Continuing a discussion about Donaldsons Gap Books

[demangler]

Feb 17, 2011 12:37:57 GMT -5 oldalchemist said:

Donaldson really excels at making every last character unlikeable. The Gap is a great series about wonderfully horrible people.

I get you. Wonderfully horrible applies to lots of stuff in those books. But every last character unlikeable?
I cannot help but answer this - I have to speak in the defense of some of my favourite characters.
Here we go.....
WARNING POSSIBLE SPOILERS

Hashi Lebwohl has to be the most obviously likable character in the books, for his honesty, cleverness, skill and humour. Not to mention his patience with the bumbling incompetence of just about everyone around him, and his ability to put the views of his enormous and usually trustworthy intellect to one side to trust that someone like Warden Dios might just be doing the right thing.
Min Donner is potentially the most unlikable, but she actually does have loyalty and good will for her people, and is absolutely selfless in protecting them.
Nick Succourso is the character that perhaps we are supposed to hate, but he is such a victim of his circumstances that you cannot help but feel sorry for him.
Angus Thermopyle is just a trapped animal - it is difficult to feel sorry for him because of his strength, and he has so little control over anything in the book, all he does is motivated not by evil, but by trying to avoid the consequences of the evil he has experienced. His early failures emphasise the scale of the problem and the hoplessness of his struggle - yet does he succeed in the end? Donaldson portrays this splendidly. Angus is the hero of the book.
Warden Dios is the overall plot driver - everything that happens in the book is to further his goal of saving humanity - I could go on about this, but he is perhaps the most purely good, from a moral point of vew, person in the book. What is not to like?
Holt Fastner - Evil, without a doubt. But I like him.
Morn Hyland - Easy not to like her - a rich kid from privileged background finds herself in a bad situation outside her experience, she is central to some of the point of views early on which gives us some empathy for her, but we soon see how much more heroically others deal with their horrors that we end up thinking that she is just a manipulative victim.
Mikka Vasaczk - Does so much to help Morn and her brother, utterly selfless - she even gives Nick much more slack than he deserves because of her own weakness perhaps but also because she sees who he could be if he could get over his issues. The direction she takes in some crises situations just inspires admiration.
Vector Shaheed - Likable. Full stop. His job in the book is to be likable and a friend to the friendless, never mind that he ultimately produces the solution to humanities Amnion problems.
Sorus Chatelain - Is evil. Who could like her? Almost every other character in the book has their bad qualities thrown into a context where we can relate to them and understand them - even forgive them, but not her.
Orn Vorbuld - He is not even a character really, but you can't like him. I suppose there is so little to him, and what he has is just destructive and selfish, that disliking him is automatic.

I am going to leave it there as I am just getting started.
I must say I am surprised at how well I remember the book. Donaldson certainly did a great job of creating memorable characters, love them or hate them.
dM


<edit> I forgot Godsen Frik - He is definitely unlikable. Weak, dishonest, stupid, he is Fasners puppet but he thinks he is in some kind of control. His willingness to manipulate othersand total selfishness mean that instead of empathizing with his situation you end up thinking he deserves it. <edit>

[Kelvin Zero]

I guess I'll have to look this series up. Since the local Borders is closing maybe I can get them on sale.

[oldalchemist]

OK, it's been a long time since I read the Gap series. Maybe I have to dig it off of my shelves and go back through it between bouts with Star Traders.

Right, Spoiler Alert:

I remember really rooting for Angus and then remembering that he rapes and mind-rapes Morn in the first book. Very par-for-the-course with Donaldson. He grinds your gears, which is one excellent reason to keep reading his stuff.

[demangler]

Yeah, practically all the characters in the book do terrible things. Sometimes the small and petty bad things done through simple selfishness and lack of concern for others seem worse that the great and terrible things done while the perpetrator is engaged in a titanic struggle with some kind of internal evil.
We have a culture in the west, and now that I think about it, possibly any culture with strong roots in the Abrahamic religions and also probably Platonism, of viewing people as being 'Little Gods' - totally responsible for everything that they do - little divinities doing everything through choice and some kind of power to act independently of the world. To the extent that they fail to be 'divine' in this way is considered a 'sin'.
This view of course to some degree is necessary in order to support society's constructs like justice and so-on (something Donladson throws into context with his Amnion - who have a completely different society), but there seems to be a growing understanding now, through psychology and so on, that the reality is vastly different. A less naive and more realistic approach is needed if we are to control our more destructive internal inheritance.
The more I think about this the more I think that Donaldson was making some kind of commentary on this. There is just so much in those books that throws the conflict of power and helplessness, cowardice and heroism, 'good' and 'evil' into a wider context than that which we normally shoehorn it into.
Anyway, perhaps this is not the place for me to launch into a wall of text. Once I get started thinking......
I will read those books again myself.
;D

[Cory Trese]

I like spaceships!

[demangler]

Feb 19, 2011 13:40:20 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

I like spaceships!

For real.