The Gradual Week 12

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Summary

  1. Sandro accompanies the adepts to Yenna, where Renettia breaks his practice stave - he no longer needs it. There he helps a woman with a baby. Renettia says he appears to be a natural at this. Then they go to Cheoner where his next 'fare' is an older couple. Renettia sells the husband a new stave, and then they use a car to erase seven days from them. On Cheoner, there's a car for adepts to use, but on other islands they need to rent or use other, unspecified, means to get cars. Renettia drives the couple around while Sandro makes calculations. Eventually, he's no longer sure what to do, so Renettia examines his work and pronounces it to be correct, and the deficit erased. The couple are next heading to Nelquay and will need Sandro's help when they get there. Renettia will accompany him for moral support. They leave later, but arrive earlier, than the couple.
  2. Nelquay is in the far north, close to Faiandland. It's a cold place, and neither Sandro nor Renettia are used to it. They help the couple when they arrive on this island, but the couple seems dissatisfied - too expensive for what they did. Sandro and Renettia decide to head south, somewhere warmer - to Paneron, near Winho. Being near Winho, it has an emotional attachment to his brother.
  3. Paneron is a lushly beautiful island, part of The Swirl chain. It's a popular tourist destination and a transportation hub of The Swirl, so there are many adepts there - the usual crowd plus fifty more. After a few days on the island of easy detriment fixing, Renettia tells Sandro it's time for him to head off on his own. There's no more she can teach him. He plans to leave the next day. That night, at the request of the adepts, he puts on a solo violin concert in the square. The next day he goes to Dianme, the island that first stirred his heart.
  4. Dianme is "the cultivation of a lifetime of hopes". When he arrives, he corrects the increment, and this moves him into the warmer daylight of the day before, which makes the trip effectively instantaneous. "I had become an adept of time. I travelled free of time. I arrived at the same subjective moment as I left." However, Sandro finds Dianme bereft, with no natural music. It's not what he thought it was - not the place that stirred his early work of music, anyhow. He leaves shortly after - his journey will take him home.
  5. Sandro arrives at the port of Questiur in Glaund. With a plan in mind, he goes to the archive of the newspaper library in town and searches for something. Armed with this, he sets off again on a tour of several islands, arriving back in Questiur on a specific day, just in time for a specific event.
  6. Back in Questiur, Sandro goes to greet an arriving troop ship. Many soldiers are coming off - it's the de-mob of the 289th Battalion. Eventually, Sandro sees a small man with a violin slung over his shoulder - it's his brother Jacj. They greet in a long embrace, standing on the landing until all the remaining soldiers have passed.
  7. They go to a restaurant in Glaund City. Jacj explains that the last few days have been odd - that they had been dressed up for an official inspection by the Junta, but he had no idea why. Sandro, for his part, explains he's been travelling, but doesn't elaborate on any details. He does mention he's become a composer, and this doesn't surprise his brother.
  8. It turns out Jacj has been away for 4 rather boring years, which is why he still looks young. For Sandro, more than 40 have passed. Brothers being brothers, they find they don't have much to say. A crowd bursts in to the restaurant and the place gets loud with excitement. The Generalissima has been killed in a coup, and a general election is planned. Someone is playing rock music, a thing not normally heard. Jacj asks Sandro if he knew this was going to happen, but despite all his planning for this day, Sandro did not expect this. They decide to go somewhere quieter.
  9. They head back home to Errest on the train. Both wonder what awaits them? Will their parents be there? Jacj's cat? Sandro hopes to start composing again - music from his own inspiration, and not the music of the Gradual. He'll even make good on his promise to compose a triumphal march for the new government, complete with folk dance interludes and sea shanties.
    THE END

Discussion

  • So, there it is - the end of the novel. Satisfying?
  • What is your final take on this story - what Priest is trying to achieve? Is it about life and music, and how a record of life is like a sheet of music? It it more about time travel, about how travelling to the islands can be rejuvenating (despite the trials and tribulations along the way)? Is it about siezing second chances?
  • Should we think about this book, or just 'feel' it?
  • Just before the end, Priest spends a little more time with the adepts and we learn more details of adeptry, though it's barely anything. Why take us through this just before the close, do you think? Is it to generate a contrast at the end? The life the adept that he leaves behind could not be more different that the one that lies ahead.
  • It seems he's not just going back in time (afterall, the events are already different - his brother has de-mobbed and the Generalissima is dead) so it seems likely we're talking about diverging spheres, here. Is this why (this time) he doesn't seem concerned about meeting himself at home?

Comments

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    @Apocryphal said:

    • So, there it is - the end of the novel. Satisfying?

    No.

    • What is your final take on this story - what Priest is trying to achieve? Is it about life and music, and how a record of life is like a sheet of music? It it more about time travel, about how travelling to the islands can be rejuvenating (despite the trials and tribulations along the way)? Is it about siezing second chances?
    • Should we think about this book, or just 'feel' it?

    I have no idea what Priest is trying to achieve. It's clear we're not meant to "think" about the book: nothing makes much sense when you think about it. The book works best when it's a collection of impressions and feelings, so it's one to feel.

    But what should we feel? What is it trying to say? I've no idea. There are many, too many, ideas in the book for any one of them to rise to the position of unifying the whole.

    There's a lot to be said for the idea of readers bringing their own concepts and meaning to a work, but I think that works best when there's a solid core in the work to react to, to manipulate into our own meaning. This book... it's like trying to wrestle with jelly. There's nothing there to grab hold of, to pull into a shape.

    • It seems he's not just going back in time (afterall, the events are already different - his brother has de-mobbed and the Generalissima is dead) so it seems likely we're talking about diverging spheres, here. Is this why (this time) he doesn't seem concerned about meeting himself at home?

    I'm sure Priest had some grand idea for what the meaning meant. Unfortunately, he didn't think to communicate it to poor readers.

    This book reads like Priest had a couple of ideas for some short stories, but hasn't developed them, or distilled them down to something compelling. If this book had turned into two or three stories in Dream Archipelago, I think it would have been a good read. I think he needed a good editor or agent to tell him to stop being so self-indulgent and do the work to hone his ideas.

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    And lest my post be too negative... Do I regret reading this book? No, not really. Priest is someone I've wanted to read more of for a long time. This was an opportunity to do that, and one I was keen to take up when @Apocryphal suggested it.

    Thanks, @Apocryphal , for leading these discussions! Much appreciated.

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    If I was to pick the books again, based on reader reactions, I’d pick The Affirmation for the novel (much tighter around the idea and a more satisfying story), the The Dream Archipelago, and lastly The Islanders.

    I enjoyed the read - for me a 3.5 out of 5. I don’t tend to concern myself much with what the author supposed us to think or feel. In fact, it always strikes me as a bit odd when Neil phrases it that way. I wonder why it’s the authors job to tell.me what to think? Yet in phrasing it that way, I can definitely see how clearly demonstrating the idea of the novel would make a book more accessible.

    I don’t quite know what to make of the novel, either. That does leave me feeling vaguely dissatisfied, like I failed to piece the puzzle together. So I suppose that’s the same critique as Neil’s, just phrased differently.

    This is a philosophical question, but to what degree should a novel be an instruction manual that tells the reader how to put things together? Priest clearly isn’t into instructions.

    As a reader experience, this novel may have been better as a quick read than a slow one. It’s impressionistic nature probably lends itself to speed, just like an impressionist painting looks clearer from afar than up close.

    Much to the mysterious adeptly detail in the novel seems rather by-the-by at the end. It all seemed to illogical and pointless. Somehow, I think this is meant to be a critique of bureaucracy, and I think on one level this novel is about the joys and annoyances of travel.

    On another level it’s about gradual change (change we don’t notice) and, at the end, a longing we could go back to where we were. If only we could see the change happening, we could head it off. But we can’t. Sandro could, the lucky duck. But are we envious? I don’t think we’re envious of Sandro, because he’s not that likeable a person in the end, if Sandro goes back to do it all over again, is anyone convinced he’ll have a more satisfying life the next time round? I don’t think so.

    On the third level, there’s the allusions to the novel (or life) being a literal score.

    The three ideas seem unrelated to one another, really, so yeah… there’s a disconnect, isn’t there.
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    @Apocryphal said:
    If I was to pick the books again, based on reader reactions, I’d pick The Affirmation for the novel (much tighter around the idea and a more satisfying story), the The Dream Archipelago, and lastly The Islanders.

    Hindsight's wonderful. The picks seemed like a good idea at the time, so I'm happy with where we ended up.

    I enjoyed the read - for me a 3.5 out of 5. I don’t tend to concern myself much with what the author supposed us to think or feel. In fact, it always strikes me as a bit odd when Neil phrases it that way. I wonder why it’s the authors job to tell.me what to think? Yet in phrasing it that way, I can definitely see how clearly demonstrating the idea of the novel would make a book more accessible.

    It's the "So what?" question. Why am I spending my time reading this book? Why this, and not some other book or some other activity?

    Not every book needs to be "about" something! I've just read another T, Kingfisher novel ("A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking") and it's just fluffy whimsy. The heroes are good, the villains are bad, you know the jeopardy won't come to much, and you know everything will turn out all right in the end. It was a delight to read while nodding off to sleep. But by the same token, because the book's not "about" anything, I wouldn't recommend it for a book club read: it's just fluffy whimsy. The entirety of any possible critical discussion of the book is already contained in that one sentence above.

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    I still think I liked what (I think) CP was trying to do, though I totally agree with you both that there were far too many disparate ideas and strands brought in and toyed with, but not followed through in a pleasing and systematic way. It's clear to al of us that CP is not attempting to write hard sf, but the end of the book has persuaded me that he is trying in part to toy with time dilation in the special relativity sense, and explore how different personal perception of time might play itself out if it had to be mixed with everyday life. From a mathematical point of view it doesn't even come close to grappling with relativity, but I don't think he was ever going to try to do that (unlike Forever War, or indeed Heinlein's decades old Time for the Stars .

    But... he also throws in adepts, and maybe some alternate universe / parallel world stuff, and some synaesthesia, and all kinds of other bits, and it just becomes too dilute to have any real bite.

    I liked that the adept stuff had a bit of narrative time - at very least we got to learn how the adepts could arrive ahead of the travellers they were involved with! Again from a math perspective I'd have liked some more meat on the bare bone we got as to how the specific path through the temporal gradients affected the relationship between subjective and objective time (CP seems to assume without proof that there is such a thing as objective time in this world).

    I liked Sandro's cunning plan of (so to speak) going into the future to find out when his brother had come back, and then planning a very specific trip to get back exactly then. As @Apocryphal said a while ago, it was all very hand wavium, but it was a nice twist which I hadn't anticipated.

    It certainly does beg the question as to which future /present Sandro ended up in. In this one, apparently his brother's trip was only four subjective years - but we are not told how many objective ones, so have no real idea whether their parents are still alive, or Jacq's cat - or even whether Sandro is still married in this variant?

    I felt the idea tat one assassination would lead to free elections and the whole shebang to be very simplistic, but I was more interested in the suggestion that after all his travelling and experiences, Sandro would choose to go back to his childhood home and attempt to build relationship with his brother, rather than find somewhere cool in the Archipelago to live and compose. Not sure this rings true for me, although certainly Sandro has been determinedly harking back to Jacq through the whole book. In passing, I wonder if this Jacq ever met this Sandro on the island with the military camp?

    Satisfying - no, not really, as judged by most authors and most novels, but then my expectation of CP from our read of him this year is that he was never going to provide a resolution to the plot. If you like, the book stops rather than finishes, as though we have reached the end of one season of a longer-running show... we have some partial tying up of a few themes, but a great many left open.

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    Jacq’s cat = Schrödinger’s cat! It’s fate will be determined when Jacj comes home and opens the door.
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    @NeilNjae said:
    This book reads like Priest had a couple of ideas for some short stories, but hasn't developed them, or distilled them down to something compelling. If this book had turned into two or three stories in Dream Archipelago, I think it would have been a good read. I think he needed a good editor or agent to tell him to stop being so self-indulgent and do the work to hone his ideas.

    Talking of editors, I am convinced that there is a slip in the whole subjective / objective time stuff. While Sandro is talking to Jacq he soliloquises "Of course I had no idea. I had been in Questiur for but an instant. Subjective tie had vanished - I had been sailing a round trip..." But surely this is objective time that has vanished? In the subjective arena he knows he has visited several islands.

    But maybe I'm as muddled about which time is which as the rest of us?

    Earlier on he has said "all journeys in subjective time were complicated, involving delays, diversions, changes of mind, many transfers in ports and between ships" which I had thought meant that subjective time was what you personally experienced - 40 years' worth for Sandro. Whereas objective time he also calls absolute or ship's time, and I had assumed that referred to some planetary frame of reference against which all the subjective time frames moved one way or another.

    So... either CP wasn't clear what he meant, or his editors couldn't decide and just left it as written! It's definitely an area where I wish he had had the desire to write more explicitly about his world-building.

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    @Apocryphal said:
    Jacq’s cat = Schrödinger’s cat! It’s fate will be determined when Jacj comes home and opens the door.

    Love it :)

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