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| *** Stars |
Right away I was appalled by this book. The tone is far too juvenile. The goodies are principled to a fault and there is a preternatural hero. There are villains. We are given made-for-TV deathbed scenes thrown up against an idealised Egyptian backdrop and basted with historical facts. I was getting eye strain from rolling my eyes.
Following the first 90 pages either his writing got marginally better or I settled into this style of storytelling. The 662 pages were not too long and I hand it to Smith, River God is a very entertaining adventure story. There is undoubtedly an art to writing an adventure story. While it may privilege spectacle over disinterested observation that is not a sound premise for saying this approach to writing is without merit. Or to put it plainly, being entertaining is a difficult thing to do so that deserves to be acknowledged also.
In my reading of River God the tale is kept interesting by (1) following a unique and cleverly designed narrator (2) sound world building with a diverse range of focuses and (3) a long second act that kills its darlings but doesn’t stack the odds so high that it becomes tedious and overcooked.
On the first point Smith’s narrator - ‘Taita’ the eunuch and devoted servant – is a genius and narcissist in equal parts. With his status of a slave we get to see the horrors of the age acted out on his body and his peers. With his servitude we get to develop empathy towards him and the main supporting characters. His narcissism allows for some gags and inside observations between the author and the reader and his genius leads to an array of situations which end up holding the whole story together. Actually, his extraordinary genius is comparable to the utility belt of Adam West-era Batman. Need a prophecy? Talk to Taita. Need some healing? Go see Taita. Need to escape from an impossible situation? I know just the guy, he can do it all.
To hold our interest through all this Smith produces a smorgasbord of situations and environments. On top of that he then provides us with many ways of observing that moment. Sometimes he will pull back the camera and we will be looking at the city or the desert, then he will contrast that image with well articulated actions like a sword fight or the expression on someone’s face changing. That will then be contrasted against a conversation overheard between characters and then developed further by a set piece where multiply characters are acting out there motivations in a romanticised setting. That level of detail could be followed by an internalised observation by Taita and then we will be sent across time and space to another idealized, panoramic setting.
This is top notch world building as it requires the writer to keep shifting his gaze and exercising his imagination on different types of detail. This is all taking place against the adventure plot and the spinning plates that go along with that brand of storytelling. This is an entertaining style of writing and might even be an explanation for his ordinary prose.
This approach to world building serves Smith best in the end of the second act of this story which is very, very long. The three acts of this book are built around Taita completing a prophecy for the queen. But because of his commitment to building the world of the Diasporas Egyptians it never gets boring. For hundreds of pages they are essentially roaming around in subplots. This should be a tiresome but instead it is just plain fun.
Yes, I actually like this book. I almost want to give it four stars. I enjoyed these characters and their grand adventure and while I will not read another Smith book for a long time I will definitely consider him again. I have enjoyed discovering that escapist fiction has its merits beyond the distraction value. I should thank Smith for that lesson as well as the more plain fact that I clearly like adventure for adventures sake.
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