Each year around this time I participate in the voting for the Prometheus Award, which in my case entails reading the five finalists and submitting my vote (deadline: July 4). This year there are six finalists. I have less time than ever to read the books, so I find myself reading at lunch and while walking to and from my car at work. I began this week with Vin Suprynowicz’ The Black Arrow and Walter Mosley’s 47 in parallel. I just finished Mosley’s novel, and only am 50 pages into the Suprynowicz book. The former impressed me, at least the first half. After the critical tipping point of 47 the novel lost impact in some ways, and I’m still sorting out my thoughts. The prose flows well, and the emotional impact of the slave tale sat with me long after I put the book down each day. However, without spoiling the ending, I felt it left out a great deal of information, and perhaps it lost a little direction. The central element, that one is not a slave nor a master, unless one makes that choice, has deep libertarian roots, going back to Etienne de la Boetie. Regardless of Mosley’s ‘progressive’ politics, that alone earns it some points.
The Black Arrow created a stir last year when Laissez Faire Books refused to carry it in their catalog, due to what they termed excessive and gratuitous sex scenes. I have not come across any of these yet, but having read some Ray Garton stories, I doubt I’ll blanch when the moments arrive. This is a first novel, and that fact is inescapable when reading the book. The prose certainly isn’t unreadable, and Suprynowicz is an experienced writer of non-fiction, so he knows how to tell a story. However, there are moments when I’m jarred out of my reading state of mind and think more about the process of writing and characterization, rather than about the story. No doubt it’s unfair of me to say this at such an early stage; the book is fairly long and I’m but a few chapters deep. Still, the blend of Harlequin romance emotions of the characters when looking at members of the opposite sex, plus the clinical analysis of anatomy – “From the look of her breasts, it was unlikely she had yet fed children.” – tells me the author is still working to free his fictional voice from his journalistic past. Unlike Mosley, the author is explicitly libertarian, so it ill be interesting to see how the book turns out.
As I said on my blog a couple of weeks ago, I had a problem midway with Mosley’s The Wave, just as you seem to have had with 47. Thoroughly enjoyed the first 100 pages; the last 100 were a drag.