This is something of a double-review. I'll be reviewing John Scalzi's new book, The Last Emperox, while simultaneously reviewing another reviewer. Yeah, yeah, I know, that's not normally done, but this guy got on my nerves, and I need to vent.
***SPOILER ALERT!!!*** If you don't wish to know how The Last Emperox ends, please stop here and come back when you're done reading it. If you don't care whether you know the ending, well, you're special.
The reviewer in question is Luke Burrage. He's a professional juggler, and from all I can gather, a rather good one. (Nothing wrong with that. So is Penn Jillette, and I love his opinions.) He's written some fiction of his own, which is good (if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a reviewer who can't write), and he does a podcast where he reviews every science fiction book he reads, as he reads it, with no set schedule. He seems like a nice enough guy, but I'm not sure he ought to be reviewing science fiction books at all. His tastes are so narrow, so hyper-specific, that I wonder how many writers can actually satisfy him.
I finished audiobooking The Last Emperox a week ago, and enjoyed every minute. It was every bit up to Scalzi's usual high standards, in spite of having an ending which I found slightly klutzy. But I'll get to that later.
Not long after, I found Luke Burrage's podcast. I think I happened upon it because I was desperate for more science fiction news and reviews which actually inform me as to what's going on. I very much want to feel informed before I take up the burden of voting at the Hugo Awards, which I definitely want to be able to do by the time Worldcon comes to Chicago in 2022. As a resident of Milwaukee, which is only an hour and a half away, there's no WAY I'm missing out! But how does one really know what's hot and what's not? How can people sort through the dizzying amount of short fiction out there to separate the wheat from the chaff? I still don't know. So you can understand my mindset when I typed "science fiction review" into my iTunes player, and Burrage's podcast came up.
And then, yesterday, I made the mistake of listening to it.
Oh, it's not that I found the review itself detestable. It's not even that I hated the podcast. I didn't. In a strange way, I enjoyed it. But I ended up listening to this well-meaning, yet utterly mistaken, professional stage performer absolutely SHIT on my favorite writer for one hour and twenty-three minutes!
He began by saying that he wouldn't make the mistake of listening to Wil Wheaton's narration via audiobook. Luke's evaluation of Wil's audio work is that Wheaton fails to differentiate his voice enough between different characters to make the dialogue more understandable. When I heard this, I could scarcely believe someone had actually said it! Clearly, he must have Wil Wheaton mistaken for someone else, or perhaps he has some form of hearing loss which my own tinnitus-plagued ears cannot relate to. Wil Wheaton does a fantastic job of narrating! I have deliberately sought out his work in relation to other authors, such as Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes of Amber. So I knew right away that Burrage was not quite on my wavelength. I sensed it further when he kept mispronouncing "Emperox" as "Emper-oks." (It's "Emper-oh," non-gender-specific.)
What kept me engrossed throughout the podcast was the utterly inane reasons Burrage gave for calling it crap. "I want a participatory experience," he says. "And John Scalzi takes away the participatory nature of it."
Okay, that's basically true. Scalzi's latest does skim over some of the details regarding battles, such as a revolutionary space-battle on the Planet End. He shortens long stretches of descriptions and events to give a synopsis so that he can get to the zinging one-liners, witty dialogue, and world-champion put-downs he's famous for. When he does give descriptions, he does so only when he has an outrageous one, and those are always good. But most of us don't need every scene of the story described in painting-with-words detail to enjoy it.
"This book," he says, "is like listening to a podcast about a movie which you don't get to watch."
Okay, here I call bullshit. I can see why, if he prefers the long descriptions of events in between the witty dialogue, or the great battles of ships in space, or even a picturesque description of what those ships look like, he might feel a bit cheated. But Scalzi is part of a class of writers I call the Ultra-Fans, who were raised on sci-fi, really know about what fanboys like, and serve it up - red hot! This isn't Herman Melville, here! Nor is it Jean LeCarre! This is John Fucking Scalzi! The man who writes dialogue fans live for! And we can abridge the stuff in between and get to the good stuff because that's Scalzi's brand!
In other words, Scalzi's stuff is pure candy. And yet here sits Burrage, complaining about its low nutritional value. Well, no shit, Sherlock! What did you expect? Scalzi is meant to be delicious, not nutritious!
"I knew what sort of book this was going in," he claims, "and I was still disappointed."
No, sir, you didn't. You knew it was sugar, ate it all at one sitting anyway, gave yourself a tummyache, and now you're blaming the confectionery. Well then, eat less candy! But don't tell us that Scalzi's editor should have made him go back and include a salad!Okay, I get it. Some people might not appreciate too much frosting and not enough cake. But others live for the frosting. Those are Scalzi's fans. If Luke hasn't as much of a sweet tooth, that's fine, but he oughtn't be telling a pastry chef to serve more vegetables!
One thing that really stood out for me, and made me research who the hell Burrage really was, was his comment calling himself an "A-lister in science fiction," and this gave him the right to demand more from Scalzi. Really? Burrage is on the A-list? Yes, his podcast has been around a long, long time (since 2008), but this guy is no Gardner Dozois! How dare he claim a chair at the grown-ups table!
Scalzi wrote at the end, "This was a very satisfying writing experience for me. I hope that it was satisfying for you as well. Thank you for coming along with me." Apparently, Burrage doesn't appreciate this sort of thing. He says it's like having sex, and telling the person you're with that you just had sex, and that you hope the person found it as fun. He went off on this for several minutes, saying what a horrible postscript this was. Okay, I can understand how that might annoy you if you didn't like the book, but shit, man! It's just a postscript! It didn't deserve adding an extra ten minutes onto your podcast just to complain about that.
I think what Luke was trying to say, without actually getting around to saying it despite having 83 minutes in which to do so, is that Scalzi's work seems geared to audiobook format. It's for people who want to hear what's being said, and don't want extensive details breaking up the tete-a-tete. This is true! Scalzi and the other Ultra-Fans, such as Ernest Cline, Dennis E. Taylor, James S.A. Corey, Hugh Howey, Cory Doctorow, and Andy Weir, are all people who appeal directly to the fans, and they don't give a rat's ass about what higher literary critics might have to say. And yes, audiobook does influence writers to write more pop dialogue and less purple prose, especially since e-books and piracy have made audio versions more profitable than print books by far. Burrage can complain about this until the proverbial cows come home. But he is the man who also gave a bad review to The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal - which won the Nebula Award! So that tells you just how finicky his particular tastes are.
As for Scalzi, expect the same fun and wit as you found in the first two books of the Interdependency Trilogy. Nothing about it was disappointing to me, although the ending did have an unusual twist which I found odd. The main character, Emperox Grayland II, saw a plot to assassinate her, and instead of thwarting it, which she could have done easily, chose instead to die and let her consciousness be uploaded into a computer, where she ended up defeating her enemies posthumously. She did this, she said, to prevent any further attempts on her life, which is a bit like curing the disease by killing the patient. That was a left-turn which I found unnecessary. I kept expecting Grayland to re-emerge as her living, breathing self, having fooled everyone into thinking that she'd died. But no. She and her lover, the physicist Marce Claimont, never get their happily-ever-after. Okay, stories are expected to have unexpected twists to break up the cliches, but I never expected Scalzi, of all people, to go all "George R.R. Martin" on us.
Aside from that? A great book! Find it, read it, love it!
And Luke? If you ever read this (which I doubt), I'll go on listening to your podcast, but try to be more understanding of the many, many fans who do not share your bizarre tastes in literature, please?
Eric
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