Recent Reading: Ocean’s Echo

Okay, so this stuff about architects is just irresistible:

Tennalhin Halkana arrived at the party fashionably late, which might have meant something if he’d been invited in the first place. Tennal often set out to make trouble, it was true, but this evening, he was genuinely here for a drink and a good tie.

That was a lie. He also wanted an architect, and this party would be filled with architects.

Ocean’s Echo has an absolutely brilliant opening.

I thought that opening was brilliant the first time I read it and I still think so. Would a guy like Tennal appeal to me without the architects? No, he wouldn’t. Or, I mean, he might, if the next paragraphs appealed to me for some other reason, but a protagonist who is basically out to make trouble, and for that matter a protagonist who is focused on having a drink and a good time, usually doesn’t engage my interest.

But that line about architects sure did. It’s surprising, it’s clever, it’s interesting, I love it –

– and then the story turns out to turn around mind control and mind reading, and the forced subjugation of a reader (meaning is obvious) to an architect (and here we get an idiosyncratic definition: an architect can “write” a person, meaning compel them to do something. And suddenly I love this barely-begun story a lot less.

This was not a surprise at all. The publisher makes no attempt to disguise this aspect of the plot:

Conscripted into the military under dubious circumstances, Tennal is placed into the care of Lieutenant Surit Yeni, a duty-bound soldier, principled leader, and the son of a notorious traitor general. Whereas Tennal can read minds, Surit can influence them. Like all other neuromodified architects, he can impose his will onto others, and he’s under orders to control Tennal …

Extreme ugh, which I grant is kinda hilarious coming from me, but possibly one difference that matters is that in the Tuyo world, sorcerers are terrifying because they’re always evil (fine, almost always), but at least there aren’t a lot of them; while in this world, you trip over architects everywhere and they can all do this mind control stuff, some a lot more powerfully than others. But don’t worry! Actual long-term compulsions aren’t THAT common, and after all, you can tell when someone is forcing you to act against your will, so it’s not THAT disturbing! Really!

This is obviously very disturbing, especially since another difference between the Tuyo world and Everina Maxwell’s world is that here, in this book, the Legislator (planetary ruler) is an awful person and the military is also filled with a huge number of awful people. I don’t think a single person in a position of authority is non-awful in the entire story, and by awful … this is a minor spoiler, so heads up, here comes a mild spoiler …

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… by awful, I mean that it’s not nice to set up soldiers under your command to be murdered in order to straighten out a political inconvenience, for example, and it’s also not nice to go along with commanding officers who think that’s fine. The reason this is a minor spoiler is that it’s totally obvious that this is happening. I mean obvious to the reader. It makes sense the protagonists don’t catch on because it’s not easy to suspect something this bad is going on, plus they’re distracted.

But my response to this plot element was: Don’t you think someone in the chain of command might say ick, no, when a superior orders them to force a mind-meld between two non-consenting participants and then murder the junior officer forced into this? Did the Legislator really think everyone involved would say Yes, sir, onward with this obviously illegal and also appalling abuse of power when faced with this kind of plot? There’s no hint that she went out of her way to pick especially corrupt officers; instead, there are various hints that this is just how everyone in the military is – I mean everyone remotely senior. Even the medical officers were participating in this plot. It’s frankly astounding.

Luckily for Tennal, Surit Yeni is approximately the least awful person in the entire universe.

And then Everina Maxwell is good at writing snappy dialogue and neat relationships. Tennal is an extreme, and I mean extreme, extrovert who is thoroughly screwed up; Surit Yeni is an extreme introvert crossed with Simon Ilyan, and Maxwell really shines with this kind of dialogue and these types of characters, which is perhaps why they’re broadly similar to the protagonists in Winter’s Orbit. The major difference is that in the latter, the extreme extrovert is also really competent and not nearly as self-destructive as Tennal, while the introvert is the one in a horrible situation. Plus his situation has improved immeasurably; it’s just not totally clear to him that this has happened for a long time. But the personal dynamics are similar. Which is fine, because as I say, Maxwell is good at this kind of relationship.

Here’s another minor spoiler. Here it comes …

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Interestingly, not only the dynamic between the main protagonists is similar in this book as in the first, the plot is also very similar in one important respect. Quick tip! If everyone knows the Tau field / true brainwashing is impossible, I bet it turns out that actually it’s very possible and lo! this will be an important component of the climactic scenes. If I were Maxwell, in my next book, I would set the reader up to expect something just like this to happen yet again, and then whoops, no! The climax would hinge on something else and no, really, in a surprise twist, the Tau field or brainwashing (or whatever) actually is impossible. Or at least, not the big problem the protagonist’s face at the end.

I don’t honestly think anything above this paragraph constitutes a real true spoiler because both the plot to kill Surit and the looming threat of brainwashing are obvious to any reasonably astute reader.

Let me see. All right, compared to Winter’s Orbit, Ocean’s Echo has:

— A very similar m/m romance involving a forced relationship between an extreme extrovert and an extreme introvert, though this time they realize they’re on the same side a lot faster and the romantic angle is a less dominant plot element;

— A mind-bending telepathic merger that has a significant downside, so you can see why the romantic angle takes a back seat, because whoa, there’s a lot to handle already;

— Dialogue that is just as fun and witty;

— And, in this case, a possibly over-ornate plot. I’m tempted to outline this book just so I can better evaluate whether I think the plot is in fact over-ornate, because I’m honestly not sure. I was distracted by the telepathic merger with the significant downside. But I sort of felt that some plot elements were cobbled together in ways that didn’t entirely make sense.

I’m trying to decide if I should lay this out because this wouldn’t be limited to minor spoilers. But okay, I’m going to, and seriously, this time, big spoilers coming up …

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In order from least to most important:

A) I really don’t understand Governor Oma’s early line about if the Legislator gives her another order to stand down her troops she’s going to resign. In the moment, this is funny and gives the reader an idea about Oma’s character, but nothing about that line makes sense given how the plot unrolls or how the polity appears to be organized. Maybe I missed something huge and crucial about the worldbuilding that causes this to make sense? Because Governor Oma is not remotely under the Legislator’s control, given how she treated the Cavalry unit as enemy troops, right? So if something explains how this made sense, I sure missed it.

B) I get that Tennal is extremely self-destructive, but nothing about the opening scene in the party makes sense to me, because this doesn’t seem to be consistent with how he reacts to all sorts of other things in the plot.

C) I was surprised that the crew of Retriever Two were are not only this competent but also this willing to go out on an increasingly thin limb. I mean, I understand this is handy for the plot, but I’m not totally sure I bought it.

D) I felt the author, not merely the Legislator, was working on the presupposition that naturally all senior military personnel are perfectly fine with murdering junior officers because a politician told them to, because there’s no pushback against the assumption that everyone involved would just offer a snappy salute and carry on with this obviously insane and thoroughly illegal plot. Everyone goes along with this nefarious plan! Even though it’s insanely stupid!

And the reason this is insanely stupid as well as evil is that nobody seems to realize that this secret plot is certain to get out given that the plot isn’t even secret.

I mean, three can keep a secret if two of them are dead, right? And in this case a whole bunch of people seem to have been involved, so how was that even supposed to work? Worse, the author apparently thinks that a whole crowd is going to keep this secret, because ALL the characters apparently think this could work, even though it obviously could not work!

So, for me, this whole thing constituted a pretty serious problem with suspension of disbelief.

E) It’s all very well to explain that you can force a link between a reader and an architect, and then killing the architect will allow the reader to walk away with architect abilities. This doesn’t remotely justify the Legislator’s actions, and I don’t mean morally, I mean I don’t see the point. If her nephew is this impossible to control, why not, say, frame him for some sort of crime … or come to think of it, arrest him for a crime he has actually committed, if that’s more convenient … and drop him in the sort of prison that is surely already available, the sort of place you put rich people’s sons when they’re annoying, but too well connected to drop a bigger hammer on them. What is the point of all this stuff with military conscription and setting him up with a disposable lieutenant you plan to have murdered? Do you think he will be easier to control after all this? Why would anybody think that? So to me this ALSO involved a fairly huge suspension of disbelief.

F) Why are mind readers also able to sense the structure of space? I don’t get why these two wildly different abilities should be linked. I understand why this was necessary to make the plot work, but I’m not sure it was justified in a way that worked for me in worldbuilding terms. I’m not sure the author saying “alien remnants” and waving her hands really fast worked well enough for me in this story.

This is what I mean by saying the plot seemed overly ornate and I found myself wanting to outline the story to see whether it actually makes more sense than it seemed to while I was reading it. Maybe it did and I just missed things that justified the above.

Overall:

I liked the story – truly! Witty dialogue is really important! I loved Surit Yeri, who is just my kind of super-responsible, highly competent, totally honorable introvert. I even liked Tennal, though self-destructive extroverts are a (much) harder sell for me. The relationship between them worked for me, pretty much, though it would have worked better for me personally without the romance, which I honestly did not feel was necessary or even particularly useful in this story.

But that’s fine. I enjoyed the story, and I’d pick up another book by Maxwell when and if she writes another one. Meanwhile, I’m re-reading Winter’s Orbit, which imo is a more successful novel. I did honestly like Ocean’s Echo, but I didn’t love it or want to immediately re-read it.

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