So Close. . .

I hesitate to write a negative review, because I worry that in some distant future I will encounter the author or editor or publisher of the work in some professional setting. I imagine their faces going sour. “Oh, it’s you,” they will say.

Which is why I feel it prudent to preface this with some explanation. I loved Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series. It was creative and different and deep in ways that the Rithmatist isn’t. I get that the latter book was just a little side project for him, and that it was written with a younger audience in mind. It also happens that my complaints about the Rithmatist are not specific to this story alone, but apply to so very many fantasy stories, both for children and for adults. And I am picking on the Rithmatist, not because it is the worst offender of the bunch, but because it came so close to breaking out of the gravitational pull of generic fantasy, and I was sad to see it fail.

I picked up the Rithmatist on the recommendation of a friend, who knew I was looking for unusual YA fantasy. several elements in its favor. Topping the list is the magic system. In this world certain people are endowed with the ability to attack and defend using chalk drawings. On top of that, the fantasy genre has been hybridized with the mystery genre, and the setting is an age of clockwork technology in an alternate history of the United States. So the Rithmatist begins with fertile soil. And yet out of it springs. . . a suburban lawn.

Sanderson’s novel fit the bill, and from the start had

The architecture of the plot is predictable even for a genre mash-up. There is mention of a tower somewhere far away that is leaking naughty little chalk-monsters, in a toy-like imitation of Tolkien. There is a school for the magically endowed. There is a youth of mysterious parentage whose longings and personal history tell us that he is destined to end up in the magical community. We know that the first girl who snubs him will end up being. . . well, just his friend, for which I give Sanderson points. Love triangle do get so tiresome.

We know when the mentor figure is going to get payback for the wrong done to him. We know that the obvious villain is going to turn around and do something heroic, even if he proceeds to surprise us again. We know that the villain will turn out to be one of the seemingly nice characters whom we have met along the way, and we know that the villain isn’t the cranky desk worker who seems to have been planted there in a wet noodle of an attempt at a red herring.

The magic system, while novel on the surface, boils down to something we have seen ad nausem: certain special people have special abilities. Special fighting abilities. Nevermind that there is untapped potential for new systems of magic to delve into areas of creativity or spirituality. No, these people are human guns.

That said, Sanderson explores, shallowly, one aspect of the magic-as-weapon trope that too many other authors overlook, and it is this: how exactly will society control such overpowered and dangerous individuals? These rithmatists, as they are called, are conscripted at the age of eight, trained at their Hogwarts for several years, and then shipped off for a ten-year stint on the battle front. At the end of their tour of duty they are free to rejoin society. My suspension of disbelief fizzles here because these powerful people, isolated during their formative years, sent away to face horrors for an entire decade - they go on to neither be victims of PTSD, nor a threat to society. In fact, the plot revolves around the “shocking” possibility that one of them might have gone bad - as if they were not emerging from a system that, in the real world, would be churning out the mentally ill and and terrorists like maggot-infested meat emitting flies.

The handling of gender in the Rithmatist, while not offensive, leaves something to be desired. Many works of fantasy are placed in settings of gender inequality to match their generic setting of pseudo-Medieval Europe. Older generations of fantasy did this without questioning the practice, chaining together male-dominated societies un-self-consciously with stories that were largely about men and for men. Newer generations of fantasy writers use the same patriarchal settings, but as a foil for their heroines to look progressive or oppressed or heroic. This is the track that to a limited extent Sanderson took. Which is great. . . except that there are so many other unexplored possibilities. Why not a world in which gender equality is the norm? When the repression of one gender plays exactly zero role in the plot, why throw inequality in as a background element in the first place? All that it accomplishes is to reinforce the notion that the repression of women is normal.

In the Rithmatist, there was the possibility of a dramatic reveal of how the setting ties into the villains and the magic system. But instead of a revelation there was a puny tease. That great ta-daa moment, if there is to be one, was punted to the inevitable sequel. And the cover didn’t even have the decency to proclaim that the Rithmatist as “book one.”

I can’t help but think ahead with dread to the next two books.Our Chosen One is going to traipse off into the wilderness and come back with some shiny variant of the magic that will allow him to trounce the villain at the end of book two. Along the way he'll die and be resurrected. The love triangle (or perhaps a g-rated friend triangle) will also happen in book two, ending with hurt feelings, but this will be resolved in book three. In book three, all of the good guys will be armed with the shiny new power, and will successfully take out that distant evil tower full of bad guys. Here comes the Quest. Forget the remnants of the mystery, because it will have been shoved out of the way by marching hordes of fantasy tropes.

I would like to think that this series will surprise me. Mistborn certainly did. Spoiler alert: Mistborn so thoroughly trounced its tropes that by the end the awful villain turned out to be a hero (of sorts), the source of the magic powers turned out to be evil, the mentor ascended as a god, and the two main characters not only died but deliberately ended the world. It was epic, it was surprising, it wasn’t tragic, despite everything - and Sanderson tied up every loose end in a gorgeous Gordian knot. End spoiler.

Maybe, just maybe, Sanderson will drive the Rithmatist series off the road in the same manner. Given its beginning and his statement that it was just a plaything between “real” projects, I am not hopeful. I don’t think he takes young adult readers seriously enough to serve them anything in the way of horizon-broadening concepts. This book is junk food. But the guy can write. Here’s hoping he can’t hold himself back from more intelligent and surprising epicness.