Clockwork Heart, by Dru Pagliasotti
Jun. 26th, 2010 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snarpThis is a steampunk book that manages to avoid glorifying racist and colonialist societies! So that's nice. It is unfortunate that it's also kind of weird in other ways.
The pollution-choked industrial city of Ondinium is divided into four castes: the Famulate laborers, the Lictor police force, the Exalted ruling class, and the Icarii, messengers and diplomats who travel through the city using metal wings and "counterweights" made of ondium, the gravity-defying metal for which Ondinium is named.
While the Exalted are born into their caste, and believed to be the end product of one thousand rebirths and supernaturally wise, the Famulates, Lictors, and Icarii are selected by a giant punch-card computer at the heart of the city, designed and maintained by the Exalted. The Exalted live separate from the Famulates and Lictors, wearing robes and masks and never speaking to them - only the Icarii, the smallest caste, can communicate with people in both worlds.
Taya, an Icarus, sees no problem with this system, and considers her ex-boyfriend Pyke, who does, a little crazy. So when she finds herself being courted by the handsome and brilliant Exalted Alister, she is awed and flattered. Alister's angry and socially awkward brother Cristof, who abandoned his caste to live as a Famulate clockmaker, she considers a bizarre aberration. She doesn't realize the implications of the tensions within their family until it's too late.
I've made it sound like this book is about Taya coming to realize the shortcomings of her society, because that's what I thought it was going to be about. Maybe this is a spoiler, but: that is not what the book is about. The punch-card computer is, apparently, pretty much always right, and no one who ought to be taken seriously ever resents it, and Ondinium is a perfectly nice place. The book is a straightforward romance/adventure, and I had a fairly clear idea how it was all going to play out by the end of the scene where Alister and Cristof were introduced.
Now, I have no objection to the romance/adventure plot per se; yeah, it was a predictable one, and the pacing went wonky around the 2/3 mark, but overall I liked the execution. The romance was very sweet and its dynamics were interestingly unconventional.
But I do find it kinda weird that we're apparently supposed to be siding with the guys who let the hereditary rulers and their punch-cards determine social mobility? And I don't think the problem's with me! I think that that's a setting that's 100% guaranteed to produce Dystopian Horrors, or your money back. Especially given that there are frequent references to the city's choking air pollution. "Choking air pollution" is right up there with "everybody wears winter colors and lives in the sky (or underwater)" as a Dystopian Horrors warning sign. (See: Battle Angel, Chrono Trigger, Last Exile, Golden Sun) That shit is what you call a metaphor.
At one point the book pulls the classically cheap tactic of comparing the relative safety of present-day Ondinium to the violence of a nearby country. Yeah, okay, so you're better than the puppy-kickers. You don't get a gold star. The implication of this sort of tactic, in books as in real-world politics, is always to set up a false dichotomy - we've got to have this insane proscribed caste system based on punch cards and reincarnation, or else we'd be blowing each other up all the time! NO THERE ARE NOT OTHER OPTIONS, SHUT YOUR FACE
Putting the weirdness of the setting aside: I liked a lot of things about the characterization, but can't talk about them without spoiling everything: Taya's relationship with Cristof is adorable; I am not generally fond of sulky loner guys, but Cristof's sulkiness is actually because he's a socially-awkward dork. It's not because he's awesome and Byronian! He honestly is just a dork. I have no idea how he ever got anything done before Taya showed up.
Something that struck me as interesting: So, Alister is a monomaniacal cold-blooded murderer who lies pathologically, and he's going to be executed, and Taya and Cristof are the ones who caught him and turned him in. He flat-out tried to kill Cristof, and I'd say Taya, too.
And they're sad he's going to die and don't want him to!
And this is a totally reasonable reaction. Or, it is for Cristof, at least - the guy's his brother, and in any case Cristof is a huge cream-puff. I'm not sure that I buy Taya caring, given that she'd only known him a few days, but it's made clear that she cares a lot less than Cristof, so I'll go with it.
A lot of authors are kind of cheap about these sorts of situations and, for the heroes, at least, ignore all the emotional implications of learning that someone you love has done something awful. It's in keeping with the general humaneness of the book that, even after he's tried to kill them, Taya and Cristof don't stop caring about Alister.
It's also notable that despite his attempts to kill them, Alister keeps acting like he cares about Taya and Cristof, in his screwed-up way - and again, that's both unusual and more realistic than what's usual. Pagliasotti makes things tidier than I'd prefer, but I feel like Alister's behavior isn't too far off from that of real-life abusers. The way he relates to people is so damaged that attempted murder is perfectly in line with his feelings for his brother and his friend. He does feel that he cares for them, and his behavior doesn't change because his feelings haven't actually changed. Because he's entirely self-centered, he doesn't entirely get that theirs have.
I have one other objection, which is totally inane. I object to this line:
That isn't a good thing! That's a bad thing. Comment your code, dude.
The pollution-choked industrial city of Ondinium is divided into four castes: the Famulate laborers, the Lictor police force, the Exalted ruling class, and the Icarii, messengers and diplomats who travel through the city using metal wings and "counterweights" made of ondium, the gravity-defying metal for which Ondinium is named.
While the Exalted are born into their caste, and believed to be the end product of one thousand rebirths and supernaturally wise, the Famulates, Lictors, and Icarii are selected by a giant punch-card computer at the heart of the city, designed and maintained by the Exalted. The Exalted live separate from the Famulates and Lictors, wearing robes and masks and never speaking to them - only the Icarii, the smallest caste, can communicate with people in both worlds.
Taya, an Icarus, sees no problem with this system, and considers her ex-boyfriend Pyke, who does, a little crazy. So when she finds herself being courted by the handsome and brilliant Exalted Alister, she is awed and flattered. Alister's angry and socially awkward brother Cristof, who abandoned his caste to live as a Famulate clockmaker, she considers a bizarre aberration. She doesn't realize the implications of the tensions within their family until it's too late.
I've made it sound like this book is about Taya coming to realize the shortcomings of her society, because that's what I thought it was going to be about. Maybe this is a spoiler, but: that is not what the book is about. The punch-card computer is, apparently, pretty much always right, and no one who ought to be taken seriously ever resents it, and Ondinium is a perfectly nice place. The book is a straightforward romance/adventure, and I had a fairly clear idea how it was all going to play out by the end of the scene where Alister and Cristof were introduced.
Now, I have no objection to the romance/adventure plot per se; yeah, it was a predictable one, and the pacing went wonky around the 2/3 mark, but overall I liked the execution. The romance was very sweet and its dynamics were interestingly unconventional.
But I do find it kinda weird that we're apparently supposed to be siding with the guys who let the hereditary rulers and their punch-cards determine social mobility? And I don't think the problem's with me! I think that that's a setting that's 100% guaranteed to produce Dystopian Horrors, or your money back. Especially given that there are frequent references to the city's choking air pollution. "Choking air pollution" is right up there with "everybody wears winter colors and lives in the sky (or underwater)" as a Dystopian Horrors warning sign. (See: Battle Angel, Chrono Trigger, Last Exile, Golden Sun) That shit is what you call a metaphor.
At one point the book pulls the classically cheap tactic of comparing the relative safety of present-day Ondinium to the violence of a nearby country. Yeah, okay, so you're better than the puppy-kickers. You don't get a gold star. The implication of this sort of tactic, in books as in real-world politics, is always to set up a false dichotomy - we've got to have this insane proscribed caste system based on punch cards and reincarnation, or else we'd be blowing each other up all the time! NO THERE ARE NOT OTHER OPTIONS, SHUT YOUR FACE
Putting the weirdness of the setting aside: I liked a lot of things about the characterization, but can't talk about them without spoiling everything: Taya's relationship with Cristof is adorable; I am not generally fond of sulky loner guys, but Cristof's sulkiness is actually because he's a socially-awkward dork. It's not because he's awesome and Byronian! He honestly is just a dork. I have no idea how he ever got anything done before Taya showed up.
Something that struck me as interesting: So, Alister is a monomaniacal cold-blooded murderer who lies pathologically, and he's going to be executed, and Taya and Cristof are the ones who caught him and turned him in. He flat-out tried to kill Cristof, and I'd say Taya, too.
And they're sad he's going to die and don't want him to!
And this is a totally reasonable reaction. Or, it is for Cristof, at least - the guy's his brother, and in any case Cristof is a huge cream-puff. I'm not sure that I buy Taya caring, given that she'd only known him a few days, but it's made clear that she cares a lot less than Cristof, so I'll go with it.
A lot of authors are kind of cheap about these sorts of situations and, for the heroes, at least, ignore all the emotional implications of learning that someone you love has done something awful. It's in keeping with the general humaneness of the book that, even after he's tried to kill them, Taya and Cristof don't stop caring about Alister.
It's also notable that despite his attempts to kill them, Alister keeps acting like he cares about Taya and Cristof, in his screwed-up way - and again, that's both unusual and more realistic than what's usual. Pagliasotti makes things tidier than I'd prefer, but I feel like Alister's behavior isn't too far off from that of real-life abusers. The way he relates to people is so damaged that attempted murder is perfectly in line with his feelings for his brother and his friend. He does feel that he cares for them, and his behavior doesn't change because his feelings haven't actually changed. Because he's entirely self-centered, he doesn't entirely get that theirs have.
I have one other objection, which is totally inane. I object to this line:
No one'll ever punch code the way he did. [...] Lady knows what'll happen if something he wrote ever needs to be modified. It'll probably take the whole team to figure out what he did."
That isn't a good thing! That's a bad thing. Comment your code, dude.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-27 06:43 pm (UTC)So it all seemed suspiciously symbolic. If the subject of the Ills Of Society hadn't kept being brought up and then dropped, it wouldn't have seemed so odd.