12 years ago
Tue Mar 27 2012, 08:57am
Hullo everyone. I'm a newbie on Obernewtyn.net. My wife is a massive fan of the series, and she asked me to read it. I've been doing so very slowly over the last few years. I am a big sci fi/fantasy buff, so she thought I might appreciate it. In fact, I have done. Although I would say that Isobelle Carmody needs a more stringent editor, she has a very compelling story on her hands. However, I am currently about 70% of the way through 'The Sending', and there has been a bit of boredom and annoyance festering in my head since I've been reading it. Last night it came tumbling out in a rant, and my wife suggested I come on here and talk about it with the community here. Hopefully, what I am about to say makes sense.
My favourite books in the series so far have been Nos. 2, 3 & 5. Although, ironically, I found 'The Stone Key' to be almost too relentless in its pace (perhaps due to its length), the story of a second apocalypse being prevented by an agent assisted by people who lived hundreds of years before is quite an interesting one. I particularly enjoy post-apocalyptic settings (my favourite SF novel, 'A Canticle for Leibowitz', is one such).
However, I have found IC's storytelling to be periodically turgid. The first phrase on the blurb of 'The Keeping Place' is "After a kidnapping,...", but Elspeth doesn't find out about the kidnapping until about half way through a 750-page book. I now find myself with the same problem in 'The Sending', where she doesn't leave Obernewtyn until about 400 pages in. I have no problem with slow books, but in the ancient Greek storytelling model, we should be well past the complication and near to the climax. Slow storytelling at this stage bogs everything down and frustrates people like me who like things told a certain way. Last night, when I was reading the chapter where Elspeth, Swallow and Ahmedri enter the Taillard Observatory, several things occurred to me.
1. Elspeth doesn't know where either the BOT weapons or Sentinel are.
2. Elspeth needs Cassandra's key, but she doesn't know why she needs it, nor what it looks like or where it is. She says herself that it could be anything.
3. Elspeth knows that Jacob Obernewtyn had the key, but she doesn't know where his body is, if he had the key when he died, or if the key is still with his body. If he fell off one of the mountains on the way to the Graag, she would have no way of knowing where the key is. She could miss his body by 100 metres and not realise.
4. Elspeth has absolutely *nothing* to go on at this point, except that she knows that Jacob was heading for some kind of city, and that Rheagor has had a vision that somewhat pinpoints a city. That's not much.
I can't understand why Elspeth doesn't just crack it and get really annoyed with the Agyllians. I understand why Cassy's messages to her are left vague, but I don't know why Atthis' communications with Elspeth could not be more conclusive, since she was communicating with Elspeth directly. Although it could be said that Atthis' death was partly Elspeth's own doing, one might have thought that the Agyllians could go to some special effort to bring Elspeth to the Ken so that she could speak with Atthis before the latter died. Acting with a proxy (Maruman) makes things more complicated. Unless there is some underlying reason for this, it doesn't seem like the Agyllians are trying particularly hard to prevent another Great White.
It says a lot that even though Elspeth has finally set out on her quest, she has no idea of her eventual destination, nor of the purpose of the travelling companions she finds herself with. Dare I say it, but could this unnecessary mystery have anything to do with ramping up the drama? After all, having characters with the power of telling the future always makes it difficult to make things dramatic.
If I've raised any hackles with my tone, I apologise. I am a very direct person and I haven't really held back in this post. Realise that I actually enjoy this series, and my frustration comes from a desire to see it resolve satisfactorily, rather than any need to troll.
I have to say a do agree with what you wrote about the pace of the novels, although I still enjoyed them immensely, it has been really hard to get my friends to read them because they are just so slow. I even remember that when I first read Obernewtyn, I couldn't really got into the book until I was over halfway through.
I'm pretty sure that the fact that Elspeth does not know anything about the quest will have some deeper meaning in the end. It will have some moral like either "you must trust people" or "don't trust strangers- find out important information yourself" or just "futuretellers are annoying" (okay, that's more Elspeth's personal message to you throughout the entire series!). But I'm sure that Carmody has done that for a reason to show how annoyed Elspeth is that she has to sacrifice (apparently!) her own life and she hasn't even been told what she's suppossed to be doing or where she is going.
Sorry just had to pop in from a long hiatus to mull over the eternal question of "Why so Lud-damn vague futuretellers?!" I think the reason why all futuretellers (including the Agyllians) are so vague has been documented many times through the novel especially in the conversations Elf has had with Maryon.
The future is never set - that has been repeated time and time again, it is simply a course that a river could flow but a time of drought/flood can so easily alter its course to paraphrase from the Farseekers. Maryon went into more details in the Sending pointing out that futuretellers see a thousand different possibilities and has to seek again and again the chain of events that lead to one possibility. She also then goes on to say that the actions/inactions of a futureteller can be a powerful force that allows only one future to exist or shuts another future out completely.
I think the Agyllians are vague because they are well aware of that fact. A lot of the things they are not saying is simply because by saying them they will create a future they are trying to avoid. Or because they must allow Elf so degree of agency and not make her a mindless puppet of destiny. The most prominent example of this is Elf choosing to save Rushton above her own life and her own task. She chose to save him completely out of her will and that in turn set into a motion a vast chain of events with far-reaching consequences - Atthis dying, Elf/Rushton consummating their love and creating the bond between them, Bear!Rushton helping Elf accept her dark powers. If the Agyllians dictate too much what Elf should do/can't do they will be shutting out a lot of futures that may have ramifications they dare not create.
As always apologies for wall of text! but my two and a half cents
