jane carver of waar
posted by molly under reviews, this and that | permalink | | leave a comment | 7 comments
Sometimes fortune smiles upon me. I posted on Facebook a few months ago how much I had enjoyed the batshit-insane post-apocalyptic barbarian queen epic She, and Ross Lockhart, friend/kick-ass editor of The Book of Cthulhu pinged me, asking if I’d like an advance copy of Nathan Long’s Jane Carver of Waar. I looked up the cover (left) and started drooling. Yes, I said. Yes, send this book to me, please.
I mean, omg, look at that cover! Big-hair muscle-babe in sweet armor uses a Gatsu-proprotioned sword to carve up purple tiger-taurs amidst an epic landscape? That is pretty much all I ever wanted from a novel. But a question came to mind: Could Jane Carver possibly live up to my expectations after I had gazed upon that wonderful artist’s rendition of a bad-ass warrior woman’s enviable quadriceps?
Yes. Yes, it could. Actually—no. Jane Carver exceeded every single one of my expectations in the best possible ways.
I mean, let’s talk about the protagonist: Jane Carver. Jane is a strong, punchy biker chick and ex-Airborne Ranger, who, due to circumstances, is forced to go on the run from the law … straight into a magical cave that transports her to an alien planet: Waar. Waar is populated with terrible monsters and all-too-human alien humanoids. They ride big chocobo-style birds and have a quasi-feudal society. So far, so awesome. Also: The gravity is less than Jane’s used to, meaning she can jump high, punch hard, lift heavy things, and go braless without pain. YES!
Jane, to her credit, takes all this in stride, and for much of the book ends up helping a male-model handsome (but hopeless-with-a-sword) princeling named Kai who early-on in the book has his sexy bride stolen from him by a rival nobleman-cum-asshole. Noble Kai, who speaks in luxurious courtly language, is the straight man to Jane’s joker. The dynamic is awesome, and often very funny. Take, for example, this early exchange, after Jane helps Kai extricate himself from the ruins of his coach, post violent bride-snatching:
I passed him some of the meat pies and veggies. “Eat. You gotta get your strength back.”
He took the chow, but offered some back to me. “And you? Do you not hunger?”
I hadn’t realized it ’til then, but I did hunger. I hungered like dammit. Traveling light-years in a second, or whatever I’d done, sure built up a powerful appetite.
That’s the tone throughout; Jane narrates the whole thing (College Feminist Molly says: Look how she’s a Subject rather than an Object! Hells yes!). Thus we see Waarian culture through her eyes, and Jane is not uncritical of what she finds. It may be a beautiful world full of thoroughly decent people, but misogyny, machismo, and double-standards abound among the folks she encounters. Jane, however, calls everyone on his or her bullshit, which is really fun for the reader. Not only does she freak everyone out by being a woman who looks unusual (Waarians are purplish, dark-haired, and on the shorter side; Jane is 6’2″, white, and red-haired), as well as being strangely strong and agile, but she freaks them out with her feminist and class-eliding notions, too.
Jane articulates her problems with Waarian culture beautifully, and without pretension, and with laser-pinpoint accuracy. Take, for example, Jane’s thoughts on lordly, incompetent, honor-bound Sai’s quest to win back his fiancee via single combat when she first encounters regular ol’ Waarians (instead of the noblesse):
…I understood these people. The guys were just guys. The chicks were just chicks. They wouldn’t die for some sucker’s idea of honor if you told them heaven was an eternal blowjob. They might die for love, or for friendship or even their country, but they wouldn’t throw their lives away because it was more honorable to be dead.
Sorry. I guess Sai was pissing me off a little at that point. I bet he could have ditched his title, got the girl and lived down here on Sailcloth Street and nobody here would have given him a second glance. But with his upbringing that would probably have been harder for him than dying. Oh well, fuck it.
Jane rolls with the punches (and throws them) which is gratifying and makes for smile-inducing reading. Even better: she never considers herself superior to the Waarians because of her appearance/opinions/abilities, just different. Jane is a very “live-and-let-live (unless you piss me off or hurt my friends)” sort of person. She may think she has a handle on things, but her opinions aren’t rigid and she’s willing to learn as well as teach. Long does a bang-up job of writing a first-person female protagonist whose feminism is unobtrusive but so omnipresent you can tell that’s just who she is. It’s fantastic. I mean, after reading the book I wanted a sequel, but more than that, I wanted to go to the gym and then grab a beer with Jane. So, yeah.
The novel hit all the right notes for me, basically. I can’t talk more about what I loved with out spoilering too much, so I’ll leave off here and just say, if you like well-written adventure novels, get this book when it comes out. It’s so goddamn good.
There was literally only one little thing that bothered me in Jane Carver of Waar, and wasn’t a big deal, though it does come in the first two pages, in Long’s prologue. I liked the conceit of the prologue just fine: that Long met Jane outside of a bar, and she provided him with the account that comprises the book. But then there’s a weird moment, before we’ve even met Jane, where Long tells us:
Jane is remarkably honest in her admissions of her failings, but sometimes I wonder if she is’t being too modest. She says throughout the tapes how ugly she is. Well, I met her, and though she was no Scarlett Johansson, she was by no means ugly. She had the kind of broad-faced, rugged good looks you associate with frontierswomen and female fire-fighters.
This comment rubbed me ever so slightly the wrong way. I understand what Long’s trying to do here—Jane is, after all, a 6’2″ female ex-airborne ranger, and even on earth that’s not something one sees every day, so Jane has certain opinions regarding her physical appearance that are informed by the beauty standards of our world. That said, I don’t give a damn if the heroine of a novel is butt-ugly or not, and I don’t need an outsider’s reassurance that “it’s not like that, objectively speaking” if a heroine says she’s not attractive. I didn’t feel it was a necessary remark; indeed, I felt it kind of undermined Jane’s authority in telling her own tale. That said, I understand why Long included this comment. I think it was with the best of intentions, and it’s true that body-worship is part and parcel of the barbarian epic. I just think it would have been fine to have Jane tell us about herself, rather than Long as he appears in his prologue, I guess.
Anyways, who cares, the book ruled like dammit, as Jane would say, and I would read a billion Jane Carver novels. The back-cover copy may read: “Jane Carver is nobody’s idea of a space princess.” Well, maybe that’s true for some people, but Jane Carver is exactly my idea of a space princess. Strong, foul-mouthed, bad-ass, socially aware in interesting and engaging ways, self-aware, feminist, malleable while holding strong opinions, crafty, intelligent, resourceful, and still entirely human in all the right ways. Yes! Yes, yes, yes. We need more books like Jane Carver of Waar out there. I actually delayed finishing the book for a few days because I didn’t want to leave Jane and Waar behind; hearing that Long has already planned a sequel, Swords of Waar, took away a little of the pain. I cannot wait to devour it.
12:46 pm, 5 March 2012
It sounds like this is a purposeful rewriting of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s _A Princess of Mars_, which that _John Carter_ movie is based on. The protagonist John Carter (sounds like Jane Carver) goes into a cave and is whisked magically to Mars, where he can jump really high and excels at everything in a feudal society.
I recently listened to a really well-read Librivox version (http://librivox.org/a-princess-of-mars-by-edgar-rice-burroughs-2/), and it was really fun in a “I can’t believe how bad and offensively silly this is” kind of way. Carter is like Gaston, ALL THE TIME: everything he does is the strongest, most perfect, most beautiful, most noble thing that HAS EVER BEEN DONE ON MARS. (The narrator helps emphasize this, though I can’t tell how accidental it is and how much he just kind of sounds like that.) Add the not-so-subtle comparison between American Indians and the noble-yet-cruelly-savage Martians, and you’ve got an interesting, bizarre book. Haven’t read the sequels….
But I’ve never heard of Jane Carver! Now I really want to teach a gender images in sf class so I can assign both! Woo-hoo!
12:49 pm, 5 March 2012
Oh, whoops, I should have pointed that out. Yes, it’s definitely a rewriting, both homage and purposeful inversion. I think I had a line in there pointing that out, and then cut it!
Jane Carver is brand new and in-your-face, and not even out yet–so that’s why you’ve never heard of her! Now go teach that class. Woo!
5:04 am, 6 March 2012
Sounds like a very good read. While I do like me some Barsoom and am very excited for the upcoming adaptation, I think this will provide a very nice palate-cleanser afterwards. Thanks for the heads up! Waaaaaaaaaaaaar!
6:50 pm, 22 August 2012
Hi Molly!
I just finished Jane Carver of Waar, and enjoyed it so much that I was prompted to immediately do a search for another scifi story with a strong female lead. Which led me to your review. I can’t agree more with your analysis and that one little thing that bugged you in the story’s intro.
Anyway, I would appreciate if you would post a suggested reading list of books that you’ve enjoyed. The queer/gender-bending flavor of this story was particularly enjoyable and is rather difficult to find in this genre. With that in mind, I would appreciate any suggestions you may have for my future reading.
11:04 am, 23 August 2012
Hi Sean!
Haha, my first notion is to tell you to keep your eye out for the Jane sequel that’s forthcoming though Night Shade … it’s possible I was lucky enough to read an early draft. 🙂 It’s going to be a super book, just like the first one!
I’m not actually a huge scifi reader … but my first impulse, if you liked the queer/gender-bending of Jane would be to point you toward Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and also Gerd Brantenberg’s Egalia’s Daughters. Neither are particularly recent but they’re rad and have what you’re looking for. If you’re interested in just specfic in general, I’d check out Jesse Bullington’s The Enterprise of Death (queer-themed historical fantasy with some S&S elements) and, of course, my forthcoming novel and associated short stories, A Pretty Mouth (historical horror, will be out this October).
Other than that, I’d ask Nathan himself! He’s on Twitter and Facebook, and he’s super-nice (and better read!).
Thanks!