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

[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.