Codex by Lev Grossman

[lightreads]

Codex by Lev Grossman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Young investment banker gets caught up in the search for a medieval manuscript that may or may not exist.

Ouch, this is not good. It's what appears to be Grossman's default protagonist: young white New Yorker dude who is deeply confused that his enormous privilege doesn't translate automatically to happiness. But his later fantasies have so much more muscle and richness to them. This thriller, by comparison, thumps blandly along to its dull conclusion.

That's actually one of the saddest things about this book. It flirts with the fantastical around the edges, but then withdraws to the banal with what looks like a failure of courage. The protagonist plays a computer game, whose scenes and convolutions begin to parallel the quest plot in eerie and inexplicable ways. Inexplicable until explained, anyway, and not to get too psychological about this because I don't like doing that. But man. There is a fantasy novel strangled to death inside this rigid thriller, and it's kind of terrible to watch it happen.




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Comments

[readerjane]

I didn't get very far with this book. A few chapters, maybe, and then I admitted I didn't like the main character enough to care whether he ever got into the game world or not.

Funny how some books teeter on whether they'll cross over into faerie stories or not, and sometimes it's better that they do, and sometimes it would have been better that they didn't.

With Tana French's In The Woods, I kept expecting it to happen. The title suggested it, and the lyrical passages about Rob and his friends hinted very strongly that they had been stolen away by some magical force. But the book never goes there, and by the end I felt the story was stronger for it.

With Anne Ursu's Breadcrumbs, the crossover into faerie territory was entirely necessary. There was a mundane story there, but if the magical elements had been removed it would have taken the heart out of the book.

[lightreads]

Yes. My dissatisfaction here comes partly from the idea that Grossman is a much better fantasy writer, and that this book is pushing at some things he works at much more directly and adultly in his fantasy. But he just couldn't/wouldn't write the book he really wanted here. Partly, I've always been uncomfortable with the way he talks about the fantasy genre; everything is always about explaining fantasy to people who don't get it, and justifying what he apparently views as a slightly embarrassing interest in it. Meh, lots of armchair psychology.

[lightreads]

P.s. Wow, how much would I read Tana French writing fantasy? Soooooo much. It would be about the dense thicket of psychology underpinning magic, and I would love it.