Robin Hobb -- Shaman's Crossing -- Review

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Shaman's Crossing by Robin Hobb ***
First Volume of Soldier Son
Rating: Good (3 out of five stars)


The first volume of Robin Hobb’s projected Soldier Son trilogy is not easy to define. It’s certainly not fantasy on an epic scale, like say Erikson or Martin. Nor is it very much like many other fantasy-adventure novels that are set in the Middle Ages. Shaman's Crossing is more like “Dances with Wolves” meets Carlos Castaneda. For those who are not familiar with Castaneda, he was/is a psychologist/anthropologist who had made somewhat of a splash during the 1960s because of his controversial views on magic and drug induced “dreams” (feel free to substitute hallucinations here). He spent time in the deserts of the Southwest with a Shaman (a witch doctor named Don Juan), who tried to convince him that he had magical powers. He and Castaneda would cure and then ingest various drugs, and share their hallucinations, which were supposed to convince Castaneda of Don Juan’s magical powers.

I read only the first book, The Teachings of Don Juan, back in the 80s while a student in college. By then, the book seemed quite dated. There did not seem to be anything all that magical about it, except for Castaneda’s insistence that they - he and the Indian tribesmen - all shared the same dream state. That part of the book was fascinating. And they were all supposedly visited by the Desert God, a kind of giant, walking cactus, iirc, who would teach them various things about “power” and its uses. In Shaman's Crossing we have something very similar. But instead of a walking cactus, we have a Tree Woman, who instructs the main character, Nevare, on the uses of magical power and the magic of the forest while he is in a dream state, which he also shares with other characters in the story at times.

But first, the setting: Gernia is Nevare’s home. It has just conquered the Plains People (Indians), and it is working its way towards the Barrier Mountains in the East. Unlike the desert wastelands of the Plains People, the Barrier Mountains are heavily forested and home to the Specks, a dappled and “savage” race of people who are close to the earth; thus, setting the stage for the next military conflict. You should be advised that there is a lot of “Green” ideology in this book, and it is often only thinly veiled. Gernia is recovering from the loss of its Western lands to the kingdom of Landsing, a very formidable rival to the West of Gernia, hence the reason the King of Gernia is driving to the East, with the Plains People being his first victims in a war of expansion. But all is not well at home: the old noble families are unhappy with the new King, who has promoted his battle lords, who have served him well in the last war, to the positions of a new ruling nobility in Gernia. Thus the old nobility despises the new. Into the center of this conflict steps Nevare, the young son of a “new noble.”

Hobb takes a lot of time constructing a ridged society in which most everyone follows a hierarchy of birth – hence the “soldier son” theme of the novel. All the second born sons are supposed to be soldiers, while the first born are the true heirs (have the easy life), and the third born are supposed to enter the church. As can be guessed here, Nevare is a second born son. His father was a second born, and as such a soldier also, a commanding officer in the King’s Cavella (cavalry), and is preparing Nevare for the same fate. But before he packs Navare off to the military academy (a school much like West Point), he leaves him in the hands of a Plainsman, who was a sworn enemy, but has agreed to teach Nevare in the tribal ways. It should be noted that Dewara, the plainsman, is hoping to get guns in this exchange, for both himself and his people, since his people were defeated because they lacked the rifles that the Cavella troops used against them in the last Plains War. Does this sound familiar? In any event, Nevare travels into the desert with Dewara -- and that’s when the fun begins.

The story, at least on its face, is really quite good. Unfortunately, the center part of the novel is so slow moving that it is as dull as watching rocks in the desert and about as much fun as eating sand. The book starts out well enough, but it constantly bogs down in Hobb’s obsession to describe everything, even the most mundane details and events in Nevare’s daily life at the Cavella Academy. And almost all of it is “textbook schooling” – that’s right, the trials and tribulations of math and engineering classes – what fun. But the story has a fairly decent climax, and leaves off well enough – which saved this book from a one star rating (at least in my opinion of it).

The main characters are rendered very well. And by the end of the book Nevare is a likable character, despite his very ridged view of society and its governing hierarchy, which he completely buys into. But this is also a “coming of age story,” and as such, Nevare is entitled to his somewhat awkward shortcomings throughout a large part of the story. A real standout is Epiny, Navare’s unconventional cousin, who also resides in the capital of Old Thares, where the Cavella Academy is located.

On the downside, the pacing of the narrative is very slow. And don’t expect to be knocked over with a lot of action throughout most of the book, unless you enjoy reading about someone struggling with preparing for the “big exam day” at prep school. Also, the book is thin on real dialogue and action, so that much of it is hard description and story telling. It is said that good writers show, they don’t tell. But Hobb does manage to pull everything together in the end, and there is a real desire to see what happens in the next installment, Forest Mage, which is due out in just a few months. I wonder what Nevare will be taking next semester…I hope it’s not more math and science classes.

[ July 01, 2006, 05:10: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

That doesn't sound good. That puts me right off.

 

So far I've been uninspired to pick this up because it just screams 'standard fantasy!' at me - this reinforces that...

I'm also a little tired of books that run around screaming 'Whee! Let's get back to the Earth and plant trees and stuff!' - sure, it's a nice theme and all and I have some sympathy for it - but it just occurs too damn often to be interesting anymore.

 

Wouldnt call it standard fantasy. I have been browsing around a lot lately due to a lack of funds and re-discovery of the library and read a lot of writers I had missed and even though this book doesnt reach up to the standards of most of Hobb's other work it is still her writing and thus a lot better than most of what is out there, even the quite decent stuff. I at least found it somewhat original if only for the setting that was a bit different from your normal fantasy. I did find the extreme parallels with the history of our world to be somewhat uninteresting though. Fantasy writers copying almost straight off from the real world doesnt score many points with me. Read some Sarah Ash lately and even though the books are entirly readable the all too obvious paralells to "our" world puts me off a bit.

 

It must be very hard to come up with original ideas. I've often thought of writing a book, but I know it would just end being a ripoff of what someone else had already done.

 

Are saying that all the good books have already been written? I think you should go for it, HB. You never know....

 

No, just that whenever I write anything, it just comes out the same as what someone else has already written. A story I wrote when I was young teenager was a virtual re-hash of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. One I started a bit later was a straight derivation of The Lord of the Rings. And if I did one now, it would be an Erikson clone.

 

oh good, now i don't feel too bad about not getting this.