Review 6: The Long Price Quartet by Daniel Abraham
This review is a bit of an oddity, in two ways: 1. It is a review not of one book, but of four: A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War, and The Price of Spring. These books, while technically standing on their own, are really one single, self-contained unit - The Long Price Quartet - and should be read (and reviewed) as such. 2. The reading of the four books was stretched out quite a bit, both between books and even while reading single books, and so while my memory of the quartet is reasonably good, the experience of reading it was somewhat different from that of a single book.
It's worth knowing that a blog post I skimmed is what turned me on to these books, at tor.com. I don't recall how I found it; it has a certain amount of spoilerish discussion of the world that is built that I somehow managed to forget or skim over it, but it's there if you'd like to read it. It notes that the books are decidedly feminist - while not a "theme" of the books, the fact is that they do address women and traditional lesser roles with depth and understanding, and the women are not merely tropes of "strong women" or anything like that - they are people, acting as people in their situation would. The review also introduces you to the distinctive device that the books use: they are set 15 years apart, but take place within the same world and deal with many of the same characters. It is that idea that initially made me want to read the books - to be sure, many other series have ongoing plots that span years or decades, but this was the first I could remember that did it all in a single unit of four books.
Of course, the each book has to be engaging, otherwise a reader will never even move to the next chapter 15 years later - and engaging they are! The world-building that Abraham has done is superb - the type of "magic" that is introduced is well thought out, and fairly unique - and for those of you that are unsatisfied with the first book's drifting at an explanation, fear not - the mechanisms of the poets and their andat are fully explained later (I very strongly feel that delving too much into the nature of the poets, and the andat (terms that will make sense if you read the books) will detract from the experience of reading the novels. The way they are introduced and then explained seems to me to be an integral part of the reading experience.).
But it is not only the magic that is superbly crafted - the cultures and people of the novels are amongst the most well-written, fleshed-out, and well-rounded that I have ever read. Each character has certain motivations, each culture has certain values, that anyone can understand and connect with. There is less "good vs. evil" in these novels, and much, much more "people doing what they feel is right, or that they feel they must do." And of course, the intervening 15 years between each book add a great deal to this conversation. One 15 year period contains almost an entire life's worth of events for a main character, and is only referenced as his memories, things that have come and gone, that we get mere glimpses at to help us understand how he moved from the character we saw in one book to the one we are reading about now. But it's not merely the changes in characters that we see in these 15 year periods: the world itself moves, changes, and things happen while we are away. It adds a much greater sense of depth - rather than the characters in the book we are reading being the be-all-and-end-all of the world, there are people who skip books, and a world that carries on without them, which adds to a greater sense of depth in the world. One of the most important results of the time between novels is that we can actually see the results of characters' actions. Instead of a brief epilog or a simple "they lived happily ever after," the seemingly good deeds of one book can come back to haunt characters later, giving every decision, every "happy ending" a greater weight with realistic consequences.
And that's almost the point of the books. While the events of a person's life may seem important (or unimportant), even if that person is the ruler of the world, the world itself moves on, and it is that person's descendants, and those of later generations, that carry on with their own lives, as the world itself carries on (especially in the 15 years between books!). I suppose that this review is somewhat vague, but with good reason. I waited quite a while (perhaps even too long) to read the final chapters of the final book, because I knew I would want some time to decompress, to digest the emotional impact of the end of the series. Because this is the sort of series that really does draw you in, and makes you feel as if you are part of its world, and have a stake in the outcome. You will very much be doing yourself a disservice if you don't buy all four of these books.
Edit: I entirely forgot that the third book, An Autumn War, struck me as being a decided metaphor for nuclear weapons, to a certain extent. Or at least, the way our first introduced character views the world has certain parallels to what an anti-nuclear weapon proponent might think. I don't know why I decided to go back and edit this on, but it certainly seems significant when a fantasy novel can strike you with the thought that it is perhaps an allegory for non-proliferation.
This review is a bit of an oddity, in two ways: 1. It is a review not of one book, but of four: A Shadow in Summer, A Betrayal in Winter, An Autumn War, and The Price of Spring. These books, while technically standing on their own, are really one single, self-contained unit - The Long Price Quartet - and should be read (and reviewed) as such. 2. The reading of the four books was stretched out quite a bit, both between books and even while reading single books, and so while my memory of the quartet is reasonably good, the experience of reading it was somewhat different from that of a single book.
It's worth knowing that a blog post I skimmed is what turned me on to these books, at tor.com. I don't recall how I found it; it has a certain amount of spoilerish discussion of the world that is built that I somehow managed to forget or skim over it, but it's there if you'd like to read it. It notes that the books are decidedly feminist - while not a "theme" of the books, the fact is that they do address women and traditional lesser roles with depth and understanding, and the women are not merely tropes of "strong women" or anything like that - they are people, acting as people in their situation would. The review also introduces you to the distinctive device that the books use: they are set 15 years apart, but take place within the same world and deal with many of the same characters. It is that idea that initially made me want to read the books - to be sure, many other series have ongoing plots that span years or decades, but this was the first I could remember that did it all in a single unit of four books.
Of course, the each book has to be engaging, otherwise a reader will never even move to the next chapter 15 years later - and engaging they are! The world-building that Abraham has done is superb - the type of "magic" that is introduced is well thought out, and fairly unique - and for those of you that are unsatisfied with the first book's drifting at an explanation, fear not - the mechanisms of the poets and their andat are fully explained later (I very strongly feel that delving too much into the nature of the poets, and the andat (terms that will make sense if you read the books) will detract from the experience of reading the novels. The way they are introduced and then explained seems to me to be an integral part of the reading experience.).
But it is not only the magic that is superbly crafted - the cultures and people of the novels are amongst the most well-written, fleshed-out, and well-rounded that I have ever read. Each character has certain motivations, each culture has certain values, that anyone can understand and connect with. There is less "good vs. evil" in these novels, and much, much more "people doing what they feel is right, or that they feel they must do." And of course, the intervening 15 years between each book add a great deal to this conversation. One 15 year period contains almost an entire life's worth of events for a main character, and is only referenced as his memories, things that have come and gone, that we get mere glimpses at to help us understand how he moved from the character we saw in one book to the one we are reading about now. But it's not merely the changes in characters that we see in these 15 year periods: the world itself moves, changes, and things happen while we are away. It adds a much greater sense of depth - rather than the characters in the book we are reading being the be-all-and-end-all of the world, there are people who skip books, and a world that carries on without them, which adds to a greater sense of depth in the world. One of the most important results of the time between novels is that we can actually see the results of characters' actions. Instead of a brief epilog or a simple "they lived happily ever after," the seemingly good deeds of one book can come back to haunt characters later, giving every decision, every "happy ending" a greater weight with realistic consequences.
And that's almost the point of the books. While the events of a person's life may seem important (or unimportant), even if that person is the ruler of the world, the world itself moves on, and it is that person's descendants, and those of later generations, that carry on with their own lives, as the world itself carries on (especially in the 15 years between books!). I suppose that this review is somewhat vague, but with good reason. I waited quite a while (perhaps even too long) to read the final chapters of the final book, because I knew I would want some time to decompress, to digest the emotional impact of the end of the series. Because this is the sort of series that really does draw you in, and makes you feel as if you are part of its world, and have a stake in the outcome. You will very much be doing yourself a disservice if you don't buy all four of these books.
Edit: I entirely forgot that the third book, An Autumn War, struck me as being a decided metaphor for nuclear weapons, to a certain extent. Or at least, the way our first introduced character views the world has certain parallels to what an anti-nuclear weapon proponent might think. I don't know why I decided to go back and edit this on, but it certainly seems significant when a fantasy novel can strike you with the thought that it is perhaps an allegory for non-proliferation.
