Evil Will Not Enter the World Through Me
by James Schellenberg
Fantasy novels are filled with war, and maybe that's a default because human history is also filled with war. And violence is exciting, right? But I start to wonder: can't we imagine a different way of telling a story? Fantasy is an imagined world after all.
After reading Laurie J. Marks' Water Logic, I've come to the conclusion that writers use war and violence in fantasy novels partly because it's the easy thing. Marks sets out to do the hard task, not the easy one. Trying to resolve a conflict in an alternate way is in fact incredibly hard; characters have to be stubborn and smart and there's no simple-minded heroics in the task. Frankly, it's mind-bending stuff, and refreshing.
Water Logic is the third book in a series that Marks has been writing called Elemental Logic - this fantasy world involves people who are gifted in one of the four elements, and the first two books, appropriately enough, were titled Fire Logic and Earth Logic.
By this point in the story, a brutal war has just concluded: the Shaftalese have defeated the invading force of Sainnites, or at least beat them to a standstill and cut off their retreat. But quite a few Sainnites are still in the realm, and some Shaftalese are understandably bent on vengeance. All through human history, that has been the reaction of those whose homeland has been invaded.
So who carries the flag of the conflict resolution camp? How does this work? As Marks sets it up, it's a matter of taking personal responsibility first and foremost. A Shaftalese group called the Paladins, part of the governing structure in a loose way, are more warriors of philosophy than Conan-style head-bashers. And as the Paladin characters say many times: "Evil may enter the world, but it will not enter through me."
At first glimpse, this seems like a set-up for the boring part of the story - the one that is usually wrapped up in an epilogue after the big climax. Marks, however, has something ambitious in mind: balancing realism (a gruelling look at the consequences of violence) with some of the other attractions of the fantasy genre, like nifty magic, feats of adventures, and so on. The invasion/war has already had its moment in the previous books, and now it's the road less-travelled.
And it's crucial too that Marks is talking about the aftermath. No longer does the story suffer from that structural deficit of all war-is-hell narratives: yes, violence is problematic, but then why is your book/movie so incredibly violent? See The Wild Bunch, Fight Club, and many others - good movies, but they break down upon closer examination of this very point.
In Water Logic, the inevitable excitement and glamour of battle is over, and now we have to work out how to live with the people we were busy slaughtering. That's why this book reminded me more of real-world conflicts than the typical fantasy nonsense of destroy-the-dark-lord-and-utopia-ensues.
But Water Logic is not all one thing - not all excruciating and grim - and I liked the way the plot unravelled. The division between the Sainnites and Salmites wase not resolved - it continues as a background for other things that are happening. The gulf is so wide that it won't be crossed all that quickly.
Other things are going on - the title refers to the very circuitous magic that springs from water. Marks keeps the reader a little too far in the dark at points, but once the "big plan" is revealed, everything falls into place. Nicely played, especially since there's so much else going on in the book. The characters already have their hands full with the Shaftalese-Sainnite reconciliation, never mind a water logic adept to mess things up. Good stuff!
A few months ago, I talked about reading a series out of order. I haven't read the previous two Logic books by Marks so this was like a flashback to my childhood. Interestingly, while there was some character history that I missed, from what I've seen of Marks' writing style, I didn't necessarily miss much explanation anyways. The world is presented as-is, and of course all the people in it know what is going on and why. I found the book quite intriguing, since Marks does have some unusual magic going on, and there's certainly no overkill in the infodump department.
Water Logic is available in a lovely edition from Small Beer Press - they sent me another book called Interfictions at the same time and I was planning to write about both in this article. But Water Logic took over! Interfictions is a neat anthology from the Interstitial Arts Foundation, and it's worth checking out if genre-bending sounds like your sort of thing.
"I’ve come to the conclusion that writers use war and violence in fantasy novels partly because it’s the easy thing."
Yes! Change doesn't happen that way. A war is only the initiating event. It's in the decisions people make, every single day, that changes stays happened.
—Chris S.
If one looks at the non "war" conflicts presented in this book as a war of some kind (a war of words, a war of ideals, a war of religions) then it sounds like you've still got a war going on in the book.
I mean, you could thing of the Lord of the Rings as dealing with the aftermath of the First Great War of the Rings. The Matrix is really the aftermath of the Robot take-over of the Earth.
I think what you like is more of a surface change - it sounds like violent conflict is still at the heart of the novel; it's just set up with a different context that feels more complex.
—Evil Roy Slade
Evil Roy Slade,
I'm not sure if I agree with you, re: equating war of words with regular war. Sure, there's still conflict, but in this particular case it doesn't reduce to we're good, they're bad, let's kill 'em all. It struck me that the complexity makes the situation qualitatively different, that the conflict is moving towards a resolution that includes everyone, rather than with one party dead or bleeding on the battlefield. I dunno, seems pretty far away from the normal fantasy story to me.
—James Schellenberg
Evil Roy Slade, I think he's talking more about violence rather than conflict. While the Lord of the Rings was about the aftermath of the first Ring War there was still a healthy dose of sword-swinging and romantic charges into a horde of enemies. Likewise, the Matrix had some serious kung fu in between the pacifist sermons. It seems to me like this book is more about the boring stuff (in a traditional fantasy novel) of what happens after all the violence dies down and how to use real-world logic to deal with the aftermath of a war. Is there actually any violence in the book, James, and does the author try not to make it look cool?
—Ezra
Hey Ezra,
Yup, there's a fair amount of violence, but no pitched battles. And there's some epic use of magic, albeit told from the point of view of someone who's considerably confused by what's going on. I might be idealizing the book - it does lose its way here and there, but that's partly because it's not falling back onto typical ways of pumping up the story with "exciting" violence, and I was glad to see a book that tries something different.
—James Schellenberg
It sounds like this book would be better compared to the very last part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy where Frodo and Sam return to the Shire and deal with the fall-out of the major conflicts that have been happening in the rest of the world.
As a kid, I admit I found this part pretty boring. I really couldn't understand why Tolkien didn't just end the story with the victory over Sauron, the rescue from Mount Doom, and the celebration in Gondor. Why do we have to ploddingly follow the hobbits home?
As an adult, and knowing more about Tolkien's own experience with the First World War, I appreciate that he doesn't just give us a happily-ever-after/ celebration-on-Endor ending. He still has a very essentialist understanding of good and evil, but at least he acknowledges the difficulty of coming back into a peaceful society following a prolongued conflict.
I see that Earth Logic is available through my public library. Maybe I'll check it out before laying out geld for Water Logic.
—Mr.Dave
15 hours on the road and I was my own red-eye on I-94's corridor of stripclubs, fireworks and roadkill, racing past dead deer in Michigan, then Gary, Indiana's steel mills and through Chicagoland, the Sears Tower in the distance waiting for its evil eye, till the highway gave out in Wisconsin. Yes, I went to WisCon 32, the world's oldest feminist science fiction convention. And there I felt deeper fatigue than 15 hours, 2 countries, 4 states and 2 time zones. Zombie fatigue.
Prince Caspian, a lesser-known entry in the Narnia series, is a book with not much substance. The recent movie actually streamlines the story, eliminating flashbacks and so forth. What fills the running time back up? Why, war of course.
No matter the genre or subject, every reader has her Absolute Favourite writers. The ones whose books she’ll charge the stores to get, and drop everything to read. Diving into those books is a particularly edifying treat, a gourmet of literary delight. But there’s more than one kind of favourite. Sometimes a reader wants plain and simple -- sometimes the hankering for peanut butter wins out over a new gustatory adventure. Occasionally, you just want something comforting, familiar, and, though it may not be the fanciest item to ever hit the palate, a taste you know you’ll like.