Patricia McKillip, Fool's Run
Sep. 24th, 2007 12:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sub_dividedPatricia McKillip, Fool’s Run: This gets a pass, in the end, but only because the second half is a wild ride. Though really, [spoiler]?
The set-up: a woman locked away for life, considered the Underworld’s most dangerous prisoner. (Though you have to take the author’s word for this, at first, since for most of the book, Terra Viridian is too out-of-it to tie her own shoes, let alone go off on another laser-rifle rampage.) The central mystery of the book of course is: why’d she do it? What possessed her? Is she just crazy, or…I think most of you can already guess the answer to this question, XD. If she were simply crazy, where would the story be?
Other characters:
Aaron Fisher: First-class patroller, a man who by his own admission has no imagination, obsessed with tracking down Terra’s elusive twin sister for personal reasons. (Yup, it’s a dead wife. He even has his own secret base. ^^; Also, for a man with no imagination, he spends an awfully long time contemplating the sunrise – this is explained as out-of-character, an aberration, but I sort of think that characters should live up to their descriptions for at least the first scene they’re in.)
The twin sister, presumably, since she has to be in the main cast. (Three guesses who and the first two don’t count! But her identity is not a major plot-point.)
Jase Kylos: Chief of the Underworld, a man of convenient hunches, who wants nothing more than to be transferred somewhere else. (Who needs plotting when you have convenient hunches? Note to author, “intuition” and “psychic powers” are not the same thing.)
And the music-and-money obsessed, maybe-psychic leader of a first-class club band on the verge of hitting it big. (…I still have no idea what the Magician’s personality is. He’s intelligent, he doesn’t have a criminal record, he’s lost to the world of music except when the plot demands that he be grounded so he can interpret for the even-more-spacey Terra…)
And that’s, er, it. The rest is a matter of maneuvering the players into place at the space-station, with who-cares-what flimsy excuses, so they can all be there when [spoiler] goes down.
At this point, my biggest complaints were: the Magician is a cipher, Aaron and Jase are clichés who spend more time acting out of character than in-character, those excuses sure are flimsy, and Patricia McKillip obviously doesn’t know anything about…a lot of things, actually, but mainly music – can’t write anything technical, so she just has the Magician playing the same note over an over (for the record, a B flat). A minor quibble, maybe, but the killer is in the details, and the book lacks interesting detail…
…in the first half. It does get better later on. ^^; McKillip has the sort of style that imbues nearly every act with implied layers of meaning, so I sort of got cranky when there wasn’t anything there – but sometimes there was something there, and then it was all worth it. (An example of a line I really liked: an ex-con “was pacing a small, very contain oval between two couches; its exact dimensions fascinated and appalled the Musician.” See? Isn’t that cool? Now If only the ratio of A to B were more in B’s favor.)
Then there’s some stuff about the past, and the action happens…okay, I have a small problem with the content of the action.
Spoiler:
So cool, Terra and Michelle’s backstory, though why is it that the coded-feminine twin sister is the one who goes crazy? But more importantly, there were so many interesting directions this could have gone in: the pharmaceutical research station the two of them grew up on was working on something nefarious. (Why else would FWG lie about Terra and Michelle’s point of origin in the news reports?) Terra’s rampage was manufactured by the military. Some other theories I can’t recall right now – the point is, there was potential there, so after all those pages, to finally get to the heart of the matter, and learn that in truth, the aliens made her do it, is…kind of disappointing. XD; Though the vivid description and speculation that follows almost makes up for it. (Almost.)
I also have issues with the epilogue – I don’t think a tyrannical, less-freedom-more-safety type of hegemonic world government would care what the Magician’s reasons for aiding and abetting were, whether Jase Kylos swears it was overriding biological necessity or not – just like I don’t believe that most superiors would accept “oh, she had a gun to my head, I had to” as an absolution of all responsibility on his end during the initial escape. At some point, it doesn’t matter what your reasons are, if you are in a position of authority, you are expected to do your job. Unreasonably, in some cases. And anyway, the epilogue strikes me as a “because the ending was so flimsy, we need to reinforce it” sort of deal, as if repetition will compensate for underlying illogic. (Well, it sort of does. ^^; Despite exasperation on my part that with so many questions still hanging in the air, nothing new of substance occurs.)
In summary: nice scenery, poor plotting, occasionally great writing. Checking IMDB, I see that this book has not been made into a movie, which is a shame, since it would really be a great one -- all the structuring, logic, and cliché issues would disappear in a visual medium, leaving behind pure, unadulterated SF coolness. (Also I’m impressed all over again by the cover, which strikes a perfect balance between ambiguous and apt.) Will probably read more by McKillip, in spite of everything. ^^; Any recommendations? Books with actual substance appreciated. (I've already read the Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy.)
The set-up: a woman locked away for life, considered the Underworld’s most dangerous prisoner. (Though you have to take the author’s word for this, at first, since for most of the book, Terra Viridian is too out-of-it to tie her own shoes, let alone go off on another laser-rifle rampage.) The central mystery of the book of course is: why’d she do it? What possessed her? Is she just crazy, or…I think most of you can already guess the answer to this question, XD. If she were simply crazy, where would the story be?
Other characters:
Aaron Fisher: First-class patroller, a man who by his own admission has no imagination, obsessed with tracking down Terra’s elusive twin sister for personal reasons. (Yup, it’s a dead wife. He even has his own secret base. ^^; Also, for a man with no imagination, he spends an awfully long time contemplating the sunrise – this is explained as out-of-character, an aberration, but I sort of think that characters should live up to their descriptions for at least the first scene they’re in.)
The twin sister, presumably, since she has to be in the main cast. (Three guesses who and the first two don’t count! But her identity is not a major plot-point.)
Jase Kylos: Chief of the Underworld, a man of convenient hunches, who wants nothing more than to be transferred somewhere else. (Who needs plotting when you have convenient hunches? Note to author, “intuition” and “psychic powers” are not the same thing.)
And the music-and-money obsessed, maybe-psychic leader of a first-class club band on the verge of hitting it big. (…I still have no idea what the Magician’s personality is. He’s intelligent, he doesn’t have a criminal record, he’s lost to the world of music except when the plot demands that he be grounded so he can interpret for the even-more-spacey Terra…)
And that’s, er, it. The rest is a matter of maneuvering the players into place at the space-station, with who-cares-what flimsy excuses, so they can all be there when [spoiler] goes down.
At this point, my biggest complaints were: the Magician is a cipher, Aaron and Jase are clichés who spend more time acting out of character than in-character, those excuses sure are flimsy, and Patricia McKillip obviously doesn’t know anything about…a lot of things, actually, but mainly music – can’t write anything technical, so she just has the Magician playing the same note over an over (for the record, a B flat). A minor quibble, maybe, but the killer is in the details, and the book lacks interesting detail…
…in the first half. It does get better later on. ^^; McKillip has the sort of style that imbues nearly every act with implied layers of meaning, so I sort of got cranky when there wasn’t anything there – but sometimes there was something there, and then it was all worth it. (An example of a line I really liked: an ex-con “was pacing a small, very contain oval between two couches; its exact dimensions fascinated and appalled the Musician.” See? Isn’t that cool? Now If only the ratio of A to B were more in B’s favor.)
Then there’s some stuff about the past, and the action happens…okay, I have a small problem with the content of the action.
Spoiler:
So cool, Terra and Michelle’s backstory, though why is it that the coded-feminine twin sister is the one who goes crazy? But more importantly, there were so many interesting directions this could have gone in: the pharmaceutical research station the two of them grew up on was working on something nefarious. (Why else would FWG lie about Terra and Michelle’s point of origin in the news reports?) Terra’s rampage was manufactured by the military. Some other theories I can’t recall right now – the point is, there was potential there, so after all those pages, to finally get to the heart of the matter, and learn that in truth, the aliens made her do it, is…kind of disappointing. XD; Though the vivid description and speculation that follows almost makes up for it. (Almost.)
I also have issues with the epilogue – I don’t think a tyrannical, less-freedom-more-safety type of hegemonic world government would care what the Magician’s reasons for aiding and abetting were, whether Jase Kylos swears it was overriding biological necessity or not – just like I don’t believe that most superiors would accept “oh, she had a gun to my head, I had to” as an absolution of all responsibility on his end during the initial escape. At some point, it doesn’t matter what your reasons are, if you are in a position of authority, you are expected to do your job. Unreasonably, in some cases. And anyway, the epilogue strikes me as a “because the ending was so flimsy, we need to reinforce it” sort of deal, as if repetition will compensate for underlying illogic. (Well, it sort of does. ^^; Despite exasperation on my part that with so many questions still hanging in the air, nothing new of substance occurs.)
In summary: nice scenery, poor plotting, occasionally great writing. Checking IMDB, I see that this book has not been made into a movie, which is a shame, since it would really be a great one -- all the structuring, logic, and cliché issues would disappear in a visual medium, leaving behind pure, unadulterated SF coolness. (Also I’m impressed all over again by the cover, which strikes a perfect balance between ambiguous and apt.) Will probably read more by McKillip, in spite of everything. ^^; Any recommendations? Books with actual substance appreciated. (I've already read the Riddlemaster of Hed trilogy.)