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randominityPrior to the Game of Thrones fever I'm currently experiencing (NK has been pushing for me to read it for ages, but I resisted right up until about episode 3 of the HBO series, and now I'm on book 3, so huzzah), I decided to check out the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. I was interested in his work due to the much improved job he did on the last WoT book, because, seriously, anyone who can make Robert Jordan's plot move like that deserves some kudos.
I was won over by the backflap premise, of a hero of the ages who succeeds in defeating the darkness, and it turns out that he did a nice job breaking things instead. I was further intrigued by the fact that it seemed there was a female heroine who had great martial skills and more of a tomboyish (almost asexual) bent to her, and that that was portrayed as okay.
I was even okay with (or, at least, grudgingly accepted) that this was, visually-speaking, a European fantasy world full of white people and different cultures are only represented by accents and fashions, or "the place where the brown-haired people live" versus "the place where the fair-haired people live."
I may be being uncharitable in thinking that maybe it's Sanderson's Mormon worldview that shapes his storytelling, but ultimately I kind of felt like the series starts off as a horrible totalitarian world full of white people ruled by a sociopathic white guy, and ends as a newly-reborn and slightly less climatically fucked-up totalitarian world full of white people ruled by an empathetic white guy.
That Vin is more or less the main character, unquestionably the most powerful, and ends up becoming the power of preservation and it turns out she's just a means to an end really, really annoyed me, and maybe I'm being petulant, but it felt like a bait and switch, because if I'm being honest, I signed on for a "girl saves the world" story and I don't really feel like I got it at the last minute.
I thought Sanderson was doing such a good job of not making her into a Mary Sue, and I believed in her as a real, breathing character with flaws and characteristics I didn't find in a lot of other female fantasy characters, and so, in the end, for her moment of salvation to literally come down to "now that you've killed my man I have nothing to live for" was like being slapped in the face.
The other thing that really, really bothered me was that European makeup of the world, since it turns out the world was manipulated and altered so that many different kinds of creatures could arise and thrive given its atmosphere. So instead of being a generic Europe, you have this world that's moved closer to the sun by a god-creature, and it's stated that he alters the biological needs and makeup of the humans on the planet to sustain them, and increased melanin doesn't even fucking enter the picture? That was just insulting to me. Of all the worlds that could have easily and believably had a dose of color in its people, this was one of them.
Ugh, that last bit just made me so angry. Near the end of the story there are all these descriptions of how quickly everyone is getting sunburned and I was just gritting my teeth the whole while (not that black people can't get sunburned, obviously, but REALLY SANDERSON? NO INCREASED MELANIN?) I've read disappointing fantasy before, and I've read books I wouldn't read again, but I'm actually upset that I own these books now and I wish I could get rid of them, but I wouldn't want anyone else to read them either :(.
Whatever. End rant.
Finally, I have a list of recommendations for fantasy novels written with people of color in the main cast, but what I would like to know, because I'm not sure how to search for it - especially if I'm missing something - is if there are any novels/series that fall into a Western/European fantasy mold with characters of color in them. For example, I read the Lion's Blood series, which was a great alt history with African and Arab characters as the protagonists, but is culturally African and Arab, as you'd expect. I suppose, as a product of "Western"/North American culture and an anglophile, my wish would be to see poc characters in the typical knights and royalty and sorcery kind of world, rather than read fantasies set in other cultures.
I guess that's wishful thinking.
I was won over by the backflap premise, of a hero of the ages who succeeds in defeating the darkness, and it turns out that he did a nice job breaking things instead. I was further intrigued by the fact that it seemed there was a female heroine who had great martial skills and more of a tomboyish (almost asexual) bent to her, and that that was portrayed as okay.
I was even okay with (or, at least, grudgingly accepted) that this was, visually-speaking, a European fantasy world full of white people and different cultures are only represented by accents and fashions, or "the place where the brown-haired people live" versus "the place where the fair-haired people live."
I may be being uncharitable in thinking that maybe it's Sanderson's Mormon worldview that shapes his storytelling, but ultimately I kind of felt like the series starts off as a horrible totalitarian world full of white people ruled by a sociopathic white guy, and ends as a newly-reborn and slightly less climatically fucked-up totalitarian world full of white people ruled by an empathetic white guy.
That Vin is more or less the main character, unquestionably the most powerful, and ends up becoming the power of preservation and it turns out she's just a means to an end really, really annoyed me, and maybe I'm being petulant, but it felt like a bait and switch, because if I'm being honest, I signed on for a "girl saves the world" story and I don't really feel like I got it at the last minute.
I thought Sanderson was doing such a good job of not making her into a Mary Sue, and I believed in her as a real, breathing character with flaws and characteristics I didn't find in a lot of other female fantasy characters, and so, in the end, for her moment of salvation to literally come down to "now that you've killed my man I have nothing to live for" was like being slapped in the face.
The other thing that really, really bothered me was that European makeup of the world, since it turns out the world was manipulated and altered so that many different kinds of creatures could arise and thrive given its atmosphere. So instead of being a generic Europe, you have this world that's moved closer to the sun by a god-creature, and it's stated that he alters the biological needs and makeup of the humans on the planet to sustain them, and increased melanin doesn't even fucking enter the picture? That was just insulting to me. Of all the worlds that could have easily and believably had a dose of color in its people, this was one of them.
Ugh, that last bit just made me so angry. Near the end of the story there are all these descriptions of how quickly everyone is getting sunburned and I was just gritting my teeth the whole while (not that black people can't get sunburned, obviously, but REALLY SANDERSON? NO INCREASED MELANIN?) I've read disappointing fantasy before, and I've read books I wouldn't read again, but I'm actually upset that I own these books now and I wish I could get rid of them, but I wouldn't want anyone else to read them either :(.
Whatever. End rant.
Finally, I have a list of recommendations for fantasy novels written with people of color in the main cast, but what I would like to know, because I'm not sure how to search for it - especially if I'm missing something - is if there are any novels/series that fall into a Western/European fantasy mold with characters of color in them. For example, I read the Lion's Blood series, which was a great alt history with African and Arab characters as the protagonists, but is culturally African and Arab, as you'd expect. I suppose, as a product of "Western"/North American culture and an anglophile, my wish would be to see poc characters in the typical knights and royalty and sorcery kind of world, rather than read fantasies set in other cultures.
I guess that's wishful thinking.
