A · Life

a review / analysis of Martha Wells' Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy.
This isn't a review per se, not in the way that one normally reviews books: it is more a look at a series that fascinates me partly because it is precisely what I have been attempting to do. I am herein sort of picking it apart to see why it worked, and worked so well. So herein lies a lot of writing blather, as tehta would put it. It shouldn't contain any spoilers, however. I'll try to avoid them, anyway.

I will mention that these books got me through what would have otherwise been a very boring and cold blackout of electrical service during a severe snowstorm that took down trees and power lines all over my city, and in fact the last book has wax spilled on some of the pages from the ridiculous little tealight candle I was trying to read by. I had an unprecedented chance to concentrate on these books, and reread, and I will always remember those couple of days fondly. That aside, now I'm going to talk about why.

The first thing I would like to say is that this is not your boilerplate
fantasy novel. It does not take place in "a far-off land" or "long ago and far away" or anything nearly so vague. There's pretty much no time wasted on setting, but it's clear as day. The characters are very down-to-earth, even though it's not earth. It's marvelous and efficient and transparent: the novel simply takes place in a world, which is real, and somehow this is readily apparent without any time being wasted on exposition. Even the most fantastic elements are handled in a very matter-of-fact kind of way, the characters' reactions making perfectly plain what is out of the ordinary and what is not, and incidentally what kind of characters they are in the mean time. [For example, when Tremaine encounters a wicked fairy that bares its teeth and tells her she looks tasty, and her response is to point her pistol straight into its face and say "So do you." So this is a woman who knows about fairies, and isn't really intimidated by much.]

Rien is sort of vaguely French-ish, and the time period is sort of early twentieth century ish. Ish. Telephones, automobiles with starter cranks, blackout curtains, and luxury trans-oceanic liners with steam engines. And oh, sorcerers are everywhere, and there's a whole university dedicated to them, and magic is just a part of everyday life although most people have only passing understanding of how it works. The other main setting, the Syrnai, is kind of Mediterranean-ish, sort of vaguely Minoan (as in the great Iron Age [?] civilization of Crete contemporary with the Mycenaens) actually: steel swords, olive oil lamps, and rowed galleys are the height of their modest technology. But no time is wasted on explanation; things simply happen, and they are well enough described (and consistently so) that it is obvious and no explanation is needed.

An example:
Tremaine's home at Coldcourt, described on the first page. The description and narrative are so inextricably entwined there's nothing for the attention-span to skip.

The entry hall was dark except for a single electric bulb burning in the converted gas fixture above the sweep of the stairs. The light fell on yellowed plaster walls and rich old wood and a blue-and-gold patterned carpet on polished stone tile. Coldcourt was aptly named and Tremaine's bare feet were half frozen by the time she made it to the front door. She had let the housekeeper have the night off and now she regretted it, but she had had no idea it would take this long to arrange things. At this rate she wouldn't be dead until next week.

The characters likewise are immediate and individual, entirely free from bullshit. Characters' individual natures are immediately obvious, revealed with an economy of narrative that entwines exposition with storytelling so that the story never bogs down.
Example: from the first section in which Ilias and Giliead appear, this gives you not only an overview of their relationship to one another, but also explains the level of their technology and makes it clear they do not share a world with Tremaine and Coldcourt. (book 1, page 11-12.)

"Ready?" Giliead asked, shaking his braids back and awkwardly maneuvering the pack's strap over his head and shoulder. He was nearly a head taller than Ilias and the confined space was almost too small for him.
"No," Ilias told him brightly. The crevice was not only too small for Giliead, it was too small for the distance weapons they would have preferred to bring; bows and hunting spears would never fit through here. They both had their swords strapped to their backs, but drawing them in the confined space was impossible.
Giliead's warm smile flickered, then straight-faced he nodded firmly. "Me neither."
"Then let's go."

The point of view shifts in sections, rotating among several main characters and a few minor ones. This presents an ideal opportunity to make clear certain things about the appearance of various characters, which my choice of a tight POV in the novel I'm just finishing now didn't allow me. I can't stand it when a character stands and stares into a mirror just so the author can tell you what he/she looks like. And so there are only a few times in the book when the reader gets an idea of what my character looks like. Wells handles things much better, and less clumsily: I can see her characters clearly, but never have to digest large chunks of description. She avoids cliches here just as in everything else.

There is one mirror-gazing moment, which is very typically Wellsish in what it reveals: Tremaine, in book 2, p. 47 or so.

She leaned on the sink, looking into the mirror. Her mousy brown hair was getting shaggy and she pulled it back for an unobstructed view of her face. No, still don't recognize that person, she thought, resigned. Especially now, when she should be pale from the Vienne winter. Whoever that was in the mirror, her cheeks had a sprinkle of freckles and red patches from riding under this world's summer sun, as well as a nice patchwork of greenish yellow bruises. Giving up the unproductive self-scrutiny, she went back out into the main room.

More instructive are the passages wherein Wells uses the reactions of third characters to give the POV character a chance to reflect on what the character in question looks like. In book 2, page 29ish, Tremaine answers the door with Ilias at her side and speaks to a new character, and the reader is given a far more objective picture of Ilias's appearance: throughout the first book, Tremaine quietly admires him, but this gives a much more compelling idea of why:

Tremaine glared at him, then opened the door.
It was an older woman, slender, her graying dark hair neatly arranged and her face bare of cosmetics. She wore a plain but well-tailored blue-gray wool suit. Tremaine thought she might be one of the Institute's secretaries or administrators but didn't recognize her. The woman lifted her brows and said calmly, "Oh, it must be Miss Valiarde from the Villier Institute. They said you'd be somewhere with all these young men." She smiled admiringly at Ilias, who was leaning against the other wall, displaying more bare chest and arms than one usually got to see in Ile-Rien since the ballet, the opera and more interesting demimonde theaters and dining establishments had shut down for the duration. He smiled engagingly back at her. Tremaine suspected the Syprians were going to prove popular, at least among the Rienish on board.
[...]
"Oh"-- the woman tucked her clipboard under her arm and extended a hand-- "I've forgotten to introduce myself. I'm Lady Aviler."
Tremaine automatically shook the extended hand. The expensive but tastefully plain just-what-one-should-wear-to-an-evacuation clothing, the confident beau monde manner combined with the polite leer at Ilias all made sense; she was a member of Ile-Rien's nobility. [... spoilery reasons for this to make Tremaine very nervous removed.] "This is Ilias," she managed, hoping to distract her.
Lady Aviler gave him a pleasant nod and a warm smile. "How very nice."
As Lady Aviler continued briskly up the corridor, Ilias leaned out to watch her. "Get back in here," Tremaine snapped, anxious to shut the door again. She was paranoid about [spoilery reason] being uncovered. Not that it had been terribly well covered in the first place, but she hadn't had any time. [...]
Ilias stepped back in, giving her a wry look. "She was nice."
Tremaine grimly shut the door, heading back into the sitting room. "Sure she was."

That little scene serves at least three purposes. It highlights Tremaine's half-unconscious response to the character of Ilias [via her concealed jealousy of another woman's flirting], illuminates the reasons she has a guilty conscience [giving a sense of perspective about how her actions would be perceived by her peers] and the fact that she's far more ruthless yet human than she lets on, and also it sets up for another scene where Ilias [who, incidentally, has a facial tattoo that to his own people plainly illustrates that he has violated a taboo and thus is a non-person] tries to puzzle out his own motivations (book 2, p. 33-34):

"I know you weren't there long, but did they seem the kind of people we could ally with?"
Ilias stared at the floor. He didn't like this all being on his head; he didn't want to mix what he wanted with what Cineth, let alone the whole Syrnai, should do. In his gut he thought the Rienish would make good allies [...]. He told himself it wasn't just because the Rienish, like the woman who had come to the door, never saw his curse mark for what it was and that he liked being looked at like a man again. "All I can tell you is that they treated me well."

Another very interesting and well-done aspect was the understated emotional content. Given that this deals with a world war on a grand scale (in fact more than one world), there is a lot of high drama-- husbands killed, innocents slaughtered, cities destroyed, civilizations driven toward extinction; traitors and self-sacrificing martyrs; many bittersweet final partings and highly-wrought emotional moments interspersed with frantic action. There are long-lost relatives and back-from-the-dead and mortal wounds and the such. And lots of standoffs with guns pointed at heads and such (including one poor young female character who has a gun held to her head to induce others to surrender twice within one book alone: her response is a resigned, "Not again").
And yet the thing never slides into melodrama. Some of the best examples are off-limits because of my self-imposed ban on spoilers (including a long-missing character's first response to a family member being, "What did you do to your hair?" while being held at gunpoint). But a few good ones include,
from book 3, p. 183 [hardback edition]:

She found the idea of expecting him to wait at her bedside like some character from a bad romantic novel hilarious, or possibly humiliating, or possibly both, but what if he didn't? What if he had intentionally stayed away to avoid giving her the wrong idea? What was the wrong idea?

It had occurred to her why she had avoided every opportunity to talk to [him]. I can't say it. I can't say it like I'm supposed to. All the ridiculously emotional phrases of love. She remembered the last play she had seen before the war had closed the theaters, a romantic drama with people draping themselves langorously on couches and saying things like [...] You're the only one in my life and you fill it completely. She couldn't imagine how drunk she would have to be to say something like that> Whenever she had tried to write a romance in her plays, the audience could never tell if the characters were in love or not. She clapped a hand to her forehead in despair. Killing [rival] seemed like the best solution. Yes, for a crazy person, she thought in disgust. We were trying to give that up, remember?

Interestingly, in Wells's livejournal, she mentions receiving criticisms of this particular character in reviews of the book, saying she is not emotional enough. I almost agreed: in a very emotional part near the end I did feel that she came across as slightly too flat, and it reduced some of the impact of the scene. It was mild; I liked how her shock made her reaction very straightforward but understated, but, not to be spoilery, I'll just say there was an embrace that should have been a kiss. But throughout the rest of the book, I found the emotional tone absolutely perfect: it vibrated beneath the surface with a restrained tension that made the entire thing much more absorbing.
Not just the romantic love: the closeness of Gil and Ilias, for example, and the conflicted relationship Gil had with his step-father throughout all three books. Large and small, incidental and central, the relationships were remarkably human and fully-developed, even for minor characters.
Likewise the 'culture clash' aspect of the thing: the Syprians are Iron Age-type barbarians, with a matriarchal society and a very honest habit of discourse, while Tremaine is the daughter of a Rienish spy and double agent and has spent her life in concealment and subterfuge. How they live with themselves and each other is a key aspect of the book.

book 2 p. 339

If this bit of blackmail with Dubos didn't work... She hoped that maybe she would only have to kill him. She found, amazingly enough, that she didn't want to kill anybody. She propped her chin on her hand, looking at Ilias. "So you'd throw someone off this thing if I asked you to?"
Prying open another crate, Ilias paused to consider this, staring thoughtfully into the distance. "I don't know. Do you have any of those chocolates with you?"
Tremaine felt herself smiling. There was no word for "chocolate" in Syrnaic and Ilias had used the Rienish word, slurring his way through the pronounciation. "Yes, but I was saving those to bribe you for sex."
"Oh." Ilias gave her a crooked smile, apparently liking the implication that he could be had for a handful of pastilles. If she persuaded Giliead to [spoilery action] and it somehow changed what Giliead was, or how he thought of himself, Ilias would hate her.
Wrestling down another crate, Giliead paused to give them both a withering look from under lowered brows, but Tremaine saw amusement there too. Surely it wouldn't be too hard to talk him into it. Surely he would see sense. Watching his faintly disgusted expression at finding the crate packed with [spoilery relevant thing], she felt a distinct sinking sensation.

I might mention a couple of my kinks that it hits pretty hard, as well. I love how it is so feminist that it is beyond feminist: the Rienish society is roughly equivalent to ours in that women are nominally equal but minor relics of a patriarchial society cling on, such as taking the man's last name at marriage and not always being taken seriously as, for example, a soldier if you're female. It's a fairly enlightened society, but understatedly so. Whereas the Syprians are overtly matriarchial: a man has no rights on his own, and cannot own property. This is interesting in how it feminizes several characters who would otherwise be very manly: Ilias, for example, is a macho killing machine but is inwardly upset that his facial tattoo has rendered him worthless as a potential mate, depriving his family of the dowry that they would have been paid for him.
Overall there are as many major female characters as male ones, but it doesn't make a fuss about itself. It doesn't have to be feminist. It's just that the women are characters too and are just as important.

Another kink is the sensitive barbarians. The Syprians are very emotional, with lots of hugging and crying and wrestling matches and kissing strangers on the mouth and so on. I can't explain it, but it's hot. Really hot. *fans self* I am sure that there must be Giliead/Ilias slash, and it's not helped by the fact that at one point Ilias wants them both to marry the same woman. (As polygamy is allowed, or polyandry to be correct: a man can only have one wife, but a woman can have as many husbands as she can afford.) You know, I don't even have to write fic about that. I'll just sit here a minute.
Right, back to analysis. Stop sniggering.

And the action. Her previous novel, The Element of Fire (full text of novel available online), is called "swashbuckling" a lot. This one likewise has pretty much nonstop action. It's all clearly-described, and believable. People don't miraculously all know kung-fu or anything, it's just that two characters have always made their living killing bad guys so they're good at it, and various others demonstrate their proficiency in believable ways, and react to it afterward in a consistent manner.

The plot, and structure, and the way the action tied together: thoroughly coherent, well-structured. There were, to use a metaphor, a lot of balls in the air, but the juggler managed to catch them all at the end. It was almost, almost too much, almost too many characters (a couple of times similar names bamboozled me-- Herias and Halian; Tremaine and Tiamarc) but if you were actually paying any attention whatsoever, the characters were so distinctly drawn that there was no reason to be confused. I did have to reread to catch up on quite how the whole ending part fit together with the issues raised in the beginning. But it was beautifully plotted, and paced perfectly.

The magic: I wish Harry Potter was a bit more like this, in that the magic always serves more of a purpose than doing things that regular people have invented machines to do. (In fact there's an amusing dichotomy between things the Iron Age 'barbarians' think are magic versus the things that actually are magic.) The magic is well-integrated with the rest of the world, and it is always perfectly sensible for it to do what it does.
I was just in the scribbling-notes stage of a novel based on sensible magic, so I am a bit taken aback by the fact that it's already been done so well. But I'll think of something.

There were a few things I didn't like. The ending, where I wanted more emotion from the one character: that was not as bad for me as it undoubtedly was for the negative reviewers. There were a few places where things fit together almost too smoothly, and if you were distracted enough to be thinking that way, the coincidences were too convenient. But there was nothing that should have been impossible, and so nothing I could fault. I wouldn't change a thing, but it did give me something to ponder when it was too dark to read. The thing is, it's either have everything fit together that tightly, or waste the reader's time with red herrings; all told, I'd rather have things be seamless than be trying to pick out what parts are wasting my time.
There were a few linguistic quibbles I had, as well. Overall I enjoyed the language and style-- very unobtrusive, but distinctive. But she relied an awful lot on "brows" for expression-- brows were always being lifted or lowered, in pretty much every paragraph. Not that I'd know what else to say, and it was a damn sight better than the usual flashing eyes bullshit you get.
edited to add: Oh yeah. I had one major quibble. The damn thing's only rated about PG-13. There's lots of violence and some bad language, but anything more sexual than a deep kiss gets faded to black!! I was so upset about that. I am so spoiled. I needs me some smut. I cannot believe there was no smut in this thing.
Grouse, grouse, grumble grumble.
I mean, the fades were well done, but come on. You can't tell me nothing plot-significant would've happened in bed. You have to be kidding me.
Grumble.

Yeah, that's all I can come up with to say against it. I should give up on that.

I should sum up, as I've been going on too long, but this is me trying to work through the fog I mentioned in the last post. This is as much organization as I can muster just now. So I will sum up by saying that these books worked for very good reasons and I can recommend them to others by those reasons. Down-to-earth, bullshit-free fantasy, with hunky sensitive killing machines.

Where to read more:
The Element Of Fire, sort of a prequel: the first novel set in Ile-Rien, taking place some centuries beforehand. Wheel-lock pistols, dowager queens, Fayre, wicked sorcerers, true love. At this writing, she is posting the entire text of the novel online (scroll to the bottom of the page) and soliciting donations to charity, as Tor has foolishly let the thing go out of print. She may in future put it up on Lulu or another publish-on-demand site.

The Fall of Ile-Rien:
These are the pages for the books on the author's website. Each contains an excerpt of the first five chapters of the book, and I should warn you, the later ones will have spoilers. Don't be an idiot like me: save yourself to read the books all at once, and don't read all the excerpts while waiting for the books to arrive. She has good places to buy the books listed at the bottoms of the pages.
Book 1: The Wizard Hunters
Book 2: The Ships of Air
Book 3: The Gate of Gods

Don't let this series go out of print like Element of Fire did. Buy them now. Book 3 will be out in paperback soon, but I might mention that the hardbacks are very attractive. You can also buy signed hardbacks from the author for not very much money through her website, I believe.

Now I really have to start thrashing my way back to the real world. Bah.