Subject: Ian McDonald's _The Broken Land_: review

From: [email-masked] (Curtis Yarvin)
Date: 22 Sep 1992 07:11:56 GMT

_The Broken Land_ is about Ireland.

Ireland? you say, suspicious.  After all, McDonald is an sf writer.
Is this some soon-to-be technopunk cyber-Eire?  Matte-black electronic
sheep grazing the green hills?  The now-traditional cliche-clash?  Or
has he turned to fantasy?  Rune-inscribed claymores and people who use
the word "gorse" in serious conversation?  Spare us, you think.

But no.  It's an allegory.

Now if there's a style of speculative fiction that I _absolutely
loathe_, in which I have never seen a work worthy of being stacked
behind Piers Anthony in the one-buck remainder rack, the exclusive
domain of two-bit hacks with million-dollar pretensions, a portajohn
for second-rate carpetbaggers wetbacked from utter failure on the
mainstream side of the shelf, it's the allegory.

The usual raison d'etre of an sf allegory is to make ill-disguised and
iller-mannered comments, observations, or wisecracks about the state
of modern society.  The sf trappings serve only as a camouflage vehicle
for the pawning-off of ideas so inane that they would evoke instant
laughter if expressed in any more-respectable forum.  Readers who, by
the grace of God, are unfamilar with this genre, may wish to examine
the Urrasti sequences in Le Guin's infamous _The Dispossessed_.

So, after discovering the suspicious similarities (clear by about page
ten), I approached the rest of _The Broken Land_ with some
trepidation.  (And, I must confess, a certain sorrow for the passing of
those eleven dollars.  We libertarians are not wholly without emotion.)

On one side of the River, see, is the Province.  The Province is
populated about half-and-half by Proclaimers and Confessors.
Religions these.  On the other side of the River is the Empire.  The
Empire is chock-full of Proclaimers and doesn't have any Confessors to
speak of; it also happens to own the Province.

The parallels get much more detailed than this; and I imagine someone
who knew more about Irish history would notice more than I have.
(Does "Fianna Fail" really mean "Warriors of Destiny?") Suffice it to
say: the allegory is clear.

But, against all rational instinct, I didn't drop the book then and
there.  I didn't hurl it into the fire and curse the decline of
Western Literature.  After all, McDonald (who's Irish) might bring out
the axes and start grinding; he might embed subliminal messages -
"UNION NOW AND FOREVER!" in alternate letters; he might openly declare
a ten-page intermission to lecture on the plight of the McDundlehenny
Seven.  

Or whatever.  But he's still one of the best sf writers in the
business; and perhaps one of the best prose stylists in any business.
McDonald's prose is something special.  Most modern writers, and
almost all sf writers, derive their prose style largely from the
minimalist roots of Hemingway and Chandler.  What's brief is good;
what isn't is purple.  The art of writing complex prose that _isn't_
purple is largely lost. 

McDonald can do it; and do it well.  Amazingly well.  If you think
Ray Bradbury is something special, McDonald will bring you to your
knees.  _Anything_ by this guy is worth reading.

And, anyway, _The Broken Land_ turns out to be good.  Real good.  I
don't want to seem overenthusiastic, but I might even call it damn
good.  

What makes McDonald's allegory work, where (say) Le Guin's does not?  

Well, aside from the fact that the latter can no more be compared to
the former than a rich man pass through the eye of a camel, many of
the allegories I've seen seem to be such, for no other reason than
lack of imagination.  When you can't make up an interesting universe
of your own, what's the thing to do?  Borrow a real one and change the
names.  Crutches for the lame.  This works, but not well.  One cannot
write much of a novel without any imagination at all; nor can one
borrow the minute detail that's necessary for a tale with any depth,
without making one's limitations obvious.

Now, anyone who's read _Desolation Road_, _Out On Blue Six_, or _King
of Morning, Queen of Day_ knows that McDonald doesn't need crutches
for the imagination.  And _The Broken Land_ is no exception.  McDonald
borrows the political history of Ireland for its obvious associations;
it brings the faint spine-tingle of received reality to what might
otherwise be mere ersatz unpleasantness.  But around it he sets a
powerful and moving story, without lecture or cliche, with character
and taste; and a world which is far more than the crude caricature
that straight extrapolation would give.

Indeed.  I won't even try to describe _The Broken Land_'s universe.
For most sf novels I could just list a few major details and be done
in a sentence, but if I tried this for a McDonald novel I'd wear my
fingertips down to the bone.  Just buy the damned book.

This is the best sf novel I've read in quite some time, and if it
doesn't win some major award or other I will be thoroughly peeved.

Bicameral Composite Logarithmic Rating - on the Annotated Erland Scale:

Camera Lowbrow:

Tits.........	-2.  Adolescent.
Action.......	-1.  Sporadic.
Romance......	-3.  Cold.
Suspense.....	-3.  Unsurprising.
Melodrama....	-1.  Pedestrian.
Laffs........	+0.  Restrained.
Plot.........	+1.  Plucking.

Lowbrow Rating:	-1.  Beats staring out the window all the way from
Narita to JFK.

Camera Highbrow:

Pacing.......	+2.  Steady.
Characters...	+3.  Alive-oh.
Imagination..	+5.  Intense.
Prose........	+5.  Absofuckinglutely incredible.
Theme........	+5.  Fierce.
Meaning......	+5.  Meaningful.

Highbrown rating: +5.  Buy this book if you have to mortgage your
firstborn son to do it.

Cover art:  Nice... but... Grr!  If I see _one more book_ with a black
character painted white on the cover, I'll... grrr.

The publisher is Bantam.  The price is $11 in trade paperback, but buy
it in hardcover if you've got any money at all.  The numerically
inclined know it as ISB 0-533-37054-5.

c