Eight Million Gods, Wen Spencer

Eight Million Gods, Wen Spencer

ISBN: 9781451638981

Read October 22, 2013

Fantasy: Modern-Mythic Japan via hypographic expat American.

Eh... I really wanted to like this, and the ideas were awesome, but the second half just completely fell apart.  There was a real sense that it was rushed to printing, with no chance to look into even basic things like plotholes, dropped characters, and logical progression of abilities.

Nikki is in Japan after having narrowly escaped her mother, who is hell-bent on putting her into an institution due to her hypographia, which manifests as writing horrible graphic death scenes for characters which pop into her head fully-formed.  

The world turns out to be more complex than she imagined, as she enters a world of Kami and yokai, and learns that instead of having a mental disorder, she's really a Seer - and all those horrible deaths she's written?  Totally true, actually happening to real people.  Ugh.

Here's where things get interesting, and also fall apart.  Characters appear and then vanish for a time, intentions are set up and then left stagnant, and even important character developments (TRUE LOVE!!!1!!) happen in the space of a paragraph.  

 

That's not even counting the actual climax of the book, where everything established so far gets tossed aside for an ending that is not only confusing, but seems totally implausible in the world as given to us so far.  An unreliable narrator will only get you so far with this, and the overly chipper finale just made the entire journey seem even more unrealistic.

Specific disgruntlements:

WTF happened with Atsumori?  Dropped like a hot rock, no closure whatsoever, and he was my favorite character.  

When you name a character "Scary Cat Dude" you need to have him be a scary cat dude in an ACTION SCENE - not just locked in a cage.

Power-creep progression.  Nikki begins the story not able to handle stress without uncontrollable, unfocused writing, sometimes for hours.  Then she can handle stress without writing by frantically clicking a pen, and getting to the writing ASAP.  Next she can handle stress without writing at all, then or later.  Not satisfied with that, then she moves into handling stress just fine, and can guide the "uncontrollable" writing to focus on a specific person.  Next?  Guiding the writing to specify time or scene desired.  Still not enough, as then we're told that she can write multiple options for reality and then choose the best.  Seems that's not quite enough, so then she writes in blood and causes the writing to manifest.  Finally, not happy with the already earthshattering graphically-based powers laid onto the heroine, Nikki finishes up by IMAGINING a scene, and causes the imagined scene to manifest, therefore wiping a main character entirely out existence in the modern world.  Well then.  That settles that.  Makes all of her stress and worry and panic from previously in the book (as well as previously in life) seem a bit silly.  

Sadly not a keeper, and not really a recommended title either.  Which is a shame, because Atsumori and Inari really deserve better.