M. H. Boroson

I guess there's something wrong with me, because I didn't enjoy this book even though it is extremely popular and well-received. And where other people praised the author for the research they did in writing a book outside of their own culture, I found various things jarring.

The setting is cool and the premise appealed to me a lot, and I'm on a bingefest of Chinese ghost fiction at the moment, but despite a strong start, I nearly didn't finish.

A lot of subtle things bugged me about the interaction. For example, characters were constantly talking about face. I thought about why this bugged me, and talked to some other Asian friends about it, and here's the thing: I don't think I have EVER heard anyone mention 'face' directly in conversation. Yes it is an important concept in Chinese culture and other Asian cultures too, and can shape everything from day to day interactions to large political decisions (governments not wanting to lose face or look weak etc). But we don't tend to reference it directly.

The characters here are constantly talking about face, though, in a way I find really weird. Li Lin frequently remarks *in dialogue* on whether something will cause her to gain or lose face, to the person whom she's conversing with. This would be the English equivalent of me saying "Oh wow, you didn't find my joke funny. I will have lost social standing with you!"
Consider how odd this sounds in English, and likewise how odd it would sound for the Asian characters to constantly be remarking "You will gain much face for doing this to me!" (Nota bene: I probably woudlnt' have complained if the MC thought constantly about face in her own internal thoughts; very specifically, what makes me baulk is that it's frequently dropped into out-loud dialogue.)

The naming conventions were quite odd, and I won't say they didn't work so much as they maybe needed more explanation. Why is the gangster named Bok Choy? Someone hangs a lantern on it by saying it's unusual but I think it maybe needed a little more to it. Like Carrot in Terry Pratchett's novel; his name is a thing, a joke, and we get both an explanation for *why* it is his name along with why nobody ever makes fun of him for it.

Other name things: A surprising amount of Chinese characters have non Chinese names, with not much explanation offered. Li Lin supposedly doesn't have fluent English, but she calls Tom Wong "Tom" and I thought that unusual; I would expect her, in that time period and with her background, to use his Chinese name. Or to at least mention it, or maybe just to highlight the fact that Tom has deliberately chosen a Western name, or... something lol.

Li Lin's deceased husband is named Rocket, and I spent too long wondering whether that was English, or a Chinese name that for some reason was translated directly when other Chinese names weren't. (Frex, Gene Wolfe wrote a Roman setting where all the names were translated, including cities, so Athens became the City of Thought.) No one seems to find it unusual, either way.


But ultimately, while these things annoyed me, they're not the key reason for my poor review. As with all things, I'm a structure whore, and in the end it was the narrative structure itself that bothered me.

In short: Li Lin mostly fails. By which I mean, she does things and they don't work. She makes plans, and they crumble. She fights but usually loses. She tries to avert disaster and either escalates it, causes herself delays, or is wholly ineffectual and it happens regardless.

Characters shouldn't succeed all the time or they feel overpowered and dull, but the reverse is also true. When a character fails constantly and continuously at almost every hurdle, it starts to feel like they're just spinning their wheels while things happen around them. It got to the point where for every single conflict, I was just tiredly waiting for her to cock it up, which she inevitably seemed to, only to get bailed out in some fashion by the eyeball spirit (which WAS cool, I will grant) or her father, or some other character, or luck.

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Dean Koontz talks about the difference between delay and complication in narratives, and gives this example (I'm paraphrasing)). Say you're accused of murder, and only one person can clear your name. You go to her house, but she's not at home and has gone to the mall; so you go to the mall, but she's just left and you've missed her, and so on.

Say instead that you're accused of murder and only one person can clear your name. You go to her house... and find her dead. Now the police are on their way, you're accused of two murders, and NO one can clear your name.

The first example is DELAY: the solution is in sight, but artificially removed from the MC by the author dossing around. The second example is COMPLICATION: the problems are multiplying.

A lot of the narrative structure in GHOST EYES (this book) felt like delay. Instead of succeeding in her goals, and then inadvertently creating new problems, she failed in her goals. That failure rarely incurred new consequences for her and instead mostly functioned to move the goal posts further away. The solution to the plot problems are X: she didn't manage it. Now the solution is Y: she chases after that, doesn't manage it.

In the end, both her failures and successes felt anaemic and without stakes as a result.

I hope I don't sound like I'm beating a dead horse but I'm wanting to be clear on what is a very subtle structural issue that was bothering me in the book.

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I won't say that you shouldn't read this book. Lots of people clearly liked it so I'm probably off base. But it didn't work for me on lots of different levels.… (meer)

Returning to the world of "The Girl with Ghost Eyes," Boroson pretty much picks up right where he left off, as Xian Li-Lin, Daoist priestess, is presented with the corpse of a girl who was suffocated by a plant growing out of her. From there the plot moves out fairly briskly as Li-Lin and, eventually, her embittered father, are drawn into a grand plot to wield supernatural power. If you liked the first book you will like this one even better, as there was some clunky writing in what was apparently Boroson's first novel. I do wonder where Boroson is ultimately going to take this series (now described as a chronicle), as I do get some sense that Li-Lin is already getting over-powered rather quickly, a chronic problem of urban fantasy protagonists in general.… (meer)