Oh god. Oh god, I have this blog, don’t I? Gah!
I’m still reading things! Look! Look at the things I am reading! Look at what I am reading and read my thoughts about them and let it be known that I haven’t completely abandoned this blog. Just temporarily neglected it.
I don’t think I could have possibly timed my reading of Jane Carver of Waar any better if I’d tried. The books I’d read just before it? The John Carter of Mars novels.
For those unfamiliar with John Carter of Mars, then I should probably explain that the book, one considered as one of the earliest works of sci-fi, is the epitome of what I like to call Macho Fic. It’s a broad categorisation, encompassing classical Epics, modern action heroes from movies, video games and novels and an awful lot of stuff from the 19th and early 20th century, where the protagonist has a jaw square enough to measure right angles and the closest they get to character arcs is being able to punch more dudes unconscious than they could at the beginning. It’s kind of been a guilty pleasure of mine, something slightly silly to enjoy, and Jane Carver of Waar takes that formula, gender-swaps the protagonist, adds a good dash of satire, actually bothers with all that character development nonsense and ends up being the most fun novel I’ve read since Ack-Ack Macaque.
The novel starts with Jane Carver, a six foot and hard-as-nails biker chick, accidentally killing a man. On the run from the police, she hides in a cave, is knocked unconscious by a burst of energy from a mysterious device and wakes up far from home on the planet of Waar. There, she must contend with aliens, purple locals, a sinister conspiracy and she must try to help the guy get the girl.
While reading Jane Carver of Waar, what stood out was the titular character; the novel is narrated entirely from the first person and Jane has a distinct narrative voice from the start, one that peppers the story with slang and is thick with an American accent throughout, a voice that feels appropriate for her character. As well as being an excellent and memorable narrator, she also serves as a great lead character; she’s complex, flawed, sympathetic and grounded, and is a perfect counterbalance to the ultra-macho super-strong ubermensch lead of the John Carter books.
It helps that the rest of the cast are generally a memorable bunch as well; there’s the alien tribeswoman of “Queenie”, the brattish and quasi-heroic prince Sai, his greatly put-upon second-in-command Lhan and the warlord Kedac. They don’t get as much limelight as Jane does, obviously, but they’re all interesting, memorable characters and Sai has a very well written character-arc-that-isn’t-quite-a-character-arc.
While the novel is very much a swashbuckling adventure novel, and a very fun one at that, it also has a rather interesting exploration of female and LGBT (or at least LGB) rights as pretty prominent aspect. Society on Waar is depicted as being highly patriarchal and homophobic, something that repeatedly grates against Jane’s much more free-thinking sensibilities, and the integration of this into the story, as well as how it affects Jane’s story and how she interacts with the world, adds a good measure of depth and nuance to the story.
In conclusion, as well as being excellently written and as fun as a barrel of explosive confetti monkeys, Jane Carver of Waar is a novel that not only entertains the reader but challenges them to think as well. I found reading it to be an absolute blast from start to finish.
Verbal Fisticuffs 