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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9775558" data-attributes="member: 8461">I just finished reading Django Wexler's 2024 novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Spelljammer-Memorys-Wake/dp/059372321X" target="_blank">Spelljammer: Memory's Wake</a>, and my immediate impression is that it's...okay, but decidedly imperfect.To be clear, nothing here is bad per se. The story's plot holds together well enough, the characterizations—while never deep—do an decent job of defining who dramatis personae, and while the prose isn't anything special it never devolves into a workmanlike slog. Everything about this story can be defined as "adequate," and I suppose it's just my nature that I see the things that kept this from being better than it is more than the things which kept it from being worse.To start with the obvious, this isn't really a Spelljammer novel. Which is to say, nothing about spelljammer is integral to this story. Yes, it utilizes various elements of that campaign setting—you have giff and neogi and scavvers, ships powered by magical helms, and everyone sails between asteroids and various other space-bases—but nothing that makes the story unique to this particular setting; with the possible exception of a few, and altogether minor, space-based maneuvers (e.g. manipulating the gravity plane of two ships as they come into contact), concerns (e.g. running out of breathable air), and affectations (e.g. asteroid settlements that are tidally-locked) and you could just as easily set this on a series of islands on a terrestrial sea somewhere.Now, I make that critique with some hesitation; the more details you dispense with, the more that any overview will seem to resemble other stories of the same genre. Yet I can't help but compare this book with the Cloakmaster Cycle sextet, which were also Spelljammer novels and which made the particulars of that setting central to their overall plot (or at least, more so than anything here). Having an "ultimate helm" that can potentially grant control over the strongest ship for which the entire setting is named, for instance, makes the story one which leans more toward what makes Spelljammer what it is (all the more so since it passes through a couple of other campaign worlds, showcasing Spelljammer's serving as setting that connects other settings, as well as highlighting its own "home base" by way of the Rock of Bral, which only gets two or three name-drops here).Memory's Wake, to reiterate a point, had none of that. It certainly puts forward plenty of minor aspects of the setting, as I noted before, but the result is something that's a mile-wide and an inch deep. If you told me that this novel had been written for another setting altogether, and had been rewritten to make it a Spelljammer story, I wouldn't find that hard to believe.The other thing which stuck out at me is that while Wexler can write decent characters, in that we have a general sense of who they are (which is, ironically, rather fitting for how most D&D characters are typically presented, notwithstanding that one person who always seems to show up with twenty pages of backstory), he doesn't seem to write relationships between the characters very well at all.For an example of this, take our introduction to supporting characters Nia (a tiefling warlock) and Kori (a half-elven cleric). When they make their debut, they know that Axia (the main character) is an amnesiac who is likely to be wary of them, they know that they need to get her on their side in order to secure a huge treasure, and they know that there are other people who are also looking for Axia and have hostile intent. You'd think that would necessitate that they be focused on trying to secure her cooperation via the promise of gold and adventure and the warning that she's in danger, likely fairly immediate danger. And Nia and Kori do do this...but also flirt with each other at the same time. ("What have I told you about your fatalistic nihilism, Nia?" "That it makes me intellectually unattractive? That's fine; I've already accepted that you just want me for my body.")To me, that came across as Wexler wanting us to immediately know that these two are a couple. The problem is that, at least to me, that breaks what should be a fairly tense scene, with Axia trying to figure out if she can trust these two or not. That such tension is dispelled with their badinage comes across as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax_(rhetoric)#Anticlimax" target="_blank">rhetorical anticlimax</a>, which seems like it's everywhere in media nowadays and which I've subsequently come to despise.It's not like Wexler needed us to know that Kori and Nia are a couple in their very first scene, as he plays up their flirting virtually every time we see them, meaning that he could have withheld it from their introduction in favor of letting the scene's tension build. Particularly since the next scene is of them realizing that the people aiming for Axia's life have the barn where they first meet her surrounded, and that they'll need to fight their way out. Kori giving Nia a kiss for luck as the latter goes out alone to create a distraction would have been a much more organic way to highlight their relationship status rather than rubbing our noses in it right off the metaphorical bat.By contrast, Axia herself is notable for her lack of relationship with Tsorik, the old man whom she's living with at the start of the novel. While he's irascible and a cheapskate, he's also the one who found her and gave her a place to live when it became clear that she had no memory of who she was. More than that, by the time the novel starts the two of them have been living together for three years in what seems like very close proximity (as it's implied that Tsorik's place is fairly small). To that end, you'd think that they'd have developed some kind of familial relationship by then; not necessarily a loving one but some sort of close bond. But no, all Axia seems to feel toward Tsorik is a vague sense of exasperation, as if she'd prefer to be away from him but can't figure out a way to extricate herself from his life.Even when she finds out that Tsorik is engaged in underhanded dealings with the neogi, Axia doesn't seem to feel any sort of personal disillusionment or sense of personal betrayal (beyond a vague outrage at how Tsorik sputtered and gaped when the neogi leader offered to buy her from him, as though not realizing that he was trying to find a way to say no without offending a creature whom he was clearly terrified of). By the time she leaves Tsorik's place to start her adventure, she's more sad to leave behind her giant space hamster than the person whom she lived with for three years.Again, I say this with some reservations, simply because when it comes to various characters' state(s) of mind, it's easy for readers to color inside the proverbial lines without realizing this. I've <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-are-you-reading-in-2023.694159/post-9019854" target="_blank">mentioned before</a> that I've read Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel, and I can't help but consider it again here. We use <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind" target="_blank">theory of mind</a> with literary characters to fill in the metaphorical blanks about what characters are thinking/feeling in a given situation, which is all well and good, but in my experience there's a notable contingent of readers who inadvertently use this to excuse bad writing. Lacking character motivations, or characters taking actions that don't make sense, or virtually any other instance of characters being presented poorly become excusable because the reader can invent a plausible reason for why things would happen the way they do. The end result is that critique and criticism are (largely) eschewed as readers seem to ignore the difference between what's on the page and what's in their heads, apparently to the point of being unable to tell the difference anymore. It's things like that which have soured me on "fan theories" in various franchises.You'd think I'd be done with my complaints at this point, but no, there are still things in this novel which rubbed me the wrong way, such as the plot threads which are rather frustratingly left dangling. I'll put these in spoilers because they answer some of the book's central mysteries:[spoiler]Why does Marya, the assassin hired by Shard to kill Axia, keep coming back to life? Unless I missed something, it's never explained. Again, we could presume that someone's resurrecting her, but I don't recall that or any other explanation ever being offered.How, exactly, did Blacktongue have a clone prepared of her? She wasn't a spellcaster, so presumably she found one who could do it for her, but there's no mention of any such thing; it's presented as being fait accompli.For that matter, so is how Blacktongue's clone ended up in a broken pile of junk on an out-of-the-way asteroid. Did it crash there? Did she stow it there on purpose because it seemed like the best place to hide it? And how is it that Blacktongue's soul seems to have periodic instances of being able to reach out to guide said clone when it's later explicitly confirmed to have been trapped in a warded temple and unable to leave? Shouldn't that prevent it from making even limited contact?[/spoiler]Stuff like this almost makes me wonder if there's going to be some sort of sequel where at least some of this would be answered, but leaving aside whether or not there will be, this book is still at fault for not resolving the aforementioned issues, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.I've read <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-are-you-reading-in-2024.701874/post-9520221" target="_blank">worse novels</a>, to be sure, but I've also read <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-are-you-reading-in-2025.709371/post-9755325" target="_blank">better ones</a>, so while I wish I could say that I enjoyed this book, its flaws stood out more than its virtues. On their own, none of these were deal-breakers, but together they made this into a mediocre reading experience. It wasn't bad, but I can't say that it was good either.</blockquote>

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