Bad Habits of Worse Authors: Man vs. Author Conflict

When I was in seventh grade, they taught us about the four types of conflict that can exist in a story: man vs. self, man vs. man, man vs. society, and man vs. nature. What they mean is that there are four basic types of conflict that can drive the plot of the story, but each story can, of course, have more than one. Man vs. self, for example, is a story about a character struggling to overcome personal demons or limitations. Following the same logical path, one can infer what the other three types of conflict are.

If Wikipedia is to be believed, at the time of writing there are three or four other types of conflict that my teacher did not tell us about. Unfortunately, neither list included the most important type of conflict: man vs. author. This is a special type of conflict that exists in works of shitty writers. It is a plot that involves a character who is impossibly and inexplicably unlucky.

A good example would be a little girl walking with her legal guardian, a kind old man. As they are walking, the old man slips and falls down a cliff, breaks both his legs, and bleeds to death while the little girl watches. The little girl is so traumatized by the experience that she gets cancer, face cancer. If an author pulls that bull shit once, it takes me a significant suspension of disbelief to not call it.

Unfortunately, some author uses this shit as the primary driver for the plot. I would expect this from an emo/goth 15 year old that just discovered that the world, on average, is a pretty shitty place. It is less acceptable coming from a person who has a 3 book deal from a major publisher. For this type of author it is a cheap cop out when an author cannot figure out a believable reason for a character to have misfortune. It is a deus ex machina. The writer has put the characters in such a positive and fortunate position that she cannot figure out how to believably inject more drama in the plot. She takes the easy way out: incapacitate the protagonist’s benefactor and put the evil uncle in a position of power. I wish this was an isolated incident, but most of the books that I have read recently have pulled this crap.

Clan of the Cave Bear, a Tale of Girls and Bears

Clan of the Cave Bear is a prehistoric historic fiction novel. I have a sweet tooth for the genre thanks to Piers Anthony’s Geodyssey series. I came into it with certain expectations and desires. The book delivered what I wanted, it just delivered so much more, it is just that from all that extra, there is nothing positive. I shall start with the good first.

The book builds a good universe. It does a good job creating a social structure for the Neanderthals. The author creates a good set of myths and legends for the characters to believe. When we see day to day events projected through the lens of the primitive religion, it provides a unique yet logical view of the world.

The book also seems to be well researched; not to so well as the aforementioned Geodyssey, but still well done. The descriptions of the Neanderthal anatomy and physical characteristics sound realistic and coincide with what I have seen in other sources. The trivia integrate well into the plot. The facts do not seem forced, but rather just another aspects of the characters and setting. It is worth noting that I do not have a background in anthropology nor have I done any research on the subject. It could very well be the case that the author is just making up all the information, but if she is, it is very well done.

These two characteristics are what I was hoping for from the book. They make the novel a quality work of historic fiction. Having said that, some aspects of this book are not as good. The first is that the book is, frankly, extremely sexist. The seconds is that it is full of (wo)man vs. author conflict. Finally, the ending is not an ending but just a removal of characters to simplify the sequel.

In general, I have a thick skin to media that is not ‘politically correct’. I am a firm believer that racial and gender stereotypes make for some very good humor. I do not care if every show or book has at least one representative of every racial group in the population, a homosexual, and a person with a disability. In general I find such things as something that should be mocked, not admired. Having said that, this book makes its prejudices central and obvious. “Men are evil and objectify women because they fear them” is one of the major themes of this book. There are literally no positive male characters in this book. None. The closest is an old mentor to the protagonist, who is not a true male. He may have a Y chromosome, but he is not a true man. He is unable to properly function sexually due to old age and physical disability. He cannot hunt because he can neither run nor use a spear. In the eyes of the book he is not truly a man so he is allowed to have positive characteristics. Even in his case he only helps the protagonist until it conflicts with his duty in society (which it often does). The male who wants to do good, but is crippled by his duty to society is a recurring characteristic in the book. The men are depicted as impotent to fight with the establishment. The issue with this is that the establishment is law and order and what they do is giving the lightest possible punishment to the protagonist for knowingly and purposefully violating the major laws that govern their society. The females of this book get the opposite treatment. They can do no wrong. Thinking over the plot, I have a hard time coming up with a single instance in which a female character does anything against the will or good of the protagonist. There is a female who malevolently ignores the protagonist, but she only does so because she is the mate of the main antagonist of the book. In the end, even she sides with the protagonist against the will and desire of her mate and love. The male hate is probably best illustrated in the books depictions of sexuality: the males are driven by a desire for sexual release. They need it often and in the most sexually stimulating way they know and can get away with. The primitive females only consent to sex because it is expected of them and they enjoy it on a purely physical level. The protagonist, the most intelligent and rational life form in the book, has the most conservative view of sex: it is wrong to have sex, it is wrong to enjoy sex, and the only reason that she endures sex is because she is forced to and because she wants a child. The books message is clear: no intelligent female would want recreational sexual activity and sex for a non-reproductive purpose is a crime against women.

The main conflict in the story is one that I refer to as man vs. author (in allusion to the forms of conflict in literature). Most of the books drama occurs because, through no fault of her own, the main character ends up in trouble and all the other characters decide to blame her for it even though they all agree that it is not her fault. This type of conflict always annoys me. It is a cheap strategy to make the reader sympathize with the protagonist, but it never has the proper effect on me. It simply makes me hate the author. When an author is resorting to this type of conflict it is because she could not think of a logical and believable reason why the plot should have conflict. It is also a sign of the fact that the author cannot bear to tarnish her perfect protagonist with a fault that would make her actually capable of causing trouble. I tend to sympathize with the protagonist in the sense that I feel sorry that the protagonist has to exist in a universe created by an author who would resort to such writing techniques.

The ending to this book is especially heinous, because there really is not one. In the end, the final chapter serves to set up a reason why all of the characters in this book will not be mentioned in the next. No, really, the final chapter boils down to the protagonist snapping, getting into a big fight, and getting kicked out of the clan. Really, that is all that happens. None of the characters get enough closure. Most of the major ones are killed off in the final act; a few retire from their posts. The clan as a whole is left in a state of flux. The final chapter leaves them in a state of flux, but the author is obviously done with them. The protagonist has left them so I can be fairly sure I am right when I predict that nothing about their fate will ever be mentioned again in the sequel. Yes, this is the type of ending that acts as a set up for a sequel. The protagonist leaves for an epic journey that is foreshadowed at several major points in the plot.

Overall, the book is a decent read. I was able to finish it, but it was painful to do so. At some points I considered giving up on it, but I decided against it on principle. If you are considering reading this book, read the vastly superior Geodyssey by Piers Anthony. It is better researched, better written, and teaches you a bit of history.

The Failings of the Second Book of a Trilogy: A Review of Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

Royal Assassin is the second book in The Farseer Trilogy. It is the second book of a trilogy, which is all that needs to be said of it, unfortunately. It is well written. It advances the plot well enough. Unfortunately, it suffers from the condition of being the second book in a trilogy with the author is sure that there will be a third. By which, I mean that it is not a book on its own, but more of a setup for the third. The first book has to stand on its own, since there is no guarantee that the author will ever get a shot at any other books. The third one does too, to some degree. The author cannot depend on the reader to have read the previous books (doing otherwise would mean that the book would not be able to get more readers than the previous installment, a bad state of affairs). The third book is also responsible for wrapping up the plot since it is the end of the trilogy. That leaves the second book in the trilogy.

The second book has just enough of an introduction to the setting for the reader to be able to understand the motivations of characters. It then proceeds to start advancing the characters from the first book and setting up plot threads for the third book... and then it stops. It has to resolution. It has no conclusion. It is the author reaching a page count that she feels is sufficient to sell it as a full novel, reaches a point where the reader can stop for a bit and still pick up the book later, and puts in a “To be concluded in the next book.”

The author is under no obligation to give any of the plot threads and closure or conclusion. It is likely better for the author that she did not since it leaves the reader that much more tempted to keep reading the series. It is sufferable if one has the third book already or expects to read it in reasonable time. It also leaves one feeling cheated. The reader has taken the time to read the book and yet is left with a story that is unfinished. It feels like the book is nothing more than a marketing ploy for the third book. It is as if the author left it unfinished to force the reader to finish reading the series or face a situation when the effort of reading the second book was for naught. I suspect that it is not the case and it is just that the author had crafted a plot that requires multiple books to convey and did not take the effort to separate it into self-contained installments.

As I was coming to this opinion, I thought to find examples of trilogies that did not fall into the same pattern of a middle book that does not stand on its own, and I found many series that did not suffer thus, but I also found that many successful plots do have the same problem. Look at the original Star Wars films for example: A New Hope does a magnificent job of introducing characters, establishing the motivations of the major factions, creating a plot that draws the viewer in, and coming to a satisfying --- if not finalizing --- conclusion. Return of the Jedi takes all the plots and conflicts from the previous two films and brings them together on a single battle field to have then resolved totally and decisively. The Empire Strikes Back is a magnificent film; unfortunately it does not have much of a conclusion: Han is on his way to Jabba so he can be rescued in the beginning of the next film, Luke’s training is not yet completed, and the movie drops its biggest surprise --- the relationship between Luke and Vader --- in the last moments of the third act leaving the implications unexplored.

Royal Assassin is very much the same; it advances the plot significantly and sets up a great deal of conflict, but leaves the user unsatisfied. The ending is just a point where the protagonist is out of immediate mortal danger, but the state of the plot is completely unresolved. Too many of the plot threads that the books sets up are left unexplored, left for the third book to pull together.

Assassin‘s Quest, a Quest With no Assassination

To say that Assassin‘s Quest is a bad book would be wrong. It is well quite written. The story flows well. The plot seems predictable at times, but caught me off guard with twists at major junctures. The major characters, though some are annoying, seem fairly fleshed out and each has a reasonable back story and motivations.

Hobb does a good job of connecting with the user on an emotional level in the previous books and this one is no different. As the characters progress through their quest, I felt that I could relate to the feeling. The desire to complete ones task, no matter the cost, resonates prominently throughout the final act of the book. At a major juncture in the book, a character was forced to give up his passions and emotions to power an ultimate spell. To me, the moment resonated as Hobb doing the same for this book.

My biggest objection with the book is not even with the book itself, it is with the series as a whole. It feels like every book is trying to take a plot in a new direction. It is not that the plots do not flow into each other, they do, it is just that each of the books in the series presents the protagonist does a radical turn in terms of characterization. In the first book he is an assassin trainee and the series looks to focus on the stealth and politics of his profession. In the second book, the main character becomes a valiant warrior, defending his motherland from threats both external and internal and fighting for love and honor. In the last book, the protagonist is reduced to a single rogue agent with no purpose, no direction, few natural talents, and a single minded devotion to the task that he is set upon. In many ways, the books do not feel consistent between each other in term of plot direction, like the author who wrote each of them was in a different mental state than the author who wrote the previous.

The series also has some issues defining the central conflict and getting good pacing. The major conflict that drove the other two books and should have been the focus of this book is treated as a secondary one and relegated to the final half of the last chapter. The problem that the characters encounter in the climax, the one that the plot should be building to, is a secondary one. Until just before the climax, the problem seemed to me to be nothing more than just a tool to stretch out the plot and develop the characters. It is not that the major conflict is not mentioned often, it is more that the characters for the most part do not seem to care about it until they are near the finish line. Most characters are simply doing it out of duty and have other quests that they are working towards. If anything, the main conflict is just a hurdle that the characters have to overcome before they can move on to what they really want to do and what drives them. Unfortunately, by the time that the quest is over and done, there is almost no book left and the author includes a scant few pages about how they did. This is unfortunate since the secondary problems are not only more interesting to the characters, but they are also more interesting to the reader. These are the life and world changing conflicts that the reader wants to read about, it is not that the major conflict was not important, it was, it is just that it is not as exiting and interesting as the secondary ones that are never addressed.

Overall, the book is well written, but the plot is badly paced and creates and concludes owing the reader resolution to a number of plot threads that it must scramble in the end to finish.