The Spare Man (Kowal)
Aug. 13th, 2023 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnDNF. I tried to read The Spare Man. I really did! It's got a great title! However, I got less than 150 pages in (I think I made it to page 125 or so).
-In the first few pages I was informed that the heroine was named "Tesla," and she was an extremely rich heiress. Going to Mars. Like... seriously? I suppose at the time the book was published I didn't have nearly as many thoughts and judgments about another billionaire this might remind us of as I do now, but... still. That was a choice that aged even worse than its initial presentation.
-On the very first page we're informed that Tesla's wedding ring is "platinum-iridium---just like the historic kilogram standard, because her spouse knew she was a nerd."
...Or maybe just because 90/10 platinum-iridium alloy is a pretty standard one for platinum jewelry?? I mean... I guess there's been a move towards platinum-ruthenium, especially for cast jewelry. So does that mean her ring is hand-fabricated, which would be rather cool?
...The point here is that, although I fully understand this is kind of a stupid example and only one that bothers me because I actually am a nerd in this area, I have the same problem with Tesla that I did with the Calculating Stars heroine: that she is supposed to be this big engineering nerd, but she doesn't actually think about things the way an engineering nerd would think about them. Or she does for the one paragraph where the plot requires her to do something nerd-like and then goes back to her non-nerd ways.
-Tesla's poor service dog Gimlet seems to be less of a service dog and more of a tool Tesla uses for social engineering (e.g., getting other people to talk to her by softening them up by petting a cute dog), which I feel like is maybe not the message one wants to be sending about service dogs...?
-Most importantly, there is something I found deeply, deeply classist about this book where the super-mega-rich billionaire takes great, great delight and righteous anger in punching down on people who have to work for a living and who are freaking trying to do their jobs. It's not even that I liked the space liner security folks, but when Tesla spends some astronomical sum of money to get her super-awesome lawyer to verbally punch out the head of security Wisor who, let us remember, has a lot of evidence at that point that Tesla's spouse Shal is the murderer -- that left a really bad taste in my mouth. Wisor is wrong, sure, and he could be more emotionally intelligent, sure, but the way Tesla throws her weight and money around so that she and her spouse aren't inconvenienced is just something else. (And her name, evoking another billionaire who likes to throw his weight around, doesn't help.)
We even get this from her POV: "There was a limit to how hard she could push without being a privileged asshole. To Josie. She'd definitely been one to Wisor, but he deserved it." No! That doesn't make it okay!
(I am weirded out how this got on the ballot with so many other works of the form "People in power SUCK," because this whole book is from the POV of someone in power who SUCKS.)
-I have no idea what her spouse Shal is like. Literally the only thing I knew about him 100 pages in was that he had formerly been a detective, because this is brought up kind of a lot. He seems to be bog-standard romance novel love interest, handsome and polite and considerate and probably it would be trivial to program a robot to respond exactly like him. At one point Tesla is asked, "How well do you know your spouse, anyway?" (because of all the preponderance of evidence against him) and instead of maybe thinking about that question? giving us some insight into how well she does know him?? anything??? she instead defaults to punching down on the person who asked it, because of course she does. I liked Shal, especially because he seemed to try to get her to do less of the punching down, but I didn't feel like I had any idea of why she was in love with him or why he was an interesting character or really anything about him! Oh, wait, there was one bit where he was able to make deductions like an ex-detective that was really cool, but again, just like Tesla, he turned that on briefly and then it wasn't plot relevant any more so we didn't get that any more. It would be cool if he made deductions about Tesla... and even more if that was why she loved him, maybe because she had no secrets from him? but... that's not what we got.
If you want me to care about your character's recent marriage, you kind of have to make me care about the spouse, and I just didn't.
-By page 100 I was only hate-reading to see what things I would hate next, but by page 125 I couldn't take Kowal's prose any more. There's a certain quality of compelling writing that Kowal just doesn't have for me.
-In the first few pages I was informed that the heroine was named "Tesla," and she was an extremely rich heiress. Going to Mars. Like... seriously? I suppose at the time the book was published I didn't have nearly as many thoughts and judgments about another billionaire this might remind us of as I do now, but... still. That was a choice that aged even worse than its initial presentation.
-On the very first page we're informed that Tesla's wedding ring is "platinum-iridium---just like the historic kilogram standard, because her spouse knew she was a nerd."
...Or maybe just because 90/10 platinum-iridium alloy is a pretty standard one for platinum jewelry?? I mean... I guess there's been a move towards platinum-ruthenium, especially for cast jewelry. So does that mean her ring is hand-fabricated, which would be rather cool?
...The point here is that, although I fully understand this is kind of a stupid example and only one that bothers me because I actually am a nerd in this area, I have the same problem with Tesla that I did with the Calculating Stars heroine: that she is supposed to be this big engineering nerd, but she doesn't actually think about things the way an engineering nerd would think about them. Or she does for the one paragraph where the plot requires her to do something nerd-like and then goes back to her non-nerd ways.
-Tesla's poor service dog Gimlet seems to be less of a service dog and more of a tool Tesla uses for social engineering (e.g., getting other people to talk to her by softening them up by petting a cute dog), which I feel like is maybe not the message one wants to be sending about service dogs...?
-Most importantly, there is something I found deeply, deeply classist about this book where the super-mega-rich billionaire takes great, great delight and righteous anger in punching down on people who have to work for a living and who are freaking trying to do their jobs. It's not even that I liked the space liner security folks, but when Tesla spends some astronomical sum of money to get her super-awesome lawyer to verbally punch out the head of security Wisor who, let us remember, has a lot of evidence at that point that Tesla's spouse Shal is the murderer -- that left a really bad taste in my mouth. Wisor is wrong, sure, and he could be more emotionally intelligent, sure, but the way Tesla throws her weight and money around so that she and her spouse aren't inconvenienced is just something else. (And her name, evoking another billionaire who likes to throw his weight around, doesn't help.)
We even get this from her POV: "There was a limit to how hard she could push without being a privileged asshole. To Josie. She'd definitely been one to Wisor, but he deserved it." No! That doesn't make it okay!
(I am weirded out how this got on the ballot with so many other works of the form "People in power SUCK," because this whole book is from the POV of someone in power who SUCKS.)
-I have no idea what her spouse Shal is like. Literally the only thing I knew about him 100 pages in was that he had formerly been a detective, because this is brought up kind of a lot. He seems to be bog-standard romance novel love interest, handsome and polite and considerate and probably it would be trivial to program a robot to respond exactly like him. At one point Tesla is asked, "How well do you know your spouse, anyway?" (because of all the preponderance of evidence against him) and instead of maybe thinking about that question? giving us some insight into how well she does know him?? anything??? she instead defaults to punching down on the person who asked it, because of course she does. I liked Shal, especially because he seemed to try to get her to do less of the punching down, but I didn't feel like I had any idea of why she was in love with him or why he was an interesting character or really anything about him! Oh, wait, there was one bit where he was able to make deductions like an ex-detective that was really cool, but again, just like Tesla, he turned that on briefly and then it wasn't plot relevant any more so we didn't get that any more. It would be cool if he made deductions about Tesla... and even more if that was why she loved him, maybe because she had no secrets from him? but... that's not what we got.
If you want me to care about your character's recent marriage, you kind of have to make me care about the spouse, and I just didn't.
-By page 100 I was only hate-reading to see what things I would hate next, but by page 125 I couldn't take Kowal's prose any more. There's a certain quality of compelling writing that Kowal just doesn't have for me.
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Date: 2023-08-13 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-08-14 02:32 am (UTC)I loved the Glamourist books when I read them, but Kowal's scifi in the Calculating Stars universe has not really spoken to me, and I think you have helped me reflect on why.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-15 05:22 am (UTC)(K)
Date: 2023-08-15 03:59 am (UTC)Re: (K)
Date: 2023-08-15 05:31 am (UTC)Oh interesting -- the only McDonald I've read is (a long time ago) King of Morning, Queen of Day which in retrospect I was much too young to read at the time, but I liked it and (what's perhaps more impressive) it did stay with me. And the library has Hopeland! Excellent.
Re: (K)
Date: 2023-08-15 07:14 am (UTC)Re: (K)
Date: 2023-08-17 05:21 am (UTC)