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juushikaTitle: One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
Author: Clive Woodall
Published: New York: Ace Books, 2005 (2002)
Page Count: 312
Total Page Count: 22,983
Text Number: 67
Read For: my own enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: A book in two parts, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is the tale of anthropomorphic birds and their battle to save the song birds and then to restore the native population. Magpies in Birddom are leading a crusade to kill all of the small birds in their territory and claim the land for themselves. Hunted and exhausted, the last robin redbreast, Kirrick, seeks the help of the wisest of owls, Tomar. Together they devise a plan to defeat the magpies and their supporters, but first Kirrick must fly to the ends of the word he knows in order to garter support and find troops for battle. In the second half of the book, following a victory over the magpies, Kirrick's mate Portia must traverse the sea in order to find songbirds from Windland to bring back to repopulate Birddom. This is no kids book: the battles are violent, the magpies are depraved, good birds are murdered, rapes are committed, and thousands are slaughtered. However, the two-dimensional characters, clear delineation of good and evil, and friendly, and simplistic writing style mean that this isn't quite a book for adults, either. One for Sorrow, Two for Joy fails to live up to its epic premise, creating a brief, underdeveloped story with flat characters. The premise, however, is a good one, and the book is a fast read. All in all, I wouldn't recommend this novel. Look to the Redwall series and Watership Down for your anthropomorphic animals and epic journeys. In this book, those elements are weak and disappointing.
I was drawn to this book by its premise, and I think that premise is still a promising one. Kirrick's journey and the war in Birddom does have the potential to be epic, emotional, and exciting. Indeed, Woodall did see the elements that would make a good story: there is conflict, there are journeys, there is love, there is a battle, there are repercussions, and some of the good birds die. In fact, some of the deaths, and the order of the others, is fairly daring and surprising as far as general fiction goes. If this same plot had been written, in more detail perhaps, by almost any other author, it would probably make a very good book. Woodall, however, fails to make his story particularly exciting or even epic. He moves too quickly, making journeys seem brief and uneventful rather than arduous and long, his characterization is brief and flat and as a result his characters fail to be compelling or believable and it's difficult to become personally involved in their trails and tribulations, his villains are so unrealistically and unquestionably evil that they and their plots seem impossible, and the climaxes to both stories are almost identical and are therefore both predictable and read like deus ex machina.
My other, somewhat smaller, complaint about this book was its setting: unlike Redwall, the story takes place in the human world, and unlike Watership Down, it forgoes to much of bird nature that is visible to man. Human animals inside of a human world is harder for me to accept than human animals within an entirely human-free world, because I am constantly contrasting the animals to the humans that I know are out there. They either seem too human, too (in this case) bird-like, or too much like parodies and copies of humans. In a non-human world, I don't have that problem. That doesn't mean that it's impossible, in my mind, to create realistic and believable human animals in our world, and I do love Watership Down quite a bit, but Woodall fails to do so gracefully. His constant use of human turns of phrase with bird references thrown in ("a weight across his wings," "a grin playing on his beak," etc) remind us again and again of the humans out there. Moreover, some of the things the birds do is so entirely unbirdlike that it goes against the established nature of birds in our human world. Birds of disparate species become close friends, the birds vow to stop eating insects, robins congregate with, persuade, and fight alongside eagles, and so forth. In the human world, birds don't do that; moreover, it's the sort of thing we would perhaps notice if they suddenly began doing. Trapped within our world but failing to fit the boundaries of that world, the book becomes even more unconvincing.
This is a genre that I adore, but the book is a failure. I don't recommend One for Sorrow, Two for Joy. Kudos to Woodall for an interesting premise, promising plot, and a number of brave decisions in terms of events and deaths, but even that list can't save this book. The writing is poor, too fast and therefore without depth, characterization is horrible, the setting is bothersome, and in the end there's not much left to make this book worth reading. If you do pick it up, you'll probably get through it: the plot at least keeps the reader interested in how things turn out. However, it isn't worth the time or energy to bother.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
Author: Clive Woodall
Published: New York: Ace Books, 2005 (2002)
Page Count: 312
Total Page Count: 22,983
Text Number: 67
Read For: my own enjoyment, checked out from the library
Short review: A book in two parts, One for Sorrow, Two for Joy is the tale of anthropomorphic birds and their battle to save the song birds and then to restore the native population. Magpies in Birddom are leading a crusade to kill all of the small birds in their territory and claim the land for themselves. Hunted and exhausted, the last robin redbreast, Kirrick, seeks the help of the wisest of owls, Tomar. Together they devise a plan to defeat the magpies and their supporters, but first Kirrick must fly to the ends of the word he knows in order to garter support and find troops for battle. In the second half of the book, following a victory over the magpies, Kirrick's mate Portia must traverse the sea in order to find songbirds from Windland to bring back to repopulate Birddom. This is no kids book: the battles are violent, the magpies are depraved, good birds are murdered, rapes are committed, and thousands are slaughtered. However, the two-dimensional characters, clear delineation of good and evil, and friendly, and simplistic writing style mean that this isn't quite a book for adults, either. One for Sorrow, Two for Joy fails to live up to its epic premise, creating a brief, underdeveloped story with flat characters. The premise, however, is a good one, and the book is a fast read. All in all, I wouldn't recommend this novel. Look to the Redwall series and Watership Down for your anthropomorphic animals and epic journeys. In this book, those elements are weak and disappointing.
I was drawn to this book by its premise, and I think that premise is still a promising one. Kirrick's journey and the war in Birddom does have the potential to be epic, emotional, and exciting. Indeed, Woodall did see the elements that would make a good story: there is conflict, there are journeys, there is love, there is a battle, there are repercussions, and some of the good birds die. In fact, some of the deaths, and the order of the others, is fairly daring and surprising as far as general fiction goes. If this same plot had been written, in more detail perhaps, by almost any other author, it would probably make a very good book. Woodall, however, fails to make his story particularly exciting or even epic. He moves too quickly, making journeys seem brief and uneventful rather than arduous and long, his characterization is brief and flat and as a result his characters fail to be compelling or believable and it's difficult to become personally involved in their trails and tribulations, his villains are so unrealistically and unquestionably evil that they and their plots seem impossible, and the climaxes to both stories are almost identical and are therefore both predictable and read like deus ex machina.
My other, somewhat smaller, complaint about this book was its setting: unlike Redwall, the story takes place in the human world, and unlike Watership Down, it forgoes to much of bird nature that is visible to man. Human animals inside of a human world is harder for me to accept than human animals within an entirely human-free world, because I am constantly contrasting the animals to the humans that I know are out there. They either seem too human, too (in this case) bird-like, or too much like parodies and copies of humans. In a non-human world, I don't have that problem. That doesn't mean that it's impossible, in my mind, to create realistic and believable human animals in our world, and I do love Watership Down quite a bit, but Woodall fails to do so gracefully. His constant use of human turns of phrase with bird references thrown in ("a weight across his wings," "a grin playing on his beak," etc) remind us again and again of the humans out there. Moreover, some of the things the birds do is so entirely unbirdlike that it goes against the established nature of birds in our human world. Birds of disparate species become close friends, the birds vow to stop eating insects, robins congregate with, persuade, and fight alongside eagles, and so forth. In the human world, birds don't do that; moreover, it's the sort of thing we would perhaps notice if they suddenly began doing. Trapped within our world but failing to fit the boundaries of that world, the book becomes even more unconvincing.
This is a genre that I adore, but the book is a failure. I don't recommend One for Sorrow, Two for Joy. Kudos to Woodall for an interesting premise, promising plot, and a number of brave decisions in terms of events and deaths, but even that list can't save this book. The writing is poor, too fast and therefore without depth, characterization is horrible, the setting is bothersome, and in the end there's not much left to make this book worth reading. If you do pick it up, you'll probably get through it: the plot at least keeps the reader interested in how things turn out. However, it isn't worth the time or energy to bother.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
