Further thoughts on Melusine

[megwrites]

This review of Melusine, which was similiar to mine in taste in opinion (on some points) made me realize something about the book that I hadn't realized before.

Which, in turn, got me thinking down a much wider path.



In bellatrys's review, the point is made:

#1 was the bigger problem; it's distinctly jarring to come across mention of alligators and coyotes in a fantasy which is represented as following a European outline of history without being set in the far future; I could buy it as a fantasy-analogue of not Paris, but New Orleans, what with the swamps and the alligators and the deadly undead, except that a) the city is supposed to go back to classical antiquity, b) it has an undercity with stone tunnels (despite being in a riparian swamp) and c) it's supposed to be on the same continent as alt-Norway and alt-Greece. So with a little twitch of Cognitive Dissonance I just had to shrug that off and pretend to myself that they were the hemisphere-appropriate crocodiles and jackals, and it was just altered for US readers the way they used to do."

I agree with this utterly. A lot of my enjoyment of this novel was lessened because I kept running around things that were quite clearly unexplainable except in a place that was an alternate universe of Earth which shared at least *some* history with this Earth.

Only, I never got around to getting that explained.

The fact that there are saints really got to me (there is a place, in the novel, called St. Crellifer's). Saints are a patently Christian invention. And if someone's gonna use saints and cathedrals, I want to at least know what happened to *Christianity*. You might as well name a character "Jesus" and then not explain to me why something that is clearly part of *THIS* world is hanging out in this *other* world, unless they're two in the same.

And if they are two in the same, I want a roadmap drawn for me.

At this point, it dawned on me. Way back when I reviewed Melusine I commented that it annoyed the crap out of me that there were clearly historical names/places stuck in the novel with no explanation.

At the time, I had no way to express why this annoyed me or why I felt it was wrong. And technically, it isn't wrong. Anyone can write what they like.

But now, I have my finger on it.

The reason all the constant reminders of the Real World (or at least the canonical historical world) got to me so much was because it kept smacking me in the face with this simple fact:

I'm not entirely sure Melusine should've been a fantasy novel.

Now, before I get into this - let me air my standard disclaimer. I make no claims to know ANYTHING about Ms. Monette's creative processes, inner thoughts, writing, or other various mental processes. Nor am I saying that Melusine is, by any stretch, a *bad* novel. It really, really, really isn't.

But like any novel, it has its flaws. And these flaws of course, are all IMHO. Take or leave them as you will.

Now, let's get to the beef.

I think, in another life, Melusine would have been a smashing gay historical romance. If you substitute the Virtu for a pact or a secret and instead of magic, have Malkar just plain ol' raping/torturing the information from Felix (thus driving him mad) - you've got the same novel essentially.

The changes, IMHO, are cosmetic if you remove the magic. And *that* is precisely what annoyed me. The magic in Melusine feels hollow. It feels like a coat of paint put over the plot and characters of the novel to shoehorn them into the fantasy genre.

I can, ostensibly, see how this entire book could be set in Renaissance (or Mediaeval, take your pick) Paris and everything could stay essentially the same. You can still have the court pretender with the sordid past, the thief, and the breaking of a powerful thing (this time a treaty, pact, secret or other such thing) that drives Felix mad, brings Mildmay into the story, and has them both fleeing Paris.

The only details that I would feel deprived of are the very enchanting flourishes of the Lower City (ie, the story of the Boneprince and such). But those aren't really magical tales at all. The Boneprince in the novel is just a story about a prince who tried to kill his brother and failed. No magic necessary.

As far as the divinations that Bernard does, well, throw in some Mediaeval version of the tarot or something. Replace the ghosts in the swamp with thieves or animals of some kind. I could on and on with how much you could replace on the surface without affecting the deeper elements of the novel. Motives, characters, and events stay more or less the same.

Which is what frustrates me. I like my surface details to be just as essential as anything else. I don't like to be fed fantasy which is fantasy just for the sake of being fantasy without being necessary.

Take Tolkien (no, really. Go on. Help yourself.). I really cannot see how to strip the magic elements from that story without fundamentally changing big important chunks.

You can't subsitute the One Ring for a pact or a treaty or a crown or any other thing without destroying the motives of all the characters, the history of the entire trilogy, and just about everything on Middle Earth.

I mean, the trip to Mount Doom is only necessary BECAUSE THE RING IS MAGIC. The fact that only Frodo can bear the ring is because IT IS MAGIC.

Magic is inherent in everything in Tolkein's books. And his books, also, have a very real root in this world. He basically got out the Prose Edda (collection of Germanic myths, for those who didn't geek out for four years in university) and went to town.

Also true, you can see how Sauron and his forces represent the evils of WWI and industrialization. But you can't go in and substitute Sauron for the Kaiser and a bunch of big, fat rich Kings of Industry and get anything like the same novel. At all.

You either have to add a lot or subtract a lot by taking away something as simple as the Ring, or Hobbits or Elves. You can't turn the Hobbits into simple English farmers and Elves into...I dunno...bow-shootin' Frenchmen and get the same novel.

You can't tell the story without magic. Melusine can be told without magic.

There are lots of fantasy and sci-fi novels that can be told without their genre - and those novels also have a tendency to annoy me.

Take Ghosts in the Snow (which I really enjoyed, as an exception to prove the rule) by Tamara Siler Jones. It also doesn't need to be fantasy. It's basically an episode of Poirot in which Poirot finds himself on an English manor in the Middle Ages solving the murders of serfs. Finagle a little and you can work around the magical elements. The seeing of ghosts could be replaced with, say, someone who's just a genius and can extrapolate things in their head.

In fact, I think the point of that novel was to be CSI: The Dark Ages and see what that would look like. And the result is fascinating, but I didn't buy that book for the fantasy at all. I bought it for the mystery.

What kept me from getting fed up with Ghosts In the Snow was that the fantastical elements didn't get burdensome. The story doesn't have to stop so the author can inject the magic where it doesn't really belong.

Okay, I'm done being a Monday Morning Quarterback for books. Back to writing.

Comments

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

I've wondered about that. The only thing making me really hesitant is that I've heard that it's got just as much of the things that made Felix annoying, if not more.

And Felix was that irksome of a character to me. Personal quirk, I guess.

Plus the stack of books I want to read is not getting any shorter.

But if I ever never an airplane book, I'll keep in mind.