Dreamsnake

Why, yes, I can read a book in less than two months. I know, I was shocked to remember I could as well. I confess that part of the credit goes to the book itself, Dreamsnake by Vonda N. McIntyre. Not many characters, not too subtle in its plot, only around 300 pages, Dreamsnake makes a nice summer getaway of relatively light fantasy fare.

The main character, Snake, is a healer on an unnamed world. There are as many hints that this world is Earth as there are that it is another world completely, but ultimately it doesn't matter. Her travels within the story do not take up much time or space, and though the possibility of it taking place on an alien world is clear, nothing happens as a result of it. Snake is well-trained in the diagnosis of injury and disease and apparently well versed in curing them, but the first few patients we see her with are not complete successes. Her failure is due, in great part, to the method by which her medicines are delivered--poisonous snake. She milks the venom from her pet cobra or rattlesnake, then feeds the snake a drugwhich causes the snake to produce medicine, which then is delivered by snake-bite. Patients unfamiliar with the practice are understandably unsettled by this, and the relatives of those patients are concerned as well. And when the family of Snake's first patient in the book kill her prized dreamsnake--the snake whose venom provides dreams of what the patient most desires--out of fear and loathing for snakes, the crisis that drives the rest of the book is set into motion. Without her dreamsnake, Snake feels incapable of being a healer, and what's more, she's certain that the community of healers she comes from will drive her out for her failure.

To be honest, there appears to be a bit of a plot flaw here. The beginning of the novel contains a lengthy passage of Snake milking her cobra, but there is never a very sufficient explanation of why the medicines it can produce are not similarly milked and delivered via more pedestrian means. There is a scene where Snake does exactly that with other medicine, and the reaction of her patients is very much like contemporary patients--fear of the needle--which is a darn bit less violent than fear of being bitten by a snake that one knows to be poisonous.

Snake's second patient has abroken spine, and Snake suffers the guilt of being unable to heal her from this injury. The woman's partners and Snake devise a plan to carry the patient to the what is apparently the only city on the planet because, as it fortunately turns out, the patient is a missing member of the ruling family. But the plans turn to naught when Snake discovers that, as her patient lay wounded and unable to move, she lay in the radioactive crater of a bomb that had gone off in the past until she was rescued. Snake also cannot treat radiation poisoning and so helps to euthanize the patient, adding to Snake's angst. But Snake now has a mission, go to the city and tell the woman's family of her death and, since there is apparently a spaceport at this city, see if they can provide her with more dreamsnakes...because it turns out the dreamsnakes are not from the world where the story takes place. With dreamsnakes in hand, Snake believes she can redeem herself to her community.

Along the way to the city, Snake visits a town of beautiful people whose pleasing exteriors mask repulsive interiors. We are also introduced to the perhaps progressive sexuality of the peopel on this planet; they spend part of their youths learning how to control their reproductive systems so that men are voluntarily sterile and woman can usually keep from conceiving unless they want to. As a result, the people are an exuberantly friendly lot, and attraction is handled with physicality, even at the ages of 12 to 15. It's all handled rather adroitly, without voyeurism and exhibitionism within the book. But Snake must move on, after adopting a young girl who was being abused by her mentor.

And so it goes, which is where the book fails. There are many hints and allusions to what could be interesting subjects that end up never being built upon. For instance, in that same town, we find out that the mayor will not allow its citizens to be bonded to anyone else for more than a year. There is a little discussion of this, all from the point-of-view of people who know what this means, but to the reader it's fairly opaque. How common is slavery on this world? How is "bonding" the servants/slaves handled elsewhere? Snake meets a young woman who has had rings of unbreakable material pushed through her ankles as a sign of her being bonded...where did it come from? Who did it and how? We get no answers to these questions.

The novel ultimately has the feel of the first book in a series, where a lot of ideas for how this world works are floated out without much detail, so that they may be picked up later and expanded upon. For instance, it turns out that some human tribes on this world mate in triads, but it is only mentioned in passing and never explained beyond the recognition that it is there. How disappointing.

I fully recognize that if McIntyre had expanded her novel along the lines of explaining some of these things, she would run the risk of having too much information not having to do with the story she wants to tell. Furthermore, she would end up breaking her narrative, since everything is told from Snake's point-of-voew, and she already knows what we don't. And yet it still feels lazy; the author's art is exactly in telling us the details without making it into a recitation. And it's not like anything of real importance happens in the novel; the plot meanders along the path you exactly expect it to, detouring momentarily to show how things are different from what the reader knows before moving on to Snake's next encounter.

And so it ends up being like Chinese food--you read the book and are minimally satisfied, but within moments you immediately want more, possibly more filling fare. And, honestly, Dreamsnake is a nice enough diversion; I'm just saddened by the content that drifts ghostlike into the view of the reader only to disappear completely when one's full attention is brought to bear.

The Moon and the Sun

If you read my earlier blog from today, you'll see that I mentioned this book a little bit. Well, I was actually home not feeling so great, so I sat right down and finished the book. My opinion of it has changed a little, but allow me to recap.

Vonda McIntyre's The Moon and the Sun is ostensibly an alternative history novel, set in the court of Louis XIV right about the turn of the 17th century into the 18th. The main character is Marie-Josephe de la Croix, a recent escapee from a convent on Martinique into the court of Louis himself. We find out that she is actually the daughter of nobility who were sent to Martinique by Louis and who died, leaving her in the care of the convent. Her natural intelligence and curiosity (we find out in degrees that she is a mathematician, composer, and accomplished artist) were stifled by the convent, and she looks forward to beginning her career as a minor noble, the lady-in-waiting for Louis's niece.

Court intrigue follows and she, being quite beautiful (of course) becomes the target of lecherous men all around her, except for Lucien de Chretien, the king's most trusted advisor. As if learning how to deal with Versailles in the Sun King's reign is not difficult enough, her father ( edit: "brother," see Yonmei's comment and my response below. Stupid fingers) is a renowned Jesuit natural philosopher who has just accomplished a mission of the utmost importance to the king--capturing a live mer-creature and returning it to Versailles for study. Louis and her brother, Yves, believe that mermen have an organ that gives immortality, and they are seeking it in the best scientific method of their time--which involves dissection and detailed comparative study.

And here is where my problem begins. It is perfectly clear that the merpeople are in fact sentient, even if no one in the book gets it. So, the surviving mer-creature (affectionately called "sea monster" by name) witnesses the dissection of her dead lover and wails in the mer-language, a sort of song that everyone around her takes to be the cry of an animal. But for nearly half the book, we get to follow Marie-Josephe around while she wins over the court with her innocence and intelligence, despite the way the church and the court itself continually remind her of the inherent weakness of women. But she is not so smart that she can't figure out that the mer-woman reacts exactly like a human woman would under the same impulse. Part of that is because we rarely see the mer-woman in the first half of the book.

Now understand, if I wanted to read a period piece with a little fantasy thrown in on the side, this would be a marvelous book. It is light and fluffy, full of simple feminism (although never openly expressed by any of the characters). But the shadow of the impending torture of an alien sentient hangs over the novel, causing the courtly interplay to be asinine. In fact, a hard science fiction novel would be all over the implications of the merpeople, while for most of the book, it is only an interesting background detail. Of some interest is the opinion of the visiting Pope Innocent, who is torn between deciding if the mer-creatures are beasts or demons.

Finally though, Marie-Josephe gets it (due in no part to the near-psychic communication the mer-creature possesses) and she finds herself trying to change the minds of the notoriously stubborn Louis and her brother...and the pope. If she fails, the mer-creature is to be butchered and served as the main course at one of Louis's feasts. Marie-Josephe must work within the constraints of her role in the severely repressed system to convince them not only to spare the life of a human creature but also to not commit the mortal sin of murder in the process of preparing her for a meal. Her solution is ingenious, even though it ultimately fails, setting the reader up for the obligatory but silly action scenes.

As I put the book down, I wondered why this story had to be set in the time it is. How much more philosophical conversation could take place if it was set in modern times? How much deeper could the book have drawn its characters and their opinions if they lived in a contemporary setting? What McIntyre does is an interesting thought experiment, but it has little depth to it. So I'm left with the feeling that a lot of potential has been left unfulfilled and wondering why.

To be honest, there are a few scenes, especially with de Chretien, that take up an alternative viewpoint that I don't entirely believe would have been present in the setting she chose. de Chretien is an avowed atheist who is tolerated at court because of his service to Louis. Because he is not so wed to the Christian morality as the people around him, he is among the first to believe that the mer-creature is sentient. I find his arguments about atheism to be compelling, especially in light of current conversations about biblical literalism "versus" science. A good friend has been pointing me to the lectures of David Hawkins, recent author of The God Delusion, where he posits rational arguments about the faultiness of the Bible as a historical record and moral guidebook. Ironically, Marie-Josephe, a devout Catholic raised in a convent, is the first to set aside her bias, but it is de Chretien who makes the most astute arguments, in part because he *can*--he is a man in the court and is not automatically ignored when he speaks.

The Moon and the Sun is an entertaining book, but I run again into my problem with recent award-winning books. The question I ask myself, which is not at all fair to the book, is what else was up for the Nebula that year that this won? It really doesn't break new ground nor is it particularly stylish. And what I think would be more fascinating, now that the table is set, is to write a sequel in which we see some of the war that has been declared by the novel's end. By doing that, there is no way McIntyre could avoid the moral implications of the thrust of her novel.