Books 2014 - Runemarks by Joanne Harris

[byslantedlight]

I was really looking forward to reading this - I've been tucking into The Almighty Johnsons, a New Zealand tv series about four brothers who are Norse gods, and I thought it'd be rather cool to read more about these chaps (the gods, not the brothers - though that would have been good too!)

Runemarks tells the story of a girl called Maddy, and a sweeping, imaginative story it is too, full of twists and turns and cleverness and oh-my-god I can't believe that although that kept me going through half the books, I'd almost stopped caring by then... waaaaaah! Joanne Harris, what did you do?! I love your books, why don't I love this one?

Funnily enough, I'd delayed buying it, picking it up and putting it down again in bookshops, even though I'd been so excited to find more books by this author - often shelved separately from her other more mainstream books, because it's very much a fantasy series (it's a series!). I'd flick through the first pages, and then... just put it down for next time, because those first few pages just didn't read like Joanne Harris. They read like someone else's rather more ordinarily-written story. And disappointingly, it seems that I was right.

Maddy just didn't grab me as a character, much as she should have - and I think this was partly because, rather than letting us get to to know her, we were introduced to her and her situation, and then rushed through it to get to the good bits - as if all that pesky character-building would have got in the way of a good story. The trouble is that for me it's the other way around - I don't like a story that gets in the way of a character, I like a story that wraps around a character that I'm at least starting to like, if not already feeling part of. And Maddy just... isn't. She's hard-done-by and has to act bravely to get through it, which is usually a good thing in a book, but we don't really see any part of that in the story, it just happens, and we're filled in on the background to things as we go along. Through exposition. Actual "okay, so let me explain what's happening..." kind of exposition. Nooooooo! I mean, the exposition is written well and cleverly, and the twists are interesting, but still... nooooo! There's even a long bit of exposition near the end, which sort of stopped me dead in my tracks of what story remained to me, because it was the bad guy explaining what his plan had been all along. We were seeing the plan unfold, but he also had to explain it, presumably so that we could get the clever parts that couldn't be shown. And that's just all wrong - especially from an author I love and trust.

There was one character that I ended up liking and empathising with, and he's what kept me reading, to be honest. I don't think I was supposed to read him as the hero of the book instead of Maddy, but I think I did because I suspect that Harris is quite fond of him too, and it shone through in the way she wrote him - Loki. The good characters explain over and over what a self-serving ratbag he is, and our official hero knows not to trust him, though they're together throughout. But despite that explanation, I did. We find out more about him and how he feels about things, and - perhaps more importantly - why he does things, than any other character. And I feel sympathy for him, and I want him to be okay at the end of the story, and I'm never sure that he will be - and so I kept reading.

Interestingly, the very end of the book (the first story in the series) also gives us a nicely written morally-thinky bit to wrap it all up too - the exact opposite of the way The Ocean at the End of the Lane felt, which I loved so much more. Maddy sort of sums up what we've learned from the story up for us, and I like what she realises here (not anything new and flash-of-lighty, but cool all the same - Anything that can be dreamed is true, and For a teller of tales will never die, but will live on in stories - for as long as there are folk to listen, and the like). Trouble is, the explanation comes at the end of 504 pages of being told what's going on and having things explained, and so it doesn't come as a burst of light at the end of the tale, it's just a bit more dragging on of the story, and I ended up thinking 504 pages - well done, me! rather than sitting there half-stunned and breathless with the whirl and joy of it, which I should be after a good read.

I liked the world-building, which was gorgeously done - all complex and interesting and intriguing in places. I mostly liked the modern, almost self-aware way the characters often spoke - "Well of course I'm the Trickster, what did you think was going on...?", though just occasionally it got a bit cartoon-y. There were enough snatches of that's-cool that, coupled with wanting to find out what happened to Loki, I kept reading. But I wanted to care about the main character, and I just didn't.

Oh, and it barely scrapes through the Bechdel test too, despite the main character being female, and there being many other strong female characters in the story - which is good. The trouble is, they barely speak to each other - their world revolves around what the men are doing, and we don't see any part of it that isn't focussed on the men. There's a brief passage where the three Vanir who were woken first were all female, and they talk together, and there's an even briefer passage where Ethel demands her dresses back from Skaldi, but I think that's it - and, as usual, would it have been so difficult to include more than that, especially when the main character is female? Surely not...

But - I have now read a mythology story for my Once Upon A Time Challenge - oh, so in theory I've completed the quest! Wheeee! I think I'll keep going though, through to 21st June, the end of the challenge - I'm quite enjoying this... *g* And I've undertaken other aspects of the challenge too, so there will be more Once-upon-a-time blathering still to come...

Read at least one book from each of the four categories. In this quest you will be reading 4 books total: one fantasy, one folklore, one fairy tale, and one mythology.
Fantasy
Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Folklore
Thursbitch by Alan Garner

Fairy tale
Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Mythology
Runemarks by Joanne Harris

Comments

[byslantedlight.livejournal.com]

I know, it's awful, isn't it! And is it them, or you...? Cos she might be writing perfectly well in many ways (and I'm sure many people love the Runemark books), it's just they they're not at all what I want, when I thought that was what she wrote... if you see what I mean. *g*

They're who carry the story, not the other way round.
Nicely put - that's it exactly! That's why I struggle to read fanfic where the lads that are written aren't the lads that I see in the series. There's some great stories out there, I can tell, but they're just not my lads so they don't work for me...