Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Between The Rivers by Turtledove

So, I just finished between the rivers by Turtledove, and I thought I would mention whether it is any good. Only. . . I can't. I'm not saying it's particularly bad. It's just not good.

So instead I'll break it down by good points and bad points.

Plot: Slight negative. Due to the writing style and some of the story elements there was a lot of padding in this book. Simple events that should have taken a page to get through took ten pages. In fact I think that this should have been a 40 page short story rather than a 400 page novel. That being said, the story that was being told was entertaining.

Research: Strong positive and strong negative. Now I'm not expecting a novelist, even one who does a lot of alternate history, to know as much about ancient Sumer as I do. I was pleasantly surprised at how much research he put into the life of the ancient Sumerian. On the other hand the story was about a merchant who sold worked metal items in a world filled with demons and where gods could be seen towering above battle fields. You would have thought he would have done a little research into Sumerian religion or metal working.

Writing style: Slight positive. Ancient Near Eastern writing had a peculiar style to it. They would say the same thing several times so that the text was perfectly clear. This was done because one character could represent several completely different concepts. The whole book is written like this. My response was "Wow, this guy is really willing to put forth some serious effort!" . . . at first. I got sick of it when I realized that it was making the book drag. Another problem with the writing style is the clever way that they talk around things. Mortals attempting to lie to a god must speak the truth in a deceptive way. They also will not say things by name lest they draw the attention of that thing. As a result of these two things the book is ten times longer than it really should be. Still, I appreciate the effort.

Personal reaction: There needs to be more books set in ancient Sumer or with Sumerian elements, and for that reason I'm glad this book was written. I feel that way about the book Snow Crash (even though that was highly influenced by Sitchin). The depiction of the gods was so far away from anything Sumerian that I couldn't get offended. They simply weren't my gods. Only Engibil the Lazy god of the book had a name similar to Gibil god of fire.

Themes: again both good and bad. All gods are powerful, stupid and literal minded. They don't work together in any way, and are weakened in the presence of new things like metal working and writing. That's an interesting concept, but not in any way Sumerian. It's so far away from Sumerian that I couldn't even get offended. The people of the main city are innovative, value new and different things, act like real people, do not attempt to fight the gods directly, and in many ways would have made the Sumerian gods proud.

Do I recommend the book? Meh. There are worse things you can read.

One spoiler: Do the pseudo Sumerians overthrow their gods? No. They pretty much over throw the gods of the Pseudo Canaanites, and it takes them the last fifty pages of the book or so to decide to do that.

Also posted on my other Sumerian Blog and Tablet of Destiny Yahoo Group