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Carol Berg Books
Oct. 4th, 2012 01:03 pmBecause Sabine asked --
Having adored to death the recent Carol Berg trilogy I read (The Spirit Lens, etc.), I went back and found some of her earlier books. In this case: Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone, often called "The Lighthouse Duology". Can I digress long enough to say that I loathe the word "duology?"
Berg writes secondary world fantasy for grown-ups. She does as good a job of creating complex alternate cultures as the best Barbara Hambly novels. Her writing is textured and rich. Problems are rarely solved by the application of brute force. There are moral quandries and difficult choices. The people feel real, even though they exist in an unreal world. Part of what makes Berg a writer for grownups is that plans fail. Things do not go the heroes' way. They make huge mistakes and spend a lot of time trying to recover from those mistakes.
I didn't adore the Lighthouse books as much as I adored the other trilogy. Part of this is because I found the sole narrator (first person again) to be a mite annoying. OK, a selfish, snotty brat. I think Valen was supposed to be annoying when he started out. I certainly found him easier to read about as the books went on and he matured. Perhaps because I read the books in rapid succession, rather than with an interval between the first and second, I wasn't entirely prepared to forego slapping him repeatedly even by the end.
On the Alys vs. Rhi sliding scale of darkness vs. light in fantasy fiction, the Lighthouse books fall more on the Alys/dark side. There aren't a lot of pleasant people here. They do unpleasant things. Even the heroes contemplate doing awful things in the name of the greater good. The ending is a triumph of idealism over pragmatism, but there's a long slog through bad doings in order to get there. On the other hand, on the relative darkness scale, it's nowhere near as dark as Anne Bishop's Black Jewels novels or the average Sopranos episode.
Having adored to death the recent Carol Berg trilogy I read (The Spirit Lens, etc.), I went back and found some of her earlier books. In this case: Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone, often called "The Lighthouse Duology". Can I digress long enough to say that I loathe the word "duology?"
Berg writes secondary world fantasy for grown-ups. She does as good a job of creating complex alternate cultures as the best Barbara Hambly novels. Her writing is textured and rich. Problems are rarely solved by the application of brute force. There are moral quandries and difficult choices. The people feel real, even though they exist in an unreal world. Part of what makes Berg a writer for grownups is that plans fail. Things do not go the heroes' way. They make huge mistakes and spend a lot of time trying to recover from those mistakes.
I didn't adore the Lighthouse books as much as I adored the other trilogy. Part of this is because I found the sole narrator (first person again) to be a mite annoying. OK, a selfish, snotty brat. I think Valen was supposed to be annoying when he started out. I certainly found him easier to read about as the books went on and he matured. Perhaps because I read the books in rapid succession, rather than with an interval between the first and second, I wasn't entirely prepared to forego slapping him repeatedly even by the end.
On the Alys vs. Rhi sliding scale of darkness vs. light in fantasy fiction, the Lighthouse books fall more on the Alys/dark side. There aren't a lot of pleasant people here. They do unpleasant things. Even the heroes contemplate doing awful things in the name of the greater good. The ending is a triumph of idealism over pragmatism, but there's a long slog through bad doings in order to get there. On the other hand, on the relative darkness scale, it's nowhere near as dark as Anne Bishop's Black Jewels novels or the average Sopranos episode.
