Customer Reviews

Green

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book is a three part story that tells the story of a girl sold in to slavery at a very young age, trained to be a concubine, only to escape and take and become a powerful assassin. That's only part of the story though, as a major part of the story in this book is actually the gods of her world, and their power struggles and manipulation of humanity. The story told at the books core is actually pretty sound and interesting, unfortunately it's constantly at odds with Greens more personal story, which is often weird and seems to consist of little more than pointless exhibition.

The first part is great. We live through this girls "training" to essentially become a wife so she can be married off in high society to primarily benefit her "factor", or owner. This first part is great, though brutal as one can imagine such "training" would be. It suffers somewhat from some pacing problems as it gets a tad redundant at times, but it's otherwise quite interesting. The part that makes it the most interesting is where the author is going with it, and how our main character is going to use this training to her advantage, since it's clear cooperation is not in her nature. The gods at work in the world are also hinted at points in this section, though this is left a bit vague yet.

Unfortunately the first part ends, and things start to go south in the second section, and on in to the third. The plotline with the gods and the cultures becomes more prevalent in the second part, and takes on an even bigger role in the third part. This part of the story is sound and well told, and I found it to be quite interesting as well. The difficult part is that in spite of it being the primary focus and direction of the book, it actually spends the majority of the second and third part of the book playing second fiddle to the weirder, sometimes disturbing, and altogether pointless aspects of Greens life.

At its core this book starts to feel less like a fantasy book about an Asian themed world with varying cultures and a power struggle between imperfect factions and gods, as well as the societies they are related to. It instead feels like an exhibitionist novel about a girl in her early teens and her sexual escapades, which ranges from everything to orgies to bondage/S&M to inter-species relations and so on. It could be with her fellow students in her Sisterhood, or her instructors, or in a jail cell with a fellow inmate while she's imprisoned, or just checking out some woman who helps her even if her life is at risk at the time, and there's even a man tossed in there for good measure; and all in her early to mid teens. If it's going to be a book about some little girls sex life in a fantasy world then so be it, but it comes with the pretense of a fantasy world and a greater story told about these clashing societies and the clashing gods, which pops up only now and again. Honestly, I felt more like I was reading an erotic novel than a fantasy book.

Now the other plot that sits in the backseat for most of the book is actually rather interesting, and I'm actually interested to see how that plays out. But all the unnecessary and strange erotic material makes me weary as it simply doesn't interest me, and it pretty much always felt completely out of place, as though it were just exhibition put in place just to prove the book is for adults.

One of her earliest memories is being carried away by the tall man, while her father, who never meets her eyes, or says goodbye, accepts a small bag of coins. The girl is raised in isolation, trained through intense study and frequent beatings to become a concubine or to be a rich noble's wife. Addressed only as "Girl" from age three until age 11, she is raised under the sadistic and jealous eye of her jailer and tutor, Mistress Tirelle. Girl swallows her rage, her fire, her stubbornness and waits for something, anything to improve. Hope comes when the Dancing Mistress enters her life and teaches Girl how to move. The Dancing Mistress teaches poise, confidence and self-defense. This early section is only about a third of the book, yet it was the most fascinating for me. We move along with dread yet fascination, waiting for something to happen, something to change, as Girl's narrative, and the lessons of her many teachers make for a compelling read. When the factor visits her, and dubs her Emerald, I got excited about seeing Emerald maneuver through court life, politics and also be able to use her finely trained skills.

In one horrible night, Green escapes in an attempt to get back home, to the memory of her simple life before she was sold. Her journey home and beyond were quite touching and flowed naturally, but about halfway through, the book stops being enjoyable and just gets weird. I would have liked the book so much more if we had seen Emerald living the life she had been training for, and then perhaps using the marriage or courtship as a way to return home, rather than as a fugitive. The contrast then between her old life and new would have been even greater. All the lessons she received or had beaten into her were wasted, both in the characters life and in the storytelling. Is it lazy writing? Poor editing? There were brief scenes where the style and mood fit what I enjoyed earlier in the book, but I really was forcing myself to finish.

First part of the book? Five stars! Middle part? Three stars. Last part? One star.

In my defense, the cover is kind of cool, and green is one of my favorite colors. The ridiculously [...] anecdote was obscured by the library code, so I would have put the book back on the shelf if only for that-- "Her exquisite beauty and brilliant mind were not enough to free her from captivity. That took the power of a goddess... and her skill with a knife." PLEASE.

Anyway, it's a story about a little girl from an impoverished farm country (with incredibly inconsistent topography and environment, let me tell you) who is bought by a man referred to as having skin the color of maggots. APPARENTLY, in her miserable country, there is nothing white to which she can compare this man but maggots? Are there not clouds? Nor froth nor snow nor ice or stars that are white?

In case you're wondering, yes, the cover is totally inaccurate. Green, the ~beautiful assassin~ is actually dark-skinned. It's pounded into your brain constantly. Exoticism at its best. Or worst, as you'll soon learn...

...Green is swept away to some foreign country full of ~maggot people~ and is trained to be a courtesan and completely holed away from any men except for Federo, the maggot man. He's referred to alternatively as a fop and a dandy-- for the record, that's offensive to both parties. Fops and dandies are NOT the same thing, Mr Lake. I know you were skirting around calling him gay, but really? Get your ostentatious socialites straight. (Oh-ho, a double entendre! I wasn't even trying!)

Anyway, so eventually she learns about ~sex~ and how she's expected to be compliant and please whatever man she's with without any regard to her own pleasure.

Why, yes! This IS written by a man! BUT IT GETS BETTER OR WORSE, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU LOOK AT IT. The mistress who teaches Green about sex lets her play around with...

...

Get this...

...

Her sweetpocket. Let me repeat that.

SWEETPOCKET.

Meditate on that a while. More craziness ensues. Green is taught to become a ninja at night by her dancing instructor, who is A FURRY. I wish there was a picture of this creature, but she's like a large, anthropomorphic MOUSE WOMAN.

Anyway, I skipped around and found a scene where Green is being flogged for having killed someone and promptly GETS OFF ON IT. Her hotpocket-- I mean, sweetpocket filled with heat and blah blah blah blah stuff ew. It was out of context (even with me flipping back a few pages to see what led up to it) and was a pointless, unpleasant scene.

There's also a short bit concerning homosexuality-- men together is SO DISGUSTING but ladies together is a-okay! Good to know our societal bearings on what relations are acceptable and which aren't reflect on this fictional world. This is justified by Green saying that the opinion was taught to her in the Pomegranate Court. Sorry, Mr. Lake. That's not good enough.

OH AND THEN LATER ON SHE HAS SEX WITH THE MOUSE LADY. I WISH I WAS KIDDING. They have been locked up in a jail together and apparently, the mood is just right and they 'do the deed'. You know what I mean.

I think the worst part about this book, above all, is that it's dedicated to the author's daughter. What kind of screwed up author dedicates a book about misogyny, sex slavery, furries, sadomasochism, and all kinds of other screwed up subjects to his DAUGHTER?

I can, therefore, conclude that this book (the writing of which was encouraged by Mr Lake's 'supportive blogging community', aka, LJ friends list full of Inu Yasha and Bleach fans) is a very, very poorly written RP that somehow, by powers unknown to me, was published.

I am a very fast reader so it's unusual for me not to finish a book. It's even more unusual for me to get about 70% of the way through a book and then decide it's just not worth finishing. That's what happened with this book, and having committed so much time and energy to reading as much of it as I did I feel a review is justified.

Green starts off promisingly - a young girl from a poor family in the tropics is sold and taken far away to a city in colder climes, ruled by an immortal Duke. There she is kept in a court, alone except for her female teachers. She is to be turned into a 'great lady' - one of many such in training funded by the Duke. The training is extensive and harsh and most of her teachers are petty and abusive. She learns cookery, sewing, dancing, riding, calligraphy etc but is kept ignorant of the current political system/ruler/situtation. Anything to do with her past is forbidden including her name. She is called simply "Girl". Her only respite from her strict schedule are her sessions with the inaccurately named Dancing Mistress. The style is slow and dream-like, with hints that Girl will not be so easily moulded.

This all seems very promising, if a bit mystifying. It didn't really make sense to me that anyone would spend so much money and time (approx. 10 years) excessively training a girl to be some kind of mistress/wife/courtesan - and not just one girl but many (although they are all kept equally isolated in their own ridiculously resource-intensive courts). The pacing is quite slow throughout this part of the book with very little action. I was hoping it would be worth it when we got to see Girl being kick-ass at political maneuvering and saving future such girls or something of that nature.

Then, in one night Girl escapes and everything changes.

*spoilers*

The pacing suddenly speeds up - The Dancing Mistress and her original captor engage her help to kill the unnaturally long-lived Duke of the city. This is all accomplished at the speed of light with minimal hassle or explanation, and then Girl (now known as Green) heads back to her original homeland. Once there she ends up at a temple and trains as an assassin and randomly gets into lesbian BDSM. And then the dancing mistress turns up again and they have sex in a jail cell [did I mention that the Dancing Mistress also happens to look like a furry Mouse-Human hybrid?] and then they go back to the city to save it from baddies who've set themselves up since the Duke's demise.

I kid you not.

By this point in the novel I'm feeling like I'm reading a really bad ripoff of Jacqueline Carey's 'Kushiel's Dart' (which I happen to like).

The weird sex wouldn't be a problem if (a)it felt like a realistic choice for the character (b) there was some build-up/discussion of the character's sexuality instead of jumping straight from virginal/naive girl to experienced lesbian/BDSMist or (c)it added to the story in some way. It didn't. It was just too weird and random and the character describes 'down there' as her sweetpocket. SWEETPOCKET. Worst euphemism ever. And given the first person narrative, there is no excuse for the reader not having the faintest clue why the main character is acting like this.

Aside from the random sex, by this point in the novel the plot was barely holding together. The random changes in focus create the impression that there is no overarching storyline, just a succession of ideas. I found I didn't really care what happened to Green and co. So I put the book down with only a few chapters to go. Possibly the ending makes up for everything else, but it would have to be the most awesome ending in the history of fantasy novels to make up for the journey - this is the opinion I'm going to need to hear in order to finish this book. 1 1/2 stars at the moment.

This story was my sanity saver on a work trip, and I highly recommend it. The story of Green and the world she inhabits is not necessarily a nice world. In fact, it is specifically a world where the strong oppress the weak. But Green is stronger than she appears and learns to exist and resist the world.

The language employed by Lake sings. Whether it is describing the texture of a fine silk, the blood washing down the drain from a vanquished enemy, or the breath and life of the cities Green visits. If you are someone who loves language and prose this is a great example of Lake's skill. Green is an exceptionally interesting character, and the reader inhabits her head. She is not necessarily the most believable character, but it is very hard to write a believable exceptional child character. Lake gives in to the same demands that Card did for Ender, and wrote a character who is wonderful to inhabit and makes sense, until you remember that she is fourteen or so. Even given the harsher maturation Green is forced to endure and her clear exceptional intelligence and physical grace, there are moments of clashes, but they are vastly overshadowed by the enjoyment of her character.

The other characters are not as strong Green, but to an extent that is because Green has very little empathy/awareness of those who are not her and she is the viewpoint character. The Dancing Mistress is the major exception, and there is a strong bond between the two characters. I recommend the companion short story A Water Matter for those that wish to explore the Dancing Mistress further.

The only major issue I have with Green is the feeling that it could have been slowed down. There are 3 major arcs in Green's story, and each could have potentially been its own novel which would have allowed for external character development and deeper delving into what is clearly an interesting world. I suspect this was a conscious choice on Lake's part to avoid the Fat Trilogy of Fantasy doom. Which I can respect, certainly, but I wanted to explore more of the underlying mythos of Copper Downs. I wanted to understand more about the Lily Goddess and character of that city. I wanted more information about the Hunt and catlike race to which the Dancing Mistress belonged.

It's not easy being Green. While still a small girl, she's sold by her impoverished, widowed father to a stranger from another country. There, in the great city of Copper Downs, in her glorified prison-home of The Pomegranate Court, she begins several years of stern tutelage at the hands (and other instruments of punishment) of various mistresses, each an expert in an aristocratic art, such as cooking, sewing, or dancing. But despite her cultivation, the nimble-bodied and -minded girl remains an alien tigress, rebelliously clinging to her native memories and customs and, above all, an irrepressible yearning for freedom. As Green grows in size and skill, she discovers she's being groomed as a concubine for the city's apparently immortal duke -- but also, by secretive allies, as something more. Soon enough, she becomes a living weapon who will forever change the countries on both sides of the sea; but will she wreak a storm of bloodshed or help the lands find peace?

As penned by the prolific and prodigiously talented Jay Lake, Green's autobiography is at once classic and distinctive. While remarkable for its world-building (which includes another humanoid race, steam-powered ships, and rudimentary pistols) and eloquent authenticity in Green's narrative voice, the novel can, at least in part, be considered as a definitive bildungsroman of an otherworldly, yet all-too-human, ninja. It includes elements of *The Name of the Wind*, *Assassin's Apprentice*, and *The Joy Luck Club* (while Green herself is a close cousin of Joss Whedon's warrior-girls, such as River Tam); but it still finds a niche of its own. Writing such as this certainly helps:

* I wish that the past were so much more open to me, as it is to the blue-robed men who sit atop the shattered heads of ancient idols in the Dockmarket at Copper Downs.

* The last of his pleasure fled as a bird before a storm. "It is not a lesson to be taken. Your circumstances and hers are as different as the stars are from the lamps of your house."
"Both light the night," [I replied.]

* "We each carry a measure of grace, and we each carry a measure of evil. There is never enough grace to banish the evil, and there is never enough evil to smother the grace."

In sum, Green is a compelling, gritty chronicle of one girl's struggle to make her mark on the world without shattering either it or herself. At times, I hoped for a touch more insight into the other humanoid race (the pardines), the magic system, and the exact nature of Green's ultimate opponent. Also, a couple of unlikely events felt more like plot-points than parts of a naturally unfolding tale; and I'd alert sensitive readers to the significant presence of (non-gratuitous) violence and (homo)sexual content. Nonetheless, Green could easily endure as a minor classic and is highly recommended for mature fantasy fans, especially those partial to exotic settings or thieves and assassins. I have no doubt this will be one of the best fantasy books I'll read this year. 4-1/2 dripping blades.

The story starts out strong. By the second third of the book it begins to wander aimlessly without direction until being brought to task in the third section for what feels like an underwhelming twist climax and conclusion. Add generous portion of juvenile male biased lesbian fantasy throughout the story and you have Green by Jay Lake.

Green starts so strong because it sets itself up for so much potential. The character building is incredible as Green feels full of purpose. She has been yanked from her homeland to be a high class sex slave to an immortal prince known as "the Duke". Her training is in all the arts of a noblewoman with hints of future assassination attempts. The process of the training itself is well described and stays fresh, interrupted by the Dancing Mistress with her questionable motives in aiding Green's quiet rebellion just as you feel it falling into routine.

Green's vague memory of a home she never knew and a father who sold her keeps her hungering for some kind of closure and direction. She hates thinking of herself as a tool to anyone and decides to champion for child rights as her own childhood was stolen from her.

As the conclusion of the first part of the novel draws to an end we see Green murder an instructor, flee the training complex, and dispatch the ruler of Copper Downs with a spell taught to her by the Dancing Mistress. Victory is hers.

Green sails home on a ship while paying her way with the cooking skills she was trained for. When she arrives Green finds her homeland a place of famine and hunger. Her father is a broken shell of a man who has lost his sanity and no longer understands the world around him, her father's Ox, Endurance (of which she has made into a symbol of patience) is a gaunt and old creature about to be butchered.

The story could have ended here, the ending is poignant even if it is a bit of a let down to all the build up. I am convinced this book would have done better in the reviews, however. This is a synopsis of the first third of the story, it's very powerful and with a bit more wrap-up I honestly would have rather just stopped reading here.

Unfortunately the story meanders on, now without any driving purpose. There is no longer any over-arching goal, Green has no direction and the story certainly feels meandering for a while. Green finds herself in a new city where she trains as a ruffian and then as an assassin. Again she has purpose, but it feels so removed from what happened in the first part it's almost a second story. Once she gets full swing as a Blade of the Lily Goddess she again loses focus and purpose and meanders for a while until the Dancing Mistress comes for some vague reason to drag her back to Copper Downs.

At this point we're getting the sense of the final climax which is to be a clash of supernatural forces and gods, but we've been meandering aimless and disjointed through Green's life and honestly it doesn't feel that important. Green is a fairly self-centered and stubborn individual, her motives for helping other people are flimsy as she is inconsistently picks fights at some times, and abides by evil at others. The narrative is also pretty self-centered, but her life doesn't really have much purpose.

Some interesting character interactions were had in the temple of pain, and under the streets when she encountered skinless, but overall this portion largely involves aimless wandering until Green stumbles across the plot again and is captured by the new god. The twist here felt strained, I'll leave the rest of the story to the reader, but overall the conclusion was underwhelming, the buildup at the first portion seemed under-utilized, and the middle section with the assassin training could have probably been entirely omitted with little difference to the plot.

As an exercise to new readers I challenge you to break the book up into parts, every time she loses her bells (excluding the first remembered time of her childhood), imagine if the story were a complete stand-alone.

Green is barely a toddler when her father sells her to Federo, a man who travels around looking for young female children on behalf of a faraway Duke. Taken halfway across the world, not even able to speak the local language, Green is imprisoned in the Pomegranate Court, where she endures a ruthless training program designed to mold her from an innocent, illiterate child into a sophisticated courtesan or concubine for the Duke's court. Various Mistresses teach her the skills a lady needs and punish her cruelly at the slightest misstep or shortcoming. It isn't until Green meets the Dancing Mistress, a catlike "pardine" who ends up teaching her much more than just dancing, that she begins to get a better understanding of the city surrounding the Pomegranate Court -- and her real purpose for being there...

As a novel, Green is a mixed bag. There's much to like here, and it isn't hard to see why some readers raved about this book. At the same time, some of its aspects may prevent you from truly enjoying all it has to offer. In the end, I couldn't get over Green's problems, and while I enjoyed some sections of the novel, in the end my opinion wasn't a positive one.

The real star of Green is its eponymous main character. Describing Green as a strong female protagonist doesn't even begin to do her justice. Put through an inhuman training program at such a young age that she ends up having a larger vocabulary in the new language than in her mother tongue, she never loses her focus or her courage for a moment, tackling each challenge head-on and mastering an impressive array of skills, from cooking to martial arts. Rather than being cowed when she meets the "Factor" who runs her training, she refuses to accept the name he bestows upon her ("Emerald"). In an act of rebellion, she takes to calling herself "Green" instead, because she doesn't know the word for "emerald" in her original language. Later in the novel, as her circumstances change, she continues to be a fascinating and deep character.

Another positive aspect of Green is Jay Lake's distinctive and gorgeous prose, something I've come to expect from this author after having read several of his short stories in the past. Take, for example, this paragraph, less than a page after a very young Green meets her first Mistress in the Pomegranate Court: "She was to be my first killing, at a time when I should already have known far better. I would have slain her that initial day, out of simple spiteful anger. It was the work of years to lacquer the nuances of a worthy, well-earned hatred over the fearful rage of the child I was."

Unfortunately a strong main character and lovely prose weren't enough to make this novel work for me. The first section, focusing on Green's training, is probably the best part of the book, but it ends with a plot twist I found highly improbable to say the least. Although there's an explanation that makes it slightly more plausible later on, it almost made me give up on the novel right then and there. Things don't improve much from that moment on. In a later part of the novel, when Green has entered an all-female religious order, the story features some lesbian sex scenes and BDSM-style whipping sessions. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this (on the contrary, as far as I'm concerned), but Jay Lake ruins it by using the truly cringe-worthy euphemism "sweetpocket" for a woman's genitalia and making references to intercourse between minors like Green and the older "Mothers."

Towards the end of the novel, Green improbably gets involved in the fight to save a city she should feel little or no loyalty towards at all. This leads to some unconvincing theological noodling and a rushed and improbable ending that left me frustrated more than anything. I truly enjoyed the first 150 pages or so of this novel, but after a strong start, Green completely fell apart, to the point where I strongly considered giving up on it several times. If not for Jay Lake's beautiful prose and some lingering curiosity about Green's fate, I probably would have ditched this novel long before the end.

Side note: Green is graced by a beautiful and striking cover illustration by Dan Dos Santos, but what may strike some people most about it is the skin color of the protagonist, who is clearly described as having "dark brown" skin in the novel but appears to be distinctly paler on the cover. Regardless, whether this is intentional "white-washing" or not, it's a gorgeous and memorable cover.

In the end, it's hard not to have mixed feelings about Green. Parts of the novel are excellent, while others are so poorly executed that it almost makes you forget about the good bits. Unfortunately, most of the better parts come early on, and the poor ones later, so by the time you reach the end of the novel you're left with a bad taste in your mouth. I had high hopes for this novel, based on Jay Lake's excellent short stories, but after turning the final page, I felt mostly disappointed that Green didn't deliver on its early promise.

This book feels almost as if it was a trilogy that was cut down to a single book by committee.

The world building is first-rate; the world feels alive and there is a sense of being in a real world, with different geography, cultures. and climates in different areas. The characters are generally well drawn, if mostly unsympathetic, and distinctive enough that there is little trouble keeping them straight in your mind.

It starts slowly, with the narrator being sold into slavery, and chronicling her training to become a courtesan or concubine in a great court, as well as her secret training to become an assassin. The courtyard she is raised in is beautifully detailed, as are the people there to train her, and her life is as well. She takes her chance and escapes. After she escapes the Pomegranate Court, the book seems to lose its focus, and its pacing goes wobbly.

The book drifts. This is where it feels that big sections of character and plot development got cut out, while leaving plenty of sex scenes in place, but without the missing material, it feels more voyeuristic than anything else. Then she is scooped up, given some quick training, and kills the man she was meant to kill. Then the book drifts some more, and then all is resolved.

It feels as if there was a lot more there; Lake clearly has a very clear and firm feeling for his world. He has a lot of big ideas scattered throughout the book as well. But it doesn't quite hang together.

When it's good, it is very good. Even when it isn't, it still feels as if a good story is lurking somewhere in the pages, or maybe on the floor somewhere, if you can only find it.

GREEN suffers from what too many fantasy books suffer from, first book syndrome.

It doesn't feel like a complete story. There's a fascinating world being built as a very young girl is taken from her home to be trained as a courtesan for the ruler of a distant land.

The main character's scared and stubborn. She's beaten. She learns. And she waits for her moment. Her moment to escape and go home.

Home is where she born, but she's not of that place. She's not of the city she grew up in either. She searches the world and fights for her life and the lives of others trying to find out who she is and where she belongs... if she belongs.

The journey's great, but it has no conclusion. The end of the book feels like the end of the beginning of the story, or the beginning of the middle. There was no conclusion. Very few of the questions were answered. There's probably a sequel coming, which I will pick up because I like the main character and I want to see where she goes from here and I want to find out if she figures out where she fits into her world.

So, four stars for the fascinating world and the enthralling main character. Minus half a star for telling a story that felt incomplete, like far too many fantasy novels out there.