The Loinfire Club doesn't read... The Misted Cliffs

The Misted Cliffs by Catherine Asaro

Every now and again, The Chronicler reads a book she hates. One that she hates a lot. In her other incarnations, she reviews books too... here is one such...

"In the hour of dawn, he made love to his wife. He died in the circle of her embrace and came alive again, and his life would never be the same, for he had let this woman topple his defences and so he had given her the power to hurt him. Why that terrible deed created such joy within him, he would never understand." ~Catherine Asaro, "The Misted Cliffs"

I profess I was rather shallowly seduced by the cover of this book. Whilst the snark continues over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books on crappy covers on romance novels, the publishers have managed to cajole the unequalled and unmistakable Stephanie Pui-Mun Law to clothe this volume is swirly pastel colours. It is gorgeous. Though that said, I am still mildly irked by the fact that Stephanie's name doesn't feature in appropriate enormity on the spine and cover. After all, she is main selling point. Too stingy to buy prints of her work, I resort to buying books sporting her art.



(Incidentally, I officially hate the person who changed the covers of the Second Son Trilogy from Law's to the current atrocity of foil and colour. Arguably the gentle, flowing lines and watercolour shades would less appeal to a male audience. Still, it's less pretty. And they've lost a reader in me.)

Firstly, the adjective-noun adjective-noun names. Fundamentally very silly, but acceptable, if random people aren't suddenly called Matthew and Muller. For no apparent reason. And there's a Leo somewhere, too. There's no rhyme or reason to the names of Aronsdale. Most of its population, hero included, but have silly adjective-noun names. Which is fine, truth be told, if the naming convention was ever justified or made anything other than a rehash of an ancient fantasy cliché. Still, the novelty of being able to pronounce the names of most of the cast isn't wearing thin just yet. I could easily live with it if it were consistent (that is, everyone having such names.) It's not even a class or cultural divide, as the distribution is utterly random, from warlord of the Misted Cliffs to the farmer in Aronsdale. Some parents saw it fit to name their children after random object and colours and abstracts, and some don't.

After Darkmane Ebonheart (aka Dark Dame Ebontart) I really can't take it too seriously. But then again, this is despite its pretensions at epic narrative, anything but a serious (or even decent) fantasy.

That Cobalt sounds decidedly like "kobold" really doesn't help his case.

The Misted Cliffs does no sport a particularly interesting or original plot. It is one familiar to readers of romance: an arranged marriage and resulting mess. Unsurprisingly, the unwilling bride and groom find themselves in love. And we go from there.

Specifically, their marriage is one of political importance. Princess Melody Headwind Dawnfield is to marry Kobold... sorry, Cobolt the Dark in order to prevent an invasion. Cobolt is the son of the deposed king of Harsdown, and arguably the rightful heir. He has great imperial ambitions and apparently a legendary cruelty.

The first thing I learnt about Princess Melody was that she didn't like her name for unspecified reasons (which is why I refuse to call her "Mel".) Woe is wished upon me, but I really don't care. Instead of an insight to her character, the statement came off has a petulant childish whim. Does she not like the association of music? Or is it the idea that her voice is melodic? Does she feel it's a poor summary of her personality? We never find out and what could have helped define a character comes off merely as a brat's bad habit. Denying sovereignty can be as irritating as revelling in it.

After that false start, she was so promising. She could fight and despite her alleged talent, felt magic was pointless. She liked swords and horses. Despite being rather hastily drawn of the tomboy stereotype, the orchard-wandering tree-climbing horse-riding little runaway, I found her reasonably likable. But a few chapters in, she needed to be saved by her husband (that scene would have been so much better if he found her meticulously cleaning her sword after she's killed all the bandits) and goes down the whole fluffy-nurturing-healer shtick, which we've all seen before. She abandons her swords and horses and becomes a happy wife who uses her art to stop people killing each other on the battlefield.

Her childishness and naivety about the world was annoying, but I was hoping the world would soon teach her a few harsh much overdue lessons. Yet instead of her learning that the world is more harsh and complex than her farmhouse upbringing would suggest, she inflicts her perception of the world onto everyone else. Her power allowing her to realise the ridiculous vision, manipulating people's emotions through violet-coloured magic. Sorry, if I'm not being clear enough: she mind-rapes and brainwashes people and imposes her happy-fluffy world view on them.

Incidentally, I've yet to see the titular cliffs. There are quite a few mountains, but no cliffs. The Misted Cliffs is the most inanely named country ever.

All the characters all have very modern views, in fact, modern colloquialisms seems to drift in every now and again. The façade of "fantasy" on the novel seems rather fragile, imperfectly grafted on. Too often it feels like I'm reading a badly written medieval novel with some magic thrown it. The whole point of fantasy is immersing yourself into a foreign and alien world. Different ideologies, systems of thought, ways of looking at life. That I meet all-too-familiar faces who speak all-too-familiar platitudes is an insult to the genre. Fantasy Romance (as opposed to Romantic Fantasy, a very different sub-genre) was to me a promise of a strange and savage world where romance seems unlikely, even impossible, yet it blossoms still. I was hoping for richly textured cultures and civilisations, empires built on a foreign logic and a far-reaching history, yet all of it still understandably human. They still bleed and die, wars are still fought. Fantasy is to me an endeavour to rebuild civilisation on different assumptions, that magic exists, that gods can intervene directly...

Asaro took the most trite of the two genres, Romance and Fantasy, and created a monster. It's not bad, exactly, just not particularly good. (Not to mention Romantic Fantasy, which is possibly the very antithesis of this new monstrosity.) The romance between Cobolt and Melody tread the tired tracks of most Regency and Medieval romances out there, exploring little new ground. Cobolt angsts and feels that he's unworthy of Melody and her angelic beauty. Melody doesn't know how to deal with her passion, her love for a man whom she sees as evil, though capable of good. They dance the very familiar dance that has dance so many times before and ultimately danced much more eloquently before. Their romance was never difficult. Their world conspires for the two to fall in love and even when it throws obstacles in their way, there is never a sense that that there is any true struggle. In this I always felt Romance has hobbled itself, by deciding to focus solely on the relationship between two characters, all too often the world around them is underdeveloped. To fully evoke love, a character and the world around them must be fully real because of all emotions, love is something that does not exist in abstract.

The rather heavy-handed divide between Light and Darkness, good and evil got to me a bit. I can almost tolerate otherworldly sources of Evil, dark lords and such, but from a human? For all it's pretences at a more humanist stance, the book doesn't deal properly with the touted ideals. Towards the end, it had sank to the depths of a monochromatic world. The hero isn't of ambiguous morality. He is Good, merely mislead or misunderstood. The villain, however, is Evil.

Evil as well as good is hereditary in Asaro-world. Dancer, Cobolt's mother, shagged the stable-hand and therefore the evilness was crossbred with gentleness and then everything was okay.

The world Asaro created is very boring. It's generically medieval with books thrown in for good measure. For no apparent reason. Each nation exists with its culture in abstract, with no rhyme or reason. And it's people, utterly colourless, existing as only generically "good" or "evil". I couldn't care for all these nations that are rising and falling, conquering and conquered. When Melody talks of the common people that will suffer and Colbalt of his great ambitions for uniting the shattered empire of the Misted Cliffs, I feel nothing. They both speak of things they do not understand, Melody more than Colbalt, but one fails to care.

The whole business of the thousand-year family and the two-hundred-year occupations is senseless. That she has spanned such complex history and fluctuating of borders in less that fifty years should have made Asaro realise that societies are so much more mercurial, so why do her nations stagnate for so long. It's not even a matter of war, but sheer stagnation.

Cobalt might have read a lot of history (not difficult when it seems to be nothing happens until you came along, sire), but Asaro doesn't seem to have. Medieval warfare is mostly about people avoiding a fight. Armies will circle, insult, impress, antagonise and intimidate. Rulers, even generals, will do all they to avoid fighting in an open field. Losses are just too high, the fight too chaotic, the outcome too variable.

There's also that great pretence at being "good". The heir should always marry the woman of greatest mage talent and produce children is effectively a eugenics programme. Slightly glorified, granted, but that Asaro tries so hard to justify its existence and make it seem more romanticised is painful. It is perhaps slightly more enlightened, but it is really no different from saying my child shall only marry one of noble birth. It's merely that one values slightly different qualities. (And people of proper magical qualifications always miraculously and conveniently fall in love with each other, no matter how much they initially despise one another.)

Equally Melody's parents rule their kingdom from a manor of a farmhouse. This is hailed as a great thing, but at no point does find out how in actuality it works. I want to know how this court is run. Where are all the courtiers? The nobility? The advisors and the bureaucrats? They're touted as being very liberal with their encouragement of education and new farming methods, which is jarringly anachronistic enough, but what and how can they make it possible with no system or institution to do their bidding? What would a nation of farmers do with books anyway?

There are a lot of ideas that I like, but they flash by too quickly. Too much emphasis is placed on the couple and ultimately, most of the cast is merely Nice in a very bland way. The scene where Cobolt waits for his bride at the altar is rather charming as he mistakes each woman who comes through the door as his future wife (always preceed the bride with an ugly bridesmaid, works every time.)

One such idea is the interesting magic system. The idea of light and geometry coming together to create magic has potential. Though the first thing that irritated me is that there are no such thing as offensive spells (no blasty-blasty death for you!) and most mages are women (go healy-healy-nurture-nurture!) However, in the previous book The Charmed Sphere, which this one harks back to in various places, it appears that the very powerful mage woman must marry a more powerful man (Die, feminism! Die!).

Someone should so write fanfic where a topologist falls into their universe, thinks up 5th dimensional shapes and rules the world.

In a world where marriages are a way of transferring property and creating political ties, where does the idea that you should abandon your mistress and devote yourself to your wife come from? If a man has had a mistress for many years, marries a woman for political and dynastic gain, he is apparently wrong to go back to his mistress. Or so says this book at least. Cobolt rowed extensively with his father when he found out Varqelle had a mistress. In a world that should be viewing women as possessions and peace-weavers and political tools, Cobolt has distinctly anachronistic ideals. What are these modern minds doing playing dress up? To watch love flourish despite of political ties and marriages and cultural expectations is interesting. To watch love flourish in a convenient place, that well-nurtured plant-pot in the glass house is frankly boring.

One of the things that did intrigue me was Varqelle's relationship with his estranged wife, Dancer. What had they done? Why does Dancer find her father, Stonebreaker's court and his abusive behaviour preferable to her husband? How is Stonebreaker the lesser evil? What hold does her father have on her? Why can they never exchange words? Why is she so damn spineless?

I had hoped for something complicated and dark. My guess was that Stonebreaker sexually abused her as a child and she's so utterly screwed up that she has to back to him because it's been ingrained into her that she can't shag anyone else. The level of spineless behaviour she displayed and years of enduring her father's hellish company has to mean source from something more complicated and fundamentally fucked up than just an "evil mistress."

Why is it that the king's mistress is evil when the queen's lover is a nice gentle man? Why is the king seeking solace in his mistress bad and wrong and evil when the queen loving her stable-hand utterly okay and right? But that's better, right? Since in most romance novels it's the other way around.

And the sex. I'll try to keep this short. Simply said, Asaro wrote as though she was ticking the obligatory romance scenes off a list. Sex doesn't happen to compliment or complicate emotional matters. It happens when it is most convenient. The intimate doesn't illuminate the relationship between Cobolt and Melody. It just happens as the infernal wheel of the story turns.

That Cobalt wasn't obsessed with Melody's virginity is a pleasant surprise. Though I'm really getting sick of how well the Heroine's innocence compares oh-so-favourably to an experienced courtesan. Perhaps it's just me, but sex gets better the more you practice. Additionally, Melody's energetic youth should have robbed her of a hymen. Swords and horses would do that to you. She also seems most confused about the exact mechanics of sex, something which is never clarified to her.

Suffice to say the book began likable, but soon fell prey to all I hated about the two genres instead of combining the strengths of both. Fantasy and Sci-fi can oddly be devoid of emotion at times, concentrating instead on plot and general scenery. Romance often lacks the plot and situation to support the deep vein of feeling it tries to open in its readers. I had hoped the marrying of the two genres can create something brilliant. But no, not this time. Decidedly not this time.

Oh, and Asaro, you should be ashamed of yourself. You won a bloody Nebula.