"Earth Made of Glass"
Oct. 27th, 2004 08:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowThis review is tough to write. Most of the things that I want to say involve details that people who haven't read the book might not want to know. I'd like this to be of some use to those people too, though. So, I'll say some general things - enough, perhaps, to give the flavor of the book - and put the spoilers under a cut.
Earth Made of Glass takes place about nine years after the end of A Million Open Doors. Throughout that time, Giraut Leones and his Caledonian-born wife Margaret have been working as agents of the Council of Humanity, helping to ease the transition of once-isolated colonies to full-fledged, springer-based participation in the galactic civilization. Their new assignment is to the planet Briand, which is home to two cultures. Neither culture is, so to speak, natural; each began as a reconstruction of a culture known only through archaeological research. One is based on the Tamil-speaking Cankam culture, which flourished in southern India between the first and fourth centuries AD; the poetry of that era, and criticism of that poetry, are the heart of Briand's Tamil Mandalam culture. The other, called Kintulum, is based on the Maya of the Classical era - roughly contemporary, as it happens, with the Cankam culture. It was not intended for the two cultures to be in contact - very little of Briand's surface is habitable, and they were assigned widely separated areas - but an unexpected natural disaster forced them into proximity. Ethnic hostility has simmered for some four hundred years, and the usual practices of the Council, which are quite disruptive, have been forgone, for fear of triggering full-scale conflict. The arrival of Giraut and Margaret prompts a liberal faction among the Maya to make a bid to establish a bridge between the two cultures and, ultimately, between both and the larger culture. The risk is great, if the effort fails, but it has to be made; there is little the two diplomats can do except observe, and perhaps nudge matters in a favorable direction. Matters develop with a terrible fatality to an excruciating climax.
And now the spoilers. This is an intricate work. It has something to say about the role, positive or negative, of art in culture; about prophets, and about reconciliation; about the importance of diversity, and the importance of uniformity. I'm not going to attempt more than a few comments on certain of these matters.
As before, we see everything through Giraut's eyes, and though he is, perhaps, wiser than he was in the first book, he is still disturbingly blind to his surroundings at times. In A Million Open Doors, it was clear that Giraut's perceptions had to be received with a grain of salt; it is less clear here, but it seems to me that salt is still needed. His failure to recognize the source of Margaret's distress, and in particular to notice the signs that she is having an affair with Kapilar, inclines me to regard all of his judgments with suspicion. What concerns me, in this respect, is his jaded belief that, for most people throughout the Thousand Cultures, life is essentially meaningless, and that all the cultural differences of humanity amount to a desperate attempt to feel that what one does has some kind of importance. It is hard to tell whether Barnes endorses this attitude, or whether Giraut should be seen as projecting his own ennui. Giraut is still not free from his own cultural conditioning; he looks back on his Occitanian upbringing with an ambiguous nostalgia - desiring those times back again, but rejecting them as well in the light of his off-planet experiences. At this point, I can't tell whether this book is transitional; it may be that the third book will show him reaching some kind of balance, and, perhaps, a real sense of purpose. Or, it may be that his realization of Shan's role in the whole Briand affair will push him towards an even more complete nihilism. We shall see.
The figure of Ix, the prophet, is equally ambiguous. Giraut himself recognizes that Ix is a canny politician, but that he is also something else - that Ix possesses the charisma of a true prophet. It is hard, if not impossible, to tell just what Ix's intentions were. That he intended to be martyred, as Giraut guesses, seems clear; but to what end? Did he think that his death would lead to the success of the ideals he espoused? Or, perhaps, could he have intended to trigger war, expecting the Maya to triumph? Was his affair with Auvaiyar truly an unexpected matter of the heart, or did he intend it, as part of his ultimate purpose (whatever that purpose was)? Did he, perhaps, intend her death? I really don't know. Perhaps a second, more attentive reading would answer these questions.
Next, there is the matter of Ambassador Kiel. Giraut regards him as an incompetent, fundamentally misreading the situation, interfering with those who were trying to mend matters, and doing no more than staving off the day of confrontation. But could the consequences of following his policies possibly have been worse than what actually happened? Without the intervention of the Office of Special Projects, in the persons of Giraut and Margaret, the faction from which Ix came might not have pushed matters as hard as they did; simply keeping the situation stable might have led to a slower but, perhaps, happier conclusion.
Affecting this question is the final matter: the imperative to unify all of humanity's cultures, so that when the aliens whose relics dot the domain of the Thousand Cultures return - if they do, if they even still exist - whatever culture they encounter will be truly representative of humanity. The point is well taken, that if the aliens were to first encounter either of the xenophobic cultures of Briand, the results could be disastrous, and disastrous on a more than planetary scale. That, perhaps, is the justification for forcing the issue there; it may be that, for the sake of the entire race, it would be safer for them to annihilate each other than to allow either to make first contact. Better still, if they could be reabsorbed into the galactic community, but I'm inclined to think that Shan did not see that as a real possibility; my disillusionment with him is even greater than Giraut's.
I'm going to have to reserve judgment; I don't think I'll be able to evaluate this book until I've read the third volume, and then reread the whole series from that vantage. The book is intriguing enough to make that effort seem worthwhile.
Earth Made of Glass takes place about nine years after the end of A Million Open Doors. Throughout that time, Giraut Leones and his Caledonian-born wife Margaret have been working as agents of the Council of Humanity, helping to ease the transition of once-isolated colonies to full-fledged, springer-based participation in the galactic civilization. Their new assignment is to the planet Briand, which is home to two cultures. Neither culture is, so to speak, natural; each began as a reconstruction of a culture known only through archaeological research. One is based on the Tamil-speaking Cankam culture, which flourished in southern India between the first and fourth centuries AD; the poetry of that era, and criticism of that poetry, are the heart of Briand's Tamil Mandalam culture. The other, called Kintulum, is based on the Maya of the Classical era - roughly contemporary, as it happens, with the Cankam culture. It was not intended for the two cultures to be in contact - very little of Briand's surface is habitable, and they were assigned widely separated areas - but an unexpected natural disaster forced them into proximity. Ethnic hostility has simmered for some four hundred years, and the usual practices of the Council, which are quite disruptive, have been forgone, for fear of triggering full-scale conflict. The arrival of Giraut and Margaret prompts a liberal faction among the Maya to make a bid to establish a bridge between the two cultures and, ultimately, between both and the larger culture. The risk is great, if the effort fails, but it has to be made; there is little the two diplomats can do except observe, and perhaps nudge matters in a favorable direction. Matters develop with a terrible fatality to an excruciating climax.
And now the spoilers. This is an intricate work. It has something to say about the role, positive or negative, of art in culture; about prophets, and about reconciliation; about the importance of diversity, and the importance of uniformity. I'm not going to attempt more than a few comments on certain of these matters.
As before, we see everything through Giraut's eyes, and though he is, perhaps, wiser than he was in the first book, he is still disturbingly blind to his surroundings at times. In A Million Open Doors, it was clear that Giraut's perceptions had to be received with a grain of salt; it is less clear here, but it seems to me that salt is still needed. His failure to recognize the source of Margaret's distress, and in particular to notice the signs that she is having an affair with Kapilar, inclines me to regard all of his judgments with suspicion. What concerns me, in this respect, is his jaded belief that, for most people throughout the Thousand Cultures, life is essentially meaningless, and that all the cultural differences of humanity amount to a desperate attempt to feel that what one does has some kind of importance. It is hard to tell whether Barnes endorses this attitude, or whether Giraut should be seen as projecting his own ennui. Giraut is still not free from his own cultural conditioning; he looks back on his Occitanian upbringing with an ambiguous nostalgia - desiring those times back again, but rejecting them as well in the light of his off-planet experiences. At this point, I can't tell whether this book is transitional; it may be that the third book will show him reaching some kind of balance, and, perhaps, a real sense of purpose. Or, it may be that his realization of Shan's role in the whole Briand affair will push him towards an even more complete nihilism. We shall see.
The figure of Ix, the prophet, is equally ambiguous. Giraut himself recognizes that Ix is a canny politician, but that he is also something else - that Ix possesses the charisma of a true prophet. It is hard, if not impossible, to tell just what Ix's intentions were. That he intended to be martyred, as Giraut guesses, seems clear; but to what end? Did he think that his death would lead to the success of the ideals he espoused? Or, perhaps, could he have intended to trigger war, expecting the Maya to triumph? Was his affair with Auvaiyar truly an unexpected matter of the heart, or did he intend it, as part of his ultimate purpose (whatever that purpose was)? Did he, perhaps, intend her death? I really don't know. Perhaps a second, more attentive reading would answer these questions.
Next, there is the matter of Ambassador Kiel. Giraut regards him as an incompetent, fundamentally misreading the situation, interfering with those who were trying to mend matters, and doing no more than staving off the day of confrontation. But could the consequences of following his policies possibly have been worse than what actually happened? Without the intervention of the Office of Special Projects, in the persons of Giraut and Margaret, the faction from which Ix came might not have pushed matters as hard as they did; simply keeping the situation stable might have led to a slower but, perhaps, happier conclusion.
Affecting this question is the final matter: the imperative to unify all of humanity's cultures, so that when the aliens whose relics dot the domain of the Thousand Cultures return - if they do, if they even still exist - whatever culture they encounter will be truly representative of humanity. The point is well taken, that if the aliens were to first encounter either of the xenophobic cultures of Briand, the results could be disastrous, and disastrous on a more than planetary scale. That, perhaps, is the justification for forcing the issue there; it may be that, for the sake of the entire race, it would be safer for them to annihilate each other than to allow either to make first contact. Better still, if they could be reabsorbed into the galactic community, but I'm inclined to think that Shan did not see that as a real possibility; my disillusionment with him is even greater than Giraut's.
I'm going to have to reserve judgment; I don't think I'll be able to evaluate this book until I've read the third volume, and then reread the whole series from that vantage. The book is intriguing enough to make that effort seem worthwhile.
