Liminal Worlds

Trine Erotic, by Alice Andrews (ViviSphere Publishing, 2002)

Trine Erotic is not the easiest book to describe or summarize, but here’s my attempt: a romantic, philosophical novel with a postmodern narrative structure that explores the dialectic between biology and free will. To what extent are our feelings, actions and relationships determined by our genes and by evolutionary forces?

While Trine Erotic is certainly an intellectual and philosophical novel, it is also down to earth and readable. The deeper issues are explored through the experiences of well-rounded characters. The technique of stories within stories has become a kind of postmodern genre of its own. Trine Erotic, however, uses this style in a way that is quite original -to explore the role of evolution and biology in human existence, more specifically in human romantic and sexual behavior.

If someone were to write a novel with the sole purpose of trying to prove an argument such as “biology is destiny,” it would, I fear, be quite one dimensional, even dull. Fortunately, Alice Andrews leaves the question of how much biology determines our actions open-ended. More importantly, the characters in this book are are more than abstract symbols to prove a point; they are real people who have interesting thoughts, conversations and relationships.

As the title suggests, the book consists of three sections, Love Stories, Siren’s Song and Third Force. The postmodern structure comes in as we discover that each section turns out to be about the author who penned the previous one. As you might expect with such a style, there are close parallels between the characters in each section.

The characters in Trine Erotic struggle with issues such as love, attraction, fidelity, jealousy and abandonment. One of the central issues is the tendency of some women to be drawn to “alpha” type males who are attractive and charismatic but often unreliable and unwilling to commit to one woman. This is not an unfamiliar theme, but in this novel it is scrutinized from a blatantly biological (evolutionary) perspective.

The whole biology vs. free will problem comes to a head in an interesting manner in the final section. Here, Helen, who turns out to be the author of all the previous narratives, meets Ed, who is not only an attractive alpha male, but the head of a spiritual community based on the teachings of someone named Guerttiev, who seems to be a thinly disguised stand in for Gurdjieff, the esoteric philosopher who taught that “the Work” of ones life should be to authentic and “wake up.”

This esoteric view of spiritual evolution differs fundamentally from the biological kind. The aim of the mystic or magus is to transcend mere physical existence and take conscious control of the evolutionary process. Whether or not this is possible is the kind of question that is raised but not definitively answered in Trine Erotic.

As someone who is quite ambivalent about evolution and science, I did not at all mind the lack of any definite conclusions in this novel. I prefers books that make me think about such issues rather than supply oversimplified and pat answers. Trine Erotic can be read either as a fascinating study of some basic philosophical issues, or as a compelling novel about modern relationships -or both.

Note: most of my book and film reviews are posted on Amazon.com. I’m gradually moving towards posting them on my blog, with links to the Amazon product pages. You can see my Amazon reviews here.

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belief systems, book review

Seduced by Moonlight (Meredith Gentry, Book 3) (Mass Market Paperback)
by Laurell K. Hamilton

Seduced by Moonlight (Meredith Gentry, Book 3) is Book 3 of a series; I have not read the first two, so I started out at a disadvantage. Another disclaimer I should probably make is that this book is probably aimed mainly at female readers, so my criticisms can be taken with these points in mind. Still, I believe that a good book or film should not be gender or age (unless it’s a children’s book) specific.

Reading the jacket of the audiobook version, I thought this was going to be an urban fantasy about the sidhe (faeries) and humans sharing the modern world. Instead, Seduced By Moonlight reads more like a romance novel, or perhaps even soft core porn than fantasy. The protagonist, Meredith Gentry, is a half sidhe, half human who must negotiate the two worlds. The book takes place in a kind of parallel world where the existence of the sidhe is openly and casually acknowledged by human society. The faeries in this world, for example, must constantly worry what the media will say about them.

There is a lot of exposition, attempting to keep new readers up to speed, but this makes the first half of the book very heavy and clunky. The plot is based on Merdith’s attempt to get pregnant, which will make her eligible to become queen of the unseelie faery court. The unseelie court are the “dark” faeries, while the seelie court are the “light.” This is part of traditional faerie lore, not an invention of Hamilton’s. This book also has goblins, who are sort of fringe dwellers of the unseelie court.

For a fantasy novel, not all that much happens. There are a couple of fights and a lot of sex. The story line, of course, where the main goal is for Meredith to get pregnant, sets up the perfect excuse for her life to be an ongoing orgy. The number of sexual encounters Meredith has in a short period of time makes this book more unintentionally funny than erotic.

Another problem with this book is that there is too much dialog relative to the action. Even the many sex scenes are so bogged down with such excruciating analysis regarding every thought, impulse and implication of every encounter that the eroticism is diluted (of course, if this weren’t the case, what would remain would be little more than pornography).

There are also a couple of scenes of rather graphic violence. Again, these are also so full of introspection and talk that it blunts the effect of the action. There is also a lot of exposition and description of many tedious laws and customs. Of course, fantasy, as well as traditional fairy tales, must have their rules of conduct, but these are best organically and subtly inserted into the story; here the reader is bludgeoned with them page after page. If we were to go by Hamilton’s description, visiting the world of faerie would be akin to being in a Kafkaesque government bureaucracy, where the slightest action requires endless paperwork and an intricate knowledge of arcane laws and regulations.

I regret having to write such a critical review of a genre of which I’m usually fond and forgiving of minor flaws. But I feel that this material does not do justice to the rich traditions from which it gathers its elements. Even the word “sidhe” (which is the Gaelic word for faery, and pronounced like the English word “she”) is rendered silly in this book. There are numerous sentences that end up sounding like word play, such as “he is sidhe….she is not sidhe, etc. This may seem like a minor quibble (and it’s something you’d be less likely to notice if you read the print version rather than listening to the audiobook as I did), but to me it illustrates the author’s carelessness with language.

I’m sure some readers enjoy Hamilton’s version of the faerie worlds, or there would not already be a third volume in this series. I cannot, however, recommend it to readers looking for a typical fantasy or even urban fantasy.

book review