BreOl72: "
The God Engines",
by John Scalzi. Wow, what a massive disappointment.
Not only did this come with a totally unsatisfying and non-explanatory end.
There also was a glaring omission throughout the whole text
(besides some missing articles ("the", "a", "an", etc)), which irked me to no end.
Now - the missing articles might be due to erroneous editing for the ebook version - I won't pin that on the author.
But the mentioned
(and lasting) omission..?
You know, how in astronomy, some planets, etc. have only been discovered, because something was NOT visible?
It jumped to the eyes of the examining astronomers - exactly BECAUSE something wasn't there, where something should have been.
And that's exactly, how that one character stands out to the reader.
See: all the characters in the story have a their gender revealed to the reader.
All but one.
And that makes no sense.
The
(let's say) profession
(or rank) of that character, would easily support both genders.
Or even a non-binary/gender-fluid character.
But in any of these cases, some form of specified pronoun
(he/her/they/his/hers/theirs) is expected to be used, when talking about that character, respectively about the things that character does, respectively about the rooms that character inhabits
(e.g.: HE said, SHE reached across the table, THEIR bedroom was average sized, etc).
However: the author didn't do that.
There are zero pronouns used - only the name of that character. Always the name only
(plus sometimes the added rank).
But that goes only for this one, particular character.
And because that omission is so glaring in the context of the rest of the book, you constantly expect some kind of important reveal, some relevance to the
(supposedly non-binbary/gender-fluid?) character...and in some sense, that relevance is there...it just is in no way gender-related.
So why have that glaring omission in the first place?
What's the point of it?
To make that clear: I would not have had any problems with any gender, that could have been assigned to that character. Male, female, anything in-between - I could have lived with it.
And I could have somewhat accepted the way the
(expected) reveal was delayed
(though again: the omission was so glaring - there would have been no surprise involved, anymore) - if that reveal would then have had something to do with the story, and how the story ended.
But it didn't.
Not that there was a reveal.
Nor would any reveal in that regard
(had it been there), have had anything to do with how the story ends.
As it stands, the omission of that characters gender was nothing but a constant nuisance for the reader, who was expecting something more coming from that angle.
The book is from 2009.
Now, I didn't follow the "public appearances" of
(possible) non-binary/gender-fluid characters in literature, and when exactly they did get "acceptable" in books, targeted at "the mainstream".
And maybe - in 2009 - such a character
(and/or the possible same-sex relationship, that would have come with it) would still have been "too daring" for a young author's work resume
(his first Sci-Fi works seem to be from 2005),...but then why go this "mysterious" route at all?
Why not simply make that character a female and be done with it?
Would have fit perfectly to the character and its arc in the story.
Nothing in the story would need to be adapted, to make it all work
(apart from using a few extra pronouns).
I just don't get it.
Like I said in my first sentence:
a massive disappointment - even more so, since the general topic of the story sounded interesting.
But then nothing got made with it.
Can't recommend.
Edit: wrong bracket A few years ago I read the Brazilian edition of Lock in by the same author, and found it pretty good.
A bit later, reading about the book, I read that Scalzi had ommited the gender of the main character so that any reader could decide for his own. I... didn't even notice that while I was reading, and felt too lazy to go over the pages of the digital book trying to check on my own (and maybe the Brazilian translation had changed that? I still don't know :P ), but ultimately I found it to be an interesting choice by the author.
I also don't remember what gender I assumed, it's been a few years already, but I recall thinking that any adaption would make the character female, probably.
All that said, I think he was probably doing the same with the character you mention in the book you read. But I haven't read it, so I could be wrong.
Again, sometimes authors ommit or delay information about characters so that readers may identify better with them. Ursula K LeGuin hid that Ged, the main character, was black until fairly late into the book A Wizard of Earthsea, so that readers wouldn't make assumptions about him before knowing him (that adaptions of the books to other media always made Ged white, irked her imensely).
