City of Diamond
The line between science fiction and fantasy is frequently blurred; fans of one might not be fans of the other, but there's a vast in-between that’s either popular with or derided by both, depending on the offering’s quality. City of Diamond, first published in 1996, is one of those books that rides that in-between with extraordinary success.
Written by Doris Egan, now an Executive Producer for the television show House, M.D., under the pseudonym Jane Emerson, City of Diamond takes place primarily on the eponymous Diamond, a massive and potentially self-sufficient city-ship. A group of Redemptionists, a fringe religious sect with adherents scattered throughout the galaxy, inhabit both the Diamond and its two sister-ships, the Opal and the Pearl, all three of which run on technology given to humanity by a mysterious race of aliens known as the Curosa.
And that's enough background: the real fascination of this story lies in the character development, which is played out for the reader in a remarkably subtle way, particularly given how very many main characters Ms. Egan has created to populate her novel.
The leader of the Diamond, as the story opens, is about to enter an arranged marriage with an aristocratic girl from the Opal, which is run with an iron fist by the more fanatic elements of the Redemptionist faith; that leader's right-hand man is a demon, the product of the forbidden union of a human and an alien. And then there's the demon Tal's personal bodyguard, a young woman from a strange culture in which the elite are trained to be the galaxy's most successful guards and assassins; Tal's assistant, a middle-aged smuggler; Will, a city guard from the Opal with a checkered past; Will's childhood friend Hartley, who's now a politician and spy for the Opal, and a person of very dubious morality; and several others of varying importance. Put this all together and shake with some ice, let all these odd characters bounce off of one another a bit, and the result is something incredibly refreshing.
Ironically, perhaps one of the most praiseworthy qualities of this book is its utter resistance to review. Most reviews contain a fair summary of the action, perhaps with certain last-chapter spoilers omitted; City of Diamond is its own summary, and it would be impossible to properly convey its action or salient points in fewer pages than Ms. Egan used to tell the tale. The complexity of the character interactions drive the story – something that's much harder to summarize than a tale in which things go boom, someone has sex, and then there’s either – depending on which part of the spec fic genre the book inhabits – a unicorn or a supernova at the end.
But City of Diamond is no dry character study. Many things, indeed, go boom in this story; shots are fired, people die, and there's even some sex. These elements flow naturally from the characters and the subject matter, though, and there are no action sequences without a purpose.
Although it would be fair to say that there are no sequences of any kind without a purpose in City of Diamond, one qualification is necessary. The book’s structure may take the average reader aback at first. It's written loosely, in a way, moving from scene to scene and character to character without that sense of finality often seen in books written from multiple points of view. Chapters don't necessarily end with cliffhangers, nor do they contain resolution; rather than chapters, City of Diamond could almost be said to contain a string of vignettes. At first it's potentially disorienting. After a while, it becomes truly delightful, and that, again, has much to do with the characters themselves.
Any reader of contemporary fantasy and science fiction may have noticed a real trend towards multiple viewpoints. George R. R. Martin, for example, has taken this idea and run with it - his A Song of Ice and Fire series is made up of chapters titled simply with their focal character’s name, and it might be reasonable to speculate that just as each reader has his or her favorite characters, each reader is bored or annoyed by others. Robert Jordan ran much too far with this idea in his Wheel of Time series, introducing so many focal characters that various complicated tracking systems were necessary for readers to keep track of the players and the action. Not just that, but the main characters in that series had so few focal chapters, as the books progressed, that some readers were surely alienated from the story.
With all of that in perspective, then, Doris Egan truly achieved something unique with City of Diamond. The focal characters are all of more than sufficient, if not equal, interest; readers who might flip ahead to find out how much longer they must wait for a favorite character to appear in one of Mr. Martin’s books will probably not be reduced to such when reading Ms. Egan’s. Tal, the sociopathic demon, and his entourage of criminals, are certainly the liveliest characters and the most likely to be favored; it would be well-nigh impossible for characters as well-drawn as those to bore a reader, particularly in the hands of a writer as competent as Ms. Egan. And almost imperceptibly, as the book progresses, the vignettes slowly flow into a relatively seamless whole.
The one great flaw in City of Diamond is simply its lack of a much-needed sequel, one that would resolve the first book’s many loose ends. Ms. Egan has mentioned on her blog and elsewhere that she has long planned a second book; when that story might be forthcoming, however, is entirely unknown.
Comments
Maybe a sequel is coming. It isn't always up to the author on whether there's a sequel, unfortunately :). Good article.
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