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Book Review: The Silkworm
Jun. 24th, 2014 10:03 pmI've gotten my grubby little fingers on J. K. Rowling’s The Silkworm, the second book in her Cormoran Strike mystery series. I liked it, although the murder was rather gruesome - it isn’t described at great length, but it’s disturbing.
( Spoilers )
***
I've always felt that the later Harry Potter books were far less effective than the earlier ones. It's fairly commonplace to blame this on J. K. Rowling's attempt to go dark, man, dark,...but The Silkworm makes it clear (even clearer than The Cuckoo's Calling, that is) that darkness is actually quite within Rowling's skill set. Both take place in a world full of venal people, many of whom are using that venality as a mask for the fact that they're actually pretty despicable.
And, in fact, the wizarding world is also full of venal people, many of whom are secretly despicable, who live in a fairly awful symptom. Their prison system is run by avatars of pure despair who are capable of sucking the souls out of their victims! How much more grimdark can you get? It's just that Rowling presented it light-heartedly, and I think for many readers the aesthetic presentation - is this terrifying or is it hilarious? - is more important than what's actually there.
So clearly the problem with the later Harry Potter books is not that Rowling is incapable of writing compelling darkness. Darkness in Rowling often resides in the pettiness of people, their little jealousies and cowardices that lead to horrible actions. In the later Harry Potter books, she's trying to achieve a kind of grandiose darkness, and that particular kind of darkness is simply not her forte.
( Spoilers )
***
I've always felt that the later Harry Potter books were far less effective than the earlier ones. It's fairly commonplace to blame this on J. K. Rowling's attempt to go dark, man, dark,...but The Silkworm makes it clear (even clearer than The Cuckoo's Calling, that is) that darkness is actually quite within Rowling's skill set. Both take place in a world full of venal people, many of whom are using that venality as a mask for the fact that they're actually pretty despicable.
And, in fact, the wizarding world is also full of venal people, many of whom are secretly despicable, who live in a fairly awful symptom. Their prison system is run by avatars of pure despair who are capable of sucking the souls out of their victims! How much more grimdark can you get? It's just that Rowling presented it light-heartedly, and I think for many readers the aesthetic presentation - is this terrifying or is it hilarious? - is more important than what's actually there.
So clearly the problem with the later Harry Potter books is not that Rowling is incapable of writing compelling darkness. Darkness in Rowling often resides in the pettiness of people, their little jealousies and cowardices that lead to horrible actions. In the later Harry Potter books, she's trying to achieve a kind of grandiose darkness, and that particular kind of darkness is simply not her forte.
