I’ve been a Arthurian fangirl since before “fangirl” was a word. I think it was in junior high that we were first introduced to excerpted, modernized sections of Malory (probably the sword in the stone episode), and I remember my best friend complaining how boring it was. I could only gape and stare and stutter, “Are you kidding me? This is ripping good stuff!” Okay, I didn’t really say “ripping good stuff” but I did find the material thrilling and didn’t understand how anyone could think otherwise. Ultimately, my love Arthuriana led me to a major in Medieval Studies (though somehow I got distracted by all the other cool Medieval topics out there and never actually studied King Arthur and his knights) and to graduate studies in Folklore & Mythology.

But I have to confess that I’ve never understood the whole emphasis on Lancelot and Guenevere. While I appreciate the extra dimension the tragic love story gives the legend, I hate the way so many treatments (especially modern ones) blame the fall of Camelot and the demise of Arthur on the affair of his queen had with his best friend. It is the same, in a way, as saying that the original Star Wars trilogy was about Han and Leia falling in love. The way I see it, Arthur, a Hero in the mythological sense of the word, should not fall because of the actions of two other people, no matter how close they were to him. Only his own actions, his own flaws, should be capable of his destruction. In short, Arthur died because he killed the babies. And no cinematic version of the story is going to be fully satisfying unless it acknowledges that fact.

This is a long introduction to a point about characterizing villains I’d like to make, which I mentioned a while ago as a post-worthy subject. The topic back then was Martha Well’s The Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, in particular the substanceless nature of the villains; to quote myself, “the antagonists are something like the false front of an old building: there’s not much behind the ominous presence.”

As a novice writer, I spend a lot of time looking around at various writing sites trying to distract myself from writing to learn as much as I can about my craft, and have read any number of articles about characterizing villains. Largely, the advice revolves around the idea of humanizing the villain, so that the bad guy is not just some cardboard evil in a black hat. Just like a hero, the villain should have goals and motivations and probably shouldn’t think of himself (or herself) as the bad guy. The writer, at least, should have empathy for the villain, even if the reader cannot. That’s hard to argue with. The Dark Lord trope has been done to death in fantasy literature, and the idea of absolute evil is hard to pull off convincingly in a world where gray is the dominant color.

But I don’t think it’s enough that you understand your villain, which is where most advice ends. Yes, you need to know why your character is going to perform evil deeds. It’s more significant to know why your protagonist is going to be the one to defeat him. Why? Because ultimately the story is not about the villain, but the protagonist — just look at the Star Wars prequels to see what happens when you try to make the story about the villain.

Protagonists, we’ve known since Aristotle wrote The Poetics, must have a tragic flaw. Usually we talk about this flaw (or mistake, as Aristotle’s term harmartia might be interpreted) in terms of how it leads the hero to his downfall — Oedipus, Macbeth, Willy Loman. That’s because Aristotle was talking about tragedies. Arthur’s fall, likewise, should be interpreted as a result of harmartia (his fatal mistake was killing the babies). We’re less fond of tragedies these days, and tend to prefer stories where the protagonist doesn’t end up dead or maimed, but overcomes his flaw (or mistake) and triumphs over adversity. But the flaw is still there.

Now, in order to understand how the concept of harmartia relates to creating meaningful villains, we must jump from Aristotle to Jung (and please pardon my very novice Jung skills — specifics may be off, but I think I have the gist of it right). Central to Jungian psychology is the concept of the Shadow, which in psychological terms represents the repressed aspects of the conscious self. While not necessarily evil, Jungian psychology maintains that the shadow-self must be confronted in order to prevent negative behaviors from emerging.

The Shadow is one of four primary archetypes named by Jung (the other three are the Self, the Anima, and the Animus) that operate on both a personal, psychological level as well as existing on a universal level as part of the collective unconscious. Scholars, such as Joseph Campbell, have shown us over and over again how these archetypes emerge in myths throughout history, and continue to influence structure and characterization in storytelling today. (This is interesting stuff, but I’m going to skip further explanations here, to keep to the point; follow the links if you need more details.)

If you’ve ever investigated dream analysis, a field heavily influenced by Jung, then you have probably encountered the guideline that anyone encountered during a dream should be interpreted as an aspect of the dreamer’s self. In the same vein, I would suggest that the characters in a myth (or any story based upon mythic structures) can be interpreted as aspects of the protagonist’s Self, which is a reflection of the Self of the collective unconscious (which is why we’re able to relate to the protagonist in the first place). What I mean to say is that when a protagonist of a myth has a meaningful interaction with any other character, it can be interpreted as a dramatization of the internal interactions between aspects of the personality that take place in the psyche.

Still with me? I know I’m generalizing a lot, and the academic merits of my argument are lacking, but bear with me. To summarize, the two main points I want to emphasize are 1) the protagonist should be forced to confront his tragic flaw/error (harmartia) in the course of a story; and 2) a mythic story should dramatize the psychic development of the protagonist (by which I mean the development of his psyche, not that he’s going to start reading people’s minds!).

In a mythic story (which fantasy most often is) the protagonist’s tragic flaw is a reflection of his Shadow and should be personified in the role of the Villain. Therefore, when the protagonist confronts the villain he is symbolically confronting his own Shadow. Sometimes the connection between the protagonist and his Shadow is made explicit: Frodo’s climactic battle is with Gollum, a creature who was once very like a hobbit himself. Luke, who has already been shown that he is dangerously in peril of turning into Darth Vader himself, finds out that his antagonist is actually his father. And King Arthur meets his doom at the hands of his own son, Mordred, who’s death he tried to arrange in order to prevent such a fate. Talk about sublimation!

Of course, not every hero is so explicitly connected to the external representation of his Shadow. We’d get pretty tired of everyone being related if that were the case. But if there is not at least an implicit association between the hero’s Shadow and the villain, then the villain becomes nothing more than a catalyst for the internal struggle of the hero. A McGuffin, if you will. This happens a lot in “character driven” fiction, where the hero must conquer his inability to trust others, or his fear of heights, or some other flaw the author has decided upon, before he is able to confront the villain. By the time the final climax occurs, the hero has already won the essential battle within himself and only has to defeat the villain in order to tie up the plot.

But when the villain actually embodies the hero’s Shadow, then there’s a real sense of tension when the climax occurs. Both Frodo and Luke are perilously close to succumbing to the dark within them, and only the physical confrontation with their Shadows allows them to survive in the end. King Arthur, too, confronts his Shadow physically, but his death on the field of Camlann is a keen reminder that there is a real risk in the struggles of the psyche, and “victory” is not always assured (but, like Arthur, there is always a promise of another chance).

I need to wrap this up now — I’ve been literally working on it for months, adding a paragraph here and there (and loosing a few more through browser crashes than I care to dwell upon) as I nursed this random thought that there needs to be more to villains than just good characterization. Like I said, the story belongs to the protagonist — it doesn’t matter how well your villain is characterized if there’s no intrinsic connection to the protagonist, something that makes it important that the protagonist is the one who defeats (or fails to defeat) him in the end. It doesn’t have to be an explicit connection, but it does need to be there, on some level, perceivable by the reader, so that — at least subconsciously — they understand that the victory over the villain represents a psychic victory for the protagonist as well.

I should, probably, bring this back around to King Arthur again, to make a well-rounded conclusion. But all I can think of is “it didn’t have anything to do with Guenevere and Lancelot.” Instead, I’ll mention the book I just happened upon last week that agrees with my supposition that a story is the dramatization of the inner struggles of the psyche. I’m only about half-way through Stealing Fire from the Gods so far, and will write more about it when I’ve finished it. Like Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, it’s by a screenwriter and promises to be a roadmap, based on Jung and Campbell, that will help other aspiring screenwriters (along with storytellers in other mediums) create “great stories.” It has a lot more substance behind it than Vogler, however, which focused archetypes and patterns, and…well, I’ll save the rest for a proper summary when I’ve finished the book.

I realized, after the last post, that I tend to focus on what’s I didn’t like about a book when I write up my comments on it. That’s my inner editor at work, I think, picking on others’ writing because I haven’t done any of my own lately for it to pick on. Or perhaps it’s a vestige of my last writers’ group, which as a whole focused on telling the author of any given piece what they did wrong, or “you should do it this way instead.” That’s why I’m not a part of the group anymore.

As far as Ysabel goes, I was disappointed because it lacks the poignancy I loved from his earlier books. But while that may be missing, there are still a lot of real good things about this book, as you can see has been pointed out in the reviews posted at his site. I’ll excuse my failure to linger over the good parts by saying I’m not really writing reviews here so much as a quickly written up response to a book I’ve just finished. But I promise I’ll try to be less negative in future write ups, and include what I like as well as what I didn’t like.

Ysabel
by Guy Gavriel Kay

“You have blundered into a corner of a very old story…”

Ned Marriner is spending six weeks with his father in France, where the celebrated photographer is shootign Saint-Sauveur Cathedral in Aix-en-Provence. Both father and son fear for Ned’s mother — a physician with Doctors Without Bordres, currently assigned to the civil war-torn country of Sudan. This is not the first time she’s placed herself in harm’s way to help alleviate suffering — and Ned has inherited her courage. He’ll need it.

While exploring the cathedral, Ned meets Kate Wenger, an American exchange student with a deep knowledge of the area’s history. But even Kate is at a losss when she and Ned surprise a scar-faced stranger, wearing a leather jacket and carrying a knife, deep inside the cathedral. “I think you ought to go now,” he tells them. “You have blundered into a corner of a very old story…”

In this ancient place, where the borders between the livng and the long-dead are thin, Ned and his family are about to be drawn into a haunted tale, as mythic figures from conflicts of long ago erupt into the present, changing — and claiming — lives.

You know an author must be one of your favorites when you find his newly released novel in the sort room of the bookstore where you work and you carry it around with you for the remaining hour of your shit, even though you are still working. Yes, that’s the kind of draw the work of Guy Gavriel Kay has for me; it’s been a year since the release of Ysabel was announced, and I’ve been watching the inventory at work closely, waiting for the long anticipated date of its arrival. I even squee’d aloud when I saw the books on the back table — fortunately no one else was there to hear me.

Despite my excitement, I did not delve into the book immediately upon arriving home. First of all, I was really tired that day, and I didn’t want my reading experience dulled by fatigue. I was also still enmeshed in Vellum, and I knew if I interrupted my reading of that book, I’d never be able to get back to finishing it. I was also experiencing strange pair of emotions, sort of the flip sides of the same coin, that kept me from diving in as soon as I could. One was the knowledge that once I finished it, I would never have that magical “first kiss” again; sometimes when you anticipate a great experience, you want to put it off as long as possible, to increase your enjoyment of it. The second feeling was fear, fear that maybe the book wouldn’t be as great an experience as I was hoping.

I’ve been let down by Kay before, after all. My first encounter with his work was A Song for Arbonne, which a friend recommended to me knowing my interest in the Middle Ages. I was quickly hooked by Kay’s style, the poignancy of his storytelling, the subtle blending of myth, history and fantasy –everything just clicked for me and I quickly devoured every other work of his available up to that point: The Fionavar Tapestry, Tigana (my absolute favorite), The Lions of Al-Rassan. When the first volume of The Sarantine Mosaic came out, I was a little disappointed, and didn’t pick up the second volume until it came out in paperback. It wasn’t until I read both books together, a few years later, that I realized what a masterpiece it is. The Last Light of the Sun, however, Kay’s last book before Ysabel, remains a disappointment even after a couple of readings — Oh, it’s not by any means a bad book, and I’d rather read it than a lot of other fantasy fiction on the shelves. It just didn’t have the same impact on me that his earlier books did.

Sadly, the same is true of Ysabel, for a few reasons. The major one is that Kay’s distinctive lyric style, which heightens the emotional poignancy of the story (for me, at least…I know other readers who’d be put off by it) and elevates the tale and characters into a more mythic space, cannot survive the impact with cellphones, iPods and the World Wide Web. The book is set entirely in the real, modern world, a first for Kay, and while there is plenty of magical stuff happening, a true sense of being in a mythic space is never achieved. A lot of it has to do with language, and a lot of it has to do with technology. The hero’s solo descent into the underworld (which happens to be up a mountain in this book) just doesn’t seem quite so heroic when he flips open his cellphone at any time to check in with his dad.

This is also the first time Kay’s main character is an adolescent; even the youngest primary characters he’s created before have already crossed the threshold into adulthood. I don’t have a problem with young protagonists, and I should just be thankful that Ned isn’t a stereotypical angst-ridden teen. He’s a pretty normal kid, up until the start of the book, but that normalness is almost a drawback here. Aside from his concern for his mom, he has no depth, nothing that makes him stand out as a character we want to care about; I might even go so far as to say he’s a typical Mary-Sue — the average kid unexpectedly granted extraordinary abilities.

The most interesting characters (including, even, the surprise appearance of a couple of familiar faces from one of Kay’s other books — I won’t spoil the surprise by saying who) are those we see the least of, the three ancient individuals in whose story Ned becomes entangled. Even though Kay’s explored the tragic lovers’ triangle before (twice, actually, in the Fionavar Tapestry and The Lions of Al-Rassan), I wouldn’t have minded a repeat here, if only we’d been able to see more of it. These are the only three characters with real depth in the tale, and we are left guessing at most of their history together, tantalizing glimpse of the great story behind the series of events that make up the novel.

I guess what I miss most is the emotional impact that Kay’s earlier works seemed to have. I want to be moved to tears, like when Dianora walks into the sea or Diarmuid rides into battle for the last time or Rodrigo and Ammar must duel to the death. I want to be struck with the mystery of seeing a riselka, and feel the joy at discovering an unexpected love. That’s what I want most from a Kay novel, and I’m disappointed not to have found it once again. Well, you can’t strike gold every time, right? I’ll just have to put my hopes on hold until Kay’s next book is ready for me to read.

Upcoming:
Stealing Fire from the Gods by James Bonnet
Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison

Vellum: The Book of All Hours
by Hal Duncan

It’s 2017 and angels and demons walk the earth. Once they were human; now they are unkin, transformed by the ancient machine-code language of reality itself. They seek The Book of All Hours, the mythical tome within which the blueprint for all reality is transcribed, which has been lost somewhere in the Vellum–the vast realm of eternity upon which our world is a mere scratch.

The Vellum, where the unkin are gathering for war.

The Vellum, where a fallen angel and a renegade devil are about to settle an age-old feud.

The Vellum, where the past, present, and future will collide with ancient worlds and myths.

And the Vellum will burn…

Note to self: when blurbs on the cover of a book proclaim it “mind-blowing” — not just once, but twice — it’s a good indication that you’re going to spend much of the book trying to figure out exactly what’s going on. And I don’t mean that in a good way, like you would with a mystery.

Given the elements woven together into Vellum — Sumerian and Greek mythology, alternate realities, emerging mythic archetypes, the intersection of science and magic — it should have been a real winner for me. Duncan has (successfully, I suppose) filled the gap between H.P. Lovecraft and William Gibson, and taken on a chapter-by-chapter basis, it can be quite engrossing (my favorite chapter, Prometheus Found, told entirely through journal entries and correspondence, is hardly less than a paean to Lovecraft himself), but all together it’s all so deliberately disordered and opaque that it made reading a real chore.

I have not read any real reviews of the book, but the odd comment here (other than what’s on the back cover) and there suggested to me that Duncan chose style over story, and that’s certainly the case. I certainly can’t disparage his stylistic competence; he’s a good writer, even if he does tend to favor too much the modernistic conceit of writing in the present tense. It’s clear that every ambiguity in the book — multiple characters with the same name, divergent timelines, shifting geographies — is done with purpose, in accordance with the very nature of the world that Duncan’s imagined.

But I don’t like books that leave me thinking, “Okay…who’s that now? And how are they related to that other person?” I don’t mind working hard for a good story, but since this story is only half-told (the second volume, Ink, will becoming out sometime soon), I’m not even sure this story is a good one, and frankly I’m not holding much hope. I feel no real attachment to the characters (except maybe Finnan, and then only after his transformation at the end). The events are disjointed, with the tenuous connections between them only beginning to be illuminated by the end of the book. It’s impossible to build up any sort of anticipation about what might happen, because just as soon as you think you’ve got things figured out, Duncan adds something completely off-the-wall, so expectations are useless.

I am sure some people (people who read James Joyce for fun, likely) enjoy books like this where style takes precedence. Me, I like my stories clear and unobstructed by the showmanship of the author.

Upcoming:
Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West by Hampton Sides
Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende
The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison