Jim Hines' Libriomancer
Mar. 19th, 2013 12:21 pmJim Hines
Jim Hines is internet-famous for a series of parodies of implausible poses imposed on heroines on the covers of urban fantasy novels (eg. http://www.jimchines.com/2012/01/striking-a-pose).
He wrote several books I was potentially interested in, but especially Libriomancer, about library wizards who get their power from pulling fictional objects out of books into the real world. It didn't gel as a whole quite as well as I wanted it to, and had some significant reservations, but it had a bunch of interesting stuff, so I thought it was well worth reading.
Good stuff
1. The premise of library wizards.
2. The world-building is rich, lots of little details show the complexity of the background world, rather than "here's the premise, there's nothing else".
3. Realistic communication difficulties and differing agendas. Antagonists are acting consistently from reasonable motivations.
4. Some genuine non-forced moral dilemma.
5. We find out more about how the magic works, what's possible, what the various political factions are, etc than was obvious from the start, with a feeling of "Aha! So that's what was going on!" not "Oh look, he retconned a bunch of stuff"
6. There are polyamorous, bisexual, female and autistic characters where it's not a big deal and The Whole Point of the Book, they're just interesting characters.
Bad stuff
1. A few things feel "too cute", like he had a cool idea he just had to squeeze in, but it didn't quite fit.
2. Specifically the first few pages introduce us to the concept that sometimes vampires have escaped fiction books long enough to convert someone in the real world, thus unleashing actual vampires, and some of the worst are Twilight-style sparkling vampires because they don't share the usual vampire weaknesses. However, while a good idea of "how this literary trend would affect a world where things could escape books", and is well-written, when it's in the first few pages it has the unfortunate effect of making it look like the whole book will be "ha ha, let's make shallow parodies of urban fantasy".
3. The obvious question about getting things out of books is, "why can't I just get something that gives me three non-malicious wishes, and then do anything I want?" And the world building does cover this very well (some things are limited by the strength of your magic or your affinity for various books, and some things are prevented by the libriomancers). But unfortunately (and not really Jim's fault), the result is a bit flat, like there's not much room for creative interpretation, and what a wizard can do is mostly governed by "roughly how powerful they seem to be", like it most books without an interesting magical underpinning, rather than "what you could logically do if you had a ready supply of books and the stated abilities of a libriomancer".
4. Despite the openness of having characters other than het cis mono white males, the main character falls into a perfectly valid but a bit tired stereotype of a male urban fantasy hero, "oh, woe is me, I'm 30 and no-one fancies me, oh look, lots of attractive women have randomly thrown themselves at me for plot reasons, but I'm still all conflicted". It's not unrealistic or anything, and almost all books try to get some sort of character-development or conflict into their romantic subplots, but it's a refreshing change if I ever read a book with a main character who's actually comfortable about their sexuality.
5. Relatedly, one of the major female characters has a big problem which hilarityallen describes here. When I heard it described I wasn't sure if it was a problem, but when I read it, it definitely was. I had a feeling Jim Hines may have acknowledged that it was a problem and apologised for letting it happen, although I can't find anywhere he said that.
( Some spoilers )
Jim Hines is internet-famous for a series of parodies of implausible poses imposed on heroines on the covers of urban fantasy novels (eg. http://www.jimchines.com/2012/01/striking-a-pose).
He wrote several books I was potentially interested in, but especially Libriomancer, about library wizards who get their power from pulling fictional objects out of books into the real world. It didn't gel as a whole quite as well as I wanted it to, and had some significant reservations, but it had a bunch of interesting stuff, so I thought it was well worth reading.
Good stuff
1. The premise of library wizards.
2. The world-building is rich, lots of little details show the complexity of the background world, rather than "here's the premise, there's nothing else".
3. Realistic communication difficulties and differing agendas. Antagonists are acting consistently from reasonable motivations.
4. Some genuine non-forced moral dilemma.
5. We find out more about how the magic works, what's possible, what the various political factions are, etc than was obvious from the start, with a feeling of "Aha! So that's what was going on!" not "Oh look, he retconned a bunch of stuff"
6. There are polyamorous, bisexual, female and autistic characters where it's not a big deal and The Whole Point of the Book, they're just interesting characters.
Bad stuff
1. A few things feel "too cute", like he had a cool idea he just had to squeeze in, but it didn't quite fit.
2. Specifically the first few pages introduce us to the concept that sometimes vampires have escaped fiction books long enough to convert someone in the real world, thus unleashing actual vampires, and some of the worst are Twilight-style sparkling vampires because they don't share the usual vampire weaknesses. However, while a good idea of "how this literary trend would affect a world where things could escape books", and is well-written, when it's in the first few pages it has the unfortunate effect of making it look like the whole book will be "ha ha, let's make shallow parodies of urban fantasy".
3. The obvious question about getting things out of books is, "why can't I just get something that gives me three non-malicious wishes, and then do anything I want?" And the world building does cover this very well (some things are limited by the strength of your magic or your affinity for various books, and some things are prevented by the libriomancers). But unfortunately (and not really Jim's fault), the result is a bit flat, like there's not much room for creative interpretation, and what a wizard can do is mostly governed by "roughly how powerful they seem to be", like it most books without an interesting magical underpinning, rather than "what you could logically do if you had a ready supply of books and the stated abilities of a libriomancer".
4. Despite the openness of having characters other than het cis mono white males, the main character falls into a perfectly valid but a bit tired stereotype of a male urban fantasy hero, "oh, woe is me, I'm 30 and no-one fancies me, oh look, lots of attractive women have randomly thrown themselves at me for plot reasons, but I'm still all conflicted". It's not unrealistic or anything, and almost all books try to get some sort of character-development or conflict into their romantic subplots, but it's a refreshing change if I ever read a book with a main character who's actually comfortable about their sexuality.
5. Relatedly, one of the major female characters has a big problem which hilarityallen describes here. When I heard it described I wasn't sure if it was a problem, but when I read it, it definitely was. I had a feeling Jim Hines may have acknowledged that it was a problem and apologised for letting it happen, although I can't find anywhere he said that.
( Some spoilers )