PhoenixFalls -
This novel (and its predecessor) is very much like the painting Ilario wants so much to study: full of bright colors, sometimes surprisingly evocative, but ultimately two-dimensional.
Gentle's technique is not particularly spectacular. Her descriptions are prosaic, her characters are stock, and she uses that cheapest of all tricks to keep the reader reading: ending every chapter on a cliffhanger. But she has a surprising flair for naming things: the Penitence, the Empty Chair, Alexandria-in-Exile, and others struck me with glimpses into her alternate world that felt realer than all the description she inserted.
Gentle's publisher also did her story no real service in splitting the original novel into two parts. The Stone Golem picks up exactly where The Lion's Eye left off, and there is no catch-up for the reader. I spent the first third of the novel trying to remember who all these people were and what on earth they had done in the previous volume. I'm still not convinced I've remembered it all.
I wanted this novel to be better than it was. I root for any writer that tries to explore gender roles and alternate sexualities. But Gentle simply never got the tone right for me: while Ilario's hermaphroditism was front and center in the first volume, it is almost non-existent in the second, as all the characters are already comfortable with it. There is no sex in this volume, and there wasn't any sex in the first volume after the first chapter. *SPOILER ALERT* Ilario's relationship with his/her child could have been quite interesting, except that Onorata was shuffled off mid-way through this volume for a reason I could not wrap my head around at all. *END OF SPOILER* And then the climax of the novel degenerates into a round-table where all of the men in the novel explain to Ilario that he/she is lucky in being too much of a man to be able to be legally classified a woman -- a bit of proselytizing that would have been unnecessary if Gentle had done her job better with describing Ilario's shifting gender roles (and peoples' reaction to him/her in her different states) throughout the novel.
Still, there is much to enjoy about this novel as well. Gentle's depiction of how an artist sees the world was quite interesting (though there was more of that in the first volume than the second); I did like the characters and was engaged to root for them, even though I liked them better when they were offstage than when they were in front of me acting like idiots; and the plot moved along briskly if you enjoy political machinations instead of battle scenes. I confess to being a little appalled by the fact that the characters at every turn choose to withhold information from each other, then bring that information out at the most inopportune times for discussion, but by halfway through the novel I simply submitted to that piece of silliness and was forced to admire the fact that at least they didn't snipe at each other for it. There also was a fair amount of humor that got me past some of the more absurd passages.
Ultimately, I don't know that I can strongly recommend this novel, but it is less annoying than the first volume (where Ilario simply runs headlong into one disaster after another), does attempt to explore some important issues, has quite an interesting alternate history behind it, and isn't a tremendous chore to read.
Gentle's technique is not particularly spectacular. Her descriptions are prosaic, her characters are stock, and she uses that cheapest of all tricks to keep the reader reading: ending every chapter on a cliffhanger. But she has a surprising flair for naming things: the Penitence, the Empty Chair, Alexandria-in-Exile, and others struck me with glimpses into her alternate world that felt realer than all the description she inserted.
Gentle's publisher also did her story no real service in splitting the original novel into two parts. The Stone Golem picks up exactly where The Lion's Eye left off, and there is no catch-up for the reader. I spent the first third of the novel trying to remember who all these people were and what on earth they had done in the previous volume. I'm still not convinced I've remembered it all.
I wanted this novel to be better than it was. I root for any writer that tries to explore gender roles and alternate sexualities. But Gentle simply never got the tone right for me: while Ilario's hermaphroditism was front and center in the first volume, it is almost non-existent in the second, as all the characters are already comfortable with it. There is no sex in this volume, and there wasn't any sex in the first volume after the first chapter. *SPOILER ALERT* Ilario's relationship with his/her child could have been quite interesting, except that Onorata was shuffled off mid-way through this volume for a reason I could not wrap my head around at all. *END OF SPOILER* And then the climax of the novel degenerates into a round-table where all of the men in the novel explain to Ilario that he/she is lucky in being too much of a man to be able to be legally classified a woman -- a bit of proselytizing that would have been unnecessary if Gentle had done her job better with describing Ilario's shifting gender roles (and peoples' reaction to him/her in her different states) throughout the novel.
Still, there is much to enjoy about this novel as well. Gentle's depiction of how an artist sees the world was quite interesting (though there was more of that in the first volume than the second); I did like the characters and was engaged to root for them, even though I liked them better when they were offstage than when they were in front of me acting like idiots; and the plot moved along briskly if you enjoy political machinations instead of battle scenes. I confess to being a little appalled by the fact that the characters at every turn choose to withhold information from each other, then bring that information out at the most inopportune times for discussion, but by halfway through the novel I simply submitted to that piece of silliness and was forced to admire the fact that at least they didn't snipe at each other for it. There also was a fair amount of humor that got me past some of the more absurd passages.
Ultimately, I don't know that I can strongly recommend this novel, but it is less annoying than the first volume (where Ilario simply runs headlong into one disaster after another), does attempt to explore some important issues, has quite an interesting alternate history behind it, and isn't a tremendous chore to read.
