Happy First Anniversary, everybody! And how encouraging that our first book of the year was a triumphant tour de force of book writing.  Everyone thought it was AWESOME.  The end.

Really.

Okay no.  January’s book was one of most polarizing reads I think this group has ever encountered.  I even called in reinforcements by way of Brian (good job Brian!) to back up my side.  Dave’s letter was firmly in the anti-Moon camp, but also hilarious (I think I saw Kat willing herself to not shoot coffee out her nose during some of the reading) so I thought I would “borrow” heavily from that.  Ahem:

“Fellow SFBC’ers,

“I can only hope the kangaroo court is being assembled tonight to level charges against Lord Dave of Hy-Vee.  The suggestion of SHEEPFARMER’S DAUGHTER as a worthy addition to the hallowed scrolls of our book list deserves no less.  Such a crime surely cannot go unpunished.

“Seriously though, this book had serious flaws.  Flaws which were not ameliorated by the few things it had going for it.  I also believe that Judith Tarr should be brought up on charges of sacrelidge (this is a religious demagoguery, right??).  ‘True heir of middle earth’ indeed.  If I just read a book from the 4th age, tell Cirdan to save me a seat on the last ship out of the Grey Havens.

“To address the accusation of ‘Boring-as-hell’ I would like to call Paksennarion Dothansdotter of the Three Firs to the stand…

“Ah, good.  Paks, thanks for joining us tonight .  I see you’ve brought the equipment needed to summarize you part in the above named tale.  What?  Yes, you can plug in the slide projector over there.  Just tell [Person Sitting Next to Outlet] to move over a bit.  Ok, now that youve fired up the slide projector, I’ll leave you to it:

“(read in monotone)
Thank you.  Dave asked me to tell you about my first few years in Duke Phelan’s Mercenary Company.

“KSSHHK! (the slide projector advances to the first slide)  This is me in front of my father’s house.  I didn’t want to live there.  So I ran away.

“KSSHHK!  This is me in the mercenary company.  Swinging a sword is tough.

“KSSHHK!  This is me learning how to hold a spear, it’s harder than it looks.

“KSSHHK!  Here’s me in the dungeon.  They accused me of trying to beat up a superior officer, but he was actually drugged by a love potion and was trying to rape me.  He didn’t though, so that’s ok.

“KSSHHK!  This is the whole cohort of recruits marching to the southlands: the land of mercenary contracts!

“KSSHHK!  This is me at my first battle, I’m the unconscious one.

“KSSHHK!  Now I brought some pictures of my trip to Mt. Rushmore but Dave said no.”

So!  Okay then.  Excellent reading, Dean, by the way.  I heard from Dave and Dean that this book was going to be awful and that they would enjoy filleting whoever dared suggest it so my plan was to come to the meeting trumpeting the love of All Things Moon and denounce any naysayers as mysogynists.  Unfortunately I actually ended up liking the book, so that fell apart.

L. Dave had a well-reasoned defense: that the trilogy beginning with SD, called the DEED OF PAKSENNARRION, was originally written as one whole work and it was the publisher’s decision to split it into three.  This was also Moon’s first attempt at writing after a career in the military.  So, we are reading the first third of someone’s first novel and comparing it to Tolkein.  No one can win with that.

The main complaint seemed to be that the text was wooden, the characters two-dimensional, and the plotting tedious at best.  I thought that this might have been a stylistic choice, since Paks was pointed out to be rather dense and naive and she was our main protagonist, she would see the world with very little shades of gray.  L. Dave also pointed out that Moon was attempting to create the Perfect Soldier on the way to sainthood, and there is much benefit from having a dichromatic main character.  The lack of libido was a thorn in the side of many at book club, I thought it might have something to do with the Madonna/Whore paradigm but L. Dave again pointed us towards the idea that we are watching someone become a saint, and saints are not known for seeking out carnal pleasures.

Right around this time there was a long divergant conversation about one of Trilety’s new pieces involving a genetic stutter.  I’m not going to recreate it here, but we were all nerdily intrigued.  Also, Enterprise, totally.  I mean, really, LASERS?

The prose of the book stuck in some people’s craws.  I liked the straightforward nature of it – what you read is what you get.  That’s one of the many reasons I don’t read a lot of fantasy, they get hung up on their ponderous wordsalads and take nine chapters anthropomorphizing foliage.  Dean, Kat, Chuck, Trilety and Dave were all disappointed in what they viewed as pedestrian language.  I think that’s more of a personal preference rather than a debate subject, you can’t really convince me that Lovecraft is an evocative writer any more than I can convince Dean that, save for some obligatory disclaimers, I thought Moon’s style was pleasant.

And I think that’s the main point.  L. Dave, Mick, Auston and myself all enjoyed the book, but are not about to sing its praises from the rooftops.  Yes, there was excessive blushing and grinning.  Yes, sometimes the infodumps were hard to digest.  Overall, though, it was a fun read.  Comparing that to Chuck, Kat, Trilety, Dean, and Dave’s opinion that “the first 200 pages or so were an exercise in endurance.  The last 100 improved primarily because it meant the the book was nearly over and then the pain would stop.”

Either way, Trilety brought cookies so the evening was an unparalleled success.  See you guys next month when we’ll be talking about one of my favorite books, LATHE OF HEAVEN by Ursula K. LeGuin.