2019 Dragon Award Finalist, Best Fantasy Novel: "The Raven Tower"

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For an abbreviated review, please check out my post on Goodreads. It will also be on Amazon.

Greetings to all my internet friends and neighbors, and for those of you who are counting down with me to the Dragon Awards, it is GOING to be a horse race! After this, I have but TWO (2) books to read and review! And to any of my family checking in, remember today is RED Friday. RED: Remember Everyone Deployed. So, wear something red today.

I'm going to tackle a subject in this blog post that has been bothering me. I'll keep it off the two condensed book reviews that I do, but THIS is my blog, and I get to say stuff. I'll also put it toward the END of this blog post, because I think for some, it's going to be off-putting.

Maybe not most who read my blog posts, though. Who knows? I certainly don't know who reads my blog posts, unless they leave a comment, and not always then.

This is my 21st book review in the series, and the second in the dead tree version. This one actually is the hard back, with dust jacket. See my comments from yesterday about dead trees costing less than electrons.

I've not read this author, Ann Leckie, before. I am aware that she hit the science fiction field big time not too long ago: she was awarded the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Arthur C. Clarke awards for her first novel “Ancillary Justice.” The cover of the version I saw has a picture that's probably little space-ships shooting a big spaceship, so that's good; exploding spaceships and/or pirates improve just about ant story. I read that part of the book's impact had something to do with the use of pronouns. Why pronouns should be an issue, I'm not sure, but there you have it.

I'm pretty sure I have never read a book with this POV before. It's that of a (seemingly) objective observer, who happens to be focused on one particular character, by the name of Eolo, a riding companion of Mawat, who is a person of importance.

Over the course of some flash-back reveals, we learn that the POV character is, most likely, a rock. Furthermore, the rock is sentient; and, eventually, we discover that the rock is a god. However, it's rather hard at the beginning to determine exactly what that means, other than 'sentient rock who can observe things.' The reveal progresses, and we learn that people have taught the rock language, and that their offerings provide the rock with power.

Without exception, the following applies to all gods, although it's mostly the rock who is used to introduce us to the rules.

Power and language are, evidently, two facets of the same item for a sentient rock, and THAT is a really interesting concept to dwell on. Deny a person the ability to communicate; how much power can they be said to have?

I love it when the boundary rules of a story are spelled out, and Leckie does a great job of doing that via the rock's self-examination. The CORE rule is that all utterances must be the truth. That happens to have a significance in this universe that the same statement does not have in ours; in THIS universe, if the rock says it, then it HAS to be true, even if the universe itself has to change to make it so. If one of the gods voices an impossibility, then they have to pay the price. Therefore, the rock has to be very careful what it says; there is no such thing as a word spoken without consequence.

A permutation of the rule: the rock can report what someone else told it without being responsible for the truthfulness of the statement. In such cases, the expected form is to say “ Here is a story someone told me,” or words to that effect. Also an implied result: it's better for the rock to speak generally, rather than specifically.

That last is a particularly elegant rule, as it covers all of the cryptic prophecies given in stories about magic, ever.

The rules for the rock are essential for the plot development. Also essential for the plot development is the otherwise merely-very-interesting memories the rock discloses. The time it sat on the floor of the ocean; trilobites and bony fish; glaciers, which recede, leaving it on top of the hill; dinosaurs; meteorites; people, who brought it offerings, and taught it language. Fortunately for the rock, it experiences the passage of time differently than we puny people do, else I fear it would have experienced some huge amounts of boredom along the way.

It would be POSSIBLE, perhaps, to strip out all of the plot pertaining to the gods, and still have a reasonably interesting story. It wouldn't be nearly as interesting, though, as it would just deal with humans striving for power. Removing the gods, here's what it looks like: Mawat's father was the Human-in-Charge, and his term and life were at an end. We encounter him in the first scene about to enter the city, expecting to have to take over. Instead, he finds his uncle on the throne. Power struggles ensue.

Yup, that is the making of a fairly good story, but not that distinctive. It's been done, at least in Hamlet form, many times. It's the addition of the actions, and inactions, of the rock and other gods that sets this apart.

Well, that, and the unusual point of view. I'm reminded of the “little did he know” interplay in the movie “Stranger Than Fiction,” with Emma Thompson, as the author, and Will Ferrell, as her character.  It's not so much a god perspective, as it is an author perspective. I do understand that some found it tiresome, but I thought it made for a nice change-up. I doubt I'd like a DIET of that, mind you, but it was rather fun.

Then again, I also enjoyed the trilobite story, and from what I've read, some people didn't, at all. I wonder about their commitment to science fiction; if you don't enjoy a good trilobite reference, how can you be claim to be a fan? Well, never mind. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

So, my opinion is : Mostly favorable, except for one troubling feature which will ONLY be dealt with in my blog post, at the VERY END, except for my sign-off, and not at all in my Goodreads and Amazon reviews.

As for The Question: Is  a worthy choice for the 2019 Dragon Award in the category of  Best Fantasy Novel?

My opinion: No. There is one troubling element that just reeks to me, which I will now explain to the best of my ability, and in the most accurate, least offensive language I can use.

IT IS, HOWEVER, A RANT. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE EXPOSED TO A RANT, STOP READING.

I have already commented on the strangeness I found with the finalists for 2019, compared to 2018. The preponderance of trad pub books, at the expense of indie and small house publishers, is a troubling development. The exultation from previously unknown-to-me sources that at last the Dragons were gone “mainstream,” I found to be deeply disturbing.

Now, with some of the books coming from the trad pub area, I had no problem with including them among the finalists; even those with only a few reviews might very well had some cult followers that championed their choice. Yay, freedom!

However, it was with the reading of “The Raven Tower” that I finally identified a theme that I'd noticed earlier, ad that had distorted some of the books: the determined focus on non-binary sexuality in humans.

In previous works, it was just an aggravation. The catastrophe that is “The Light Brigade” seemed to take great satisfaction in refusing to provide the gender of the POV character. However, with all else that is wrong with that book, no point in emphasizing any particular deficit. Similarly, “A Memory Called Empire” was so severely flawed by the purple prose and the excessive, dragging length that the intrusion of same-sex intimacy between the protagonist and her companions really didn't enter into the review at all. The real offense in “The Calculated Stars” was gender-based (men are exploitative/repressive), but not sexual in nature. And, in “Black Chamber,” it's the pan-sexuality, not the homosexuality, that is the turn-off.

But in “The Raven Tower?” The author can only wait until page four before she introduces non-binary sexuality. And, although it is briefly mentioned a few more times, IT NEVER MATTERS TO THE STORY. So, why include it?

I do not know. In this respect, I resemble the rock, in the book. I don't know what's going on inside people's heads; I can only know what I see, what they tell me. And what they are telling me is that they have a great deal to say about non-binary sexuality. More than I have ever heard, in fact, in any other context. Save one.

Starting in the eighth grade, and lasting for about a year, that seemed to be the only source of derision available to boys. According to the vile little creatures, everything was 'queer, queer, queer.' It was the sure way to isolate a target, to make them an object of contempt: tell a 'joke,' and make them the subject.

In retrospect, it's pretty clear that this was about power, and not about sexuality, per se.  There were a few boys with effeminate mannerisms, and for whatever reason, they never seemed to catch the abuse that was heaped on others. This was the form that bullying took; later, as a middle school counselor, we learned to call it by the name of sexual harassment, but that wasn't a term we had heard of in 1966.

And the behavior of the wannabe thugs in a tough all-boys school seems to be echoed in the behavior of writers of books I have reviewed over the course of the last month. The hostility between those writers and publishers previously OUTSIDE the works considered for the Dragons, and those who have been Dragon contenders since the beginning, is well documented. The DragonCon group have been called just about every name by the WorldCon group except Larry, Brad, Sarah, and Kate.  Instead: fascist, racist, sexist, patriarchist, cis-normative, white, Mormon, male.

And, in that context, it's very hard for me to attribute even neutral motives to what seems to be an artificial inclusion into the majority of the works I've reviewed. Instead, it sounds like this to my ears:

"We're going to speak of sexual deviance in an enlightened manner because it makes you uncomfortable, because you are all latent homosexuals, repressing your true feelings."

These are the tactics of bullies in all places, at all times.

Perhaps I am too sensitive about some things. It's just that I do not regard human sexuality as a spectator sport. I DO understand that there are some forms of literature that require, or rather, that audiences expect, to have sexual activity involved. Hooray for choices! I am accustomed to skip over certain passages in the works of some of my favorite authors; for example, in the “Ghost” series by John Ringo. But, in those cases, it's a matter of taste, and the explicit sexual scenes were part of the character arc of the protagonist.

But today, there was absolutely nothing contributed to the story by making a point that the character was a non-binary human. I can't read that as other than politicizing, or weaponizing, sexuality. And I find that despicable.

I warned you it was going to be a rant.

Peace be on your household.