Just wanted to say I enjoyed reading Solitaire. It kept me entertained with an intriguing plotline that led to a satisfying ending. The writing style really drew me into the story. I appreciate a book that gives elaborate yet consistent descriptions of its imaginary locales, and Solitaire delivered beautifully with its portrayals of Ko Island and NNA Zone 17.
I especially liked the subtle humor sprinkled throughout the novel. I got a kick out of the map-dispensing pillar that mixed courtesy with dire warnings about failure to recycle. The rejection e-mail from the art gallery was a scream. My favorite character (after Frankenbear of course) was Crichton. She really had a way with words (“He’s not talking to me”).
I winced at this depiction of the Garbo team: “All of them except the designer were typical R&D types — blindingly smart, highly verbal, suspicious of non-technical language, critical of new ideas, desperate for credit, and terminally rude.” Ouch! Does that describe the R&D staff at Wizards of the Coast?
Just a few criticisms. First, the basic premise was really hard to believe: that a world government would choose its future leaders based on the second they were born. Civilizations have been known to choose their chiefs in some pretty bizarre ways, but that way takes the prize for sheer irrelevance and lack of enforceability. Perhaps some further background on the history of EarthGov’s formation would help.
Why is Ko Island so cold in the winter that people put on a hundred layers of clothes and drink hot soup all the time? It’s close to Hong Kong, so it should have the same subtropical climate.
I didn’t quite understand Tiger’s behavior on Halloween and afterward. Presumably he knew about Jackal and Snow, and he was their web mate, so his actions seemed rather odd. Maybe a little more development of Tiger’s character would help.
The events at Mirabile really strained credibility, even allowing for the numerous coincidences involved. Why would the elevator control console have a “disengage backup system” command that instantly lets all three elevators drop? Backup brakes for an elevator ought to remain engaged until manually disengaged. Why did the second attendant leave the room? What eventually happened to the two attendants? “One … had been found dead; the other, not at all.” Did Ko executives have them iced or something?
Despite these issues, I enjoyed the book a lot. I look forward to your next novel. In the meantime, maybe I’ll check out some of Nicola’s writings. Do you have a favorite work of hers that you’d recommend?
Steve
Hi, Steve, and I apologize about 400 times, one for every day your email went unread (aside to the rest of the internet — yep, Steve’s message found its way into a corner of my computer and I only just discovered it a couple weeks ago. And we went to high school together, so it’s not like I’m just any old rude person, I’m a rude person he actually knows. Color me embarrassed.)
I’m glad you liked Solitaire overall, although I do get a chuckle from the idea that the plotline works at any point. Plot is not my strength; really I just want to wave my hands at it in a particular cliched Southern girl fashion, as if shooing it off into a corner. But I have learned that readers expect it.
Endings, however, are important to me, and I’ve certainly gotten enough grief from people about the “neatly wrapped up ending” that it’s nice to have someone find it satisfying. It satisfies me too, but I’ve never thought of it as neatly wrapped up. Mostly, I think of it as one part of Jackal’s life being irrevocably over… and that’s bittersweet for me, and (I’ve always imagined) for her as well.
And thank you for loving Crichton. I just adore her — all those years of being in and out of her head when I was wrestling with the novel, and when I read Solitaire she still makes me laugh out loud. I’d love to have her as a friend, not just for her charm — it would get old if that was all there was to her — but for her vast intelligence and her absolutely realistic take on things. I think she’s the smartest person in the book, except for maybe Neill. Or maybe it’s just that Crichton doesn’t quite have his experience yet, and one day she will give him a run for his money.
Hah. If there were ever going to be a “sequel” to Solitaire, maybe that would have to be it.
So, you are the first person in all these years who has asked me directly if that sentence about R&D was based on my experience at Wizards. Why, yes, it was, and is as precise a description as I could create of the folks I knew there (I didn’t know them all, so the rest may have been as sweet as pie). The exception was always Richard, the original designer of Magic, who was very nice to deal with, and was so smart that he never had to prove a thing to anyone.
I don’t blame you for arguing with the Hopes premise (shoo, plot, shoo!), although perhaps it wasn’t clear that the Hope was an honorary/PR designation — none of them were growing up to be the presidents of their nations. Jackal was being groomed for behind-the-scenes work in EarthGov, an actual position of power and influence, but still not leadership. The primary purposes of the Hopes was to take up highly visible “feel good” roles on the world stage, to be someone that a citizen of a participating nation could point to as a role model. As the Hopes are successful, so EarthGov takes on a certain credibility and “success” by association. It’s essentially celebrity politics turned about 30 degrees on its head. As carefree as I may be with plot sometimes, even I would not see the actual leaders of the near future world chosen quite so randomly.
The climate of Hong Kong: you’re right, of course, but they do have outlier days in the winter months where temperatures can get down into the 40’s or even 30’s. This may not seem particularly arduous to you, but I gave Jackal my response to cold — and I grew up in Florida, fer gosh sakes. There’s always a few days in Florida where the temperature gets into the 30’s or 40’s, and when I was growing up, whap, the mercury hit the magic number of 49 or below and women would pull out their fur coats and wear them to the gas station, the grocery store, wherever they could, just to get some use out of them.
As you may imagine, the weather at St. Paul’s was a revelation to me. I was cold all the time there.
As for Tiger, we can agree that mileage varies. I don’t need him to be reasonable or rational: young people in love so rarely are, in my experience.
You’re right about the elevator mechanics in Mirabile, that’s an example of me scratching my head and trying to plot. I needed a way for Jackal to directly interact with the crash — a way for her to have some responsibility for what happened. That’s the best I could come up with at the time. One of my writing teachers used to say that the best thing a writer can do when she finds herself on thin ice is move fast and point in the other direction (grin).
If you’re interested, there’s a very long and thoughtful conversation in the comments here about both Tiger and the intersection of accident and responsibility in the Mirabile scene.
As for Nicola’s books, well, read them all (another grin). Try Slow River — it’s an elegant book in both structure and in sheer writing, and there’s a reason it won the Nebula (beams with pride at Nicola through the internet).
Steve, thanks so much for hanging in there! And thanks for the thoughtful response to Solitaire.
Enjoy your day.
