction? To run up the street after them yelling (in capslock): "BRING BACK MY LOCKET!" She continues in this vein awhile, threatening to call down the Watch on their heads, and promptly gets a splitting headache. Then a few minutes later in the middle of a conversation with someone else, she yells: "Oh no! Oh NO! I'm LATE!" and pelts off in the direction of the university. Once there, she starts sobbing about how she's "stupid and damaged" (actual dialogue) and is then immediately distracted by her professor asking about her newest invention. Is she a person or is she a piece of fabric you're projecting random reactions on?
When one of her superiors hears about her mugging, he practically has histrionics:
Because that's really helpful to Agatha if she'd been shaken by the incident, and a complete overreaction otherwise!
Having now written all of that out, I think the authors were trying to go for humour. But there's nothing for the humour to go on top of. Nothing to build on top of, so instead I'm left wondering what's going on and why I should care, and finding the humour illogical instead.
In conclusion, I hope that their webcomic is leagues better than their writing, because this book is just plain awful. Girl Genius won a Hugo? Why do so many steampunk novels insist on being arch? It reminds me of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate, which was uneven and whose main female character practically screamed I'm not one of those girls! Thank you, I'll pass.
This book is terrible.
It is unbelievably clunkily written. Paragraphs that don't have any connection follow each other. There are entire paragraphs are made up of sentences which are very short and simple, which make the whole thing sound choppy. There are multiple italics and CAPSLOCKED WORDS AND PHRASES on nearly every page. No one acts like a human, all the Jäger machines have their accents written out phonetically (possibly German caricature?), and the whole thing tries to be clever and arch and falls so badly short. And honestly, it's the last that really gets my goat.
The writing is just bad. There is stupid description, like this:
The spheres were hot. They could feel the heat from where they stood. Barry tugged his thick leather gloves out of his belt and pulled them on.
Prologue, Page 3
Or:
If this was meant to be reassuring to the smaller man, it had the opposite effect. His eyes went wide and his face paled. "No!" His initial whisper changed to a scream.
Chapter 1, page 39
I feel this is a classic example of someone who has heard "show don't tell" and swallowed it without even thinking about what it means. It means don't tell everything, but we're also not interested in every single little detail. Sometimes elision is good.
To be pedantic and prescriptive and scarred by business-speak: they also used "impacted" and each time it made me grumpier.
A total of ten boulders impacted. Two of them directly upon the main castle. In Barry's opinion, the rest were quite superfluous, as the devastation caused by the first two left no doubt in his mind that the Lightning Eater was pulverized along with everything within the castle walls.
[...]
Barry forced himself to watch as each boulder impacted.
Prologue, page 5
That first paragraph has "impacted", then a fragment which actually sounds like they typed a period instead of a comma, and then a run-around, awkwardly long third sentence. There are authors who pull off long sentences elegantly, but this is not elegant. You end up holding on, wondering when the actual point will come in. In the end, prose comes down to trust--do I trust this author to be good enough to make an odd construction pay off? Otherwise it's just a slog through weird sentences.
In the first chapter we are introduced to the main character, Agatha H. This is a tortuous process, because the authors describe in exacting detail how she gets up, how she has a headache, how she tries "gamely" to get out of bed but trips, then puts on her glasses (by "slipping the brass loops over her ears"--incidentally, does that mean she has to put her ears through the hoops? All the glasses I've seen in my life have been curved half-circles, so you can slide them on and off easily.) The description annoyed me because this sort of thing is incredibly unhelpful. The description was neither vivid nor evocative, and furthermore told me nothing about Agatha except the aforementioned headaches (does she have an implant in her brain?), because all the descriptions were ordinary. It was indiscriminate, too; it was as though the authors feared the reader would see a white room if they didn't describe every piece of furniture's detailing. But that's not true. Sometimes the focus is not on décor, but instead on some event, and that's okay. Personally I'd rather have actual emotional complexity--or at least, believable human characters--than a meticulously described setting. And the description isn't even good! It's like a reeled off list of words you've seen many times before. If it's not important, or original, or beautiful, then I don't care. The setting had nothing to do with Agatha or her story. Why was it there?
This overabundance of information and description of physical objects also extends to paragraphs of infodumps. I know that establishing a secondary world requires a lot of information being passed along, but this is just lazy. In both the prologue fifteen years ago and present day, the background history and politics were dumped on the reader in huge chunks.
And Agatha makes terrible decisions. She gets mugged, and what is her reaction? To run up the street after them yelling (in capslock): "BRING BACK MY LOCKET!" She continues in this vein awhile, threatening to call down the Watch on their heads, and promptly gets a splitting headache. Then a few minutes later in the middle of a conversation with someone else, she yells: "Oh no! Oh NO! I'm LATE!" and pelts off in the direction of the university. Once there, she starts sobbing about how she's "stupid and damaged" (actual dialogue) and is then immediately distracted by her professor asking about her newest invention. Is she a person or is she a piece of fabric you're projecting random reactions on?
When one of her superiors hears about her mugging, he practically has histrionics:
The Baron's eyebrows rose at [Agatha being mugged]. Beetle looked shaken. "Accosted? Stolen?" His voice rose, "In my city?" He clutched at his forehead. "Oh no! This is terrible! Terrible!"
Chapter 1, page 29
Because that's really helpful to Agatha if she'd been shaken by the incident, and a complete overreaction otherwise!
Having now written all of that out, I think the authors were trying to go for humour. But there's nothing for the humour to go on top of. Nothing to build on top of, so instead I'm left wondering what's going on and why I should care, and finding the humour illogical instead.
In conclusion, I hope that their webcomic is leagues better than their writing, because this book is just plain awful. Girl Genius won a Hugo? Why do so many steampunk novels insist on being arch? It reminds me of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate, which was uneven and whose main female character practically screamed I'm not one of those girls! Thank you, I'll pass.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 04:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 02:23 am (UTC)Anyway, I'm glad I didn't read the book, but your review was enjoyable!
no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 03:59 am (UTC)Sometimes I think writing these reviews are catharsis. *shakes fist at book*
no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 05:38 am (UTC)As I recall, the novel was adapted from the first few chapters of the webcomic, so I'd be interested to hear what you think of the original source material.
no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 03:57 pm (UTC)From what I see from skimming the webcomic, they seem pretty decent. I don't usually go for comics as a medium though.
Good god
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 05:47 am (UTC)Or maybe not. A Hugo is worth noticing, but it's no guarantee of quality.
And meanwhile, that reminds me of a three-quarters finished review I need to polish up and post ... Bad writing ... aHOY!
Re: Good god
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 03:59 pm (UTC)I picked it up because a) cover, b) it's been awhile since I've tried steampunk and c) Hugo, but sadly...
Oh, do! Writing reviews about terrible books makes me feel better.
no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 09:18 am (UTC)I'm sorry this sounds like something you actually paid money for, though. Unless it's just from the library?
His initial whisper changed to a scream. Hahahaha no. I am trying to imagine someone actually doing that... and I think that if they pulled it off, I would be genuinely impressed at their vocal talents and breath control.
no subject
Date: Aug. 22nd, 2013 04:00 pm (UTC)No, I borrowed it from the library. About 99.9% of all books I read are from the library (arghh nowhere to put books anyway).
It sounds like it would tear the throat something bad!
no subject
Date: Aug. 23rd, 2013 08:28 pm (UTC)Like, I'm not sure if they use it in Girl Genius, but all caps (or bolding or another font or some other distinctive typography) FOR EMPHASIS in dialogue is pretty traditional for western comics; without anything empirical to back up my gut feeling here, I'd say it's about as commonplace there as it is out of place and grating in prose. Worldbuild-y set pieces would be easier to work into a comics panel without shifting focus away from the scene's characters/action, and character design/body language/page and panel layout can do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of conveying tone. Writing comics is hard in different ways than writing prose, and from the bits you've excerpted, it reads like they haven't been very effective in adjusting their style for the different medium.
I doubt it would address any issues you had with (lack of) characterization or deftness in the plotting, but stylistically - assuming the art carries its storytelling weight - I'd wager it's more coherent as a comic.
no subject
Date: Aug. 24th, 2013 04:24 am (UTC)Yeah, now that you mention it, I wouldn't blink an eyelash at capslock in comics' dialogue--plus the hand lettering often makes the rest of the text flow nicely around it, not stick out funny (a lot of typefaces have REALLY ugly capitals, which are not designed to go in large chunks.) And the setting could be unobtrusive and also very detailed--or at least, more detailed than a prose book could, since you could choose to pick apart the furniture or not in visual media, but you would have to listen to a writer talk about it.
I definitely hope so! Even from my corner, I've heard vaguely good things about Girl Genius. (No worries about tl;dr, I'm always for interesting stuff like this!)