Green

Well, it’s been a few days since I read the book, so I figured I might as well get this write up done with. I decided this time around I would take in a fantasy book that was just a one-shot, and that was a bit more typical of the genre than the urban fantasy that Charles de Lint presented me in his last read. Urban fantasy is great of course, but I was itching for something that really felt like a fantasy novel and so I decided I would give Green a whirl.

Now I’m a fairly open person with literature, as well as fim and related arts, and I love diversity in this respect. My musical tastes and still art tastes are a bit more rigid, but when it comes to stories, whether on pages or stages or screens, I can find a place for nearly all kinds. My blog has made this kind of evident since I haven’t really disliked anything I’ve read or watched and posted on here about. I’ve found faults, sure, but I’ve enjoyed everything that I’ve blogged about and would recommend them happily to those who were interested. Well, at least that is until now. So get ready for this momentous occassion, an entry that is negative overall is on its way.

Story

The story in Green was pretty bi-polar as it really consisted of two stories being told together. This isn’t that unheard of, but what made it a bit different in Green is that the story that felt like it should be playing second fiddle was far more dominant than the story that felt like it was really the one that was supposed to take center stage. Maybe my interpretation was a bit off, but the roles of the two stories just seemed reversed for much of the book. One of these stories was at least decent, but unfortunately that was the one that was often on the back burner. The story that ended up dominating the book was the one that I just simply didn’t care for much, if at all.

I have to say, one of the things that I actually like about young adult literature is that most of it doesn’t try to fill itself with junk to seem more mature. The story is left largely intact, untouched by the need that some authors seem to have to fill the stories with those “mature” elements to make sure we know their book is meant for adults. There are many many many great novels out there that work for adults that don’t rely on this sort of exhibition, unfortunately Green was not one of those.

The story was split in to three main parts. The first part consisted of Greens childhood being raised as a lady to be sold someday to a wealthy family. She was more or less a slave and her life was quite brutal as her teachers took their jobs more like an animal trainer would view training an animal, instead of teachers meant to teach another human. She was also locked within the walls of her grounds, forbidden from seeing the outside. It was a pretty creative story, and about the only part of the dominant story that I really liked. Still though, it dragged on at times. I mean, her unfortunate life was detailed time and time again in such a redundant fashion that I was beginning to wonder if the whole book was just going to be about her dealing with her abusive teachers and how mad it made her and strengthened her resolve to free herself some day.

Luckily the redundancy subsided eventually and the other more interesting story took control for a bit as something of the politics of man and gods are made clear. The first part ended with a pretty nice conclusion and I was actually looking forward to continuing to the second part. Unfortunately it is the second part where things took a real turn for the worse. This portion of the book was exhibitionism to such a degree I wasn’t sure if I was reading a fantasy novel, or some drug store smut. We went from a flawed, but interesting portion detailing a girl growing up as a prisoner in luxury, and being made in to a tool for two different sides to a portion that seemed more about being an exhibition of mature content than anything else.

It started interestingly enough; Green goes home and finds her father to be a shell of his former self, and makes her way to Kalimpura, a city that proved to me to be as uninteresting of a setting as this entire portion of the book turned out to be. Here she joins a group of patrons of the Lily goddess, an all female group that is practically the dominant power in the city. Here is where the exhibitionism begins in earnest. This portion is basically about a group of 12 to 15 year old girls in lesbian relationships amongst each other and with their teachers as well who also apparently love to get in a little S&M on the weekends for added pleasure. When they’re not toying with one anothers “sweetpockets”, they’re down in the dungeons killing pigs and dogs for practice. Then when they’re in assembly and their goddess decides to address them directly, they all have their period at once, … sounds great doesn’t it?

Heck, even after her proteges imprison her and one of her old mistresses from the first, she still seems obsessed with her order, even though they’re just about ready to kill the both of them. Of course, she gets distracted from this as her and her former mistress decide to get it on in the prison cell. Hell, by the start of the third portion, this girl who is now 15 has had more sexual partners than most people twice her age would. The second part ends with a brief mention of that other story I was talking about, which finally takes center stage in the third part. Unfortunately the third part just didn’t do much to improve on the second part. It seems every time a female character is introduced we get the narrative telling us how attractive they are and how much she’d enjoy being their lover.

The third part has a number of sex scenes, about equally as pointless as most of those from the second part. She does finally sleep with a guy, but he’s killed off a few pages later and she mourns him a little bit until her mistress returns and she’s lusting for her again, which happens to take place during a sex scene between them being watched over by the villain as he amuses himself. The ending then comes in a flash and all seems quiet convenient like the author suddenly remembered he has this whole other story he needs to conclude. There’s a few interesting elements, but they’re somewhat mired by what I will mention next.

Basically, the author seemed to invent this whole world, as authors do, but then he developed extreme prejudices about the people and places of that world. You get the Selistani region and the city of Kalimpura which is made off to be some great place, even though I can’t say that I would want to live in a city practically under control of militant lesbians and the rampant politics of various guilds. The goddess introduced in Kalimpura is an active and fairly wise goddess who is a patron most would envy. Then you get the Stone Cost and Copper Downs, a city with order and structure, but apparently ruled by controlling dictators, full of evil bandits and idiotic guards, and stupid and cruel gods whose avatars end up playing the role of braindead cannon fodder. Everything Selistani is painted in the brightest and greatest light, even the evil of the place, and then Copper Downs is treated with the exact opposite respect, painted as an awful place where even the good elements are crap.

Copper Downs wasn’t the only thing painted in a bad light. There were bad females and good females, but even the bad female characters were mostly given some level of respect. The male characters did not fare so well though. Nope, I fear not, almost every male character was an evil and vile and corrupt bastard, or they were just morons. Even the good guys were easily killed off or ended up evil in the end, very few male characters survived with their lives, brains and/or dignity intact. I swear, if not for the picture of the very obviously male author in the back of the book, I would swear this book was written by some militant extremist feminazi on the warpath.

That second story that sat in the background did at least save the book a little bit, even if the dominant storyline was constantly hacking away at it for most of the book, even when the second story was dominant. The premise of the second story was interesting with the rise of a new god and those who were trying to stop this obviously evil entity from rising to any power. It had some decent intrigue and corruption and twists, but it was far too little and was constantly under siege from the books other half. All in all, the interesting story probably would have covered 100 pages at most, the rest of it was all about the girls life growing up as a slave or as an S&M obsessed lesbian warrior. Even the first part of that story was at least interesting, even if a bit redundant, but it really went downhill fast.

Characters

The book focuses on Green, who is a somewhat interesting character, but as the narrator she is also the source of the constant intrusions of the books uninteresting half. As she develops, she also develops in a less and less interesting fashion. She starts as a young girl who is of a strong heart and a strong will, who is determined to win her freedom from her captors through her skills and through her words. She is a very admirable young girl who knows what is right and knows what needs to be done and is a great heroine to start. Then part two kicks in, where she becomes more of a tool than Copper Downs could have ever hoped to make her and is just a violent killer with little sensibility. Even when she knows what she’s doing is wrong, she is still happy to do it.

The strong willed and strong minded girl from the first part gives way to a tired old cliche of a character that maintains none of the integrity she developed in the first part. She’s obsessively prejudiced against the Stone Coast and in favor of Kalimpura and her order, no matter what evil they do or is present there. When she’s not exploring her prejudice, she’s then obsessing about finding who she’s going to bed next. Now I have nothing again lesbians, I’ve read books with them present in major roles before, but those books didn’t wield such extreme prejudices and pointless exhibitionism in the process. So she’s a lesbian, good for her, but when it honestly does nothing but damage the storylines with the authors obsession of it, then it becomes a problem. Your book is for adults, good for you, but get over it already and move on, it really got old and really got to be quite ridiculous very early on.

Other characters included the Dancing Mistress and Federo, who were Greens closest friends very early on. Of course, the Dancing Mistress became her lover in the jailcell in another one of those ridiculously pointless scenes, but she was a somewhat interesting character for the most part. She had a sense of wisdom not scene much in the book, not even amongst Greens later teachers, but unfortunately she was just not developed to much a degree. She was also a pardine, who was another race of people who reminded me of the catgirls in anime, and they’re also pretty small in numbers and don’t tell people their real names. Unfortunately that’s about the bulk of their development as well. After all, developing an order of angry lesbians who happen to follow the only halfway decent goddess in the book, who is not surprisingly female, is far more important than developing the only other major race in the book.

Federo was an interesting character, and one of the few male leads with any intelligence and goodness about him. Of course, we can’t stand for that now can we? So, he became the villainous person trying to rise to godhood due to the possession of some level of corruption by the end. Still, Green respected the man he was before the possession, even in the end, so I have to give her some credit there. Another male character was Septio, who was a decent enough character who followed a pretty interesting god, though he was seriously played down because we can’t have any Stone Coast gods being halfway decent now can we? Unfortunately Septio was underused and seemed to exist simply to get Green pregnate before being killed off and all but forgotten by Green and the story. Oh, and of course, Greens child is hinted to be a girl by the end of the book; I know, try not to be too surprised.

The other strong characters were the mistresses who taugh Green in the first part, who were mostly a pack of evil crones who were as happy to beat Green as they were to teach her. Still, Green had some level of love and respect for them, though I’m sure if they were male teachers they’d have been made out to be the agents of the devil himself. Then there’s the Factor, who was the villain from the first part and an ally in the third part. He wasn’t much developed aside from being a man who held the power of the pardines captive to rule over Copper Downs and keep the gods silent. Once again, the one thing that made Copper Downs out to be a good place in the book was the result of such an evil act by an evil dictator. Funny how that happens, the prejudice shows again.

The second part is dominated by the members of the Order of the Lily Goddess, which consists of a few poorly developed classmates of Green of ages ranging from very young girls to 15 year olds. Then there’s her teachers who are painted as though they are wise and wonderful leaders, but never really came off as much to me. They speak well, but they’re obsessed with their duty of killing others, though they’re not allowed to judge. I mean, we wouldn’t want killers to think about why they’re killing people now do we? When they’re not dwelling on who to kill next or drilling their student by having them kill detoothed dogs, they’re treating the students as their personal harem and bedding them on a regular basis.

The third part introduces a few very minor characters who often felt like they were meant to be something more, but just ended up being forgetable nobodies. Even the Rectifier, who was introduced as some great friend and ally ended up playing a small and relatively minor role. After that he was made out to be some kind of villain in a small portion that seemed to make absolutely no sense, like it was just tossed in because the author felt one more small twist was needed after the story appeared to have concluded. Otherwise the villain that Federo turned in to was as cliche and predictable as much of the book turned out to be. In spite of the twist that Federo was actually the villain, he was otherwise a complete disappointment as far as villains go.

Writing

I will say this for Mr.Lake, he is actually a pretty talented writer. His methods are flawed, or rather the prejudices in which he seemed to dwell on when he wrote. It’s one thing to create a world in your mind, but when you develop prejudices about the people and places in this world to such a degree it really shows in how you write, well then that can become a problem. Still, the way he wrote descriptions and details was really rather poetic at times, and was always quite thorough without seeming too dry. I may not have cared for the story that he wrote, but I certainly respect the way he wrote it.

The one thing I didn’t care for was the lack of chapters. The book was divided in to fourt parts, the fourth being a small epilogue that ran only a few pages and which kind of seemed like it was only there to ensure we knew Greens child was to be a girl. Honestly, it’s the only part of the fourth portion that seemed really relevant. The three other sections were around 100 pages each, give or take a dozen or two pages. There were divisions that indicated the story was moving to a different time or setting, but otherwise there were no chapters or major stopping points between each section. I know some authors and readers think that writing a chapterless book is the new artistic way of doing it, but I’m not part of that camp honestly. Give me chapters any day of the week please.

Illustrations

The book, like many, only had the one illustration, which is the one that wraps the book. It really is a great cover though, nd is what actually initially drew me to the book (which is a covers primary purpose). To match the name of the book, the majority of the cover is shades of green, with only Green herself and the fruit on the tree she hangs from contrasting that. The image on the cover seems to depict a scene from the first portion of the book, though Green does look a little older and built than that scene seemed to indicate she should. Still though, it’s a well painted cover that certainly will intrigue the viewers. It’s no incredible masterpiece of artwork, but it draws the eye and is quite well painted.

Closing Comments

Well, I was sucked in to a book that I just didn’t care for in the end. To be honest, I was half tempted to put the book down around the midpoint. You might notice that my page and goodreads showed I had finished the last half of the book in one swoop. That wasn’t the case though, I had just resolved at that point to give up on it. I don’t do that though, and by the next night I was resolved to finish it, particularly since I was claiming I had. I don’t like giving up on a story, even if I’m convinced by the midpoint that I wasn’t going to like it. In the end, I didn’t care for it, but I was still interested to see how the whole gods and Copper Downs portion was going to play out.

We all read our share of bad books, and I suppose this book might still appeal to some, but I am just not amongst those. Like I said, Jay Lakes writing style was actually quite impressive; but style or not, I just didn’t much like the story his impressive style had put to paper. Good writing or not, the content still has to be there, because it is the content that keeps the reader fixed and interested. You can write about a your lawn in the most poetic fashion in the world for 300 pages, but I’m still not going to enjoy a 300 page book about your lawn not matter how beautiful the writing is. So that’s it, my first blog entry for something I just really didn’t care for. I guess it can happen. Now it’s just a matter of choosing what to read next to cleanse my mind a bit. I’m going to have to be a bit careful and choose one I’m certain I’ll enjoy. Reading two bad books in a row might hinder my enthusiasm to read a bit.

© 2009, Keonyn. All rights reserved.

Tags: Fantasy, Green, Jay Lake, Tor Books