So, my main complaint about The Sharing Knife 3: Passage (the third book in a four-book series) is that the plot actually begins about three-quarters of the way through the book. And, as I said last time, and lots of other times, Lois McMaster Bujold is extraordinary at plotting. So when I whinge about one of her books being plotless, it’s because in my unreasonable expectation, I feel as if a plotlight book from Ms. Bujold is actually depriving me of a plotheavy book by Ms. Bujold. And a plotlight series of four books feels like it’s actually depriving me of four plotheavy books—say, two space operas, a fantasy epic and a farce.
Which, no, isn’t how it works. If she didn’t write these Sharing Knife books, she would write something else that she wants to write, or maybe not write anything at all. Or write something that I actively dislike. And I like these books, moderately well; I enjoy spending time with the characters, and I enjoy looking at the scenery.
This also, by the way, is an interesting special case of Author Points. If Ms. Bujold had not already racked up a truly awesome score of Author Points with me, I would certainly not have started this series with a tolerant eye, and would very likely not have read very far into the first book. I would not have been as prepared to like the characters. I would have been more frustrated by the slow plotting, which would very likely have put me into a bad mood, and thus made me even less prepared to like the characters. And since liking the characters (not, I should point out, as particularly complex or moving characters, just as characters I enjoy spending a few hours with while I’m reading the book) is the bulk of the enjoyment of these particular books, if it weren’t for the Author Points, I wouldn’t have enjoyed the books at all.
So when Jed says, quite rightly, that an author having Author Points with a reader doesn’t mean a predisposition to like a particular story more if the reader knows it is by that author, the, um, willing suspension of crankiness that is what an Author Point buys (in this case, from a cache stored after previous works, but applicable within a particular work as well) results in my liking the story, despite—wait, I’ll italicize that, I love italicizing things, it’s like waving my hands—despite the Author failing to come through with the thing I granted her Author Points for.
Man, I’ve said that badly, but since I’m in a rush here, rather than going back and fixing it, I’ll just say it again a different way. The whole idea of Author Points is that, f’r’ex, I know that Ms. Bujold is a master of plot, so if the first fifty pages or so seem a trifle light on plot, I can figure that she’ll pull through, and by halfway through there will be conflicts and subplots and seemingly incompatible goals, and that it will all come together at the end. So instead of shutting the book somewhere in those fifty pages, I’m still reading. And instead of griping through those fifty pages, I’m prepared to enjoy myself. This attitude should completely evaporate by the time I’m a hundred pages in, or a hundred and fifty pages in, or two hundred pages in. Certainly by the time I’m three-quarters of the way through the third fucking book. But because I wasn’t griping, I had a chance to become attached to the characters, and because I became attached to the characters, I enjoyed the book fairly well, and because I enjoyed the book all right, I didn’t penalize Ms. Bujold by taking away her Author Points.
Which may not be a predisposition to like a book just because her name is on the spine, but it quacks like such a predisposition, so the observer is perhaps justified in thinking it is one.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.