sigelphoenix

I just finished reading Hunted, my fourth James Alan Gardner book.

As is to be expected, I really really liked it.

I seem to remember people warning me that Edward was a bit on the whiny side. It's kind of true, especially in contrast to the extremely self-sufficient Festina, but I think Gardner pulls it off well. Part of the reason is that, while Gardner hints at Edward's self-pity, we aren't subjected to it on a constant basis. He doesn't drag us through the annoying parts of Edward's inner monologue.

The other important thing is that Edward learns. I think this is what makes Edward a flawed character who is still interesting, as opposed to Fullin from Commitment Hour, who starts out ignorant and remains pretty much the same the whole way through.

Edward is well-written, Festina is well-written, Kaisho is a compellingly written sociopath, and even smaller-part characters like Gashwan and Tobit are well-written. Samantha is the only disappointment; after the "big reveal" about her evilness (which was foreshadowed rather well, considering we were supposed to figure it out before Edward) there's nothing else interesting or surprising about her personality. She shows up all calculating and menacing, and dies somewhat anti-climactically, such that her role as the Black Queen suddenly seems unimportant. I expect more out of my villains in a good book (i.e., one written by Gardner).

On a slightly different note, I like the choice that Gardner made not to write another book starring Festina (at least, so far). Seeing her in action in the post-Expendable books has been good for sating our Festina addictions, but keeping her from the main role helps prevent her character from getting overused or feeling stale. I also really like seeing her through other characters' perspectives (even if they do keeping falling in love with her ... but hey, that's understandable).

So far, I like Gardner's creation of alien races. I'm always leery of that kind of thing, because it's so easy to fall into colonialist patterns of thinking about the "savage other." This is, paradoxically, a big risk when authors try to enhance the verisimilitude of their novel by creating an entire culture, because they can easily fall back on stereotypes of non-white/non-U.S. cultures.

Gardner's treatment of the Mandasars is a bit risky, what with the caste system where all gentles act this way, and all warriors act this way. However, Gardner exhibits enough self-awareness that I'm not too worried about it; for example, he draws parallels between the way that Mandasars base their social selves on pheremones and the way that humans base their social selves on body language. There is also enough variety in the other species I've seen to convince me that Gardner doesn't write all non-human societies this way.

Next up is Ascending, which I conveniently found at the library book sale a few months back. I look forward to reading another book with Oar.