Good Cover Art Gone Bad

On the whole, I think that the cover art by Daniel Dos Santos for Green by Jay Lake (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound, review) is quite good. It’s the kind of cover art that would make me pick up the book to see what it’s about – and I think it’s something that would likely appeal to a wide-ranging audience (even though it still somewhat fails the ‘would I want people to see me reading this in public’ test).

Then, I read the book. The character featured on the cover is the main character of the novel, also named Green. Yes, she is an adolescent girl, yes she cuts her face beneath a pomegranate tree (though I don’t recall her hanging upside down). So it fits. Only in the book Green is a person of color. In the very least she has dark skin – I always pictured her with a South Asian appearance to match my perception of the country she was born in, but her descriptions in the book leaves her appearance pretty open aside from the consistent description of dark skin.

So, why is a cover that is otherwise a fairly good representation of the content of the book misleading about this small bit? I’ve seen Jay Lake mention on either Twitter or his blog that he likes the cover a lot – now is he just saying this because that’s what a good author does, or does this little inconstancy bother him. I think it would really bother me.

The assumption I jump to is that there is a perception that a person of color in the place of the nice white girl we have instead could reduce the sales of the book. True or not, that really rubs me the wrong way. If it is true, nothing is going to change until there are more people of color on covers (see Tobias Buckell’s Ragamuffin with cover art by Todd Lockwood). Or it could be that the cover artist didn’t know that Green was a person of color, which is entirely possible since he was likely given only a short excerpt to base the cover art on).

Thoughts?

Review: Green by Jay Lake

Jay Lake has decided he doesn’t want to be known as that clockpunk guy who wrote Mainspring (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound), Escapement (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound), and forthcoming Pinion. While his internet following will always recognize him as a prolific blogger and others admire his wonderful short fiction and earlier novels, Trial of Flowers (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound) and its sequels, Lake still felt the need to further broaden his horizons to something closer to traditional fantasy. With Green (US, UK, Canada, Indiebound) Lake shows readers once again that he one of the most versatile writers in the SFF market.

Green tells the story of a young girl, sold into slavery, who strives to become her own woman. Robbed even of the memory of her name, she is raised to be a royal concubine in a far away land – extensively trained in things like cooking and sewing yet ignorant of recent history and the true daily life of the foreign lands around her. Given the name Emerald and taking the name Green in her own language, she finds herself in the center of a plot to overthrow the Duke and sacrifices everything to become free – while she comes to terms with what real freedom is and what it isn’t.

Green is told entirely from the first-person perspective of Green, so it’s not stretch to say that the success or failure of the novel rests there as well. In this respect, Green succeeds – she is a believable character who I quickly identified with and cared for. Green struggles with her identity as an individual, as foreigner in a far away land, as a slave, and eventually as a killer. She romanticizes her origins and as she matures she struggles with the idea of whether her slavery may have actually been a good thing. As a girl raised to be at the beck and call of a man, she fiercely guards her feminine identity. And through it all, she is a hormonal teenager with a very narrow education who makes bad decisions and becomes sure that she has all the right answers.

In many ways, Green is a novel that fits the YA mold with a strong cross-over appeal to adults. As such, I can see it appealing especially to teenage girls, who I imagine would strongly identify with Green and her struggles to figure out who she is as a person, and to a lesser degree, her sexual identity. Lake dedicates the book to his daughter in a touching and amusing statement that fits the book well and further leads me to believe that while I enjoyed Green, I’m probably not the audience that Green is most directly aimed at.

With all the focus on Green, other aspects fall short in comparison. Secondary characters are decidedly secondary and the plot stretches the limits of credibility at times. In Green’s world, gods and goddesses are real beings who directly touch and interact with the world – while much time is spent in temples and the like, relatively little exploration of these gods is undertaken. This leads to problems with who becomes the main villain of the story – a new god, who is at best confusingly explained, and at worst a poorly inserted antagonist to give Green a purpose.

Lake’s world-building is muted – which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but will likely seem underdone to fans of fantasy and even fans of Lake’s other work which are so wonderfully constructed. The emphasis of the book is correctly placed on Green, but in a nearly 400-page book, a bit more detail would have been appreciated (or a lower page count). The non-human, sentient race of the feline Pardines play an important role, yet remain frustratingly mysterious. As I said above, the emphasis is correctly placed on Green, but I was left wanting more exploration of this interesting race.

Above all else, Green is an addicting read. The plot had issues and the world-building left a bit to be desired, but Green herself is a fascinating character that I connected with, often in spite of her idiotic, teenage decisions. Green is the novel’s success and potential inspiration for teenage girls. 7/10

Related Posts: Review of Mainspring, Interview with Jay Lake

There was once a book called Escapement…

Jay Lake has announced a little contest over on his livejournal for an ARC of his upcoming book, Escapement, which is a sequel of sorts to Mainspring (which I rather liked). Here are the rules:

In either a limerick or a haiku, tell me in comments why you should receive an ARC of Escapement. Props for being mad funny or over the top.

This is the sort of thing that I can’t resist – especially since it’s a book I want to read. I was forced to enter…

Call me a reviewer who likes Mainspring
What does a review by me bring
Another place for a link
But in the end I think
It’s just more excrement to fling

Jay Lake Answers Questions 5

Jay Lake is a prolific short fiction writer and has written several novels including Trial of Flowers. His first wide-release novel, Mainspring (my review), was published by Tor in June. He was winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2004 and is a multiple Hugo and Nebula nominee.

I’m very pleased that he took time to answer Questions Five.

It’s Hawaiian shirt day – does Mainspring come dressed for the occasion?

JL: Naturally. One has to present one's best, even when one is 9 inches tall and basically flat. Mainspring has its shirts tailored in Thailand, just as I do, but with more clockwork and airship themed fabrics. Frankly, the book has more taste than I do.

If Mainspring were a fortune cookie, what would its fortune be?

JL: "You will reach unexpected heights before you can finally unwind."

Or possibly...

"Reply hazy, try again later."

How would you interpret this fortune if were your own?

JL: Probably as a warning that I'm likely to drive the Genre car off a cliff or over a bridge railing. I don't aspire to being 9 inches tall and basically flat, personally.

What other peculiar qualities of Mainspring should readers be aware of?

JL: It likes long walks on the Wall, and refreshingly saltwater-and-chipotle gargles. It's also remarkably fond of old Flash Gordon reruns and 19th century Boy's Own adventures.

Why should Mainspring be the next book that everyone reads?

JL: Because of the incredibly cool cover with the airship and the feral angel! In fact, I think everyone should carry copies of the book with them at all times, faced outward so that we all might know one another by this sign.

Also, it would make my publisher happy.

Mainspring by Jay Lake

Mainspring is the first full-length novel with a wide-release by short story mainstay, Jay Lake. I’ve seen it called steampunk, even clockpunk, and however you ultimately choose, it is an alternative Earth like none before it. This is the story of a savior, a humble clockmaker apprentice who is set on a journey to wind a very big clock.

Don’t think too hard about the Earth in Mainspring – it doesn’t work, it can’t, but it matters not. The Earth and all the heavenly bodies follow enormous orbital tracks as their clockwork drives rotation and orbit through the stars. Imagine that antique globe you once saw – that is the Earth of Lake’s imagination. The gears of heaven meet the gears of Earth at the miles-high equatorial wall as the planet slowly spins on a very literal axis, driven by the Mainspring, which has started to wind down.

The continents are shaped as we know them (excepting the giant barrier along the equator), though the geopolitical lines of this Victorian-era world are different. America is still a colony of the all powerful British Empire, with China as its only remaining adversary. The northern hemisphere is a place of rational thought and empires at war – the southern hemisphere is a wild, untamed of land exotic beasts and other human-like species with magic replacing logic.

Hethor is a young apprenticed clockmaker in still-colonial New Haven who is visited in the night by the archangel Gabriel and tasked to save the world by rewinding the Earth’s Mainspring. It’s a world of Rational Humanism, where in spite of the obvious world origin at the hands of an all-powerful creator, God’s direct intervention in the world is generally disbelieved. Young, naïve Hethor is ridiculed and ostracized as he fumbles through the start of his quest. Ultimately, aboard a dirigible of the Royal Navy and with the help of multiple guides of variable quality and loyalty, Hethor travels beyond the equatorial wall in his quest to save the world.

This is the story of self-discovery and growth through faith in God as Hethor fills the role of the reluctant Christ-figure. His trials are many – ranging from imprisonment to temptation by a devil in the form of a Rational Humanist sorcerer and true mortal danger at the hands of savages and clockwork constructs. Hethor gains loyal followers who willingly sacrifice themselves repeatedly for the Messenger (of God). Through it all, Hethor’s trust in God brings him to the fulfillment of his goal (which I never doubted regardless of numerous obstacles along the way). As he settles into his role as a Christ, slowly gaining confidence, the narrative increasingly fills with purposeful Deus Ex Machina, which while annoying at times, belongs.

If you haven’t stopped reading the review by now out of fear of didactic religiousosity, good. While the above description of Christ figure breaking the chains of a Rational Humanist world sounds like it must come from the heavy hand of a religious fanatic, it doesn’t. Truth be told, Lake never comes across as if he actually believes what he seems to be preaching. It’s all laid out for the reader to think on, for reflection. Implications are potentially heavy, and even though the message of Mainspring superficially seems to be clear, further thought makes me doubt this very much – and I think that just might be the real point of it all.

Mainspring is destined to be a steampunk classic of much discussion. Perhaps it will achieve a label of religious fiction, becoming spurned by the masses, but my hope is that readers look into the book deep enough to see the thought, the question, the rationality as well as the faith. This book is not a sermon, but a thought exercise and it kept me up late last night. Until about five minutes ago, I didn’t know if I would rate this book a 6 or a 9 (which is a huge difference for me) – Mainspring gets an 8, not necessarily for the surficial story it tells, but for the lack of sleep I got last night.

Related Posts: Jay Lake Answers Questions Five, Review of Green