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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good fanfic... bad pro fic, August 14, 2004
I heard about this novel, which apparently was first published as a fanfic on the 'net, through the Wraeththu fan grapevine. So I hunted it up on Amazon and ordered it despite the hefty cover price ($20 at the time I bought it; $30 if you buy it directly from Immanion Press). I read it on a four-hour train ride during a business trip; it was a short easy read. That irritated me, because when I pay $20 for a paperback I expect it to last longer than the express. But as I read the novel, I began to realize that the length wasn't the only disappointing thing about this book.
First a synopsis. The story is clearly aimed at existing Wraeththu fans rather than newbies, although a number of awkward infodumps have been woven in here and there to make it more newbie-friendly. "Breeding" takes place between books 2 and 3 of the original Wraeththu trilogy. In the land of the bloodthirsty warriors formerly known as the Varrs (now rechristened "the Parasiel" and trying to become a kinder, gentler tribe), an ugly experiment has taken place. The Varrs, in an effort to keep their armies strong, built breeding facilities where specially-trained, brainwashed hara were kept literally barefoot and pregnant for years. The story focuses on a breeder named Lisia who is thrust into a dire situation when the Varrs lose their war against the Gelaming, abandon the facility, and leave Lisia stuck with nearly two hundred Wraeththu children and no supplies. Lisia's a resourceful fellow, though, and with the aid of the older children he and they make do until a party of Gelaming soldiers discovers the facility at the start of the novel. The story then covers the next several months as the Gelaming and Parasiel try to unravel the history of the facility and decide the fate of the harlings and Lisia. Some of this unraveling occurs through the pages of Lisia's diary.
And that's pretty much it for the plot of the story. The central conflict is whether Lisia and the children will be permitted to remain in their home, or taken away by the Gelaming to be separated and "un-brainwashed" -- i.e., re-brainwashed to think like the Gelaming. There's very little actual tension surrounding this conflict. All the "good guys" want them to stay together; only one "bad guy" wants them separated, and his reasons aren't very plausible. So with the plot a foregone conclusion, the focus lies instead on the characters and how each deals with the changes.
The characters held my attention pretty well. I did grow to care what happened to Lisia, and I'm always glad to see Swift, my favorite character from Constantine's trilogy, though he was just a supporting character in this case. But although I tried my best to read this story as a kind of media tie-in for the Wraeththu universe (which was how I interpreted the cover design, which has a prominent "Wraeththu Mythos" logo above the title -- the start of a series?), I found it hard to accept this as a professional novel. It didn't have the same feel as, say, a Star Trek novel. It never stopped feeling like fanfiction. Specifically, I kept noticing certain flaws:
-Poor editing. There were more typos than I expect to see in a commercial work, and a lot of stylistic flaws (e.g., redundancies, overuse of the passive voice, unnecessarily long expositional paragraphs) which weakened the narrative and made the whole story feel bogged down/bloated in some places. This makes me wonder whether the story was even shorter in its original form, and the authors padded it with unnecessary filler to make it long enough to publish. The poor editing isn't the authors' fault, but it didn't help my overall impression.
-Shallowness. Aside from Lisia, none of the characters of the story were explored in any great depth. This made sense in the case of the "canonical" characters, since readers already know them (although I still would have liked to see their personalities explored further). But the original characters were also a bit on the flat side, and they're the ones who *needed* depth for the story to work. For example, one of the most interesting non-canon characters, a "chauvanistic" Gelaming commander who initially scorns Lisia as weak despite the obvious hardships Lisia has endured, suddenly becomes respectful at the end of the novel. What changes the commander's opinion? It's not clear. Assumably it has something to do with his more sympathetic lover talking sense into him, but although we witness several of these conversations, we never see the arguments sink in (in fact, they seem to make him dig in his heels even more). We don't get to share the moment of revelation when he suddenly begins to understand Lisia's strength, and his own limitations. He just starts acting nicer. It feels as though the authors either got tired of his grumping, or they recast his personality so the book would have a warm fuzzy ending.
-The "tell, don't show" style of the story. Many of the most (potentially) interesting events of the story occur off-camera and are discussed by the characters in passing, or described in the narrative after the fact. This is aside from the 40% or so of the story that takes place through Lisia's journal entries.
-I've already mentioned the lack of any real conflict or dramatic tension. There are few surprises in the plot (and those few are left unexplored for some reason -- sequel, maybe?); the characters don't grow or change much and when they do there's no real struggle involved; the ending is predictable practically from the beginning of the book. All this makes the story a little boring.
Now, I should be clear; these flaws weren't enough to stop me from reading the story. It kept me awake during a long train ride, which means it obviously wasn't *that* boring. I grew to like several of the original characters, and I wished they'd been given more depth because I wanted to get to know them better. I was glad to see familiar characters again, and of course the familiar world of Wraeththu. The story had little of the magnificent and artful prose, aesthetic eroticism, or power of Ms. Constantine's works, but to my own surprise that didn't bother me while I was reading -- possibly because my mind accepted the story as fanfic (i.e., authors playing around with familiar characters and concepts, but in their own way) and not true pastiche (i.e., a deliberate attempt to mimic the style and substance of another writer's work).
But BREEDING DISCONTENT isn't fanfic -- not anymore. Immanion Press is, I assume, a real honest-to-goodness publishing house. A real honest-to-goodness editor helped get the story ready for publication. And unlike fanfics which are available for free on the 'net or cheaply in homemade, xeroxed fanzines, this story exists as a high-quality trade paperback... with a premium price.
This last point was the clincher. How to judge this novel? Clearly the story is fanfiction; it was created in that spirit, and is best enjoyed in that spirit. But like it or not, a higher standard exists for commercial works than for fanfiction. What the average reader is willing to overlook in a free story becomes another matter altogether when that reader has to shell out a week's lunch money for the privilege. By the standards of fanfic this is a great story -- it passes the time nicely, it satisfies my urge to see familiar faces and places, it doesn't challenge my assumptions too much, it gives me a nice pleasant feeling at the end. But by the standards of commercial fiction it leaves me wanting in a major way. When I pay for a story I *want* to be challenged, and frightened, and amused, and entranced. I don't want a nice pleasant feeling at the end, I want to be weeping in anguish and/or joy. And in the case of a purposefully-derivative novel like this one, I want to feel at least a little of the same wonder and excitement that made me fall in love with the original series. Those are the standards by which Kevin Anderson's JEDI ACADEMY novels, Jean Lorrah's Sime/Gen novels (a series originally created by Jacqueline Lichtenberg), and all other "professional fanfics" are judged, so those are the standards I feel compelled to apply to BREEDING DISCONTENT.
So can I recommend it? If it were available on the 'net as a fanfic, definitely. As it is? No. This book costs as much as a hardcover written by an established author, and it's simply not good enough to justify that price.
So I'm giving my copy to my local library. Maybe others will do the same, and then you'll be able to read this fanfic in the usual way -- freely available to all, if better-packaged than most.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brave Wraeththu world, November 3, 2003
This is a fan-fiction novel, set in the Wraeththu world created by Storm Constantine, but written by two fans of hers.
I think this is a very good novel,expanding the history of the W. world with a very interesting and touching character, Lisia, only remaining hostling (wraeththu mother) in a "breeding farm"abandoned by the Varrs, a warlike Wraeththu tribe set in Megalithica, after their defeat by the hands of the superior Wraeththu tribe of the Gelaming. Their general Ashmael finds this abandoned facility, were slaves hostlings were conditioned to breed sons to the military, sons who would join the Varrish troops. Varrs were hermaphrodite, like all Wraeththu, but the Varrs imposed and coerced a strict separation of sex roles. Lisia, left alone to care for 182 wraeththu children, is fearful and resentful of the intervention of the Gelaming "Liberators", that he's ben taught to consider "the enemy". Lisia has the support of the new Governor of Megalithica, Lord Swift Parasiel, and of his hostling Cobweb (from Bewitchments of Love and Hate). There shall be a political confrontation between the Parsics (Varrs adopted new name)and the Gelaming over the future of Lisia and the children that will be resolved at Immanion, the Gelaming capital.
This book is notable for the character of Lisia,whose diary we read: her/his narration is tender and touching, yet chilling as he/she describes the exploitations, indoctrinations and lies of which he/she, her/his companions and the children (called harlings) are subjected from doctors and administrators of the breeding farm. At first naive and trusting, Lisia is led to discover the lies and the painfulness of his/her condition, her forced unfulfilled maternity. Some passages recalls the novel "Brave new World" of Aldous Huxhley for the chilling contrast between the blind trust of the indoctrinated and the unfeeling cruelty of the indoctrinators. Very good is also the depiction of Swift and Cobweb: their relathionship is examined in some very poignant scenes, where we feel both the undercurrent of tension between hostling and son and their reciprocal affection, when they should cope, in resolving Lisia's predicament,with unpleasant discoveries about their consort and father Terzian.
This is, in conclusion, a novel which stand comparison whit Storm Constantine's own novels, notably Bewitchments of Love and Hate and Wraiths of Will and Pleasure; Breeding Discontent shares whit those novels the uncanny similarities of the events depicted (set in an alternate reality), with events and issues of the very recent history of the world we live in. When I've been moved by Lisia's story, I was intrigued by those echoes between fantasy and reality
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great work, not only as fan-fic, but as a novel on its own, January 20, 2004
I can't add too much to the prior positive reviews, which summed up my feelings well on Breeding Discontent, except to say that it's a welcome addition to Storm's universe not only as a work of fan fiction, but taken in context with the overall Wraeththu mythos. The writing style is clean and engaging, the characters well-drawn, and the plot quite believable against the backdrop of Megalithica and its history. My only caveat with the book is that the editing and proofreading could have been somewhat better, but since Immanion Press is a fledgling independent press, I'm more than willing to overlook the occasional omitted word. As for the unhelpful negative review that was posted, I'll take his six hours and use them to re-read this book again. In short, Breeding Discontent is well-worth the effort for any Constantine or Wraeththu fan to pick up. Indeed, the quality of the writing and characterization has encouraged me to look into other works of Wraeththu fan-fiction, and to consider writing some of my own.
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by Storm Constantine
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