Vellum (the book of all hours)

[Listener]

Has anyone else read this?

I bought it last weekend and just started reading it.  It's very confusing -- there are four stories going on at the same time, and you can only tell them apart by POV and font -- and there's a lot of historical/mythical stuff going on.

The second part is better than the first so far, but the first wasn't bad.  It was just really hard to follow.

I'm just wondering if anyone else feels the same way.

[Roney]

I was intrigued by the first bit (Guy (I think) finding the (a?) Book) and fell in love with Phreedom/Inanna's hypnotic descent into hell.

I don't think I ever understood it but by the end I'd had my mind totally rearranged into its perspective.

Finally got to satisfy my addiction with Ink.  It didn't seem quite as confusing but that's probably because I'd had schooling in Vellum.  The storytelling stays rooted in the logic of the characters and the mythical resonance, rather than how a conventional linear plot might work.

I wouldn't worry about trying to follow it exactly.  Just absorb enough of the atmosphere to have a rough idea what's going on, and pay attention to the reused character names and the emerging archetypes (they get clearer as the story progresses).  I agree that that continual shifts of POV (multiple first- mixed with multiple third-person with minimal clues to the current narrator) are slippery but because the plot isn't essential it's more important to absorb the themes than the narrative.  Let the detail wash over you and listen for echoes.

Sorry for the waffle: I coulda said it quicker and more precisely in the Cant.

[Listener]

I was intrigued by the first bit (Guy (I think) finding the (a?) Book) and fell in love with Phreedom/Inanna's hypnotic descent into hell.

I don't think I ever understood it but by the end I'd had my mind totally rearranged into its perspective.

Finally got to satisfy my addiction with Ink.  It didn't seem quite as confusing but that's probably because I'd had schooling in Vellum.  The storytelling stays rooted in the logic of the characters and the mythical resonance, rather than how a conventional linear plot might work.

I wouldn't worry about trying to follow it exactly.  Just absorb enough of the atmosphere to have a rough idea what's going on, and pay attention to the reused character names and the emerging archetypes (they get clearer as the story progresses).  I agree that that continual shifts of POV (multiple first- mixed with multiple third-person with minimal clues to the current narrator) are slippery but because the plot isn't essential it's more important to absorb the themes than the narrative.  Let the detail wash over you and listen for echoes.

Sorry for the waffle: I coulda said it quicker and more precisely in the Cant.

Indeed.

I'm still reading Vellum... Not sure if I'm going to get Ink as well.  Right now I'm in the Seamus-Inchgillian part of it, and I'm not all that compelled by that part of the story.

[Listener]

I finished "Vellum".  While parts of it were quite enjoyable, I think there were too many plot threads left dangling.  It's like a really old sweater -- some of the threads are coming off, the knit is widening, but it's still a sweater and it still keeps you warm if there's not a lot of wind blowing.

I usually like books like "Vellum".  I guess I just didn't like that one.  I'll probably skip "Ink" until it's on the discount rack.

Right now I'm reading "Seven Types of Ambiguity" by Perlman (not Empson).  It's exceedingly depressing.  Not SF.

[Anarkey]

I just finished Vellum and I have to say that like Listener, I'm really thinking hard about whether I want to finish up the duology.  My to read list is too long for me to proceed with stuff I feel 'meh' about.  I'm surprised Roney refers to reading the second book as the satisfaction of an addiction, for while there's much to commend Duncan's writing, there's not much about it that made me feel high, or giddy, or compulsively want more of it. 

I didn't find the POV/time shifts and overlays more than superficially confusing, FWIW, with the exception of Guy having Carter as a last name for part of the time.  I still don't know what that's about.  There's an active Jack at that point too, so huh.  I also didn't find the constant shifts to be terribly original as a device, though I'm not sure originality is what Duncan was aiming for (how different and woo it was supposed to be was an artifact of critical hubbub and not necessarily what was intended, imo).

My central problem with the book is that it's not a story in the conventional sense.  There's no narrative drive.  For all the journeying of the various characters, we're not really going anywhere.  I found it hard to keep reading because of this and it took me almost two months to finish it and I stopped in the middle to read something else (which isn't usual for me).

It's extremely beautifully written, the prose level is top notch, but it also came across (to me) as kind of shallow, so the excellence of the prose seemed like dressing up a corpse.  Unfortunately, I think this is the result of writing people as mythic incarnations instead of as characters, so there's no way I can see to solve this and still keep to what Duncan wants to tell about.  I had a hard time getting emotionally involved with anyone, especially with Carter and Pechorin, since they are presented in such radically different ways and I don't think I ever figured out why they were quite so malleable.  I think I'm meant to care about the characters because of some of the heartbreaking situations rendered, but I couldn't quite bring myself to it.  Much of what happened to the characters didn't quite seem real, especially the big tragic moments.  The small moments seemed more real: the three guys sitting together on the quad, Jack and Guy lying together in the cold house at Evenfall, Phreedom sharing a beer with Finnan,  Phreedom stepping into the tattoo parlor for the first time, Puck painting things purple in the book as they travel along the Vellum.  Eh, maybe that was one of Duncan's points: small is real, big is only archetype.  If so, it makes for a strangely unsatisfying reading experience.
 
I also had what I usually call a Miéville issue with this work: whenever anything I was desperately interested in showed up, it turned out to be scene setting and not something I was going to get to find out more about or follow.  Meanwhile, stuff I couldn't have cared less about was treated in excruciating detail for pages and pages. 

Also.  Points off for horribly translated Spanish.  Guh.  My brother, if you're going to set things in the Spanish Civil War, make the Spaniards talk right.  It was frustratingly anticlimatic to be yelling at the page when supposed death sentences were being pronounced.  That's pretty much cause for a complete breakdown of my suspension of disbelief lately.  I'm sick and tired of SF and Fantasy with crappy Spanish in it and there's way more of it with crappy Spanish than with good.

Bonus points for nice scenery, though.  And for a gripping opening.  I did like the vastness of the times and spaces of the real world we explored (often more than I liked the fantastical bits), and part of the reason I'm so pissed off about the bad Spanish is because it took the air out of scenes I would otherwise have been really interested in. 

OTOH some of the archetypal linking was a little...blurry.  Sometimes when he linked things (usually by name transformations) I said "oh, ok, what a cool connection" but many other times I was like "that's a bit of a stretch there, isn't it?".  In rendering down all the different incarnations as aspects of the same archetypes I thought sometimes valuable individual pieces of story were lost.  Maybe that's one of his points too, but I didn't care for it.

Anyway, it gave me some stuff to think about on a meta level, and it was pretty, but it didn't really get hooks into me, transport me or give me any kind of catharsis or deep satisfaction on completion.  In fact, it felt essentially unfinished.  Maybe that would all be nicely wrapped up in the second half, but I'm not sure I trust Duncan to pull it off.

[Roney]

I just finished Vellum and I have to say that like Listener, I'm really thinking hard about whether I want to finish up the duology.  My to read list is too long for me to proceed with stuff I feel 'meh' about.

Reading Ink feels a lot less like wrestling fog.  There are much longer passages that stay with the same set of characters in a single setting, there are more callbacks to events we've seen before, and the characters themselves sometimes openly discuss their roles in a meta-narrative, which intermittently satisfies that longing for some kind of a coherent plot.  But then Duncan tends to throw it all away again by jumping to something completely different.  (What can I say?  I like being teased.)

I'm surprised Roney refers to reading the second book as the satisfaction of an addiction, for while there's much to commend Duncan's writing, there's not much about it that made me feel high, or giddy, or compulsively want more of it. 

"Giddy" was almost exactly how it made me feel.  It reminded me most of my attempts to understand quantum mechanics as an undergraduate: I could make sense of parts of it from one perspective, and grasp other parts from another perspective, and I had a sense of an underlying structure that I could just about visualize if I let my mind's eye unfocus a bit.  (For readers who never got that far with physics, imagine looking at a "magic eye" image and being always just on the verge of getting the 3D shape to click into place.)  That feeling is absolutely like a drug for me, and I've never really got it from fiction before.  Most of the books that I read have very straightforward narrative structures (yes, they're mostly SF) and the very few "literary" novels I've tried that attempt this kind of thematic linkage between stories have generally lost my attention because the individual elements are really dull.  I thought there were tedious passages in Vellum too, but they were frequently punctuated by arresting images or moments of beauty.

Not really a spoiler: there's nothing in Ink that dramatically recasts the reader's understanding of the world of Vellum, or that would count as a satisfactory pay-off for investing a lot of time in a book that you're only partially enjoying.  There is no destination, only the ride.

[Anarkey]

Not really a spoiler: there's nothing in Ink that dramatically recasts the reader's understanding of the world of Vellum, or that would count as a satisfactory pay-off for investing a lot of time in a book that you're only partially enjoying.  There is no destination, only the ride.

Thanks for this, Roney.  It's very helpful information as to whether I pick the second book up.  So far, I'm thinking maybe when I'm not in such a hurry, and I have time to enjoy the ride.  Which again, owing to the large stack of unread books waiting for me, is looking like not just yet.  However, maybe on my next reading vacation...or the one after.

I'm interested to know whether you felt any of Vellum was like Crowley's Little, Big, if you've read it.  I felt there was a lot the two works had in common.  Maybe it's just the epic scope, I haven't really thought this all the way through, but they definitely seem related.

[Roney]

I'm interested to know whether you felt any of Vellum was like Crowley's Little, Big, if you've read it.  I felt there was a lot the two works had in common.  Maybe it's just the epic scope, I haven't really thought this all the way through, but they definitely seem related.

I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage.  I've added Little, Big to my to-read list but that list is already in double digits.  I'll let you know what I think when I get a chance to read it.  It looks interesting -- thanks for the pointer.

FWIW, the last book that messed with my head in such a maddeningly delicious way was House of Leaves.

[Anarkey]

FWIW, the last book that messed with my head in such a maddeningly delicious way was House of Leaves.

Oooooh! House of Leaves is definitely on my (long, double digit) to read list.  I think I'm going to bump it up a few notches and get to it sooner rather than later. 

[Liminal]

I have to say that Vellum is one of those books that I absolutely love . . . but totally understand why other people might not even like it. What stuck with me, and what nobody seems to have mentioned, is the retelling of Matthew Shepard's murder as one of central stories. I remember reading some of those passages and nearly crying as I felt that swirling, sick feeling in my stomach when you find yourself looking at an aspect of humanity that you really, really wish you could just forget about or deny. For me, the characters' inner lives and their desires carried me throughout the book, despite the difficulties in structure and plot, but I have to admit that I'm also a sucker for writing that borders the poetic and Duncan's prose style often plays in that border zone with confidence and true talent.

Ink is definitely an easier book and reminded me more than a bit of Moorcock's Cornelius novels with the whole Harlequin/Pierrot/Columbine theme and the variations of character. Far more action-packed, I liked Ink, but didn't experience the same emotional connection as I had with the previous book.

[Anarkey]

What stuck with me, and what nobody seems to have mentioned, is the retelling of Matthew Shepard's murder as one of central stories. I remember reading some of those passages and nearly crying as I felt that swirling, sick feeling in my stomach when you find yourself looking at an aspect of humanity that you really, really wish you could just forget about or deny.

See, I had a problem with this bit in story, because if the narrative is to be believed, those aren't human beings carrying out that horrific torture and murder, and human beings are just unimportant puppets in the hands of the unkin anyway.  You can't have it both ways.  Regular people either matter or they don't.  To me the book's message is they don't.  So that passage had the opposite effect on me than that which you described.  I read it thinking its inclusion trivialized the true horror of man vs. man for the sake of the super angel plot. 

I also couldn't stop myself from thinking 'huh, I wonder what someone reading this in thirty years is going to make of that passage, since they probably will have no idea who Shepard was. I wonder if they'll assume he's made up.'

I am glad you mentioned that part though, because you're right no one had so far, and I have to admit that even though I didn't feel the emotional tug of that scene the way I was perhaps meant to, I did have a moment of weird collision where I felt like I was reading news and not fiction.  And that was pretty cool.

...but I have to admit that I'm also a sucker for writing that borders the poetic and Duncan's prose style often plays in that border zone with confidence and true talent.

Word.  The prose was astonishing in places.

[Liminal]

See, I had a problem with this bit in story, because if the narrative is to be believed, those aren't human beings carrying out that horrific torture and murder, and human beings are just unimportant puppets in the hands of the unkin anyway.  You can't have it both ways.  Regular people either matter or they don't.  To me the book's message is they don't.  So that passage had the opposite effect on me than that which you described.  I read it thinking its inclusion trivialized the true horror of man vs. man for the sake of the super angel plot. 

I see your point, but have to disagree with your basic premise that you can't have it both ways. Science fiction, by it's very nature, often operates "both ways." On a plot level the Unkin are not human, but on a thematic and literary--one might go so far as to say artistic--level, the Unkin are reflections of our own humanity. Perhaps not full reflections (very few literary characters are), but certainly broken shards from the mirror that, when we look into it, reflects our own faces back at us. From Chewbacca to Morpheus to Zeus to Hal 9000, to the very alien Gruen from "Friction," aliens, gods, and angels have always been our own shapes brought back to us distorted and different in order for us to learn something about ourselves. I would argue that the Shepard parallels reveal precisely how horrific humans can be to each other because recasting the scene with inhuman characters brings home the inhuman and grotesque actions that occurred, that really occurred, in our very own world.

[Czhorat]

I finally finished Vellum last week, haven't gotten to starting Ink yet. For the most part, I absolutely loved it. I agree that parts were confusing enough to require a second reading or pause for reflection to appreciate what was going on, but that was part of the pleasure for me.


I disagree that regular humans felt unimportant. To me the unkin were human, or at the very least the ideal to which humans can expire. Each of them seemed to represent an archetype of what a person can be when pushed in a certain direction and willing to put all of his or her heart and soul into one idea.

That Matthew Shephard murder worked for me becuase Duncan made it fit so well with the Tommaz/Thomas Messenger/Puck archetype. This seemed like the outsider who was chased and persecuted because simply of what he was. It's a character that in a way was an innocent, which made his fate that much more heartrending. What the rest of us ultimately learn about ourselves and our fellow humans comes from his suffering and defeat, so it is in his death that he has whatever kind of victory he can. I think Jesus would fit into this archetype.

The ending felt a bit abrupt to me, but there is one more volume to come. It's high on my next to read list, so I'll likely re-join the discussion later.