jethrien

Title: Saratoga
Author: David Garland
Genre: Historical fiction (Revolutionary War)
Thingummies: 1.5

Synopsis: Captain Jamie Skoyles is an officer in the British army, perhaps not the best thing to be in the American colonies in May 1777. He is perfect in every way, which is probably why he begins to doubt his superior officers as they make one bumbling mistake after another despite his near-clairvoyant advice. He's too honorable to pursue the woman he loves despite the fact that he's totally sleeping with another woman he let follow him down from Canada, and his love's fiance is a moustache-twirling villain. Since he wins at everything he does, is there really much suspense in this series over whether he'll eventually join the rebels?

Thoughts: Well, the plot is basically coherent and the characters behave in ways consistent with their established characterization, so it's a step above poor Majician/51. But other than that, this book is abysmal.

Saratoga is a poster child for two important lessons most writers get pounded into their heads: 1) Show, don't tell, and 2) Don't write frickin' Marty Stus.

The novel follows the British army down from Canada, from the capture of Fort Ticonderoga to the battle of Saratoga. It's not a bad history lesson, actually. (The author is a historian.) There are loads of exciting, interesting things that happen, from the British pulling guns to the top of the nearly-unclimbable Mount Defiance in a feat of heroic engineering to the panicked nighttime evacuation of Fort Ticonderoga to the complete rout of the British forces at Saratoga. It's a shame the author chooses to describe each event in a handful of dry paragraphs that recap the action with very little commentary instead of actually spending time immersing the reader in the action. I've read straight histories that had more suspense and excitement. Instead, he spends endless amounts of time on arguments between the commanders and his protagonist over what they should do, in which the protagonist repeatedly states the author's opinion on what should have been done and the commander bullheadedly ignores him.

(These arguments, by the way, do not read remotely like a real conversation. Instead, each opponent states his opinion, waits for the other person to state his opinion, reiterates his opinion in slightly different words, waits for the other person to reiterate his opinion in slightly different words, and repeats for another half page. At no point does anyone ever change an opinion. At no point does Skoyles ever make a bad recommendation. It's like no one can hear anyone else talk at all, and each person just tries to say the same thing in as many different words as possible.)

You could almost forgive the complete destruction of any of the natural tension inherent in the historic framework, if Garland could only avoid doing it to his characters' personal subplots as well. He loves to end sections on a dramatic sentence or reveal. "You!" "It's an ambush!" "And there stood the only person who could have recognized him." He'll then cut to a different character doing something unrelated and significantly less interesting. By the time he comes back, the exciting part is over! The big argument you've been waiting for, the actual fighting off an ambush, the tension of wondering if someone is about to be betrayed, all of it gets skipped. Instead, you'll find the character doing something innocuous, there will be one or two lines about how hurt her feelings are after the fight or that now they're prisoners and half of them are wounded or dead, or how glad he is that his friend didn't betray him back there. It's like Garland is actively avoiding anything that might actually be exciting or make the reader care.

Not that you care anyway. You know nothing bad will actually happen to Skoyles. He's the best person ever, you see. He was promoted from the ranks to an officership instead of buying his commission like everyone else. He's the very best scout ever, and the generals send him on all the most important missions. He is a fantastic shot and a masterful horseman. He's a known card sharp and everyone jokes about how much money he's won. His men adore him, unlike all the other officers. He's the best cricket player in the army and effortlessly makes heroic catch after catch. He's such an amazing swordsman that he gives other officers lessons. When they don't want to spar against him anymore because he's so good, he offers them the handicap of him using his left hand instead of his right--only to reveal that he's just as good with his left hand! (I would have forgiven the shameless Princess Bride ripoff if it had been a major plot point later that his ability to use his off hand allows him to surprise someone and save the day, but no. It's just another way of the author pointing out how extraordinarily competent and lucky his protagonist is.) He's so irresistable to women that one follows him down from Canada for the privilege of warming his bed, despite the fact that he's falling in love with another one. He feels a bit bad about this, but not for very long.

His antagonist is a fellow officer who's very well respected but not quite as competent as the heroic Skoyles. You know he's a baddie because in basically the first chapter he has a man whipped for cursing while drunk because the poor man had lost his wife and daughter to yellow fever. And the baddie talks about how much he likes whipping people. So you really shouldn't be surprised when he ungratefully hires men to try to beat up Skoyles after Skoyles saves his life, and later tries to rape his fiancee when she wants to leave him. Cackle cackle, moustache twirl. There isn't a single redeemable bone in his body, nor a trace of a shade of gray.

The baddie gets off relatively well, though. You can totally tell the historian's British. The British officers are well-meaning but somewhat incompetent and the British enlisted are lowerclass scum but still loveable bumpkins. The American officers are, for the most part, cowardly buffoons while their men are dishonorable, disorderly rapists. But you know, at least they're white. The Indians are portrayed, to a man, as back-stabbing, thieving, childishly naive, cruel, murderous, incomprehensible animals who exist solely to kill and destroy things in the most gruesome way possible. They're basically Reavers on leashes. The one Indian who actually gets a name earns Skoyles' trust (by killing the people he's aimed at) promptly bashes him on the head and steals his telescope. (Which of course, the Indians think is magic and stare at like slack-jawed yokel children.) It's ok, though, because another white dude totally shoots him in the face without provocation (not knowing that the Indian had done anything wrong). Yay! We all know the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

It's ghastly. Amazingly so. It's like reading something written from the time period. There is not a single hint at any point that the author realizes that these are actually people who probably have motives beyond scalp-rape-pillage. For the first half of the book, I waited for him to have the Indians do something that would redeem them, prove to Skoyles that he was looking at them wrong. Nope. The Indians set shit on fire for no reason and give away the army's position, and then rape some loyalists.

In conclusion--my God, this was a bad book. And they let him write a sequel.