I don't usually read anything in a series out of order. I had a bad experience with that in the Nineties with L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth series. (Shut up. I was twelve.) I started at book six, not realizing it was book six and then had to start over and then re-read the sixth one. It made much more sense the second time. But, I figured I'd pick up Jon Del Arroz's latest novella anyway. I had hear it worked well as a standalone and it does. I still do plan on going back to pick upFor Steam and Country but Knight Training worked just fine without it. I had a good time.
Our hero is a young apprentice Knight named James. (I approve. I find all guys named James to be both awesome and humble. Yes, that is my name. What does that have to do with anything?) He has a problem: He's good at what he does and he has the favor of the royal family. Why is that a problem? Because the other apprentices hate him. They basically see him as a teacher's pet. His life is hell.
I found myself identifying with this kid. I was the guy in high school whose teacher gave him a pet name (I spent my freshman year answering to “Scribble” in my biology class. Yes, my handwriting is that bad.) and check tests. A lot of people hated me as well. The difference is that this James can't just go home at the end of the day to get away from the crap. He spends his nights in a dorm with the people who are tormenting him. I couldn't help but to feel bad for the kid.
The fact remains that this not some “Woe is me. My life sucks. I'm being bullied.” story. James's solution to being tormented is to work harder and make his fellow apprentices eat their words. And, put bluntly, he really is that good. His instructors love him because of his talent and work ethic. He puts in the time. A competition is announced. It's just when that happens that James stumbles onto something...
I don't want to give too much away here, so I won't say what it is or where it leads, but James ends up doing even more than I expected him to when I picked this Knight Training up. I really like this kid. He's the kind of person I wish I had been at his age. He has been through a lot but he keeps persevering. What didn't kill him really did make him stronger. James is a real dynamo.
James and friends do not have it as bad as the characters in a George R.R. Martin novel, but they don't have it easy either. In a way, James himself almost has a Harry Dresden feeling to him. Either that, or he's a Timex watch. Regardless of how you view it, he takes a beating and keeps on fighting. This kid can absorb more punishment than a quarterback for the Detroit Lions. If he were any tougher, he'd be your mama's pot roast. The lost thing I saw get beaten like that was my...
Uhh...
Nevermind.
The thing is, he's not that super competent, Honor Harrington type, ominpotently awesome dynamo that some other characters are. He's willing. He's able. He wants to do what he needs to do. The problem is that James is an apprentice. He knows that he doesn't know everything but that knowledge, in and of itself, is not enough to save him. He has to get some help from his friends sometimes and is not always smart enough to seek it. There is a bit of Harry Potter in this kid and it's not because he has a lightning shaped scar or gets treated like The Chosen One. No, James wants to do it all but can't always get 'er done. The thing is, he never stops trying.
I hear a lot of people complain about the boarding school cliché in Young Adult literature but it works here. Knight Training starts at the knight training academy. James states (the book is in first person) early on that he has the goal of becoming the youngest Journeyman knight in history. I find myself wondering if that's because of flat out ambition or if he's just trying to escape all of the assholes. It may actually be a little bit of both. Either way, the reason the boarding school has become so common in these types of stories is because they provide a big enough place to tell a story and a place small enough to keep things from getting out of control, especially in a novella where the author may not have room to introduce an entire planet full of people.
You know, I keep telling myself I'm going to read more Steampunk and then not doing it. That's sad because this really is a great genre and I am looking forward to reading more Steampunk by Jon Del Arroz soon. I love this setting and others like it. I confess to being more of a fan of the “electronic stuff hasn't been invented yet” thing than the “all the electronics have failed” gimmick but the former is what Del Arroz uses here. It really does work. Because electronics haven't been invented yet, Knight Training is able to focus on the future instead of constantly pining for a lost past.
Del Arroz also avoids the trap that some Steampunk works fall into. Any good story focuses on the people in it. Don't get me wrong. Any Steampunk novel needs to have Steampunk tech in it, but the author needs to keep in mind that the tech is part of the setting and not the whole story. The 1999 version of Wild Wild West fell into this trap, but Knight Training didn't. You might read about horseless carriages in the background or a special gun but the tech is kept in its place. Kudos to him for getting the balance right.
Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Wooden Swords.
Knight Training
Jon Del Arroz
Superversive Press, 2018
Knight Training is available for purchase at the following link:
Showing posts with label For Steam and Country. Show all posts
Showing posts with label For Steam and Country. Show all posts
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Thursday, June 15, 2017
Writing From a Different Perspective - Guest Post by Jon Del Arroz
A question I get asked a lot from
reviewers of For Steam And Country is: Is it weird to write from a
first person perspective of a sixteen year old girl?
The answer is yes. It took me several
passes to actually dial in what Zaira Von Monocle’s perspective
would be, and I had to work extremely hard to get her to the point
where she’s the fun character in For Steam And Country that my
advance readers tell me they love.
I’m going to give a little peek
behind the curtain as to my learning as a writer, and my process as I
came up with all of this, in hopes that it is both interesting to
readers, and potentially helpful to newer writers.
When I first conceived the novel, I
knew that I wanted to write a Steampunk fantasy, to create a fantasy
world of kingdoms and airships, alchemy and swashbuckling, high
adventure that most books in the steampunk genre had shied away from.
Most books in the genre either went going something darker and
grittier, or dipping further into romance. I also wanted to make it
somewhat YA (I consider the finished product a tweener between YA and
regular fantasy, though it’s perfectly suitable for all ages),
which I thought would allow me to take a lighter tone.
YA fantasy novels take the first person
perspective more often than not, allowing for a real sense of feeling
like you’re inside the head of the protagonist, or at the very
least sitting across from them while you take high tea. A recent
trend has them in first person present, which makes people really
feel in the action, but I didn’t want to go that far, as it’s
very few and far between I read a book in the present tense that
doesn’t annoy me.
I actually had this plan to write in
the first person perspective from the onset, getting to worldbuilding
and character creating. In keeping with YA, I wanted to keep the
protagonist young, and also to the market, having a female
perspective seemed the way to go. I looked at the idea and thought,
“wow, do I really want to write a 16 year old girl in the first
person?” It sounded pretty daunting, and like it required a lot of
work to keep realistic. Once I looked at the job from that
perspective, I viewed it as a writing challenge to myself.
Very little gets me motivated like a
challenge, competition, even if it’s something as small as posing
the question to myself if I could pull something off. In fact, a lot
of my best work comes out of such challenges. It sounds silly, but in
writing, self-motivation is about the most important skill you can
learn. It’s hard to go through scenes, especially some of the
heavier ones, and it’s much harder to edit. If you have other goals
that trick yourself into feeling like a game, then you’ll more
often than not breeze through something that seemed at first like a
chore.
And this turned out hard to do, not in
the sense of it took me a long time to write--I actually had so much
fun with this world and with these characters that I breezed through
my first draft-- but when I went through it the first time, the
character didn’t come across as a good protagonist at all.
In my figuring this out, I observed
teenagers, and tried to remember what it was like to be a teenager
myself. Frankly, I found teenagers to be a bit rambunctious, acting
without thinking, and extremely low in self-confidence (for the most
part, there’s always exceptions). And I wrote my character as such.
In my early submissions drafts that I sent out to agents and
editors, the character whined a LOT. She was combative, teasing her
love interest a bit too hard. Honestly, it felt very realistic to me
from what I’ve seen of a lot of teenagers, but those behaviors
grate on a reader if they’re too pronounced, and I found that many
of the editors didn’t connect with the character because of that.
I later learned the value of connection
over realism in writing, something I wish I would have learned a lot
easier and sooner. Readers want to see some flaws, some mistakes, but
they don’t want that to be overwhelming, don’t want to find a
person annoying. And in a heroic adventure, some of those life quirks
need to be toned down rather than be presented as too realistic.
I let the book sit for awhile, wrote
Star Realms: Rescue Run, and released that to quite a bit of
fanfare. When I looked at this novel again, I saw it was close, but I
needed to push that perspective character to the next level. I
thought of who this character was, and how it would have shaped her
so she’s different than just a normal teenager. Zaira’s lived
mostly abandoned, on her own except when the neighbors checked in on
her. She’s had to work for herself, farm for herself, wash her own
clothes, cook her own meals for a couple of years now. That’s a
pretty hard life to have 14-16, and one that requires a lot of work.
As such, she’d be tougher. The whining had to go. She’d also have
a very strong sense that she could do anything herself, including
going in and doing things like flying an airship (minor spoiler, but
I think you probably figured out that airship flying occurs by this
point!). That has negative effects like stubbornness, which provide
for some good conflict that a reader can relate to more. With those
major facets of her personality in mind, I rewrote the book. And this
time, everything clicked.
Even though there were heavy rewrites,
I flew through this last pass because I made a character that was
compelling and fun for me. And that’s what it takes to make
something compelling and fun for a reader.
Authors often strive too hard for
realism, to the point where it makes a lot of works bland and boring.
Something that we can’t connect with because we’re not wishing we
were in that person’s movie. And that’s what the author has to
create. We as readers want people to rise up and be heroes, to meet
challenges, to exceed expectations. That’s why we escape into
fantasy in the first place. Realizing that changed my world, making
Zaira Von Monocle into the farm girl-turned-hero that she ended up
being in For Steam And Country. She’s still got her inexperience,
but her wide-eyed sense of wonder and being willing to take on big
challenges makes her a fun protagonist. I hope you enjoy reading
about her as much as I enjoyed writing her.
Jon
Del Arroz is the author of the Alliance Award nominated and top-10
Amazon bestselling Space Opera, "Star Realms: Rescue Run."
His second novel, "For
Steam And Country,"
is just out. He hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, is a guest
contributor to the Hugo Award-nominated Castalia House blog, and
regularly posts to http://delarroz.com. Twitter: @jondelarroz Gab.ai:
@otomo
Amazon: http://bit.ly/forsteamandcountry
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