Master of Formalities

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of a quick-takes catch up post. The point is to catch up on my “To Write About” stack—emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness..
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Thousands of years in the future, elaborate rules of honor, etiquette, and form have been imposed on the planetary governments to preserve order—even in the midst of war. We're talking rules that Downton Abbey's Carson would find overly elaborate and restrictive.

Two planets have been at war for decades—but things have come to a tipping point. It's up to the two arbiters of these rules on these planets to keep things under control.

This book did something I didn't expect—I would have admitted it was possible, but wouldn't have expected that Scott Meyers and Luke Daniels produced something that left me frequently bored and that I had a hard time connecting with at all. It was clever, but that cleverness strayed into convolutedness in the plot. Good enough to listen to, but by a hair.

Rating 3.9

Interesting and different book by Scott Meyer.
I've loved all of his Magic 2.0 books, and what really comes through is the wry humor that is a consistent feature of Meyer's novels. While technically this is a SF book as it is set on a future earth colony planet, the book is almost entirely focused on social structures and the interplay between characters. Honestly, this same fact is true of the Magic 2.0 books.

Master of Formalities tells the story of a royal family and the interactions between their staff as they are all involved in an interstellar conflict between the elegant House Jakabitus (the primary focus) and the less refined Hahn Empire. While you get to know the royal families, the real star of the show is the primary house staff of House Jakabitus, especially their Master of Formalities Wollard.

There is a ton of character development and character interplay, which is really what makes the novel fun and interesting. While there are a few novel ideas that add a tiny touch of futuristic flair (Eutalytics - nano robots that clean and sterilize everything but also serve as security and also create viewing screens on any surface), it's mostly just used for ambient effect.

More interestingly, in this future society, planet-based cultures have diverged widely over time and utilize strict sets of rules to function. The rules keepers -the Masters of Formalities, and trained to advise the rulers and help them make decisions that are within precedent and avoid breaking the societal rules.

The audiobook version was well narrated with no significant issues that would make for an annoying experience.

Do you like those Star Trek episodes where they have to go along with weird alien traditions for whatever reason? There are no aliens but humanity has spent the couple thousand years since leaving Earth getting weirder and weirder. Each planet has gone its own weird direction and the titular Masters of Formalities strive to keep everyone polite and respectful.

It's ridiculous and awesome.

This is a pretty good book, definitely unlike anything I've read before, but the first half is very dull. Several of the negative reviews I read before picking this up mention that there is no real hero or character to cheer for or identify with. That's a fair criticism, at least for the first half of the book, and adding to the effect is the fact that the book is written in third person omniscient, with the point-of-view changing many times in every scene. So there is not much focus on any one character. But all of the characters become pretty interesting as the story progresses, and Wollard, who is as close to a protagonist as the book has, is very easy to sympathize with.

I was not expecting madcap hilarity because of the reviews, and the book is not really all that funny. There's some humor, but it's mostly more “sensible chuckle” style humor than the absurdity that I love in other sci-fi comedy (Futurama, Hitchhiker's Guide). Although there is some silliness, the tone of the book is not really irreverent; I would say the book takes itself pretty seriously, and all of the characters certainly do, which is never played for comic effect. We're supposed to care about the things that concern them, for the most part, except for the extra-cartoonish villains, rather than thinking their problems are trivial. As a result, sometimes the silliness feels dissonant.

I like the worldbuilding very much. (Sorry for misspellings; I listened to the audiobook and don't own the ebook.) The utilitics and the bulk-fab technology are both good sci-fi concepts; they seem like reasonable future inventions, and they definitely serve a purpose at many points in the book, for humor, plot, and character development. It was hard to suspend my disbelief about Sports, though; it's so ridiculous that it felt out of place in the story. My least favorite thing in the book is Wollard's trip, because it just seems like a thinly veiled extended complaint about real-world air travel.

Hennick is so horrible, in a way that feels very familiar to me, to the extent that aside from the first part of the book being a little boring, I was also having trouble returning to it because I hated him so much and didn't want to spend time listening to him whine. Seriously, he is just a few levels beneath my most hated villain ever, Kai Winn from Deep Space Nine. But I know this is a huge compliment to the author, since I was supposed to hate him. Also, while the book ended the way I thought it would, for most of it, I couldn't predict what would happen next, which I enjoyed a lot.

I've seen negative reviews for this author's other books that mention sexism, but I didn't find sexism to be a problem in this book at all. It passes the Bechdel Test really well - there are several interesting female characters at the center (and others at the edges) of the story. I also really liked the resolution of the sideplot about Shly and Kreet (sorry for spelling). There are no explicitly queer characters, although several could be read that way (Wollard doesn't know the gender of the person Fee communicates with, but thinks that person is Fee's love interest). But there are a few concepts in the book that seemed overly traditional to me for a book set so far in the future, such as ruling families, and (less significantly) modesty playing such an important role in Sports. That isn't really a complaint, though, just an observation.

Overall I liked this and I may read this author again. I was really impressed with Luke Daniels' narration.

The longer I read it, the better I liked it.

Executive Summary: A fun little story, but for me not as enjoyable as his Magic 2.0 series. 3.5 Stars.Audio book: Luke Daniels is one of my favorite narrators. When reviewing [b:An Unwelcome Quest 23249416 An Unwelcome Quest (Magic 2.0 #3) Scott Meyer https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1412456562s/23249416.jpg 42792043], Mr. Daniels tweeted at me that he had the “next one” in the queue. Sadly, I think he might have thought this book was the fourth installment of Mr. Meyer's Magic 2.0 series. Much like that series (and everything else Mr. Daniels narrates) he does an excellent job. Full ReviewBetween how much I've enjoyed Mr. Meyer's Magic 2.0 series and the fact that he lucked into Luke Daniels as a narrator, there was no way I could pass this one up.I found the book a bit uneven. The start and the end were both slower than I'd like, but it seemed to really hit its stride in the middle. Overall I didn't find it as funny as his Magic series, but it was still funny at times.The concept of Master of Formalities guiding the rulers of the galaxy through their rules of etiquette is pretty amusing for a premise. It took a bit longer to set things up than I'd have liked.The best part for me was the Sports. I don't mean like how football and baseball fall under the category of sports. It's a competition that is apparently the most important thing to the men of Jakabitus home world, while the women focus on more important things, like ruling the planet. The whole thing is just so over the top ridiculous that I found those parts especially enjoyable.The characters were pretty good, though they did remind me a lot of the characters in his Magic 2.0 series, so maybe that's why. I could draw parallels between most of the main characters to those of that series, but I see little value in that.Overall, I think if you're hoping for a fourth Magic 2.0 book, you'll be a bit disappointed to have this instead. However if you're looking for another fun and light book to read/listen to in between heavier fare, this is a good option.

Getting through the first 30% was hard but then the book got a lot more interesting and funny.