Blaggard’s Moon 3: Weak Points and Conclusion

Yesterday I mentioned some of the good points of George Bryan Polivka’s Blaggard’s Moon. But I also said there were negatives. I'll begin with some minor points I think are useful information, not major issues.

Violence. Remember what I said about realism? Pirates were a bloody lot, and while the actual gore is limited, there's plenty of violence. If you can get past the first chapter or so, you'll have a good idea what's ahead. It will probably be well within most readers' tolerance.

Slow reading. NOT BORING! They aren't the same thing. I just mean that this isn't the sort of book I'd speed read. It lends itself to a more leisurely pace.

Resolution. This is a serious one. And now, some Literature:

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. ..."

The same goes for stories. I don't know why, but recently I've encountered a spate of stories that were great until near the end, where they took a catastrophic turn. Like flying a plane, takeoff and landing are the tricky bits.

So, without indulging in spoilers, I'll just say that there's a situation set up that simply evaporates, and what should have been a climactic encounter suddenly transmogrifies into Bambi Meets Godzilla. (To make matters worse, the justification for the dénouement simply doesn't work on two or three grounds. I didn't believe it, because it was a clear case where something happened only because the author said so.)

Similarly, the resolution of Delany's initial problem struck me as unlikely on several grounds, among them

1. Torture-happy necromancers are no more likely than pirates to be Really Nice Guys deep down and
2. Demons, being worse than pirates, would actually dance a jig in response to the mourning of the innocent.

Takeaway. The message readers are likely to pick up isn't uniformly good. It's quite possible to conclude that the only way to stop one evil is with an even more insidious evil--doing evil that good may come of it. Manipulative hypocrite conquers ordinary pirate, under-dressed Satanists overcome another ordinary pirate: the only good that comes from good is that it sometimes gets you off the hook. Or shot.

Now, as famous pirate humorist Skeel Barris said to a late friend who had just been shot through the brain, "I see what you're thinking." I suspect that the resolution/takeaway glitches derive from an attempt to show that the wrath of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God, or perhaps that whoever takes up the sword shall die by the sword. But these points could have been better made in other ways--and without the moral and spiritual ambiguity that arises here.

Conclusion. So I went from strongly in favor of the story to (at best) ambivalent, and that in the last sixty pages. Polivka is a great writer, and the story's about worth it anyway. But for me it's too close to call. Many readers will at most have a nagging feeling that something's wrong. They may agree with my assessment or not. If you're thinking of buying this book, check the reviews carefully first. Then flip a coin.

The rest of the CSFF blog tour probably won't be so indecisive:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Melissa Carswell
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Alex Field
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Magma
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespack
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

Blaggard’s Moon 2: Good Points

George Bryan Polivka’s Blaggard’s Moon has several good points:

Literacy. Find what's wrong with this sentence: "He was stopped by Lye Mogene's fist, which struck him squarely in the mouth." (p. 292) If you're properly educated, there's nothing at all wrong. If you've been perverted by writing gurus, you will probably consider it possessed by the passive voice and try to exorcise the demon by rewriting it as active ("Lye Mogene's fist stopped him, striking him squarely in the mouth."). Polivka's sentence is better, however, because it uses one of the several legitimate functions of the passive: delaying the logical subject. This is stronger than the active sentence and more elegant. Whether Polivka realizes that instinctively (i.e., he's a natural) or by analysis (i.e., he's smarter than 99% of the people in a critique group), he knows how to get the job done.

Structure. As I mentioned yesterday, Polivka has four concurrent stories in the book. It takes a lot of skill to weave that many strands without annoying the reader. As a writer, of course I knew what he was doing, but it still didn't bother me.

Realism where it's needed. One of the reasons I avoid pirate stories is that they tend to romanticize pirates. Not here. Just when you're warming up to a pirate character, he'll commit some atrocity and remind you that pirates are evil.

Geek factor. I always prefer a story I can learn from. Blaggard's Moon is educational without any major info dumps, and Damrick Fellows is more a thinker than a fighter. I have characters very like him.

Sneaky theology. As I read, I found myself wondering whether there was a Christian element. There is. But it doesn't really assert itself until you're well into the story, and even then it isn't that obtrusive. The stated theology is good, on the whole.

Are there negatives? Of course. Do they offset the positives? Tune in tomorrow and see. In the meantime, check out the rest of the CSFF blog tour:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Melissa Carswell
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Alex Field
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Magma
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespack
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

Blaggard's Moon 1: Intro

This month CSFF is touring George Bryan Polivka’s Blaggard’s Moon, a pirate epic. This isn't the first time I've reviewed a pirate story; I've already looked at The Ballad of Scabbard Pete, a more fantastic work in progress.

Blaggard's Moon, meanwhile, is a literarily ambitious work; Polivka tries to give a positive answer to the question, "Can a novel really have its main character perched atop a post like a stylite for nearly 400 pages?" Surprisingly, it can and does.

There are four stories here: Delany sitting on a post in the middle of a piranha-infested lake as he waits to be filleted alive, his memories of how he got there (neither many nor coherent until near the end), the ship's storyteller narrating an apparently unrelated tale, and the tale he tells, about Damrick Fellows, the scourge of pirates, and Jenta Stillmithers, the lady he keeps failing to properly meet, woo, and win.

This last story takes up most of the book, as Damrick attempts to break up a pirate conspiracy led by Conch Imbry and his surrogate brain, Mart Mazeley, and Jenta tries to keep her honor relatively intact. This is no small feat, considering that Conch wants her. She has also attracted the attention of a certain dissolute wimp—or more concisely, a panty-waistrel—who is also the scion of the largest shipping line in the area. But worms can turn, and there is a constant movement of courage in the story as hopes and strength wax and wane.

I began this intro with a comparison of sorts: Blaggard’s Moon and The Ballad of Scabbard Pete. Although I haven't read widely in this genre, I suspect that the comparison works beyond this pair. Scabbard Pete is a fantasy throughout, and its pirates are relatively romanticized; Pete himself is, for all his faults, a maritime Robin Hood. While there are a few fantastic elements in Blaggard's Moon, it is mostly realistic, and any romance to the pirates is only a thin veneer: they are evil and enjoy torturing people. Some of the more annoying tropes of modern fantasy get little more than a nod here, and even then they are handled believably. So this can probably be considered the flagship of modern pirate stories. Let's see how she sails.

Tomorrow, the good points of Blaggard’s Moon. In the meantime, check out the rest of the CSFF tour:

Brandon Barr
Jennifer Bogart
Keanan Brand
Melissa Carswell
Amy Cruson
CSFF Blog Tour
Stacey Dale
D. G. D. Davidson
Jeff Draper
April Erwin
Karina Fabian
Alex Field
Marcus Goodyear
Todd Michael Greene
Ryan Heart
Timothy Hicks
Cris Jesse
Jason Joyner
Kait
Carol Keen
Mike Lynch
Magma
Margaret
Melissa Meeks
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
John W. Otte
Crista Richey
Chawna Schroeder
James Somers
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Speculative Faith
Jason Waguespack
Fred Warren
Phyllis Wheeler
Jill Williamson

Save My Children: CFRB Review

This month, CFRB is touring Emily Wierenga's Save My Children. The stock summary is

Save My Children is a fictional retelling of the true story of Harvey and Elsie Jespersen, the founders of Bethany Homes for Children. The Jespersens’ desire was simple: to provide a safe place for any child needing a family. Save My Children traces the lives of battered and mistreated kids who were cared for at Bethany Homes. From 1948-1991, the Jespersens fostered over 800 children, taking up to fifty-five kids at a time. The Homes consisted of old army barracks based on forty two acres of farmland. Through hard work, determination and patience, the Jespersens transformed those barracks into a place of refuge for generations of children. Refusing to take any payment except what parents could afford, Harvey and Elsie depended on faith and the generosity of others to see them through. Save My Children powerfully demonstrates love's ability to transform brokenness into beauty.

That's a reasonably compact summary, and accurate, too. But as usual, I'll mention a few points others may not.

Pace. This is not a fast book, in my opinion. It's better read a few chapters at a time over the course of several weeks. But in a sense it can therefore be read alongside (probably not as part of) devotional reading. Or if your family reads out stories, your kids are in their teens, and you don't mind discussions, this could be a good family book. (Read it through first, however.)

Feel. In general, the documentary feel is strong enough you'll forget this is fiction--or rather, that it's fictionalized. Names have been changed, etc., but this is essentially a true story. The emphasis is more on the problem the kids had before arriving at Bethany Homes, so sometimes the resolution may not be as strong as you might expect. But if you're thinking in terms of what's called "slice of life," it works quite well.

I should mention that this is Emily Wierenga's first book, but she does a good job. Also, the revenues from the book go to help out Bethany Homes for Children, so it's a good read in a good cause.