last smile in sunder city final thoughts: as i read, i found that i was scouring the entire book with a great deal more scrutiny than i treat fiction with relation to authorship most of the time, trying to pin down what part of it best illustrates whatever the author got out of that great big show we both won’t shut up about, but the conclusion i ultimately drew was that it is much less ‘some thesis within the content of the novel’ and more ‘the fact that the novel exists.’ what the author got out of sails was this is so great i wish i could do something like this. HANG ON -

the author  got the writing bug, and that’s what the book is about. of course there is nothing spectacular about creatives from one medium trying their hand at another with the assurance that they’ve got a leg up simply by being established already in another field, and there are as many actors-in-bands and industry memoirs and celebrity-thriller-writer collabs as there are people to do those things, but still i think there’s a gulf, large or small, between this and ‘fantasy novel written by that guy on twitter who was in that pirate show and who is best known for being really into muppet treasure island.’

sunder city lives in that gulf comfortably. the inexpert ardentness with which it throws itself, heedless, into the yawning and toothy chasm of fantasy readers says as much. the literary criticism tool called “death of the author” has been mangled past recognition online, but neither its pop usage nor its academic usage appeal to me here. maybe i would have different takeaways if i wasn’t already familiar with the author’s acting work, but for me, sunder city is less about the fact that people might read it and more about the fact that someone wanted very badly to try and write it. to try something new. to scratch the itch. if nothing else, it is successful as a sign of what storytelling is: something that happens to you, like puberty, or lycanthropy. you catch it somewhere and start sneezing plot all over the place. and for that alone, whatever problems i may have stylistically with it, this is a successful book.