2013 read #33: The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells.

The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells
278 pages
Published 2011
Read from February 26 to March 6
Rating: ★ out of 5

I'll be honest, I thought this book was going to be something else entirely, and this time it's my fault. My eye was drawn to the cute little airship on the back cover, and I somehow didn't entirely register the goofy-as-fuck winged gargoyle demon dude smack dab on the front. (Maybe it was so goofy looking that my eyes refused to acknowledge it.) Based on the ship, I figured this would be a fun little steampunk-magic yarn, instead of a tedious creature fantasy. I almost abandoned the book after the first chapter. But I figured I should try to put aside my prejudices and give it a shot.

This is some hardcore fantasy nerd shit right here, all talking about "turns" instead of years, "second day-meal" instead of lunch, "draughtbeasts" and "herdbeasts" and "riverbeasts" and "skylings" and "treelings" instead of shit anyone would actually say, populated by innumerable dumb races that never get developed or explored to any degree. The main character is the goofy-as-fuck winged gargoyle demon dude from the cover, only he's also a totally bad-ass loner who can shapeshift and has a totally sad and compelling backstory, yo. And also he's like totally a prince who didn't know he was of royal blood. (Okay, so technically he's just a fertile male in a dumb pseudo-colonial, hierarchical species, but that's more or less the same idea -- that he's marked out and special and totally gets the princess in the end.) The only way you could get more fantasy nerd is to throw together some elves and dragons and bearded wizards in stars-and-moons robes. Honestly I'd probably be happier reading something like that rather than this. It would be less embarrassing to read in public, for sure.

The cover blurb, from Fantasy & Science Fiction, no less, claims that Wells is "One of the more graceful wordsmiths currently writing fantasy." Maybe that applies to her short stories or her other books (I wouldn't know). It sure isn't evident here. The writing isn't bad, exactly, but it's anything but "graceful." It has a smack of amateurishness to it, a certain over-confident swagger that the quality doesn't justify. The dialogue, on the other hand, is execrable. The characters dish out attitude in every verbal exchange. Huddling together for warmth, one character smirks to another, "I'll try not to molest you in my sleep." Seriously, every single character is sarcastic and belligerent toward everyone else. The characters are hazily defined at best; their actions and dialogue do nothing to distinguish them, because they all act like adolescents who think they're the coolest fucking thing in the room. You expect all of them to pop onto skateboards and flip you the bird after every sarcastic remark, even the ancient elders of the colony. It reads like something I would have written at 15.

If you strip away the stupid parts, there's a serviceable (if rote) adventure novel in here somewhere, but yeah. It's almost all stupid parts. As you can see, it took me forever to read the damn thing. After a certain point I kept reading only out of a perverse sense that it would be fun to write a rant for a review. Even that thought ceased to be entertaining by the halfway mark, and it became an uninterrupted slog. I only finished it under the influence of sunk cost fallacy.

This kind of story needs an interesting or at least companionable narrative voice. Linda Nagata's Memory, whatever its other flaws, at least had a narrator who seemed worth spending time around, at least at first. It was the same even with Nnedi Okorafor's Who Fears Death?, which was a terribly written disappointment to me. The main character here, Moon, starts out as a slow-witted and suspicious teenager-equivalent, and ends up as a smug but moodily aloof nerd empowerment fantasy who leads from the front; queens fight over him, but naturally he gets the younger, hotter one, and the only people who don't like him are idiots and jerks. That doesn't make for pleasant reading. This type of story also benefits immensely from compelling villains, and even there, The Cloud Roads fails utterly. It's never a good idea to turn your unstoppable evil race (named "the Fell," for fuck's sake) into mere cannon fodder by chapter three. Why spend two chapters building them up as this inexorable threat overrunning all the peaceful goofy-as-fuck races on land and in the air, only to have your totally bad-ass shapeshifter princeling moody hero dispatch like five of them just to work up an appetite? In fact, none of the numerous battle scenes carry any sense of stakes or danger; Moon and his cohorts slice through Fell after Fell with the ease of velociraptors at a Juggalo wedding.

It was pretty blatant by the end of the second chapter that Moon's people share a secret kinship with the dastardly Fell; by the fourth chapter it was obvious that interbreeding of these two kinds of goofy-as-fuck winged gargoyle demon creatures was going to be a major plot point. It's no good to have the general course of the entire novel sussed out by page 50. I like to be kept guessing about some things, you know? Not that I even gave a shit by that point, but I'm talking general principles here.

Maybe my eyes were glazed over when the title was explained, but I have no idea if we ever find out what "the cloud roads" are.

This -- this is the kind of book that gives SF its old reputation as worthless escapist dreck. I did it to myself, but I kind of really want the last nine days of my life back.