Reviewer’s Disclosure: I am an employee of White Wolf Game Studios, predominantly for the Dark Ages line, and I hereby state that I will not review my own work, works to which the other two members of my writer’s circle have contributed, or any work of which I had advance knowledge of any type. That being said, on with the review.
I will be honest with you all right now: I tend to like game fiction. I write it both professionally and for my own amusement value. Something about the medium – and, possibly, the fact that someone else went to all the trouble to create the world that I can fiddle with and insert characters into – appeals to me at the level of both creator and consumer. Well-written game fiction can fully involve the reader in both the world and the characters and draw them into – gasp! – actually playing the game.
Of course, bad game fiction can reek so horribly that it can drive even the most tolerant reader to violate any and all local book-burning ordinances, and White Wolf has, unfortunately, had a tendency to produce some *wretched* fiction. The sort of books that make you wonder aloud why trees were killed to produce it while reaching for your Zippo and lighter fluid. ETERNAL HEARTS, just to choose an object example.
Fortunately, SHARDS, the first book in the Lasombra Clan Trilogy is not one of those books. Bruce Baugh takes on the Herculean task of turning the Lasombra signature character Lucita – the “modern ninja,” “Death with tits” – into someone for whom we might actually feel something close to sympathy. This is no simple goal, since Lucita comes with a metric ton of fictional baggage and a history of intensely bad handling (as in the aforementioned ETERNAL HEARTS) which has tended to obliterate any natural appeal that might arise from her. Fortunately, Mr. Baugh mostly succeeds in his effort to make Lucita intellectually compelling, if not exactly emotionally connective.
From here there may very well be spoilers.
Structure:
SHARDS is divided into a Prologue and three Parts. In the Prologue, we find Lucita in Zaragoza, having returned home in a fit of ennui following the destruction of her sire, Ambrosio Luis Moncada (the events of which are detailed in Clan Novel Assamite). Ennui rapidly turns into a spasm of flat-out self-destructive behavior (the only such behavior she genuinely displays in this book) and a near suicide attempt (which, to be sure, does not succeed since that would rather have ended the book before it began).
Part One: Accusations opens in Mexico City, where a convocation of the Sabbat Cardinals is meeting to discuss the destruction of Moncada, Lucita’s role in the same, and what to do about her, as she’s proving to be a very bad example to impressionable young Sabbat Lasombra (particularly the ones fed up with their sires, their Clan, and/or the calcified senior leadership of the Sabbat).
Lucita is suffering a severe identity crisis and is searching methodically for something that will give some focus or purpose to her continued existence. As part of this quest for inner peace and/or mental stability, she pays a visit to an old Autarkis friend of hers, Konstantin, who gives her the best advice she receives in this book.
Meanwhile, the Sabbat Lasombra put together a pack led by Bishop Andrew Emory (of Clanbook Lasombra Revised fame) and consisting of Lasombra neonates – who have mostly done something irritating enough for their elders to send them on a virtual suicide mission – and sic them on Lucita’s back trail. They begin tracing Lucita’s movements as she travels around North America trying to get her head in order.
And, whilst all this is going on, a group of Abyss mystics in Sicily are diligently laboring to refine the rites by which they intend to draw Something Vastly Unpleasant from the lightless depths of the Abyss.
Part Two: Interrogations details the ongoing investigations of the various principal characters.
Andrew Emory and Company continue running down Lucita’s trail, encountering as they do so a Cathayan (“He threw his HEAD at you? How the Hell could he throw his HEAD at you?”) who possesses useful information (and who is thankfully not indestructible) and a paranoid (but not infallible) Autarkis elder who willfully withholds useful information.
Lucita, meanwhile, is criss-crossing North America and Europe, contemplating her profound lack of personal faith and considering what to do with the rest of her life. During this process, she acquires the services of a pilot and decides to dandle her toes in the waters of the Camarilla. She first takes a look at life in London, a city that has favorably impressed her in the past, and is disappointed by observation of the night to night existence of the average Camarilla harpy. Her second dip into the Camarilla is with a Lasombra Archon (Archon-Captain Kleist) who lives the life of a man of the sea, policing Sabbat piratical activity. She’s ultimately not much impressed with his mode of existence, either.
Meanwhile, the Sicilian Abyss mystics manage to summon something large and omnivorous out of the Abyss.
Part Three: Trials contains both trials of the spirit and trials of Lasombra jurisprudence.
The results of Lucita’s “meeting” with Archon-Captain Kleist puts Andrew Emory’s pack back on her trail.
Lucita herself thinks that the time is right to seek out the advice of her friend, confidante, and sometime lover Fatima al-Faqadi. This meeting does not go anywhere near as well as she hoped it might, and her subsequent emotional turmoil makes her easy pickings for the well-prepared Sabbat pack waiting for her. She is ultimately taken prisoner before a Court of Blood to answer for the destruction of her sire – a Court which has already made its decision, and is merely going through the formal motions before ordering her own destruction. This neat piece of legal sophistry is terminally disrupted when the activities of the Sicilian Abyss mystics intrude on the activities of the Court of Blood and Lucita, rather than being destroyed, is given a chance to redeem herself in the eyes of her Clan.
My Not So Humble Opinions:
The Good
Bruce Baugh’s writing style is clean and smooth, if somewhat dry at points; at its best, it is capable of setting a vivid scene, evoking genuine emotion from the reader, and instilling horror without resorting to buckets of unnecessary gore. I rate this last point quite highly since, in a book that heavily involves the Sabbat, the potential for the use of pointless oversquick to emphasize the True Dark Nastiness of the Sabbat is always unfortunately present. Mr. Baugh avoids that problem neatly. He also includes in this book one of the most quietly horrific moments in recent White Wolf fiction, a subtly horrifying moment that stayed with me for days after I finished this book. You’ll know it when you read it.
Similarly, the Sabbat pack presented here – and particularly Bishop Andrew Emory – is actually depicted as *smart* and *competent* which, if you read any part of the Clan Novel Series (but particularly Clan Novel Tzimisce), is rather a sharp break with the depiction of the Ravening Unstoppable And Largely Brainless Sabbat Horde That Conquered the East Coast. They’re none of them particularly likeable (again with the possible exception of Bishop Emory) or gifted with very much in the way of real personality (...except Bishop Emory, who’s the sort of smartass that ought to turn up more often in White Wolf fiction), but given the length limitations of a novel of this type, I consider chopping characterization grace notes to be both understandable and forgivable.
The scene between Lucita and Fatima actually brought tears to my eyes. (And this is the second time Mr. Baugh has done this to me, the first being ENDS OF EMPIRE.) In fact, I liked his depiction of Fatima (as a woman of strong faith and convictions caught between a rock and a hard place) better than I liked his depiction of Lucita.
I liked Willa, Lucita’s Caitiff minion, enormously even though I wanted to slap her silly. I liked Lucita’s mortal pilot, Angelica Trahn, even more, since she’s among the only point-of-view characters whose intellectual *and* emotional reactions we get to see. Plus, I’m just a sucker for pilots.
Oh, and Lucita develops the functional equivalent of a personality. Can’t forget that.
THE BAD
Bruce Baugh’s writing is clean and smooth and intellectually engaging but it lacks emotional resonance for most of the book. Let me explain.
The story in SHARDS is great. It’s clean, it hooks you fast and draws you in, it’s fast-paced (and a very quick read) and clever. It tells us, repeatedly, that Lucita is having a really bad go of it, is having the functional equivalent of an emotional breakdown, having lost the sole focus of her existence – which is to say, thwarting her sire at every available opportunity – and is adrift and rootless, looking for something to give her definition and purpose.
It *tells* the audience this but it doesn’t really *show* us and it, unfortunately, does not make us *feel* it until one scene at the *very* end of the book. Lucita is *entirely* too in control of both herself and virtually everything she gets involved in throughout this entire book; it makes it very difficult for us to believe she’s really suffering either an identity crisis or intense convulsions of the spirit. Even during her attempted suicide, she’s far too intellectually focused, contained, and controlled – she doesn’t even frenzy after taking a good bit of damage from exposure to sunlight and, later in the book when she does frenzy, she drops back out of said Beast-ridden state with perfect mental poise and lack of emotional involvement. Her position is intellectually understandable but emotionally unsatisfying.
THE UGLY
I haven’t read Shadows yet, but I will be heartily disappointed if Lucita doesn’t at least threaten to rip Bishop Emory’s head off in retaliation for the events of April 9, 2000, in Death Valley.
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