The Buried Pyramid, by Jane Lindskold
Sep. 13th, 2006 10:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperI really wanted to like this book. As a longstanding fan of both the Amelia Peabody books and the Indiana Jones movies, I was definitely its target audience. I love me some archaeological adventures, especially when set in Egypt. So when I saw this one on the shelf at Third Place, it didn't take me long to give in to the impulse to scarf it up. But I should have taken it as a bad sign when ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
irysangel told me the first fifty pages were quite boring. I should have taken the negative reviews on Amazon as bad signs as well, though in fairness I must say that I did not quite agree with all of those reviews.
At any rate, it had all the right bits and pieces for me to like: the mysterious archaeological setting, the worldly older British guy, his American ward, a geeky younger scholar guy who could have served well as a love interest for the lass, a crafty and beautiful antagonist, mysterious attackers, the exotic Egyptian setting, magic, mythology, and gods. With the exception of the truly supernatural aspects of the plot, hell, I get all of these things or things which are very similar in Amelia Peabody books. Same note re: Indiana Jones movies.
The pieces just weren't put together right. Between a clunky writing style, way too many usages of contemporary phrases in what should have been period dialogue, and an unsatisfying ending, I don't recommend it.
The first and foremost problem--the language choices. One reviewer on Amazon described the writing as "childish", which I think was unfair. But in several places it did strike me as clunky and graceless and just sort of... superficial, doing too much telling, not enough showing. We are given glimpses of Egyptian archaeological wonders but merely told that they are spectacular, and not made to feel that the characters really feel that way, or why they do. One could argue that anyone even remotely familiar with Egypt can assume that yes, it's full of nifty ruins and that too much description of same would be boring, but it would have been nice to get the sense from these characters that they in particular loved the place and some idea of why.
A lot of the description of the party's travels was haphazard. I got a sense more than once of "first they did this, and then they did this, and oh yeah they also did this other thing the night before". Example: getting to a "next morning" description where it's suddenly mentioned that Neville had laid snares the night before. Er, okay. Why wasn't this mentioned when you were still talking about the night before, Ms. Lindskold?
And most significantly, the dialogue choices repeatedly pulled me out of the story. Stephen was the character most guilty of this--in no small part because Lindskold, in her effort to portray him as an inveterate punster, kept having him say phrases that struck me as way, way too contemporary. Biggest example: "If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me." I personally know people, right now in this day and age, who say that. I have no earthly idea whether this was ever said by people in the day and age in which the book is set, but I'm pretty sure the answer to this question is "no".
I could have forgiven many of the other problems with the book if the language and writing had been better, but as it happened, that kept getting in the way of my appreciating what was going on. And it didn't help when the plot itself needed a couple more hard edit passes.
As with the narrative description, there was too much telling and not enough showing. There was way, way too much time spent on paragraphs in which the characters busily try to decipher coded messages sent to them by the mysterious person known only as "Sphinx"--and far too little time spent on events that should have been on camera rather than passingly referenced later. Example: Neville gets himself stabbed by an attacker, and when he and his party finally reach the Hawk Rock, he overextends himself trying to climb in search of water and winds up twisting his ankle. But we don't see any of this. We don't even know it happened until the next morning when Jenny wakes up, and she finds out about it. I found that extremely annoying--it would have been a dandy place to help build sympathy for Neville, to portray the idea that he's so caught up in his own quest that he foolishly sets his own well-being aside.
Similarly, the plot tries way, way too hard to make us believe that Audrey is Evil(TM). Why do we know Audrey is Evil(TM)? Because Sphinx's mysterious notes say so. So naturally Stephen and Jenny are suspicious of her, and of Neville's budding attraction to her. Yet we get very, very little solid proof that she's anything but a self-centered and arrogant woman who takes advantage of her own beauty, and who is conveniently showing up in places she shouldn't be. We never see her doing anything truly suspicious, and neither do Jenny and Stephen. And we only find out later what she was up to when other characters tell us about it--the men she hired to help her and her party catch up with Neville and his. Again, too much tell. Not enough show.
Eddie taking charge of the arrangements to get Neville's trio out of Cairo was sensible at least in terms of their plan, but it also made for less exciting reading. Don't get me wrong--I liked Eddie, and I liked that he was a genuine convert to Islam out of love for Miriam. He was one of the good things about the book. But because he was busy handling all the interesting arrangements, this meant that the viewpoint characters did very little themselves to advance the plot. I would really have liked to see Neville more actively involved in arranging his own quest--he was after all not only ostensibly in charge, he was a viewpoint character. We needed to see him seeing signs of current danger echoing the danger of his earlier adventures. And it would have been nice to see Jenny discovering a few things as well, since she was also a viewpoint character--see my previous remarks re: Audrey. If she could have discovered something truly suspicious about Audrey, that would have been good.
And now I get to the biggest problems with the plot--the ending. Amazon reviewers have complained that the sudden transition to truly supernatural situations was way, way too abrupt, and I admit I have to agree with them. One could argue that the Indiana Jones movies make a similarly abrupt transition--after all, throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark, you don't get any sign that the Ark is truly supernatural until the very ending. Same deal with Last Crusade. Both of these movies do a fine, fine job of dropping hints of what's to come, though, and that's where this book drops the ball. I can give it props for trying to move in that direction--we certainly get told about the legends of the good king's tomb being hidden by a sandstorm, the gods going out of their way to build him a proper resting place, etc. But again--too much tell. Not enough show. Since Lindskold went to the trouble of giving us that prologue about Neville's original adventure, that right there would have been an excellent point at which to drop a hint about things being truly supernatural there. But unfortunately it didn't happen.
So when Neville's party is thrown together with Audrey's and locked up inside the tomb and suddenly find themselves in the company of Ra, for crying out loud, I was all, "What, what, wait, when did we suddenly step into a plotline where magic and the Egyptian gods are actually real?" It was very much a "meanwhile, over in Book B" kind of transition--it was very much stepping into a suddenly completely different story that happened to have the same set of characters.
Not to mention that we get more "too much tell, not enough show" in the ending as well. I was very much dissatisfied that the characters were split up as they were judged and that the only judgings we saw were Neville's and Jenny's. I was especially annoyed that Jenny failed her judgement on what struck me as a truly specious reason--that she was willing to kill to defend herself or her loved ones despite being skilled at first aid and doctoring, and that Maat seemed to think this meant she was somehow potentially capable of causing great harm. Buh-huh-what? And the cat suddenly being the only reason she gets off the hook? LAME.
(Don't get me started about the cat. That was one of the most annoying aspects of the book, and it shouldn't have been. I mean, hell, the Amelia Peabody books are chock full of interesting cats who are way, way too intelligent to be real and who frequently have impacts on the plots. But none of them suddenly magically change size or are able to give counsel to make gods change their mind about whether to toss somebody to a monster.)
And then we have this big ol' brouhaha about how all the characters are suddenly remorseful that Audrey had failed her judgement--which we didn't see--and how they want to appeal on her behalf. We see absolutely no sign of Audrey's reaction to this. None. Not even after they successfully pass their trial to get her off the hook, and are specifically told that she might not be grateful for their intervention. She gets NO LINES WHATSOEVER, in fact, and is just quietly accompanying them as they're suddenly magically back in Luxor. LAME.
And of course the good king and the gods tell them that they can't tell anybody about this, because all the evidence will be destroyed, blah de blah, it was only a dream. LAME. LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME.
In conclusion, just not recommended. And regretfully so, since this book could have been way cooler than it actually was. But you'll do better going to read the Amelia Peabodies instead, or watching Raiders of the Lost Ark.
irysangel told me the first fifty pages were quite boring. I should have taken the negative reviews on Amazon as bad signs as well, though in fairness I must say that I did not quite agree with all of those reviews.At any rate, it had all the right bits and pieces for me to like: the mysterious archaeological setting, the worldly older British guy, his American ward, a geeky younger scholar guy who could have served well as a love interest for the lass, a crafty and beautiful antagonist, mysterious attackers, the exotic Egyptian setting, magic, mythology, and gods. With the exception of the truly supernatural aspects of the plot, hell, I get all of these things or things which are very similar in Amelia Peabody books. Same note re: Indiana Jones movies.
The pieces just weren't put together right. Between a clunky writing style, way too many usages of contemporary phrases in what should have been period dialogue, and an unsatisfying ending, I don't recommend it.
The first and foremost problem--the language choices. One reviewer on Amazon described the writing as "childish", which I think was unfair. But in several places it did strike me as clunky and graceless and just sort of... superficial, doing too much telling, not enough showing. We are given glimpses of Egyptian archaeological wonders but merely told that they are spectacular, and not made to feel that the characters really feel that way, or why they do. One could argue that anyone even remotely familiar with Egypt can assume that yes, it's full of nifty ruins and that too much description of same would be boring, but it would have been nice to get the sense from these characters that they in particular loved the place and some idea of why.
A lot of the description of the party's travels was haphazard. I got a sense more than once of "first they did this, and then they did this, and oh yeah they also did this other thing the night before". Example: getting to a "next morning" description where it's suddenly mentioned that Neville had laid snares the night before. Er, okay. Why wasn't this mentioned when you were still talking about the night before, Ms. Lindskold?
And most significantly, the dialogue choices repeatedly pulled me out of the story. Stephen was the character most guilty of this--in no small part because Lindskold, in her effort to portray him as an inveterate punster, kept having him say phrases that struck me as way, way too contemporary. Biggest example: "If you assume, you make an ass out of you and me." I personally know people, right now in this day and age, who say that. I have no earthly idea whether this was ever said by people in the day and age in which the book is set, but I'm pretty sure the answer to this question is "no".
I could have forgiven many of the other problems with the book if the language and writing had been better, but as it happened, that kept getting in the way of my appreciating what was going on. And it didn't help when the plot itself needed a couple more hard edit passes.
As with the narrative description, there was too much telling and not enough showing. There was way, way too much time spent on paragraphs in which the characters busily try to decipher coded messages sent to them by the mysterious person known only as "Sphinx"--and far too little time spent on events that should have been on camera rather than passingly referenced later. Example: Neville gets himself stabbed by an attacker, and when he and his party finally reach the Hawk Rock, he overextends himself trying to climb in search of water and winds up twisting his ankle. But we don't see any of this. We don't even know it happened until the next morning when Jenny wakes up, and she finds out about it. I found that extremely annoying--it would have been a dandy place to help build sympathy for Neville, to portray the idea that he's so caught up in his own quest that he foolishly sets his own well-being aside.
Similarly, the plot tries way, way too hard to make us believe that Audrey is Evil(TM). Why do we know Audrey is Evil(TM)? Because Sphinx's mysterious notes say so. So naturally Stephen and Jenny are suspicious of her, and of Neville's budding attraction to her. Yet we get very, very little solid proof that she's anything but a self-centered and arrogant woman who takes advantage of her own beauty, and who is conveniently showing up in places she shouldn't be. We never see her doing anything truly suspicious, and neither do Jenny and Stephen. And we only find out later what she was up to when other characters tell us about it--the men she hired to help her and her party catch up with Neville and his. Again, too much tell. Not enough show.
Eddie taking charge of the arrangements to get Neville's trio out of Cairo was sensible at least in terms of their plan, but it also made for less exciting reading. Don't get me wrong--I liked Eddie, and I liked that he was a genuine convert to Islam out of love for Miriam. He was one of the good things about the book. But because he was busy handling all the interesting arrangements, this meant that the viewpoint characters did very little themselves to advance the plot. I would really have liked to see Neville more actively involved in arranging his own quest--he was after all not only ostensibly in charge, he was a viewpoint character. We needed to see him seeing signs of current danger echoing the danger of his earlier adventures. And it would have been nice to see Jenny discovering a few things as well, since she was also a viewpoint character--see my previous remarks re: Audrey. If she could have discovered something truly suspicious about Audrey, that would have been good.
And now I get to the biggest problems with the plot--the ending. Amazon reviewers have complained that the sudden transition to truly supernatural situations was way, way too abrupt, and I admit I have to agree with them. One could argue that the Indiana Jones movies make a similarly abrupt transition--after all, throughout Raiders of the Lost Ark, you don't get any sign that the Ark is truly supernatural until the very ending. Same deal with Last Crusade. Both of these movies do a fine, fine job of dropping hints of what's to come, though, and that's where this book drops the ball. I can give it props for trying to move in that direction--we certainly get told about the legends of the good king's tomb being hidden by a sandstorm, the gods going out of their way to build him a proper resting place, etc. But again--too much tell. Not enough show. Since Lindskold went to the trouble of giving us that prologue about Neville's original adventure, that right there would have been an excellent point at which to drop a hint about things being truly supernatural there. But unfortunately it didn't happen.
So when Neville's party is thrown together with Audrey's and locked up inside the tomb and suddenly find themselves in the company of Ra, for crying out loud, I was all, "What, what, wait, when did we suddenly step into a plotline where magic and the Egyptian gods are actually real?" It was very much a "meanwhile, over in Book B" kind of transition--it was very much stepping into a suddenly completely different story that happened to have the same set of characters.
Not to mention that we get more "too much tell, not enough show" in the ending as well. I was very much dissatisfied that the characters were split up as they were judged and that the only judgings we saw were Neville's and Jenny's. I was especially annoyed that Jenny failed her judgement on what struck me as a truly specious reason--that she was willing to kill to defend herself or her loved ones despite being skilled at first aid and doctoring, and that Maat seemed to think this meant she was somehow potentially capable of causing great harm. Buh-huh-what? And the cat suddenly being the only reason she gets off the hook? LAME.
(Don't get me started about the cat. That was one of the most annoying aspects of the book, and it shouldn't have been. I mean, hell, the Amelia Peabody books are chock full of interesting cats who are way, way too intelligent to be real and who frequently have impacts on the plots. But none of them suddenly magically change size or are able to give counsel to make gods change their mind about whether to toss somebody to a monster.)
And then we have this big ol' brouhaha about how all the characters are suddenly remorseful that Audrey had failed her judgement--which we didn't see--and how they want to appeal on her behalf. We see absolutely no sign of Audrey's reaction to this. None. Not even after they successfully pass their trial to get her off the hook, and are specifically told that she might not be grateful for their intervention. She gets NO LINES WHATSOEVER, in fact, and is just quietly accompanying them as they're suddenly magically back in Luxor. LAME.
And of course the good king and the gods tell them that they can't tell anybody about this, because all the evidence will be destroyed, blah de blah, it was only a dream. LAME. LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME.
In conclusion, just not recommended. And regretfully so, since this book could have been way cooler than it actually was. But you'll do better going to read the Amelia Peabodies instead, or watching Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-14 03:56 am (UTC)I'd picked it up remaindered a while back, and was kind of looking forward to it. I think now it'll go straight to the used bookstore....
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Date: 2006-09-14 04:01 am (UTC)It's a crying shame, too. As a longstanding fan of the Amelia Peabody series, I was all prepared to eat this book right up.