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Amina al-Sirafi Q1: Cliche and novelty
The book is an interesting mix of cliche and novelty. The plot is generally utterly predictable and the foreshadowing is as subtle as a brick. The overall structure bears more than a passing similarity to the Campbell momomyth structure from Hero with a Thousand Faces. The brilliant hero is called out of retirement to do "one last job", she travels around a bit putting the old team back together (allowing convenient introductions for us readers), battles the villain, is defeated, finds a new ally and ability, returns and defeats the villain, and goes back to her previous life a changed person.
It's on rails.
Yet, there's a lot of the detail that unusual for modern, Anglophone fantasy books. The medieval Indian ocean setting, with all its diversity. The protagonist being a middle-aged mother. Middle-eastern mythology. The destruction of the McGuffin at the end.
How did that work for you? Was the predictability dull, or was it a comfortable platform? Were the unusual aspects enough to capture your interest?
Comments
I was enchanted! For me, the 'cliche' was just the frame supporting and presenting the mad, teetering sequence of action and reaction. I watched this glorious novel as a film in my head, fully immersed, loving every moment! If I had a hundred million dollars I would bring this book out as the movie it deserves to be.
In this case, what I was hoping to get was, if not a historical fiction, then a fantasy that explored the historical milieu in its own terms, and this definitely wasn’t it. Both the setting and the plot were little more than a veneer to explore modern western issues of motherhood. There was no attempt to get inside the heads of Arabic women that I could detect, not even modern ones, let alone medieval (is that the period we’re dealing with?). And despite all the references to The Nights, it didn’t really convey the essence of the Nights stories or it’s characters.
I was mostly getting on with it at first (though wondering when the ‘adventures’ of the title were going to start) but as we met more and more of the male characters I began to realize they were all cliches. We had the supportive but helpless stepfather figure, the dangerous but charming ex, the sneering, vain, overconfident villain, and so on. I gradually lost more and more interest in the book and by the end I was just turning pages, so to speak.
I do think the women were better drawn, though I found Dalilah the Crafty as presented in the Nights to be a much more interesting character and I could never figure out why lift this character from the nights at all if not to use her? Instead she became one of those quirky-but-genius sidekick characters like you usually found in the ‘computer expert’ in 90’s cop shows, who looked and acted weird but could solve specific problems (i.e. advance the plot) instantly while the main characters were off doing other things.
The Indian Ocean setting - yes, that ought to be interesting. I’m not convinced it’s all that well drawn here, but as a specific setting maybe it’s unusual. I have a lot of books set in the near east so I’m curious to do a roundup and see just where each is set. Aden and surrounds is fairly fresh in my mind, but that might be from reading non-fiction. As far as exotic setting in fiction go, I thought the settings in Master of Djinn, Frankenstein in Baghdad, and Gods of Jade and Shadow were much richer.
And I don’t think middle-aged mothers are all that unusual in fantasy/sf fiction anymore. The Broken Earth is one prime example. More recently read (though older), Tripoint, was another, though that tale was from the son’s perspective. I’d go as far as to say that exploring familial and especially gender relations has itself become a cliche in modern F/SF, actually.
I guess my feelings were sort of in the middle. I was never at serious risk of giving up, though I did wonder from time to time if the book was too long. But I wasn't gripped by it in the way @clash_bowley describes. I did enjoy reading it in parallel with Arabian Nights especially with the synchronicity of the Pari turning up in both in (for me) the same week.
I like books with gender and family relationships in (and pseudo-family ones like ship's crews and all) as opposed to lone hero ones, so I ought to have liked this more than I did. But it seemed somehow a bit forced - maybe like Arabian Nights there wasn't enough sense (for my taste) of an actual overall story - it maybe came over too much as a long series of episodes and I didn't have enough sense of things coming to a conclusion.
I did like the surprise reveal of the identity of the scrive, but perhaps we'll get to that in a later question...
I did as well! Totally unexpected for me - though that is apparently a low hurdle!