Hambly, Barbara - The Silent Tower and The Silicon Mage
Tue, Aug. 28th, 2007 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterJoanna'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.
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.
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Wed, Aug. 29th, 2007 02:52 pm (UTC)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
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Thu, Aug. 30th, 2007 12:40 am (UTC)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.