Grass For His Pillow by Lian Hearn
Jul. 29th, 2006 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Takeo knows he will love the beautiful Kaede until death. But after one night together they are destined never to meet again.
The young warrior is torn between two futures. His life is pledged to the merciless Tribe, who need his amazing magical skills in their secret work of assassination. He is also heir to the powerful Otori clan. But if he tries to claim his birthright, the Tribe will kill him.
Kaede, alone in a distant land, fights her own powerful enemies, while Takeo must make his choice. Ahead of him lies a journey that will test him to the limits of his being. And reveal the truth about who he really is ...
It's difficult to write a good second book in a trilogy because whatever you produce has to keep the story going, without producing any conclusions (or else, what would you have for the third book) but at the same time, not coming across as filler. Unfortunately, Grass For His Pillow comes across as nothing but filler.
We do get some information and background on the Tribe, which is interesting but raises more questions than it answers. For example, the plot never addresses precisely why it is that the Tribe don't want Takeo to assume control of the Otori clan. We're told that the Tribe prefer to influence things from the sidelines and work different fractions against each other, but it seems a somewhat contrived mechanism given that we're later shown how they value power. The logical thing to do would have been to keep Takeo in the Otori clan, whilst at the same time integrating him more into their ways. Instead we have a forced kidnap and browbeating as they attempt to beat him into subserviance to their organisation. It doesn't make sense and Takeo's continued poor treatment (particularly at Akio's hands) is nothing more than a plot device to prevent him from joining their side.
Lian Hearn also misses a potentially interesting sub-plot in that the current master of the Kikuta family, Kotaro, was the person who murdered Takeo's father. There should have been ample scope here for some kind of emotional or physical confrontation between Takeo and Kotaro - or at least, some kind of resolution to this storyline - but Hearn essentially ignores it and instead of a potentially interesting relationship developing, she offloads Kotaro from the page and leaves us with the cariacturish nephew who wants revenge on Takeo for taking his girl and most likely his place as head of the clan.
Kaede's story is little better. What could have been an interesting look at her character finally going home to the family estates (having been held hostage for most of her childhood) descends into melodrama as her shamed father sinks into madness (and the attempted rape of his daughter). Lord Fujiwara, an exiled poet and neighbour of Kaede's has potential to be interesting - his motivation isn't clear and the notion of him as a cold collector has a lot of mileage if developed properly.
I confess that I dislike Kaede as a character because she is so reactive and doesn't really learn from previous experiences. The relationship between her and her maid, the Tribe spy Shizuka, is strongly developed, but it doesn't make Kaede grow on her own terms. I fear that she will not develop into a strong female character in her own right (at least, in the way in which Lady Maruyama was portrayed in Across the Nightingale Floor). In essence, she's nothing more than a love interest and as such, goes through the requisite trials and tribulations before being reunited with her One True Love. It's sad that this stereotype, which is so common to fantasy fiction, is reinforced here. If anything, Hearn's use of Kaede's miscarriage merely serves to reinforce the weak and somewhat pathetic nature of her character and smacks of forced misery for its own sake. Far from feeling sympathy for her, I had to suppress an eye roll and a growl of irritation. It also suggests some inconsistency on the part of Hearn where plotting is concerned - as though she's going down one road and then changes her mind to accommodate a new whim.
For a teenage book, there are some remarkably adult scenes. In particular, we are left in no doubt about the nature of the relationship between Takeo and Yuki and I was left feeling a little uncomfortable at the description of the sex and the attitude towards Yuki's pregnancy. It would have been more believable to have had some discussion of Takeo's view of fatherhood and what he would be missing out on (or indeed, whether it was wanted). Instead, we get some half-assed prophecy element that seems to foretell how his son will one day kill him (a plot that's reinforced by the fact that Akio swears to bring up the child to hate Takeo). The prophecy element is a late entry to the story and jars as a result. It's really an additional element that the complex narrative did not need and the way in which it foretells a happy ending (which we already know anyway, given Hearn's slip in tenses) smacks of it being a surplus element that should have been stripped.
The Verdict:
Disappointing and predictable. Were it not for the fact that I've invested enough time to want to know how the story ultimately ends, I have to say that I would not purchase Brilliance of the Moon on the strength of this. Lian Hearn really needs to work out what her story is and how she wants to tell it. She also needs to flesh out her characters beyond the cyphers that she's put on the page.
Takeo knows he will love the beautiful Kaede until death. But after one night together they are destined never to meet again.
The young warrior is torn between two futures. His life is pledged to the merciless Tribe, who need his amazing magical skills in their secret work of assassination. He is also heir to the powerful Otori clan. But if he tries to claim his birthright, the Tribe will kill him.
Kaede, alone in a distant land, fights her own powerful enemies, while Takeo must make his choice. Ahead of him lies a journey that will test him to the limits of his being. And reveal the truth about who he really is ...
It's difficult to write a good second book in a trilogy because whatever you produce has to keep the story going, without producing any conclusions (or else, what would you have for the third book) but at the same time, not coming across as filler. Unfortunately, Grass For His Pillow comes across as nothing but filler.
We do get some information and background on the Tribe, which is interesting but raises more questions than it answers. For example, the plot never addresses precisely why it is that the Tribe don't want Takeo to assume control of the Otori clan. We're told that the Tribe prefer to influence things from the sidelines and work different fractions against each other, but it seems a somewhat contrived mechanism given that we're later shown how they value power. The logical thing to do would have been to keep Takeo in the Otori clan, whilst at the same time integrating him more into their ways. Instead we have a forced kidnap and browbeating as they attempt to beat him into subserviance to their organisation. It doesn't make sense and Takeo's continued poor treatment (particularly at Akio's hands) is nothing more than a plot device to prevent him from joining their side.
Lian Hearn also misses a potentially interesting sub-plot in that the current master of the Kikuta family, Kotaro, was the person who murdered Takeo's father. There should have been ample scope here for some kind of emotional or physical confrontation between Takeo and Kotaro - or at least, some kind of resolution to this storyline - but Hearn essentially ignores it and instead of a potentially interesting relationship developing, she offloads Kotaro from the page and leaves us with the cariacturish nephew who wants revenge on Takeo for taking his girl and most likely his place as head of the clan.
Kaede's story is little better. What could have been an interesting look at her character finally going home to the family estates (having been held hostage for most of her childhood) descends into melodrama as her shamed father sinks into madness (and the attempted rape of his daughter). Lord Fujiwara, an exiled poet and neighbour of Kaede's has potential to be interesting - his motivation isn't clear and the notion of him as a cold collector has a lot of mileage if developed properly.
I confess that I dislike Kaede as a character because she is so reactive and doesn't really learn from previous experiences. The relationship between her and her maid, the Tribe spy Shizuka, is strongly developed, but it doesn't make Kaede grow on her own terms. I fear that she will not develop into a strong female character in her own right (at least, in the way in which Lady Maruyama was portrayed in Across the Nightingale Floor). In essence, she's nothing more than a love interest and as such, goes through the requisite trials and tribulations before being reunited with her One True Love. It's sad that this stereotype, which is so common to fantasy fiction, is reinforced here. If anything, Hearn's use of Kaede's miscarriage merely serves to reinforce the weak and somewhat pathetic nature of her character and smacks of forced misery for its own sake. Far from feeling sympathy for her, I had to suppress an eye roll and a growl of irritation. It also suggests some inconsistency on the part of Hearn where plotting is concerned - as though she's going down one road and then changes her mind to accommodate a new whim.
For a teenage book, there are some remarkably adult scenes. In particular, we are left in no doubt about the nature of the relationship between Takeo and Yuki and I was left feeling a little uncomfortable at the description of the sex and the attitude towards Yuki's pregnancy. It would have been more believable to have had some discussion of Takeo's view of fatherhood and what he would be missing out on (or indeed, whether it was wanted). Instead, we get some half-assed prophecy element that seems to foretell how his son will one day kill him (a plot that's reinforced by the fact that Akio swears to bring up the child to hate Takeo). The prophecy element is a late entry to the story and jars as a result. It's really an additional element that the complex narrative did not need and the way in which it foretells a happy ending (which we already know anyway, given Hearn's slip in tenses) smacks of it being a surplus element that should have been stripped.
The Verdict:
Disappointing and predictable. Were it not for the fact that I've invested enough time to want to know how the story ultimately ends, I have to say that I would not purchase Brilliance of the Moon on the strength of this. Lian Hearn really needs to work out what her story is and how she wants to tell it. She also needs to flesh out her characters beyond the cyphers that she's put on the page.
