Medalon (Deconstruction)

[jheti]

nyohah executes far better summaries, mostly of Star Wars tie-in novels. They are hilarious and thorough, and deserve to be more widely read. You can browse them from here.

(In apology and by way of excuse, I started reading "Medalon" last October, and it was always my intention to do this. This is probably a one-off. I certainly won't be reading anything else by Jennifer Fallon.)

WARNING for intense capitalization abuse, crude humor, crude language, sadistic wallowing, and horrendous verbatim excerpts.

I wanted to like this book. The cover is nice. The jacket copy is industry standard, and hey, Piers Anthony seemed intrigued. Perhaps this book, this "Medalon", would be worth reading.

From the opening clause, I knew it was not to be.



"The funeral pyre caught with a whoosh," and that's the clause. A WHOOSH. We have onomatopoeia in the first clause of the first sentence of the entire damned novel, and it isn't even italicized. Most likely, the editors thought a whoosh in the first sentence was very dime novel amateurish.

"The funeral pyre caught with a whoosh, lighting the night sky and shadowing the faces of the thousands gathered to witness the Burning."

Wait. Is it a funeral rite or a witch trial?

"Smoke, scented with fragrant oils to disguise the smell of burning flesh, hung in the warm, still air, as if reluctant to leave the ceremony."

Point by point: I'm now picturing dense, oily smoke of the type that accompanies a kitchen fire disaster. Also, "the Burning." Ten words later, she uses this exact gerund noun, not capitalized. It's called repitition, and people try to avoid it that close together. And the fact that this oily, pungent smell is reluctant to leave the ceremony suggests to me that the
corpse magically burned itself up in the space of a single sentence.

In Paragraph the Second, we can spot Mary Sue the main character, because she is in the very front of the opening sentence, last name and apostrophe and all. "R'shiel Tenragan" is her name, and being the savior of humanity is her game.

"The river goddess, Meara" is important later in the story as a plot device, and thus appears on the bottom of the very first page as a tangential mention.

Oh, great, the pagans are the insurrectionist disruptors of Medalon's atheist matriarchy. I only even wanted to read this book because there was an atheist matriarchy in it.

But, alas, we are going to spend the entire novel glorifying the pagan patriarchy led by a woman with a masculine name and an apostrophe to indicate her strength and specialness. And the atheists have funeral witchhunting rites with names like the Burning. We learn a bit about R'shiel's sweaty tunic (ew), while the Female Political Figure on the pyre seems to joggle around through various levels of burnination, depending on what mood the author wanted for her stupid sentences and clunky culture touches that aren't even interesting.

The dull funeral, complete with dull funeral speech that is, of course, "intoned", takes four and a half pages. The swearing in of the New Female President, by contrast, takes a half page at the maximum, and occurs offscreen in some dialogue by--you guessed it!--male soldiers. Oh, wait, she gets sworn in with TWO WHOLE SENTENCES on page 16.

And the heroic brother of R'shiel the special priestess who will etc. etc. and lead the pagans to triumph against the evil atheists?

His name is Tarja. So at least something in the book was funny. XD

My favorite peeve? This author is, like many authors today, a crusader of adverb hate.

There are thirty-two adverbs in the first chapter alone, often to describe the dialogue of the soldiers, and said adverbs are frequently aligned back to back.

Defining Quotes for the Chapter:

"Please, Lord Jenga. Bring Tarja home." - R'shiel the Special

"I don't think, Captain," Jenga told him stiffly. "And neither should you." - Lord Defender (General?) Jenga of the Defenders.

BWAHAHAHA he just summed up the entire book. Meta-wank ftw. Was this lady even conscious while she typed this fucking story?



We can tell Tarja, R'shiel's brother and Defender heartthrob, is going to become A Rebel Leader because he was exiled for his issues with authority. He dared to call the Old Female President (The Burned Lady) "a fatuous cow" GASP HE IS SO DARING.

"With an immensely satisfying, bone-crunching thump, Gawn dropped unconscious at his feet." <--Okay, he leads Nomadic-style.

I still don't forgive him for being named Tarja.

Also? Clumsy sentencing. But the whole book is like that. You'll see me type that a lot.

Oh, by the way, the hinterlands where Tarja has been doing his Defendering in exile? Are named Bordertown.

"Bordertown was the southernmost town in Medalon, located near the point where the borders of Fardonhya [pagan], Hythria [monotheist villains] and Medalon [atheist evil female villains] met." Bracketed by me, so you can tell the difference between the interchangeable nations.

At least if it were fanfic, Baraka and Mileena would've had sex by now. (Raiden and Mary Sue would, of course, be expecting their second set of superpowered brother-'n'-sister twins.)



"Harsh shouts, muttered curses, and the sharp smell of fish permeated the docks as they rode by. Sailors and traders, riverboat captains, and red-coated Defenders swarmed over the wharves that were lapped by the broad silver expanse of the Glass River.

To Tarja, the docks were about the worst thing he had ever smelled in his life, and every time he rode past them, he wondered at those who found so much romance on the river."

That's just the first two chapters. This is a sixty-three chapter book, and book one of a trilogy. Do not give this book to suicidal relatives, as they will more than likely leap off a bridge upon finishing it.



O btw: Tarja and R'shiel are the special hero siblings, and their Evil Mother Joyhinia is the Evil Woman of Evilness, so everyone with that motif button will get a lot more mileage out of this book than I did.

"Draco was tall, dark and stern." OMG HARRY POTTER CROSSOVER. Nah. He's just a useless, faceless henchman.

OKAY GUYZ HERE IS THE BEST PART KTHX.

I dog-eared the following pages. The phrasings, oh god, the phrasings! In some cases, I giggled aloud. For IRL srys.

Page 126 (opening page of Chapter 13): "By the Founder's!" Kilene suddenly exclaimed dramatically. "It's him!"

Page 134 (describing an Evil Monotheist's Staff of Power): "It threw back the torchlight into the faces of the gathered women like chips of colored light."

Page 189 (Rebel Strategy With Our Friend Tarja Tenragan): "You know this is a trap, don't you?" /"I'm almost certain of it." [Tarja replied replyingly.]/"Then why are you going?" Brak asked./"Because there is a remote chance that it's not," he said.

WOW, the Rebels are going to win for sure! With devastating tactical prowess like that, how could they possibly lose?

Page 195 (Tarja mangles his idioms): "Just back me up if I need it. If worst comes to worst, just get clear and warn the others."

I have always heard this as "Worse comes to worse", or "From bad to worse". How can the worst of something become MORE 'worst'? Dear god.

This whole page is deeply stupid. OF COURSE IT'S A TRAP, FALL FOR IT ALREADY.

Page 197: as they are blithely walking into THE TRAP, Brak the Special Pagan Mercenary actually pauses to think the following: "Brak watched him, as Tarja stepped toward [Henchman] Draco and the captain, seeing immediately what had bothered him about Draco earlier. The resemblance between the two men was unmistakeable, and it concerned him that Tarja had made no mention of it. Was Draco an uncle perhaps? Or a cousin?"

Yes, folks, they're about to be captured and hanged, and all Brak the Special Mercenary cares about is who fucked whom way back in Tarja's family tree.

Mere words cannot convey the immensity of my bogglement. Bogglitude. Astonishment. As you like it.

Page 207: "He had betrayed nobody, said nothing." <-- Is not valid English. Not even with a comma. I know because of my learnings.

Page 213: "R'shiel, if word got back Lord Jenga that I'd helped Tarja escape, I'd be in the cell he vacated before morning." -- Random Helpful Extra, Whose Name is Davvyd; I Am Not Making That Up.

I loved this sentence, because everyone in the book talks like that ALL. THE. TIME. It's a wonderful and compact illustrative case.

Page 366: "[The Rebel Extras] spent the remainder of the night at their grizzly task, gathering the bodies from the water's edge and throwing them on the impromptu funeral pyre."

Here, we can see that even the copy-editors gave up. There's just no stopping the onslaught of hideous, vapid stupidity.

Also! The author mentioned in the second chapter that the pagans consider cremation barbaric and would Never Do Such a Thing. Well, they're doing it now. She can't even keep her own bullshit straight. *Headache.*

Page 414: "Taking her hand they walked forward together to confront the First Sister [Their Evil, Evil Mommy the Bitch]."

It speaks for myself; the bulk of my case thus rests.

Note: Tarja's full name is "Tarjanian", the same way Brak's full name is "Brakandaran". The god of theives' name is "Dace", short for "Dacendaran". This naming convention appears to be male-only. The female characters are saddled with the full tangle of syllables from the word go, such as Evil Atheist Queen "Joyhiniya" or whatever, and Valiant Pagan Goddesses like "Kalianah".

This nomenclature quirk is never explained. It should be and could be but is not. I rather think the writer herself is unaware of it.

Then there's a conclusion in which Joyhihnina-whatever is inexplicably NOT KILLED, or even punished much at all, and she was the central villain, for fuck's sake. It's such a total non-ending that I can't even write it down for you; it wouldn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to me, and I read the entire book without skimming; it just kind of stops in midsentence.

Then there is an Epilogue. The god of thieves makes a clunky, stupid joke that makes those "group laughter" scenes from Saturday morning cartoons look like the zenith of all cleverness by comparison. On which note, the book ends.

Then there's a Glossary, which I didn't read.

There were rape and sadism in this book, omg content warnings. Frankly, I thought the book was painful enough without them.

Tarja gets whipped, and it's the best part of the whole book. *Leer.*

Oh. R'shiel Special has a massive gushing period (as in, girly blood poureth forth from her female parts) sometime in the book, too.

How was this nominated for the Aurealis Awards in Australia? How was it even published?

My soul just died a little on the inside.

Comments

[evangeline21.livejournal.com]

...I just remembered why I stick with history type books rather than 'fantasy world' novels.

really, they'd let almost anything get published nowadays.

http://coyotecult.com/communities/sfandf_critters/references/limyaael.php

the 'host' there brings up a couple-or two or three-good rants.

[jheti.livejournal.com]

Oooh, what kind? ^_^

I was super into those "caveman" type ones in middle school. You know, all that Clan of the Cave Bear type stuff.

And yay links! Something to read at the uni library when I should be doing homework. ^_~

[evangeline21.livejournal.com]

I'm into Tudor history (Alison Weirs uses records and facts in her stories), Victorian history ( it's only 'proper' on the surface)and various Medieval and Renaissance texts.

I look up those links all the time-informative and amusing.

[jheti.livejournal.com]

TUDORS OMG YAY.

I know very little, but I know they fascinate me and require more study. ^_^

Thanks for the rec!

[nyohah.livejournal.com]

Tarja! Male fantasy hero! *dies of evil glee*

I've come to the conclusion from my NJO adventures that professional copy editors are either a) lazy, b) stupid/incompetent, or c) very rushed.

This book sounds like good backing for my general avoidance of fantasy novels. I mean, I tried Robert Jordan on the advice of friends, and I think that might have been okay if he'd aimed for six books instead of twelve. Or three books instead of twelve? I'm sitting here baffled over how a book can even have sixty-five chapters, like this one, and not just be too long no matter what's in it.

I was also thinking how it's odd that I generally read sci-fi, but I'm the Star Wars fan, when that is fantasy disguised as sci-fi, and you seem to read more fantasy, but you're the Star Trek fan, which is straight sci-fi, as far as I can tell. Maybe I've already said that. I can't remember the difference between what I say and what I think anymore.

[jheti.livejournal.com]

It is so awesome. He moonlights mangling opera and gets kicked out of bands in his spare time because of his giant chin and even larger ego. BWAHAHA.

You know, that's a really astute observation. I've only started seeing this trend in mass-market sf&f consistently in perhaps the last ten years. I wonder how much pressure alternative press/Net is exerting on the professional beta-reader market.

(Is it bad that my first thought was "OMG NEEDS BETA"? I mean, I know "copy writer" is a legitimate job and not a spelling-mangle of "copyrighter", also a legitimate job, and editing copy is copy editing...But my terminology circuits in my brain now default to "betas". XD)

Oh, it only has that many chapters because it obeys that obscure "bad bestseller" rule in which each chapter is six pages or so, whether it actually ENDS the scene or not.

I just always liked fairy tales best, so that's what I read now.

Mmm, Trek books. It's basically Smart Dorks IN SPACE. Most of them are horrendous, but, especially if you're a non-Trek personage, read "Corona" by Greg Bear, because Greg Bear wins every Nova Award ever (they're the sci-fi Oscars), so.

I like Diane Duane. At least her Mary Sue is interesting, and there are always a plethora of Earnest Alien Dorks, a few of them canon, such as the Horta ensign whose name escapes me ATM.

And now that you're suitably terrified away from anything with the words "Star" and "Trek" anywhere on the cover in even remotely close proximity.

May I suggest David Brin, instead. He's an astrophysicist by day, so a lot of his theory (there's a girl mathematician in Brightness Reef, and she's not a fawny moron!) and characters reflect his discipline.

Additionally, he's from a school of...He's like the posters from school when I was little, the ones that promised us underwater cities and massive space stations and talking dolphins.

Um. Some people find him too upbeat and/or treacly. Fair warning.

But he's like some sort of Smart Dork GOD, and his writing reflects it, and it's lovely. ^_^

His novel Kiln People appears to be about cloning, though I haven't read it yet.

AVOID The Postman until you have decided whether you like his style or not; it appears to have been one of his first novels, and it shows.

*Big deep breath.*

Essentially, yeah, I agree with you, and I can relate, and please, whenever you think you've said something before, I totally do not mind if you repeat yourself, because, it may have come to light before in our conversations--I have the IQ of a concert conductor, but, alas! the attention span of a fish. On meth. ^_~

So, please, always enlighten me, and don't be afraid to re-enlighten me. ^_________^