Subject: Postview: "Splashdance Silver" by Tansy Rayner Roberts

From: [email-masked] (p-m agapow)
Date: 15 Oct 1998 10:16:13 -0400

"Splashdance Silver" by Tansy Rayner Roberts
	A Postview, copyright 1998 P-M Agapow

"Book One of the Mocklore Chronicles": The daughter of a notorious pirate
searchs for her father's (inevitably) fabulous treasure, while putting up
a token resistance to her destiny as a great pirate and witch.  A bunch of
other characters (or caricatures) run noisily about, engaging in
sub-Pratchetarian hijinks.

This book was given to me as a gift, and before I move on to consider the
clashing demands of market forces and editorial expertise, as well as the
role of genre fiction in literature, I'd like to just quickly pass on a
message to the gift-givers.

My wrath will be terrible.  I will track you down and extract revenge for
every minute spent reading this book.  You cannot hide.

But I digress.  Let's first consider the small silver sticker on the cover
of this book: "Winner of the George Turner Prize".  It is not
inconceivable that the name of Turner - probably Australia's most literate
and serious SF writer, author of "The Sea and Summer," "Beloved Son" and
"The Destiny Makers" - should appear on the cover of a fantasy novel.  It
is outrageous that Turner be used to promote a the first installment of a
derivative, giggly sword-and-sorcery pap.  This won a prize?  What did
they do, slip the judges LSD? Are the editors even now dancing on Turner's
grave shouting, "Spin old man, spin!"

"Splashdance Silver" attempts to occupy that territory blazed by Terry
Pratchett and Tom Holt, the tongue-in-cheek fantasy.  Despite a
congratulatory blurb on the back cover, the mix is hardly "original."  As
Pratchett himself has shown, it's not as easy as it looks.  "Splashdance
Silver" carries itself like a drunk party guest intent on telling you bad
joke they know, while sniggering loudly at their own humour.  A very early
warning is given by the author's bio in the front of the book:

   [the author] was born in Hobart in 1978 and has been writing 
   since she could hold a pencil.  She is a Classics/English student at the 
   University of Tasmania and aspires to have a library larger than the 
   Tower of London.  She has several part-time cats, spends most weekends 
   in the Middle Ages and has romantic designs on a physicist ...  "The 
   Mocklore Chronicles" began life in 1991 as the first installment in a 
   twelve-book epic fantasy series, but died a long and painful death 
   after the author took a deep dislike to half of her characters, most of 
   her plot and all of her then cliche-ridden style.  The manuscript was 
   eventually revived early in 1996 when the author chopped it into 
   little bits, extracted a small amount of 'good stuff' and put it into the 
   blender along with a lot of new ideas and a healthy dose of treacle, 
   lemon pepper and chopped chives.  This is the the result: not quite a 
   salad and hardly dessert, but a strange kettle of fish nonetheless ...

What a coincidence - I also grew sick of her characters, plot and cliche-
ridden style.  Imagine an entire book as relentlessly smug as this for
nearly 400 pages.  The plot offers little diversion, the characters being
dragged from joke opportunity to opportunity guided by suddenly discovered
powers, previously unmentioned forces, and actions that just make no
sense.

A more subtle point worries me.  Orson Scott Card once remarked that
Turner was never evangelical about Australian settings and Australian
characters - they were simply there, just as US authors set their stories
in America, English authors in England and so on.  On that basis, Turner
was a very Australian author.  "Splashdance Silver" cannot be identified
as the work of an Australian at all.  There is not a single reference that
betrays the origins of the author, only words purloined from English
culture - hedgehogs, treacle, potato "crisps," mummers.  It is one things
for a novel to be culture-neutral.  It is another for it hide its
identity.  Again, was this an appropriate winner?  ("Spin George, spin!")

I am reluctant to slam a book so harshly when its intentions are at worst
misguided.  To be sure, there are some funny moments within.  For
instance, the palace is guarded by actors due to an emperor's decree,
which leads to a flow of guards into the suddenly available acting jobs.
For these points to shine out however, it requires a much shorter book
with a more structured plot that doesn't play out like a loosely connected
series of sketches.  Heavy editing might have produced this shorter book,
and provided the author with valuable guidance for future work.  Of this,
there is no sign.

Ghastly wish-fulfillment, guffawing dross that will stain the George
Turner Prize for years to come. Consider the horrible idea that we might
have to get the other 11 volumes. [0/bomb]

%A Tansy Rayner Roberts
%T Splashdance Silver
%I Tor
%C Bantam
%D 1998
%P 386pp
%G ISBN 0-73380-184-6
%O paperback, Aus$14.95

Paul-Michael Agapow ([email-masked]), Dept. Biology, Imperial College
"We were too young, we lived too fast and had too much technology ..."