tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post9136084570024788937..comments2024-03-20T19:40:58.078-05:00Comments on The OF Blog: Richard Morgan, The Steel RemainsLarry Nolenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16001420558511460998noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-64090233361971709462009-01-17T19:13:00.000-06:002009-01-17T19:13:00.000-06:00Don't know how that slipped my attention! But tha...Don't know how that slipped my attention! But that certainly is intriguing, to say the least. I wonder if someone will ask Morgan about that in a future interview.Larry Nolenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16001420558511460998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-64766672140094622822009-01-17T19:11:00.000-06:002009-01-17T19:11:00.000-06:00The being that rescues Egar is called "Takavach".The being that rescues Egar is called "Takavach".Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15446040693497057719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-59463105957288084812009-01-17T18:17:00.000-06:002009-01-17T18:17:00.000-06:00No, I didn't notice that. Where?No, I didn't notice that. Where?Larry Nolenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16001420558511460998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-19102791309509009792009-01-17T18:04:00.000-06:002009-01-17T18:04:00.000-06:00Not so different from my impression, then. I'd pu...Not so different from my impression, then. I'd put in firmly in "very good". Down from excellent because you're right, I don't think the end is quite right for either a serial or a big fat trilogy, and he doesn't deal in a satisfying manner with Egar or Archeth.<BR/><BR/>Also, did you notice that Kovacs is in there somewhere?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15446040693497057719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-54856654520112401622009-01-17T17:42:00.000-06:002009-01-17T17:42:00.000-06:00OK, I can agree with much of what you said there. ...OK, I can agree with much of what you said there. It perhaps is that my impressions were colored with the notion that it'd be the first of a trilogy and that as such, that it would be more akin to most trilogies in structure than say a true serial (with beginning-middle-end mostly complete for each novel in the sequence). That being said, I just don't know if the payoff will be as immediate as what many others might expect. It is this uncertainty combined with a relatively weak ending that downgraded the book from excellent to good-verging on very good status.Larry Nolenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16001420558511460998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-67883522731353490472009-01-17T17:29:00.000-06:002009-01-17T17:29:00.000-06:00Basically I agree with you about the secondary cha...Basically I agree with you about the secondary characters, Larry, especially Egar. He got such little screentime that I didn't get a huge sense of what he was about. Archeth less so - I quite like what he did with her - but I take your point.<BR/><BR/>On the structure of the novel as a whole, Morgan has said that he'd intended to alternate the Ringil books with SF ones, and given the probable timeframe between books, had written them to stand by themselves. I get the impression of something like the Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin books; all about the same characters, but able to be read by themselves. As it turns out, he apparently has changed his mind and will right all 3 ringil books in a row, but The Steel Remains was written with that structure in mind.<BR/><BR/>With that in mind, I think the Steel Remains functions quite nicely as a fantasy slice of life. Not something one tends to come across in genre, but still. Here are some people. Some things happen to them. The end.<BR/><BR/>[spoiler follows in case people will actually read this before the book]<BR/><BR/>I think part of what Morgan was trying to do was write a fantasy that isn't about a massive war, or about the return of an ancient evil. So the war happened 15 years ago. One of the ancient races has already left. The other one may or may not be evil, and may or may not return after being somewhat kicked in the ass by Ringil et al. And Ringil himself may or may not be a "Dark Lord."<BR/><BR/>I don't think the failure to address these questions is academic. They're the sort of things that you'd expect even a fairly hacky writer to be able to do in a bog-standard generic first book of a fat fantasy trilogy. And Morgan isn't a hack. To go back to my earlier post, I think the book is entirely about how marginalised people would operate in the realities of a standard fantasy setting - Ringil's a sexual deviant, Archeth is a racial oddity and a lesbian, and Egar doesn't fit in either his own culture or his adopted one. If we had these three people hanging out together in an apartment in Manhattan, you'd either get a sitcom or a middlebrow literary novel about outsiders trying to fit in. Morgan has simply transplanted that into a fantasy setting. This is also suggested by the way he writes dialogue, which uses modern slang, swearing etc frequently.<BR/><BR/>This isn't to say The Steel Remains is perfectly plotted, or that the inconclusive ending didn't irritate me. I would have liked more than vague sparky fires and Ringil staring into a mirror. But I do think that the plot structure and the ending were kind of integral to the point.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15446040693497057719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-68779466680150765502009-01-17T16:56:00.000-06:002009-01-17T16:56:00.000-06:00Jonathan,While I think a bit better of Morgan's wo...Jonathan,<BR/><BR/>While I think a bit better of Morgan's work than you apparently do, I do have to agree in regards to your take on <I>Black Man/Thirteen</I> for the most part. Despite my overall liking of the story, the ending certainly was so weak as to be pretty much a non-ending.<BR/><BR/>Eddie,<BR/><BR/>I like your take on it. I think that is why, despite me being a straight male, that I liked what Morgan aimed to do there. If I ever were to interview him, I'd ask if his experiences teaching ESL helped him to step outside his cultural bubble enough to see the Other so clearly. I suspect that my experience teaching ESL/History in Florida for two years changed my worldview quite a bit as well; might explain my new-found love for Latin American literature.<BR/><BR/>Curious to hear your take on the rest of the novel. Despite my reservations, it could simply end up being something that improves quite a bit on a re-read and with more of the story revealed. I know that was the case with my reading of Scott Bakker's <I>The Darkness That Comes Before</I> in May 2004 before I read <I>The Warrior-Prophet</I>.Larry Nolenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16001420558511460998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-59589364496598205782009-01-17T16:14:00.000-06:002009-01-17T16:14:00.000-06:00The thing I find particularly interesting about th...The thing I find particularly interesting about the way Morgan writes Gil is exactly what many have complained about - the explicit gay sex. Well, not just that, but the degree to which Gil is in your face, and the in your face way Morgan writes him.<BR/><BR/>I would suggest that a lot of prejudice against gay people is rooted in the "ew" factor. People are comfortable with Will and Grace gays because they're essentially asexual handbags - perfect fashion accessories that have no life of their own. Similarly, the brooding, damaged rape victim gays elicit sympathy: what happened to them wasn't their fault, maybe they didn't actually want it.<BR/><BR/>Gil likes sex with men. He tells everyone he likes it. This ensures his outsider status within the world of the novel. And Morgan shows us exactly what it is he likes, complete with body fluids and Gil's rather... excited thought processes. This, in turn, doesn't allow the reader to rely on the usual liberal response "Oh, how nice, a gay character. Some of my best friends are gay." The reality of gay men is that they have sex with other men. And they like it. And in my experience, this tends to make a lot of straight men very uncomfortable. Gay men in the abstract, fine. Men actually having sex with each other, ew! <BR/><BR/>This, I think, explains a lot of the reactions that I've read on other blogs that treated Gil's being gay as overplayed and/or a gimick. Particularly in the astonishingly monochromatic fantasy genre, WASP-y types have the privilege of being able to read almost all protagonists as just like them. White. Straight. Male. Saves the world with his big penis extension... erm, sword (and Gil actually makes a joke about this, I think to Grace). The only way to destabilise this default way of reading is, in my opinion, to be really fucking obvious about what you're doing. For example, the Kiriath are clearly black. As in the jet/midnight/ whatever other descriptor you want to use black. But I wonder how many people skipped over that fact because it's only mentioned a couple of times. And, more importantly, I wonder how many people thought them white by default before it was mentioned that they're black. In shoving Gil's gayness down our throat (so to speak :P), Morgan forces both the society in the book and us to address it. And I rather like that.<BR/><BR/>[I have some other comments on the book as a whole which I'll post later. Suffice to say I liked it a bit more than you and a lot more than Jonathan M]Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15446040693497057719noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8068873.post-91723287503640703282009-01-17T16:04:00.000-06:002009-01-17T16:04:00.000-06:00I must admit that I found the book to be completel...I must admit that I found the book to be completely unreadable. I gave up after 50 pages.<BR/><BR/>Your line about how it shows flashes of greatness is, I would argue, true of Morgan's writing as a whole. By and large he's a writer on a par with the Neal Ashers and Andy Remics of the world but occasionally he comes up with a particularly nice idea or shows an awareness of depth that elevates his work out of merely competent.<BR/><BR/>I definitely though that this was the case with Black Man; a knuckle-headed thriller with no ending but also enough of an awareness of wider issues to elevate it even though those issues were never properly engaged with.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com