Monday, January 23, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Things They Buried by Amanda K. King and Michael R. Swanson

 


Things They Buried is a 2019 self-published "science fantasy"* novel written by dual authors Amanda K. King and Michael R. Swanson.  Though self-published and part of the Self Published Science Fiction Competition ((SPSFC2 - my reviews of these books can be found here)) novel seems online to have garnered some reviews from reputed sources like Kirkus and has far more copies in libraries I access - including an audiobook - than many of the other books I've read in this competition.  As such, one might suspect this is a bit of a ringer, and that it might have a higher quality than some of the other works I've judged - a feeling that was intensified when it made the quarterfinals off the recommendations of one of my colleagues.  

*The Novel is described as "Science Fantasy" on its publishing pages and is entered in the SPSFC, yet there is some dispute among my team whether this really fits the Science Fiction part of "Science Fantasy" or whether this is just better defined as Dark Fantasy or Horror Fantasy.  If you're looking for strictly SciFi, this novel probably isn't going to do it for you.*

Unfortunately, despite this pedigree, Things They Buried really didn't work for me, to the point where I very much disliked the book.  The book has elements of dark fantasy and horror, with a bunch of jump scares in the second act, and follows two major protagonists and two side protagonists...except I really didn't like the two major protagonists thanks to them acting like assholes for large segments of the book (they do get a little better near the end).  Things aren't helped by the story's attempt at dealing with protagonists struggling with trauma and abuse feeling more like trauma porn than an actual attempt at showing the struggles of trauma and recovery therefrom, or by a lot of really minor elements that bugged me, chief of which was a fantasy world obsessed with various species having specific mental traits with little flexibility - a rather bad trope.  All in all, this one is not one I can recommend to others.  

TRIGGER WARNING:  Rape as backstory, Physical Abuse of children, sometimes shown on page in flashbacks, Child Slavery, Severe Post Trauma struggles.  As you might extrapolate from the above, I did not think this book handled these issues well.  

-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
Years ago, Sylandir and Aliara escaped from a nightmare childhood, where they were the frequently abused property of the esteemed scientist and inventor Orono. Their escape came when Orono's last experiment seemed to go wrong, resulting in a fiery explosion that seemed to consume Orono himself.

In the years since, Sylandir has enjoyed the comforts of being a Duke of a foreign power living in relative luxury in Dockhaven, while Aliara uses her stealthy pickpocketing and more lethal skillls as a member of the Thung Toh mercenary group....and more importantly, they have had each other to comfort one another. But when they begin to hear rumors of disappearing children down by the desalination plant constructed by Orono, they begin to fear Orono might not be as gone as they thought after all. And so, desperate to ensure that Orono's horrors are done for all time, the two of them, along with a scavenging lowlife criminal Schmalch, find a way in to investigate.

BUt what Syl and Aliara soon find is that not only is Orono likely not gone, but that his hideous new form has continued experimenting on and torturing children for his own mysterious sick ends. The two of them, along with Schmalch and a fellow mercenary Haus, will have to brave the terrors of their pasts - pasts they wish would not keep coming up in nightmares - if they are to put an end to Orono's evil once and for all. But of course, their investigation has not gone unnoticed, and Orono and his experiments have their eyes on Syl and Aliara, and their own foul intents on getting them back...
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Things they Buried takes place in a fantasy setting where there are no humans, just many different kinds of sentient species living together on this world. The narrative is always told from the third person perspective of one character per chapter, usually one of our main characters, but smaller characters and one-of characters get POVs as well. Still, these characters rarely ever are unfamiliar with the setting, so things that the reader will not know, like what a particular species looks like or where they come from, or how a government works, or whatever, is rarely explained in more than barebones, and the book throws new species names at you frequently early on without any explanation. The result is a bit confusing for little reason, although you can largely ignore it (one exception noted below).

Its also a book who, aside from being lackadaisical about explaning the setting, often can't really figure out what it wants to be at a story. Large parts of the story feel like a horror novel, complete with jump scares (especially parts of the first two acts where they're exploring a mad scientist's lab and then his mansion). Other parts of the novel feel like it's an attempt at adventure featuring a commando team (the Thung Toh who bizarrely give this series its name but are very much a side point to this main plot here). The book also doesn't always seem to understand how to play to this genre - so for example, it will use one-of doomed POV characters at times to demonstrate the horror of the monster antagonists...but it will use them not just to open the book or an act, but in the middle of major events where they're just distracting and unnecessary, like in the middle of the book's CLIMAX...such that you get unnecessary pages about characters who don't matter and you have no reason to care about at the very end. Similarly, one minor character suddenly gets a POV character where they become a major antagonist, perform a major act of evil, then disappear to show up again in the book's cliffhanger for the sequel...and this has no impact on this plot or relevance whatsosever.

And other parts feature seemingly an attempt at exploring past childhood trauma from abuse brought back up again (which is not at all contradictory with horror mind you)...except the book doesn't seem to understand how to deal with trauma and recovery as a plotline. Like in one case, this features a character running away from a traumatic discovery, then a time skip at which point he recognizes he can't run away anymore just randomly....so he just goes back? Other parts feature an antagonist using abilities to provoke such traumas in one of our main duo, but the impact of that and how it hurts is just ignored after that antagonist is revealed and dealt with. All of this could be okay in this book - not every book dealing with traumatized characters needs to deal with a recovery arc or the impact of trauma - except the book describes in way too much detail through flashbacks and implications what abuse - sexual and torture - the main duo has suffered, such that it pretty much feels like trauma porn. Not good.

This isn't helped by its main duo of characters, Syl and Aliara, spending the first half of the book as unlikable jackasses, willing to sacrifice pretty much anyone else and just mess with people for little reason other than them placing no importance on anyone but themselves. And while some of that can be explained by their reaction to trauma, the book doesn't really demonstrate that well, so it's like they're meant to be jerks with a heart of gold...who don't have the hearts of gold. This gets better in the second half, when Syl and Aliara both have some better moments, but the book is long and this change just comes from nowhere. You can feel bad a bit for Syl (although how Syl is a duke is never explained unlike his prior experiences with torture, so like what?) and Aliara but I never really wanted to root for them and found myself actively disliking them for much of the book, especially with how they treat the book's best character, the scavenger Schmalch, who is a bumbling good hearted fool of a character who they rope into helping them....and who they repeatedly expose to situations where he's in danger.

Really that bring up another big problem with this book, which is its treatment of the various species, which feels like it came from a pre-90s DnD Monster Manual, where species have various personality and character traits and are treated by others as inferior or whatnot because of them. There are obvious problems with this - particularly in the Puka race that Schmalch and the main duo's servant Sviroosa, who are basically treated like a bit more disposable and inferior due to less smarts in their actions...which well, you can see how that might map onto human racial politics. This is a racial dynamic that books really need to get rid of, and while there is some sense that the main duo is biased and prejudiced, and that the book itself isn't espousing these views, it's not strong enough, with the main duo never really getting to learn differently.

The book is readable enough, though very long, and it didn't ever make me laugh at the ridiculousness of it all or make me actively despise it. So this certainly won't get one of my lowest rankings, nor can I not understand why other readers might enjoy this ride. But its a big miss for me, and if it wasn't a quarterfinalist I'd have DNFed it fairly early. Cannot recommend.

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