"Tongues of Serpents," bringing the Australia fail

[lizbee]

First, I have to confess that I was a bit "Hmmm" when I got to the end of Victory of Eagles and realised the next book was going to be set in Australia. Because, dammit, that's our colonial and genocidal history, and surely it should be the job of an Australian to add dragons to it? That was kind of like salt in the wound, though, because I didn't really care for VoE all that much to start with, as its characters blundered through war and politics. And the conclusion, that Laurence and Temeraire were to be transported to Australia, also served to conveniently isolate all the adult female characters on the other side of the world.

It's been two years since VoE came out, and (not that I've been thinking about it non-stop, because I'm not that fannish about the series) I've had time to think, "Well, it's not like any Australian authors are adding dragons to our colonial landscape, and Temeraire isn't exactly a series noted for giving massive roles to its female characters. Put them in positions of power and responsibility and deploy them rarely, etc." Which is the reason I haven't been all that fannish about the series, despite my love for the first book.

So that's the first disclaimer. The second is that, as some people will know from locked entries and my epic whinging on Twitter, I'm currently in the middle of a massive arthritic flare-up. Centred in my hands, because it's not like I use them in my job or anything. Anyway, this is my first attempt at extended typing since I went home early on Friday morning - as I'm going back to work tomorrow, it seemed necessary - but the simplest of activities are leaving me very tired, including holding a hardcover book. So it's possible that I missed things, or misinterpreted things, purely because I didn't have the energy to properly absorb what I was reading. (On the other hand, I also reread Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and finally figured out how Harry became master of the Elder Wand. GO TEAM 2007!)

All disclaimers aside: I really detested Tongues of Serpents. There's nothing more bitter than finding that a series you loved has taken a turn for the mediocre, right?

Firstly, I had trouble with the writing. This may just be a factor of my exhaustion, but it seemed like Novik would bring the audience in at point A, then skip back a few days to the conversations that set that moment up, and then skip along a bit further. That was mostly in the early scenes, but it was frustrating and distracting. Also: confusing to my delicate brain.

Secondly, I just didn't enjoy the story. I enjoy a good Simpson Desert travelogue as much as anyone, but even with the addition of a chase narrative -- a dragon egg has been stolen, and the aviators and their motley crew of convicts have to chase after it. Also, there are smugglers subverting the East India Company's monopoly -- the whole desert crossing sequence was overlong and dull. Whole chapters would go by before particular characters had dialogue -- I honestly forgot that Tharkay was with them most of the time. Tension comes from the raising of a deformed dragonet by one of Temeraire's crew, an African boy determined to raise the dragon in the face of aviator tradition. And then there are the bunyips, native carnivores who lay extensive subterranean traps with which to pick off the interlopers. Having grown up with a healthy childhood fear of bunyips, these sequences were a wee bit terrifying. Unfortunately, they sort of drizzled to an unsatisfactory conclusion, with the aviators placating them with food.

Bunyips bring me to the big, major problem with ToS: its depiction of colonial Australia. The sequences in Sydney are straight out of a primary school reader, if you went to primary school in 1960: soldiers are drunk, convicts are white, male and working class (except for a few Irish political transportees), transportation is a sentence of pointless labour with no hope of reprieve, Bligh is a pathetic coward, Macarthur is a lovable rogue, the Indigenous Australians of New South Wales are conveniently dead.

So let's break that down:

- The New South Wales Corps earned its nickname of "the Rum Corps" for good reason: with the lack of physical money, New South Wales operated on a barter system, and under the NSW Corps, this evolved into a rum-based economy. It is true that the regiments were made up of the dregs of the British Army, and were noted for being heavy drinkers with a taste for violence, but it was more complex than that.

Additionally, "rum" at the time referred to a wide range of alcohols, so there's no need for Novik's characters to come over all snobbish about whether or not the Corps can tell the difference between Jamaica rum and any other. Although that might have been Macarthur. Either way.

- 20% of the convicts transported in the Second Fleet were women. Most were transported for prostitution, although in many cases, that was defined as "being Irish and female". A number of convicts were people of colour; Australia's first bushranger was from ... hmm, I think the Caribbean, but don't quote me on that.

- There's specific reference in ToS to convict labour being "pointless," and tickets of leave being known only in theory. These puzzle me, as this was the era when convict labour was used to build Sydney's infrastructure, and tickets of leave -- which conditionally pardoned convicts, being essentially like a parole that enabled them to seek employment and even bring their families out to Australia -- were being granted, although not at the same rate as under previous governors.

- Honestly, whole books could and have been writing about Bligh and Macarthur's characters, the Rum Rebellion and the fight to govern Australia. Novik doesn't fall into the trap of putting Macarthur wholly in the right, but her portrayal of Bligh is straight out of Rum Corps propaganda. Part of the reason Bligh was deposed was that he was seeking to improve the status of working class free men, in the face of Macarthur's burgeoning squatocracy. Not that he was a hero of the working classes by any stretch of the imagination, but as with so much of Australia's history, it's More Complicated Than That.

- Which brings me to the Indigenous Problem. And this is what makes me the angriest, because we as a nation have struggled with a history of genocide and erasure of Indigenous people, and now we have an American author coming in and doing exactly the wrong thing.

So. Firstly, ToS is set in 1808 or '09. It's only a few years since Pemulwuy, leader of an alliance of Aboriginal tribes in a guerilla war against the invaders, was killed. Sydney was still subject to raids. A character makes an offhand remark about how all the Aborigines of the area are dead of smallpox, which I imagine would come as a surprise to the descendants of those 10% who survived.

I said in a locked post yesterday that all ToS needed was a friendly native guide, and it would have ticked all the colonialised cliche boxes. But I realised, at the end, that that was silly, because that would have involved having an actual Aboriginal character. Of the dozen or so Indigenous people who appear throughout the book, only a couple have dialogue, and only two have names. The great myth of the Empty Australian Centre, Populated Only By Monsters, is alive and well. The characters visit Lake Eyre, an area of considerable significance to many central Australian tribes, twice, and not once do they see a single Indigenous person. Aborigines, in Novik's book, are mysterious and unknowable; they leave traces upon the landscape and their distant songs may be heard, but they are not people.

At the end, Laurence and his people find a Chinese settlement in northern Australia, approximately where Darwin is today. Here, traders from half a dozen countries live in harmony with their trading partners, the Larrakia Nation. This is very nice, and I was curious to see how the Larrakia were magically immune from the diseases carried by the traders. (Trade did exist between northern Indigenous tribes and overseas nations, and artefacts from this commerce have indeed been found as far south as Victoria, but it's generally believed that they came via Indonesia, or Java, as it was then known.) It is in this settlement that we have our two named Indigenous characters, but don't go thinking they play major roles or anything, because that would be silly.

My hands, they hurt, so let me wrap up: Tongues of Serpents relies on a lot of old and ugly myths about Australia's past, and participates in the erasure of Indigenous people from our history. On the one hand, I'm glad it's not written by an Australian; on the other, it is depressing to have an American come in and write a novel which is firmly on the Howard-Windschuttle side of the history wars, especially in a series with widespread international popularity. I'm disappointed in Novik and the series, and angry, and ashamed to be part of a society that still facilitates such racist erasures.

Comments

[katemonkey]

We don't get the book over here in the UK for ages yet (and I couldn't afford the hardcover anyway), but, oh, argh, this was exactly what I was afraid of.

Like, the minute they say "oh, they're being transported to Australia", I went "Oh God, the inevitable failcakes..."

So...bah.

[gominokouhai]

Sounds like you've been Dan Browned.

I got furious reading Novik's blog when she was talking about setting some scenes in Edinburgh. She kept getting the names for everything wrong. It's Princes Street Gardens, not Princes Park! And in 18-whatsit they'd probably still be calling it the Nor' Loch anyway. And everyone knows that Holyrood Park a mile away is where you'd keep the dragons.

Still, this sounds offensively bad, rather than merely irritating. It's sad.

[lizbee]

WHY DID YOU LINK ME TO TV TROPES?

And why do people get geography wrong when Google Streetview exists? (Disclaimer: I can and have gotten lost in my own neighbourhood.)

[gominokouhai]

She'd even come here herself. She blogged a load of her own photos, and kept getting the names wrong. I work hospitality, and I know the type---she's been on a flying visit, spent a couple of hours here between stops, and proclaimed herself Expert. (Yes, I'm being hypocritical now.)

If it's any consolation, I too am reading TV Tropes now, and I have to get up in seven hours.

[lizbee]

That's the impression I got from ToS, too, although her descriptions of the scenery were vivid and lifelike.

[trouble]

D:

[nolivingman]

Ugh, now I'm thinking I was right to wait on buying this one. I have been sticking with the series out of my love for Admiral Jane Fucking Roland - even though Laurence's manpain makes me insane with boredom - but I can always catch the Cliff's Notes on what Roland's up to from fandom gossip.

[lizbee]

That's LORD Admiral Jane Fucking Roland to you! I will never cease to be bitter that the series isn't about her.

[trixtah]

Here via damned_colonial, and WORD.

LORD Admiral Jane Fucking Roland is the only reason I'm still reading - I'm only up to VoE, and I'm definitely going to give the next one a swerve now.

Also, regarding boring travelogues, that hiking through the desert and mountains in Throne of Jade nearly made my brain fall out of my head with boredom. No moar, plz.

[nolivingman]

I want someone to write the big bang fic that is all her adventures while Laurence et al are off crossing endless deserts or whatever. Now that would be awesome.

[fyrdrakken]

I would also accept Emily Roland future!fic.

[puzzlement]

(Here late via damned_colonial.)

If there was to be a big bang centred on the career of Lien, I think they'd go nicely together. The females are doing the best bits of this war.

[medie]

Well, that takes care of any hopeful interest I had in reading it. Ugh. I think I should be glad she forgot where she'd put the North American breeding grounds, if she ever does a book here now, at least she'll set it in Nova Scotia and NOT blunder into the gender and race history of NFLD.

[kerravonsen]

Well, thanks for the warning. I'm not going to bother with it, now. Heck, I still haven't read the previous two books, so it's not like I was in a hurry. I loved the first book, but the later ones I found a bit slow going, I'm not sure why.

In this day and age of the internet, it is NOT difficult to get a "Native Guide" to run a beta eye over a manuscript. But hey, why bother, it's only Australia, it's not like any actual Australians will be reading the work once it's published, right? (Steven Harper I'm looking at you.)

[lizbee]

Honestly, I think the fail was just magnified by a factor of a millionty.

[damned_colonial]

Deleted comment because I checked my email and I can't find it. So now I'm wondering whether maybe I drafted the email then wimped out? Or did I post it in LJ comments or what? I don't recall anything other than a vivid memory of offering to beta, but it's possible that i didn't actually go through with it. So, who knows :-/

[ide_cyan]

So she basically Thirteenth Child-ed Austrialia?

[damned_colonial]

Sounds like it.

[lizbee]

It's funny because it's true.

[opheliastornoway]

Hngg. I gave up on the series a while ago, but it's still very, very disappointing to see Novik go down this path. I can only imagine how angry I would be if someone did this to New Zealand in their book.

[damned_colonial]

Oh good! I've been waiting for someone to make this post so I wouldn't have to read it and do it myself :P I'm a huge nerd for colonial Australia and I have been cringing in anticipation. *sigh* I might skip reading it, I think.

[badgerbag]

I will read The Other Side of the Frontier and Pilger's Secret History at your suggestion to get a view into the History Wars beyond what Wikipedia has to tell!

[trouble]

I have this big long response to this in my head but it basically boils down to "Oh, I see your country also has History Wars, which seem to be about exactly the same thing."

[lavinia]

Thank you for reminding me to be super-super-freaking-careful when I write my (eventual) novel about British India. I mean, I was already partly aware of the need to avoid racefail (and already seriously hampered in my research by the lack of available non-Western primary sources), but this was also insightful.

I loved the first Temeraire book so much, but I haven't read past the third yet. I was less impressed by that one (and I think even the second one, too), and then the fourth came out in hardcover for $26, and I was like "haha, no, I'll wait for paperback" but never got around to it. Though they are on my lengthy, lengthy to-read list.

[jaydeyn]

*sigh* Well that's annoying. Anything Windshuttlesque is bound to make me very cranky indeed. :/

:(
Jaydeyn

[hooton]

I'm officially disappointed. I read the first Temeraire book last year and enjoyed it (for all the stereotype depictions of the English aristocracy and the gender fail) as a romp. I've got the second one on my shelf now but if the series does peter out into stereotype and pointless wandering then I might just leave it at that.

For what it's worth, do you know any Australian writer doing good AU Australian historical fantasy at the moment?

[lizbee]

"For what it's worth, do you know any Australian writer doing good AU Australian historical fantasy at the moment?"

I can think of Australian writers who are writing fantasy, and I can think of Australian writers who are doing good fiction, but none of them actually meet in the middle.

No, that's not true, but the good fantasy authors that come to mind are mostly writing in a vaguely-European milieu, and I can't think of any AU fantasies.

[ellen_fremedon]

Knowing nothing of Australian history except that it presumably has one, I really wasn't sure how much of my own expectations/baggage about colonialism I was bringing to the book, and how much fail I was correctly perceiving. I'm saddened to see that the fail is not just present, but so much greater than I'd feared.

And also just baffled. So much of the point of the China and Africa books was "Hey, Laurence! The world outside Europe is not what you expected it to be!" And then Australia turned out to be... pretty much exactly what the English characters expected.

Sigh. I'm still awfully fannish about this series, and looking forward to the next one, but I really hope she does better by the Inca than she did by the indigenous Australians. (And the non-indigenous Australians, too.)

[ar]

I said in a locked post yesterday that all ToS needed was a friendly native guide, and it would have ticked all the colonialised cliche boxes. But I realised, at the end, that that was silly, because that would have involved having an actual Aboriginal character.

And here I was figuring it was because a Friendly Native Guide would be redundant in a party which still has a Mysterious Helpful Asian Man. :/ Tharkay is my third-favourite character and my second-favourite human, after Jane and Perscitia, and it was good to see that he and Laurence have become very close. But he's still good at everything and suuuuuuuperhelpful in basically all his appearances, and one would like to see more from him than just that role. There's clearly possibility for more.

These books are one of my main two fandoms at this point, and I loved the writing and pacing in this book a lot, but I did feel like it was sacrificing meaningful interactions with actual indigenous characters for the isolated atmosphere. Which really is not on, no matter how much of a sucker I am for atmosphere. Thanks for detailing where else the depiction of Australia goes a bit off; it's both helpful and interesting for those of us who aren't as familiar with Australian history as we should be.

[misscam]

Ick.

I really want to like her series of books because the premise tickles my dragon love something fierce, but something in her writing style bugs me insanely so I've had to give up reading it. Hmm. Maybe it was just as well. From your comments it sounds like she essentially uses Indigenous people as a part of the landscape of Australia, almost like cardboard cut-outs. Um. Do not like.

[chocolatepot]

Overall I agree with you - it sounds frankly terrible - but I do have a bit of an issue with this:

Because, dammit, that's our colonial and genocidal history, and surely it should be the job of an Australian to add dragons to it?

Maybe this is just my AmericanBias showing and I'm just ignorant, but if an Australian isn't doing it, then isn't it better if somebody, anybody is?

[lizbee]

I feel like that IS your American bias speaking. Not because an American (or person of some other nationality) is incapable of capable of doing it right, but because, as I discussed above, Australian history is incredibly political and personal. And a person of another nation coming in and saying, "Right, I'm going to tell that story for you" is an act of cultural imperialism, which is incredibly fraught for a nation still working to cope with its history as a subject of colonialism, imperialism and invasion.

This is not to say that you (the hypothetical author) shouldn't write that story, but at the same time, you shouldn't be surprised when Australians (or, indeed, the people of any country so metaphorically colonised) don't fall over themselves with gratitude that you've finally told this story.

[chocolatepot]

That's very true. I think I sort of read more into your sentence than you put there - mea culpa.