Why Must You Do This To Me?

A couple of years ago, I read Orson Scott Card for the first time. Even though he's famous and all I didn't know anyone who read him. Until I was...23 most of my books were hand me downs from my mother and brother, plus whatever random stuff I happened to come across at book fairs. One day I happened to find that our library had a copy of Ender's Shadow, and recognizing the name of a legend in the field I was completely unfamiliar with, I thought I'd give it a whirl.

And it was good. Really good. Okay, to be fair it's not as if had the world's deepest story. And the ending was a bit anti-climactic- not to mention that the book itself tells nearly the same story as Ender's Game, simply from another viewpoint. But I hadn't read Ender's Game. And the new perspective, that of "Bean"- an almost sociopathic but utterly brilliant child who makes his appearance by forming a gang of oprhans at the age of four is simply amazing. I absolutely loved the character, thought the story was solid, and anything left underdeveloped was purely a result of the unusual concept of re-writing the same book from another POV. So's I said "This Card fellow seems pretty sharp." Then I chortled at my urbane wit and cried myself to sleep while trying to convince myself that I don't need friends and if they can't understand how great I am, then fuck 'em.

Anyway, being poor I did not run out an immediately buy a crapton of Card's books. It wasn't until months later at a library book fair (different library) where they were so desperate to get rid of them that it was the best price I'd ever seen- 5 bucks, you can fill a bag. Any size, really. Bring your own. A single Card book was there, so I threw it in the bag. Now, about a year later, I'm finally getting to it. Indeed, that library just had it's book fair last weekend. To be fair to me, I do go to several, and I got free books from Big Corporate Internship. I mean, I did read Stranger in a Strange Land within days of picking it up at that fair. And it was a mouldered first edition, so I didn't even need a book mark or anything. Every twenty pages or so the glue would just come undone and they'd fall out.

Anyway, why do I tell you this? Well, because I do like Card's writing. Which is why this particular book I picked up, The Call of the Earth: Homecoming: Volume 2:The Revenge of the Sequel annoys me a bit. Oh, the writing itself is still good and imaginative. It only builds steam as it goes. But the names. My God, the names. If you never take anything else away from this blog, remember this- giving people and places long, inpronouncable names is a bad idea, even in SF and Fantasy.

Let me explain. First of all, normal characters tend to have difficult enough names like Gabballufix and Rashgallivak, and before you think I'm trying to pull out harder names, try saying Vozmuzhalnoy Vozmozhno ten times fast. Hell, try saying it once at any speed you like. It takes a while, doesn't it? And it doesn't flow trippingly off the tongue, as they say in fancy pants MFA classes. Now you have to compound this problem by the fact that although places still only have one name, characters all have two. Vozmuz there is "shortend" to Moozh. I mean, seriously. Moozh. The hell? He's more or less the most dangerous man in the entire world, general of an enormous army and his name is MOOZH? Even characters with easy names like Kokor confuse you by having an alternate which is used interchangably (in this case, Kyoka, which is an actual name and I therefore imagine that Card didn't realize that.) Now multiply this by the enormous size of the cast (Another pet peeve of mine- keep your central cast under a dozen, please. If you can keep the central cast at less than half a dozen, it'd be even better)and you'll start to see why this is a problem. But wait, there's more. Read now and we'll also throw in EXTREMELY COMPLEX CHARACTER RELATIONS AT ABSOLUTELY NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE. Part of this comes from the characters themselves, and part from the world building. The book primarily takes place in and aroud the great city of Basilica, in which men have no *permanent* rights. Insofar as it relates to the discussion here, what matters is that marriage is a year long contract, and although it can be renewed as often as desired, it is expected that young, especially desirable women will play the field as it were. Fine as far as it goes. It's a decent bit of world building. The problem is it means everybody is related by blood or by marriage to every other character in the book. So keeping in mind who someone is and what their relation to the other half the conversation is makes for an absolute nightmare. And I have a pretty high tolerance for bullshit and I think otherwise that Card is pretty compelling all things considered. But this really weighs down the book. Next time you write a fantasy or SF, just know that it isn't a law that you need to make things insanely complicated or difficult to say. Yes, I get it. Tolkien actually created an Elvish language. Good for him. His books were boring as shit. Speak English. It's a lot more useful.

*update* I also wanted to present you fine folks with this delicious quote from the acknowledgements "Clark and Kathy Kidd provided me with a refuge during the last week of the writing of this novel; fully half of it came forth under their roof..." Tell me that doesn't sound like he wrote it in less than two weeks. Although, where SF writers are concerned, stranger things have happened than writing a book every other week.