Book Review: A Sword and Sorcery Flop
Red Sonja: Consumed, by Gail Simone (Orbit)
I tried hard to like this book, but I failed. I neverovercame my initial, extremely unpleasant impression of Red Sonja as callous,self-centered, and incompetent. Even the queen she beds and betrays divesheadlong into revenge without a second thought. Jumping from one POV characterto another further disrupted any engagement with the story.
Sword and sorcery in the tradition of Robert E. Howard is a stylizedsubgenre. The tropes are distinctive but consistent: larger-than-lifecharacters with larger-than-life adversaries, colorful settings with mythicovertones, exaggerated action sequences, and a tendency toward florid prose. Consistency with Howard’s literary style without becoming ridiculous amounts to a high-wire act. Inthe hands of a master, the elements come together like an amusement park ride:breathless, engaging escapism that is ultimately emotionally satisfying. Thebest of these stories work by evoking psychological resonances (see JosephCampbell’s The Hero’s Journey) in an immersive reading experience.
Alas, not only was I unable to connect with any of the charactersin the book’s opening, but too many details strained my credibility even by thestandards of the subgenre. For example, Red Sonja is remarkably unaware of hersurroundings, allowing enemies to sneak up on her on a regular basis. She’sjust plain incompetent at basic survival skills. Many details about riding andhorses are wrong in the sense of being ignorant. (Example: a skilled rider on afamiliar and extremely well-trained mount does not haul on the reins to haltbut uses a shift in weight and pelvic angle.) Once my confidence in the authorhad been impaired, other things that might not have otherwise kicked me out ofthe story became barriers, like “firing” arrows in an era before gunpowder. That’sa linguistic bobble that has become commonplace and can be excused in anotherwise consistent setting.
On the plus side, Simone occasionally comes up with a memorableturn of phrase, action, or characterization (but not, alas, of Red Sonja).
I checked other reviews, both critical and defensive, to seewhat other readers thought. I wondered if I was missing something because Ihadn’t read all the modern stories. The reviewers divided mostly into twocamps: those with extensive knowledge of the Red Sonja novels and graphic andthose who just want a fun reading experience. Some of the former novels areeither critical of the many lapses in geography, nomenclature, and history,while others insist that this book cannot be properly appreciated without in-depthknowledge of the franchise. I disagree with the latter.
Good storytelling is good storytelling, regardless of genre. Nobody expects high literary values from sword and sorcery,but perhaps that is a mistake. Consider the work of Tanith Lee, C. J. Cherryhor C. L. Moore. Unfortunately, Gail Simone is not in their class.
