Best (Worst?) of 2013: Five Disappointing Releases

In writing a series of posts regarding the "best" of this passing year in a variety of categories, I debated for some days whether or not to write a post dedicated to those new releases that I read which were either execrable reads or were so flawed in some form or fashion that they did not live up to my modest expectation of entertaining me.  Some of these works others will find to be good or even excellent reads.  Others likely will gender a response of "why the hell did you read that dreck in the first place?"  But a "failure rate" of roughly 5% (5 out of slightly over 100 2013 US releases read, with another 25-50 being a mass of decent to solidly good tales that left only fleeting impressions and nothing truly indelible on my memory) is not too bad, I suppose.  Anyway, here are the five whose stories not only failed to capture my attention, but which left me feeling at least wistful about the time lost to reading/reflecting upon them:

5.  Wendy Lower, Hitler's Furies:  German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields 

See the link above for the original review, but this excerpt summarizes many of my disappointments with the study:

The sources included in the endnotes is impressive.  Although I haven't kept up with the literature since late 1997, there are a wealth of studies on the issues of women in the Third Reich and roles of women in the Holocaust that appear to be promising reads.  Yet within the body of her study, Lower rarely mentions any of these other historians and their contributions to the field.  Perhaps this is due to Hitler's Furies being marketed more to a general audience than toward an academic one, but ultimately this leads to the sense that Lower's narrative is detached too much from the debates that historians have had on this subject over the past six decades.  While it may be understandable that Lower wants to avoid the old Intentionalist/Functionalist debate regarding the level of intent that the decision-makers had in beginning the Final Solution, the book suffers because there is insufficient grounding of her arguments within the context of larger discussions of the Holocaust's beginning, mechanics, and how its perpetrators justified their actions.  Even the women involved seem at times acting within a narrative vacuum; there is not enough explanation to cover their myriad actions.
Yet despite these serious issues that I have with Hitler's Furies, it is a book that at the very least presents vividly-described actresses and whose discussions at least point the way to possible future paths of exploration within the field.  It is a flawed work, but for non-historian readers curious about the time period, it certainly is a work that will appeal to them.  For many historians of the period, however, Lower's work may be frustrating in the sense that it seems that with just more focus on placing her work within the context of current historiography, her work could have been as important as those of Ian Kershaw and Browning in discussing the mindsets of those involved in the Shoah.  The arguments on complicity and the forms in which it took here will continue to rage on.

 4.  Karen Lord, The Best of All Possible Worlds

I bought Lord's second novel on the basis of her strong debut novel, Redemption in Indigo.  Yet when I read it soon after its February 2013 release, I found myself being distracted too frequently while reading the narrative.  There just was no "spark," nothing that interested me, as the setting had too many parallels with prior SF landscapes, the characters were earnest yet lacking in vitality, and while the prose wasn't horrendous, neither did it sparkle with wit, verve, or anything that might have given me a reason to pay closer attention.  The result was a narrative that didn't appeal to me, leaving me then (and now,  months after I traded the book in at the local used bookstore for others) so disinclined to think about its themes that I chose not to write a formal review about how disappointed I was with Lord's sophomore effort.

3.  Ann Leckie, Ancillary Justice 

I reviewed this earlier this month and there is little that I would add to that review other than to note that my disappointment stems from the rare case where I tried a book despite my misgivings about the book's premise due to the enthusiastic praise of others.  I suppose in her presumed desire to write a "gender-positive" account that Leckie just failed to make her debut novel a "prose-positive" or "dynamic character-positive" one as well, as the blandness of virtually everything but her underdeveloped theme of the artificiality of gender divisions just left me cold to the pedestrian narrative.

2.  Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson, A Memory of Light 

I wrote a detailed review as to why this bloated concluding volume was a major disappointment to me, considering that at one point (well, back in the late 1990s) I enjoyed reading the WoT novels, that any more commentary would just rehash what was stated earlier.  Although I will admit that livetweeting this book back in January (using the hashtag "#WoTTF") did give birth to one of my better literary putdowns:  "non-erotic pornography."

1.  Terry Goodkind, The Third Kingdom 

This is the most disappointing 2013 release read, not because I had any hopes that it would be good, but because I lost a trusted Serbian reading squirrel due to this crap.  Damn good one, Stefan was.  He still is missed, as I have yet to attempt reading another epic fantasy until I can find a suitable replacement.

So there we have it, five disappointing releases, each for different reasons (5:  professional wish for more analysis of sources; 4:  weaker sophomore effort; 3:  too high of expectations based on others' proclamations; 2:  disappointed nostalgia of a former perhaps-fan; 1:  the toil caused by reading the book).  Any thoughts on these five books or any disappointing 2013 releases that you have read this year?

Five new genre-bending books you may want to read this month

I don't usually post columns on books that I anticipate reading because I worry that it might have a negative influence on any reviews that may follow, but having read works by all five authors listed here, who have either had books released in either English or English translation in the US before, I think for once I can dismiss my general reluctance to promote and list the authors/books and briefly state why I'm looking forward to reading them (one I've already read):

Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then (February 5).

Ever since reading a couple of Kincaid's earlier books, including A Small Place and My Brother, I have been meaning to read more of her fiction, as she mixes character and place so superbly.  Have this scheduled to be downloaded to my iPad Tuesday morning.

Angélica Gorodischer, Trafalgar (January 29).

I have read several of Gorodischer's fictions, including Kalpa Imperial, Opus Dos, Bajo las jubeas en flor, Casta luna electrónica, and Menta (and I have a couple of others to read/review later this year), yet I've not read Trafalgar in Spanish due to the difficulty in finding an affordable edition, so I will be buying the English translation later this week and reading/reviewing sometime this month.  Her stories remind me favorably at times of Ursula Le Guin's best and the wide range of tales that Gorodischer has told over nearly 50 years makes me curious about this translation of a 1977 collection.

Karen Lord, The Best of All Possible Worlds (February 12).

I have been looking forward to this one ever since I learned about its existence a couple of months ago.  Really enjoyed her debut novel, Redemption in Indigo.  That novel's mixture of West African and Caribbean story motifs was very well-done and I am curious to see how her writing style will translate to an off-planet setting.

Karen Russell, Vampires in the Lemon Grove (February 12).

I've enjoyed Russell's fictions ever since I read one of the stories included in this, her second collection, during my readings for BAF 4.  Her first collection, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, I thought was an excellent debut collection and her first novel, 2011's Swamplandia!, likewise showed promise.  Yet at this point in her career I prefer her short fictions to her novel and so my hopes are high that Vampires in the Lemon Grove will prove to be her strongest work to date.

Yoko Ogawa, Revenge (January 29).

I've already read Revenge and a mostly-positive (OK, I rarely write fully-positive reviews) review will be written in the next week or so.  It is a very good collection and the translation of this 1998 Japanese work was very good.  I also enjoyed her novel The Housekeeper and the Professor, which I highly recommend to most readers of this blog.

2011 World Fantasy Award finalist: Karen Lord, Redemption in Indigo

WHY DID PAAMA LEAVE ANSIGE?

There are men of violence.  There are men who drink.  And then there was Ansige, a man with a vice so pathetic as to be laughable.  He ate; he lived for his belly.  No one would believe that a woman could leave a man for that, but before you scoff, consider this.  With his gluttony, he drew in other sins – arrogance complicated by indolent stupidity, lust for comfort, ire when thwarted, avarice in all his business dealings, and a strange conviction that always, somehow, there was some undeserving person who had more food than he did.

I can hear some of you complaining already. 'A woman who cooks and a man who eats should be a match made in heaven!'  Do you really think so?  Then you have not grasped that Ansige was not an epicure, but a gourmand.  Paama's talents were wasted on him. (p. 11)

Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo is a recasting of sorts of Senegalese and Caribbean tales surrounding a patient yet wise woman and her greedy buffoon of a husband.  Yet that summary risks distorting what transpires in this slender and yet powerful novel.  Some stories get straight to the point and the reader is along for the ride.  Other tales take the time to don the accoutrements of a true story and these set up not just the particulars of the core narrative, but also the environs in which the story is occurring and operating around.  Redemption in Indigo is precisely that sort of tale and Lord's efforts to replicate as much as possible this storytelling motif makes this a pleasure to read.

Redemption in Indigo is episodic in nature, with over two dozen short chapters that outline parts of the tale:  Paama's initial dealings with Ansige, her attempts to sate his insatiable appetite, the interferences of the immortal djombi, the use of the Chaos Stick granted Paama, her resistance to interference, and the personal growth that she and others experience – all of these form delightful tales that build upon one another, adding to the richness of the storytelling.

Lord's narrative is told via third-person omniscient point of view.  It is told as if a narrator were sitting around a fire at night, imparting wisdom upon an eager crowd, yet without the preachiness some might associate with such a narrative structure.  Rather, it instructs without ever getting in the way of the story or the ways its listeners and readers might interpret what is taking place.  Here is an example of this, when the djombi are introduced:

The life of the undying is quite busy, either through dedication or desperation.  The benevolent ones are the most diligent and the most overlooked, because they work with willing people and take their images as their shadows.  The person who looks and in an instant reads your soul, the ordinary type who suddenly declares a profound and wise truth – I do not mean to take anything away from these people, for they are willing collaborators in a great work, but in many such cases they have lent their shadows for that pivotal moment.

Alas, there are others, not quite so benevolent, who entertain themselves by tormenting the lesser beings, namely humans.  Cooperation is not a word that you will find in their lexicon, which is why they often find it simpler to snag a ride with a passing insect or any small creature whose brain can be easily overpowered.

Some are but tricksters, turning the tiniest of choices into a dire misstep or a trigger for catastrophe.  Even very powerful ones, those who have learned to make their own shadows, sometimes do nothing more than tease and tweak fates a little, just for a good laugh.  I am sure that the spider of Ahani was one of that sort, wreaking minor havoc in the form of his own whimsically-crafted shadow. (p. 42)

Some readers might have noted the mention of Ahani and connected it with the related spider-god, Anansi.  There are several such mythological connections to be made while reading Lord's novel and while one might expect to see trickery to occur, Lord is very careful to make her tale much more than just having figures of West African folklore appear and "do their thing" before shuffling off.  Rather, she spins a deceptively complex narrative in which fate and chance, patience and guile intermingle and create a tale that contains very few rough points.

Redemption in Indigo contains few weaknesses.  It takes the folklore core and makes it feel fresh and vibrant.  The characters remain appropriate for the type of tale being told and rarely stray from the roles in which they have been cast.  The scenes flow nicely into one another, building upon the lessons learned along the way until the end is reached and the reader sees just how far most of these characters have gone along the road of personal discovery and growth.  It is more than a fable or a story to be dismissed with a smile and a shrug after the final page is turned.  It is a powerful debut novel, certainly one of the best considered for this year's World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel.