Today we learn that profound insights cannot be faked.
What I gleaned about the story: A female of unspecified age has a memory dream about being thrown into orbit by her father, taunted by the stars, and then kidnapped by government agents when she comes back down. But that’s as far as I got.
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Analysis: On the first few pages we are shown the protagonist’s recurring memory dream about her childhood. Near the end, a convoy of dark cars with government men arrive on the farm. Here’s the first thing we hear them say: “Mrs. Dawn,” said the smallest man, with a raspy voice that made my skin crawl, “we are a special governmental division, and we have developed unique technologies for the military. One of these is a special type of laser. Army doctors have shown that it can be used to kill cancer cells. We can promise you a full cure, without major side effects. No one else can. But this is top-secret technology. We cannot share this with you or anyone else – not even your doctors. Therefore, her treatment must remain secret.”
The gist is that these government men want to take their daughter away for secret medical treatments right now. With no paperwork, no proof of who they are, and no, the parents cannot seek outside advice or even come along.
Now, if it had been the normal sort of dream, where chandeliers sing arias with the crown prince of living room sofas, I’d have slipped right on past that bizarre dialogue and situation without batting an eye. But it wasn’t that kind of dream. This was the kind of dream in which the author is giving us exposition in disguised form. Sure, the part about being thrown into outer space by her father was fanciful, but the bit that followed, about the government men? That was pure exposition, situated in the dream milieu, but presented as unadulterated memory. How do I know this? Because if the scene had been even slightly surreal or invented, it would not have served its intended purpose of bringing the reader up to speed on the character’s situation. Think about it. If the role of the government man had been played in the dream by a talking coffee urn, then the entire conversation would have become instantly suspect, and thus the reader would see it as nothing more than a strange dream.
And this is the flaw I find whenever dreamscapes are used for exposition. There is a fundamental untrustworthiness to dreams that undermines the believability of the content. They can be used to provide previously unrecognized information to the dreamer, but not to the reader directly. The reader instinctively mistrusts dream content unless the author transitions from dream to straight memory, which means it is no longer a dream at all.
So despite the dream trappings, this was a simple memory flashback about something the author wanted us to know really happened. And I found it strained credibility on a number of levels. Enough to pop me out.
Analysis: On page four, there five separate occurrences. Four pairs of “I-sentences, and a triple-stream of I-paragraphs. As a result, I have now also become sensitized to the galloping I disease that has sprung up along with it. (And yes, so far this has been a first person POV story.)
Analysis: I love when a writer manages to put together a new insight and express it succinctly. Memorably. But on the flipside of that love, I hate reading pithy little aphorisms that turn out to be empty or illogical. In this case, the second chapter opens with: Nothing is ever as it seems or is as it might be. And I simply could not wrench myself away from that, trying to make sense of what was being conveyed. To isolate it, the second half of that bit of wisdom boils down to, “Nothing is ever as it might be.” It appears to be saying that nothing is ever as good as it could have been. That no matter what happens, there is always something else that could have happened but didn’t. This is a logical tautology. Nothing is ever what it is not.
There is no secret wisdom in the expression that I can find. No quip about life that I can take away and use to guide me when times get tough. I suspect the author wanted to have the narrator sound philosophical, but couldn’t come up with anything appropriate to say, so just made up something that sounded insightful. And there’s nothing that falls flatter for me than wisdomless wisdom.
Hi Jefferson,
Thanks for your thoughts on my novel. In the spirit of communication, I would like to try to clarify something about the nature of the “Daughter of Time” series and what you say about Book 1, “Reader”. It’s important to me as I believe that your analysis is missing something fundamental.
The “dream sequence” is far more than a dream. It is a vision from a person gifted with the ability to “see” into the future and past. It was “seen” by her before it happened, is part of her memory from the events, and can be “reaccessed” by her ability to see into the past independently of memory. Whatever dreams might be, whatever fantastical (or not, depending on the dreamer) aspects come with dreams, THIS dream is of a very different nature. For the protagonist, Ambra Dawn, dreams are far more than dreams.
The “Nothing is as it might be” is actually very closely associated with this, as the narrator (SPOILER ALERT) develops powers not only to see into the past and future (to “Read”), but also to alter them (“Write”). Her words in chapter 2 (where the quote is from) spell this out:
“Because of this, you must let go of the idea of the Past as set and the Future as something that does not exist. Space-time is an ever-existing clay trapped inside the great bubble we call the Cosmos. Like clay, it can be shaped, changing past, present, and future. Always with rules. But not yet with rules any creature has come to fully understand.”
So, back to your analysis, it’s not about “saying that nothing is ever as good as it could have been”. It is exactly what she means: there is no set reality, no causality as we tend to understand it. The three novels tackle this idea in several different ways, even quoting Bertrand Russel at one point in Book 3:
“The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.”
I’m not writing to say therefore everyone should like or be interested in this take on things (I’m not actually sure what I think about reality, and that is a point of the stories – playing, wrestling with those ideas). Nor to argue with your subjective experience of the novel, my writing style, the plot, characters, etc.
But I did want to clarify that there is something going on much beyond usual dream sequences and ideas of “how things are/were/will be”. And what is “going on” is actually in many respects what this trilogy is all about.
Best regards,
Erec Stebbins
Thanks for responding, Erec. The point of the IOD reviews is to provide feedback of one reader’s reaction to indie fiction, as it occurred, in the moment, paying particular attention to matters of immersion. So while the story may explain itself later on, I can only comment on what I read, as I read it. In that light, trusting that readers will hang on until the explanation comes strikes me as a significant risk. In my experience, when reading new authors (and particular indie authors) readers are quick to pull the plug when they find things illogical or problematic. Since we are “on trial,” so to speak, we have to be careful not to alienate our readers before they have reached a level of trust with our writing. So when we write a detail that we know seems odd, we need to lampshade it — make it clear to the reader that we know it’s odd, and that an explanation will be coming. By doing so, the reader can relax, knowing that this perceived gaffe was intentional, and that their patience will be rewarded. Without such signs and signals, they tend to leap past the trial and go straight to sentencing. And in that scenario we are almost always executed without chance of appeal.
Hi Jefferson,
I understand completely (especially after spending a bit more time on your site), and it’s an interesting and unique approach to analysis with several good points associated with it—a crucible of sorts refining for a particular type of gold. I also appreciate that this is actually an effort beyond improving your own writing in that you share it with all us indies. Thanks for this service and good luck with your own novels and short stories!
Best,
Erec Stebbins