Book review: the Stone Key
May. 18th, 2008 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhen I was a seventh/eighth grader I loved, loved, loved the Obernewtyn books to death. They have Misfits, who have cool mental powers! Which makes the oppressive Council and Herders (religious types) oppress them! Except the Misfits band together! And then they join the rebellion, so they can free the Land from this oppression and fight for Justice and Truth!
The Obernewtyn Chronicles have never been really big on moral complexity, but by The Stone Key they’ve lost whatever vestiges they ever had.
First, there’s the barely-acknowledged fact that mind control is at best morally problematic. There are quite legitimate reasons not to be crazy about someone who could enter your mind and make you an axe murderer at will, none of which are ever discussed, because the only people with reservations about the Misfits are the people who loathe them in a passionate, genocidal manner, and end up betraying the rebellion anyway.
This flaw is especially damning given that the books preach, with increasing shrillness, the moral importance of pacifism. Evidently mentally coercing others into action is somehow less violent than physically coercing them to do it.
The book attempts to dodge the issue in three ways. First, none of the good people seem to be put off by these displays of mental power. Second, good people always agree to help the Misfits (even at risk of getting their entire family killed) without needing to be coerced, which means that coercing must be okay because it would only have to be used on bad guys. Third, the Misfits are presented as way too awesome to misuse their powers, the exception of the psycho-Misfit who routinely mind-rapes people notwithstanding.
Dodging the issue doesn’t make the moral problem go away. And the second dodge brings up another problem with the book, which is that the good guys (and, for that matter, the bad guys) all hold very uniform opinions and behave in uniform ways.
The good guys all think the Misfits are cool. They believe in pacifism (to the point that their overthrow of the Council is nonviolent, aside from the inevitable telepathic coercion) and animal rights. They believe in democracy, despite the fact that the Land doesn’t appear to have any democratic tradition, and despite the fact that the Land, as presented in the earlier four books, would produce a horrid democratic regime that would continue killing Misfits and probably lapse into tyranny the moment a crisis loomed.
A pet peeve of mine, as a government major: Democracy is not magic. If the people voting are bigots who are in favor of burning Misfits at the stake (and for the first four books, the Landfolk definitely fit this description) they’re going to elect a government exactly as nasty as they are. The Misfits are only going to be safe and free under an unelected government that likes them.
Of course a liberal autocrat is an unacceptable solution if you want to make the Land paradise on earth. Carmody tries to get around this problem by pretending that a year of good government has made the Landfolk see the error in their ways. They now believe in pluralism, Misfit rights, and freeing the animals from bondage. Yes, that’s right, the rebels actually think the farmers might vote for a government that will free their plow horses and make them all vegetarian.
First: does that make any sense in a pre-mechanized economy? Second: prejudice is intractable. The Landfolk have believed Misfits to be evil for at least a hundred years and animals to be inferior presumably since forever, they aren’t just going to stop now that the Council has been overthrown.
Speaking of the Council, and their foul brethren, the Herders: The Stone Key is
the first book in the series where actual members of the old regime come onstage during the story. It’s very, very unfortunate.
Before, the villains were a terrifying far away menace; in person, they’re so grotesquely overblown as to be cartoonish. They keep slaves; they kill dozens for tiny infractions with scarcely a thought; they probably eat live puppies for breakfast.
This lack of balance is thrown further off-kilter by the absurd ease with which they’re overthrown. They also both contain token “good” members, who have somehow remained uncorrupted by the evil that surrounds them and have the exact same attitudes as the other good characters.
I could go on. I could talk about the complete and total destruction of one of the characters (one of my favorites—it’s ALWAYS one of my favorites), or the fact that the main character’s powers have inexplicable burgeoned, or the sudden wild need to pair everyone off that infected the book.
Oh, God. This is the series I thought absolutely brilliant for years. (In my defense, the first three books in the series—Obernewtyn, Farseekers, and Ashling—are much better, and I still think Ashling is a pretty good book.) I wrote my first fanfic based on Obernewtyn! How could it have gone so wrong?
And—here’s the worst part—I’m still going to buy the next (and hopefully last!) book in the series. Yes, I’m going to order it all the way from Australia. Because I’m a fan, dammit, and that means holding on until the bitter end.
The Obernewtyn Chronicles have never been really big on moral complexity, but by The Stone Key they’ve lost whatever vestiges they ever had.
First, there’s the barely-acknowledged fact that mind control is at best morally problematic. There are quite legitimate reasons not to be crazy about someone who could enter your mind and make you an axe murderer at will, none of which are ever discussed, because the only people with reservations about the Misfits are the people who loathe them in a passionate, genocidal manner, and end up betraying the rebellion anyway.
This flaw is especially damning given that the books preach, with increasing shrillness, the moral importance of pacifism. Evidently mentally coercing others into action is somehow less violent than physically coercing them to do it.
The book attempts to dodge the issue in three ways. First, none of the good people seem to be put off by these displays of mental power. Second, good people always agree to help the Misfits (even at risk of getting their entire family killed) without needing to be coerced, which means that coercing must be okay because it would only have to be used on bad guys. Third, the Misfits are presented as way too awesome to misuse their powers, the exception of the psycho-Misfit who routinely mind-rapes people notwithstanding.
Dodging the issue doesn’t make the moral problem go away. And the second dodge brings up another problem with the book, which is that the good guys (and, for that matter, the bad guys) all hold very uniform opinions and behave in uniform ways.
The good guys all think the Misfits are cool. They believe in pacifism (to the point that their overthrow of the Council is nonviolent, aside from the inevitable telepathic coercion) and animal rights. They believe in democracy, despite the fact that the Land doesn’t appear to have any democratic tradition, and despite the fact that the Land, as presented in the earlier four books, would produce a horrid democratic regime that would continue killing Misfits and probably lapse into tyranny the moment a crisis loomed.
A pet peeve of mine, as a government major: Democracy is not magic. If the people voting are bigots who are in favor of burning Misfits at the stake (and for the first four books, the Landfolk definitely fit this description) they’re going to elect a government exactly as nasty as they are. The Misfits are only going to be safe and free under an unelected government that likes them.
Of course a liberal autocrat is an unacceptable solution if you want to make the Land paradise on earth. Carmody tries to get around this problem by pretending that a year of good government has made the Landfolk see the error in their ways. They now believe in pluralism, Misfit rights, and freeing the animals from bondage. Yes, that’s right, the rebels actually think the farmers might vote for a government that will free their plow horses and make them all vegetarian.
First: does that make any sense in a pre-mechanized economy? Second: prejudice is intractable. The Landfolk have believed Misfits to be evil for at least a hundred years and animals to be inferior presumably since forever, they aren’t just going to stop now that the Council has been overthrown.
Speaking of the Council, and their foul brethren, the Herders: The Stone Key is
the first book in the series where actual members of the old regime come onstage during the story. It’s very, very unfortunate.
Before, the villains were a terrifying far away menace; in person, they’re so grotesquely overblown as to be cartoonish. They keep slaves; they kill dozens for tiny infractions with scarcely a thought; they probably eat live puppies for breakfast.
This lack of balance is thrown further off-kilter by the absurd ease with which they’re overthrown. They also both contain token “good” members, who have somehow remained uncorrupted by the evil that surrounds them and have the exact same attitudes as the other good characters.
I could go on. I could talk about the complete and total destruction of one of the characters (one of my favorites—it’s ALWAYS one of my favorites), or the fact that the main character’s powers have inexplicable burgeoned, or the sudden wild need to pair everyone off that infected the book.
Oh, God. This is the series I thought absolutely brilliant for years. (In my defense, the first three books in the series—Obernewtyn, Farseekers, and Ashling—are much better, and I still think Ashling is a pretty good book.) I wrote my first fanfic based on Obernewtyn! How could it have gone so wrong?
And—here’s the worst part—I’m still going to buy the next (and hopefully last!) book in the series. Yes, I’m going to order it all the way from Australia. Because I’m a fan, dammit, and that means holding on until the bitter end.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-17 12:50 pm (UTC)