Hambly, Barbara - The Silent Tower and The Silicon Mage

[oyceter]

Joanna's world unexpectedly collides with another when the powerful but insane mage Antryg Windrose gets lose. She ends up in Antryg's world, battling dark magical forces with the powers of her computer programming skills!

I am not quite sure what I think of this duology. In general, I like what Hambly is doing, but there are so many bits that I find jarring that I keep getting into the books and then getting thrown back out again.

The first is Joanna, whom I had a hard time figuring out. I get that she is a computer programmer and not good with people and very normal, but that very ordinariness without any particular quirks made her feel like a placeholder for the reader. In general, I would like her, and then I would have moments of feeling too tricked into liking her by her ordinariness.

Then there's Antryg. He's tall and supposedly insane, and I very much like that he's not handsome. On the other hand, I rolled my eyes a little at how he is the most powerful wizard in the world (or almost), how his insanity doesn't really seem insane, how he basically can figure everything out, and how he is almost infinitely forgiving.

And the thing is, I really wanted to like them, because they aren't your standard fantasy heroes.

The other thing that threw me off was the computer programming. I know this was written in the eighties, but still. I didn't believe Joanna as a computer programmer at all. Although please take this with a grain of salt, as I am not a computer programmer myself, particularly not one from the late eighties. It was just things like her saying, "This is a hardware problem, not a software one" and "I think in subroutines" that felt very off. It felt like Hambly trying to pull in programming talk into her fantasy world, and it only served to throw me out of the story.

Actually, in general, the computers threw me out of the story. They felt too handwavy. Because seriously! Not enough debugging! I'm sure some of it happened off screen, but still. All Joanna's suggested solutions based on her computer program mind pretty much work the first time, and even though she isn't programming per se, the little experience I've had with programming has me thinking that that really just doesn't happen.

Anyway.

I loved some of the characters very much, particularly the secondary characters (much Pella love). But I was irritated that the homosexual character was sort of a villain (with some redeeming qualities, but still) and was constantly referred to as a "pervert." And I was sad because I thought the beginning of book two would be a subversion of the usual "rescue the maiden in the tower" trope, but it didn't end up doing that.

Spoilers

My last problem was that the conclusion didn't feel earned. When Caris supposedly died, my first thought was "He's going to come back to life," as was my reaction to Antryg's final fate. Also, even if you acknowledge that the deus ex machina in the end is a literal deus ex machina, it does not make it feel any less of a cheat!

I am not actually this grumpy at the books; there were bits that I liked. But overall, it felt very uneven.

Comments

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I remember reading those books, but it must have been in the '80s that I read them, because I don't remember them very well. (I was definitely reading a lot of fantasy then.) The ones of hers I liked best were the ones in a series that started with The Ladies of Mandrigyn.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

I read these when they first came out. At the time, the computer stuff really worked for me. I also loved Joanna, because she was so different from characters I'd read before. But....they haven't worn nearly as well. I also found that Hambly had certain story tropes that didn't work as well when I read them in further books. I like Joanna less now than I did before, which is a bit odd. I've always liked the third book the best, it's the only one I still comfort read from time to time. My favorite parts are the comrade bits when they all travel together.

[oyceter]

There's a third book?

I think I would have really liked Joanna and Antryg had I not already read Dragonsbane, which I feel has similar archetypes, but in a more interesting way. I haven't picked up on story tropes yet, since this is the only Hambly I've read outside of Dragonsbane (and its horrible, horrible, horrible sequels which I have attempted to scrub out of my mind). Hrm, will be interesting to read more.

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Dog Wizard is about Antryg and Joanna at the wizard college. It's a really neat group of academic scholar types fighting crime, but it may be more loved by me for its warm and fuzzy memories than its quality per se. I like it a lot.

There's also a standalone about a young, female wizard trying to save her sister called Stranger At The Wedding.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I know I've read that one too, but again I don't remember it too well.

I think some of the trouble with Hambley is that in some ways, her stories are rather run-of-the-mill as far as fantasy goes, reusing certain tropes. Didn't she seem to have a thing for zombie-making insect things in several of her series? There were a fair number of fantasy authors like that in the '80s. They would churn out paperbacks at a fairly quick pace, and the stories would have one or two intriguing ideas to explore, but they didn't hold up for long-haul comfort reading.

[heavenscalyx.livejournal.com]

She's kind of problematic in a variety of ways. I think the way I've been told that some of her books (the followup to Dragonbane, I think, and the vampire novels) is that she equates BDSM with Evil. Or something like that. I can't remember the precise details -- I was warned off the other books years and years ago.

[oyceter]

Oh huh, maybe I will check that out.

[ellarien]

I first read these when they were fairly new (and a 20Mb drive was still impressive), and the computing felt about right for the period, though obviously the idea of putting an entire personality-upload into a computer of the time -- and then downloading it via what was probably a 300-baud modem or thereabouts and printing it on a home printer -- is absurd. In a way I'd like to see a reissue with the technology updated, but that seems highly unlikely to happen.

I liked Antryg, though the exact nature of his madness is never clear -- it mostly reads more like mild eccentricity -- and was intrigued by the revolving POV structure, which may have been the first time I'd noticed something like that. Sadly, Dog Wizard is partly Antryg POV, and I didn't find him nearly as interesting from the inside as from the outside.

(As it happens, I'm reading Hambly's latest historical novel, Patriot Hearts, at the moment, and I'm amused to notice that her rendition of Thomas Jefferson has some of the same endearing geekiness as Antryg and John Aversin (though she doesn't shy away from his double standards, self-delusions, and downright bigotry, either.)

[oyceter]

*nods* Yeah, the computing itself didn't feel off; I think I was just thrown by how Joanna used programming terms to talk about things like the Dead God, though morgan_dhu has a more accurate comment about it below.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

The computer stuff didn't trip me up, but yes indeed, Antryg being constantly referred to as "mad" when he in fact seemed remarkably lucid and reasonable.

(The third book was something of a letdown. I forget why.)

[oyceter]

Yeah, I was very confused about Antryg being mad! He seemed very reasonable to me, albeit very eccentric.

[nestra.livejournal.com]

Heh. I have an unreasoning love for these books (and Dog Wizard and Stranger at the Wedding), and I wish she'd write more in the universe. The ending of Dog Wizard definitely leaves the possibility open, but it's been at least ten years, and I'm not holding my breath.

The whole plot doesn't really hold up to too much scrutiny ("It's magic! Turned into electricty! To power a computer! To do magic!"), but I think I imprinted pretty hard on the characters at exactly the right age.

I get that she is a computer programmer and not good with people and very normal, but that very ordinariness without any particular quirks made her feel like a placeholder for the reader.

Interesting. I love Joanna (and Antryg). I love that she's bad with people and vaguely distrustful of men, that she has a bad relationship with her mother, that she's quiet and prefers computers amd cats to people, and that she's brave enough to go rescue someone she's betrayed.

and how he is almost infinitely forgiving.

I think this comes from the fact that he has seen so much evil done in his life, and done a fair amount of it himself. It's a dynamic I also see in "Torchwood", which you probably don't watch, but one I find very appealing. But a lot of my view of Antryg's character comes from Dog Wizard, which actually gets into his POV, unlike these books.

But I was irritated that the homosexual character was sort of a villain

Yeah, though there is also a positive gay character, albeit a minor one. (Li, the colleague that Caris deals with for a few chapters, is a gay woman. I think that's her name.)

Anyway, I like this series better than either of her other ones I'm familiar with -- The Darwath trilogy, which is actually five books, or the books about Sun Wolf or whatever his name is. I even got to write in the universe for yuletide a few years ago. If I could get to my website at work, I'd link you, but I'll settle for passive-agressive self-pimping. *g*

[oyceter]

You wrote fic! Yay! I actually read this series because edonohana had requested fic for it for Yuletide, and I got curious. I will have to find yours ^_^.

I feel like normally I would have loved Joanna and Antryg because they're quirky and odd and she sucks at social interaction, but it mapped so strongly to Jenny and John from Dragonsbane (which I imprinted on fairly young) that it kept throwing me.

Yeah, though there is also a positive gay character, albeit a minor one.

Oh, excellent! I missed that.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Haven't read the books, but...

It was just things like her saying, "This is a hardware problem, not a software one" and "I think in subroutines" that felt very off.

As a (woman) programmer in the late 80s, these are things I would have said. Especially the last one. When working with (then relatively new) languages like Pascal and C, we were all rigourously focusing on how to compartmentalise as many tasks as possible into (generic term) subroutines, because it made coding and debugging much, much easier. Since many of us had stared out on the original BASIC, this meant changing the way we thought about programming, and so there was an overemphasis on viewing every task in terms of inter-related subroutines, and a lot of us began seeing life like that..

[oyceter]

Oh, thanks for the comments!

I ended up being rather thrown by the application of the concepts to things like fantasy monsters and the way some things in the book just felt too easy (figuring out how to communicate via tapping out numbers in pi, frex). But it is good to have more background; my very meager programming experience is all Java, so it's very different.

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

It really did get to the point, for me and a lot of programmers I knew at that time (I've been out of the programming business for about 15 years, now), where we would analyse real life situations - and talk about them to each other - in programming language terms.

Actually, I still do that sometimes - and more often than not, it helps me work out "what do I do now" or "how do I handle this" kinds of problems.