Shortcut #19: The War of the Flowers

I’m on something of a Tad Williams kick at the moment.  Actually, more like the past two years.  I read Tailchaser’s Song when I was young and don’t remember much except that I liked it and it was about cats.  I bought The Dragonbone Chair when I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club, which means sometime in the early nineties, and I’m not even sure I read it all the way through.  Or I did, but then stopped because, of course, the other books in that series weren’t out yet.

A few (read: Two) years ago, at the same time when I was making my way through all of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower I also picked up Williams’ The Dragonbone Chair again.  I’d bought the second book relatively recently, but not read it yet.  Re-starting Williams was slow, perhaps because everything was vaguely familiar (I’d read it before, remember) and so, at least in the reptilian throwback part of my mind, I felt like I was wasting time.

But what happened was this: The combination of what King was doing in The Dark Tower and what Williams was doing in his Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series spurred me to finish a fantasy novel I’d begun in 2002.  I’d only completed the first chapter, and that first chapter was the remains of a failed effort to convince Wizards of the Coast that they should hire me to write one of their novelizations of adventure modules for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

If you don’t know this about me by now, caveat emptor: I am only interested in writing things that I’m interested in writing. (Granted, that interest could probably be adjusted with significant amounts of payola – but still… Well, put it this way: I’ve a long-standing dream that someone would offer me the chance to write for a soap opera.  The only condition I’d have, is that they would allow me to do whatever I wanted.  Of course, this would never happen, but the joy for me in the prospect is having to come up with an hour’s worth of material every day, all the while eschewing the time-wasting tactics that soap operas regularly use.  As you (and I) might imagine, relatively soon the scripts might start spiraling out of control.  But oh, what a beautiful spiral!) and because I’m only interested in writing what I’m interested in writing, I had picked an adventure module and a scenario that allowed me to focus on my own ideas: in this case, the failure of the traditional heroic quest model.

King and Williams work their fantasy epics against the grain, and seeing that others were doing something akin to my own desires brought out the urge in me to novelize.  And so, GOD’S TEETH, my first novel (unpublished, natch) that is basically an anti-heroic novel, was inspired by those two writers and, since reading all of The Dark Tower I’ve been stingily ladling out portions of Williams.  Lately, I’ve been on a binge.  Lately, here’s the latest bingee.

They're all pansies.

Shortcut #19: Tad Williams’ The War of the Flowers

As usual (for all of William’s works I’ve read except Tailchaser’s Song), the basic elements of the novel’s world are familiar, though this fantasy is contemporary rather than Medieval (Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn) or Renaissance (the Shadow series).  Williams’ takes the folklore of fairy and twists it to his own ends so that its recognizable, yes, but, under the surface, different than anything we’d expected.

And, as usual, I’m taken in by the story – this one of Theo Vilmos, ne’er-do-well, layabout, and shiftless thirty-something musician – and by Williams’ ability to adopt conventions of fantasy and make them his own.  Williams is a good writer, and creates both believable characters and fully-fleshed environments with deceptive ease.  Without further ado, a recommendation: Read this book.

But what I want to talk about is a failing that appears in the novel and that, if nothing else, reassures me that Williams is only human after all, and that others have done and can do what he has done (But, you know, with different works of literature).  In this case, that failing has to do with the disjunct between what Theo knows and what the reader knows.  Also, a note: spoilers ahead.

The difference between what the reader knows and what the character knows can create the wealth of tension in a novel, and it’s a useful tool in general, whether used in the manner of a murder mystery, where the plot is revealed by the sleuth at the end through the revelation of how his thoughts have been clockworking along all this time, or in providing dramatic irony through the audience knowing certain facts that let us know the main character’s actions are a train wreck in the making.

Another sort of tension (the normal narrative kind) is developed through both the character and the reader being on the out-and-out regarding some key knowledge.  Sometimes this knowledge is a major twist in the plot, a twist that’s meant to give the reader as well as the character a shock, and sometimes the twist is a resolution to the plot threads that wouldn’t have been sewn together otherwise.  It’s this tension I want to talk about. Seriously: spoilers!  Move your eyes downward at your own risk!

The problem arises when the reader figures out the truth long before the character does, especially when it seems that the reader is supposed to be in the dark as well.

For example (1), Theo is a changeling.  The novel deals with fairies of the old school, and changelings are a classic folk legend, so when, early in the book, Theo’s mom says, during a bad trip, “They took the baby”, and then later tells him, as she’s dying, that she never loved him as she could, because she felt that she wasn’t his, it’s pretty clear that Theo’s a changeling.  This is hammered in as it becomes evident that Theo has fairy blood and that there is a mortal child (transformed into something beyond mortal) in the land of Faerie already.  Still, it takes Theo pretty much all of the book to figure this out – or, more to the point, to be told – and by this time the revelation is no surprise and the lead-up to it is tiresome rather than shocking.

For example (2), because Theo is a changeling, he can’t return to the mortal world. The explanation for this is a little complicated, but it’s enough to say that a spell was put in place that allowed only two trips through the Faerie/mortal world barrier.  So, for example, a mortal could visit Faerie world, but once they return to the mortal world, they can never go to Faerie again.  And the same is true for Faeries.  This point is hammered into the reader’s consciousness again and again because several plot points hang on it.  Because Theo is a changeling, that means he started in Faerie and (altogether now) is now stuck in Faerie on his return.  And yet it takes him until the last few pages to realize that there’s no going back for him… and this after pages and pages of agonizing over going back due to a love he found in Faerie.  This agonizing, because of the reader’s knowledge, is a little annoying, and not emotionally wrenching as it aims to be.

What’s the solution?  Either make sure your reader is in the dark, or make certain that the “revelation” doesn’t matter to the effectiveness of the book as a whole (i.e., the writing must carry it).  Of course, these flaws, as I see them, don’t prevent The War of the Flowers from being a great book, nor do they lesson my respect for Williams as a writer.  I only wish I could write a novel like that with only two such minor flaws.