littlemissattitude
Super Moderator
“Transformation” by Carol Berg
I know I am really going to enjoy a book when, very early on, I find myself wondering what the characters are doing during the times in the lives of the characters that the author has chosen not to tell the reader about. The story skips forward a day or a week between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, and I start trying to imagine what the characters did and said during that missing time. And not only do I try to figure this out, the characters have been so well-drawn, the background of history and culture has been so fully realized, even the climate is described in vivid enough detail, that I can make some pretty good guesses as to what, were that world real, might have gone on.
Books like this are, unfortunately, few and far between. Fortunately, Carol Berg’s “Transformation” is one of those few novels that stimulated my imagination almost from the first page, quite an achievement for a first novel. It is a difficult thing to write that vividly and with that much detail without having the detail overshadow the plot and make the all the characters seem like cardboard cutouts. In Seyonne, the Ezzarian slave, and in Aleksander, son of the Derzhi Emperor, Berg has managed to create two characters that I found myself caring deeply about because they are as realistic as the background she has set them to act on. Neither is perfect. Neither is even very nice all the time. But Berg managed to make me care about Aleksander and what happened to him even as he shows his arrogance and cruelty in his early treatment of Seyonne, who he has purchased seemingly on a whim.
As expertly drawn as Berg’s two main characters are, so has she put them into a world that is richly detailed and logically realized. The cultures of the Derzhi and the Ezzarians feel like real cultures, and the conflicts between the members of those cultures and how those conflicts play out ring true. This is one of the aspects of “Transformation” that impressed me most. These cultures are so fully realized and so realistic that if I were in the position of teaching a cultural anthropology course, I would seriously consider teaching this book as a way of illustrating real anthropological principles using this fictional setting.
Having said all this, the point must be made that “Transformation” is not a perfect novel. The demon-infested Khelid characters come off as stock villains. Even absent the influence of the demons that possess them for much of the book, they still seem only to want to conquer the Derzhi Empire, but Berg never really tells us about their motivations for this desire. This is something that I would have liked to know. She just does not explore their culture fully enough. There is also the issue of Seyonne’s betrayal by a childhood friend, that resulted in Seyonne’s capture and enslavement by the Derzhi. The reasons given for this betrayal just don’t seem complete enough, at least to me. A third problem that I had with the book is that there is not enough of Lydia, Aleksander’s spirited fiancee, in the story. I can see why Berg made the choices about Lydia’s character that she did, but Lydia is a great character and I would have liked to see more of her. Still, within the whole of the novel, these are small enough issues that they ultimately don’t matter enough to mar enjoyment of a rip-roaringly good story.
I know I am really going to enjoy a book when, very early on, I find myself wondering what the characters are doing during the times in the lives of the characters that the author has chosen not to tell the reader about. The story skips forward a day or a week between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next, and I start trying to imagine what the characters did and said during that missing time. And not only do I try to figure this out, the characters have been so well-drawn, the background of history and culture has been so fully realized, even the climate is described in vivid enough detail, that I can make some pretty good guesses as to what, were that world real, might have gone on.
Books like this are, unfortunately, few and far between. Fortunately, Carol Berg’s “Transformation” is one of those few novels that stimulated my imagination almost from the first page, quite an achievement for a first novel. It is a difficult thing to write that vividly and with that much detail without having the detail overshadow the plot and make the all the characters seem like cardboard cutouts. In Seyonne, the Ezzarian slave, and in Aleksander, son of the Derzhi Emperor, Berg has managed to create two characters that I found myself caring deeply about because they are as realistic as the background she has set them to act on. Neither is perfect. Neither is even very nice all the time. But Berg managed to make me care about Aleksander and what happened to him even as he shows his arrogance and cruelty in his early treatment of Seyonne, who he has purchased seemingly on a whim.
As expertly drawn as Berg’s two main characters are, so has she put them into a world that is richly detailed and logically realized. The cultures of the Derzhi and the Ezzarians feel like real cultures, and the conflicts between the members of those cultures and how those conflicts play out ring true. This is one of the aspects of “Transformation” that impressed me most. These cultures are so fully realized and so realistic that if I were in the position of teaching a cultural anthropology course, I would seriously consider teaching this book as a way of illustrating real anthropological principles using this fictional setting.
Having said all this, the point must be made that “Transformation” is not a perfect novel. The demon-infested Khelid characters come off as stock villains. Even absent the influence of the demons that possess them for much of the book, they still seem only to want to conquer the Derzhi Empire, but Berg never really tells us about their motivations for this desire. This is something that I would have liked to know. She just does not explore their culture fully enough. There is also the issue of Seyonne’s betrayal by a childhood friend, that resulted in Seyonne’s capture and enslavement by the Derzhi. The reasons given for this betrayal just don’t seem complete enough, at least to me. A third problem that I had with the book is that there is not enough of Lydia, Aleksander’s spirited fiancee, in the story. I can see why Berg made the choices about Lydia’s character that she did, but Lydia is a great character and I would have liked to see more of her. Still, within the whole of the novel, these are small enough issues that they ultimately don’t matter enough to mar enjoyment of a rip-roaringly good story.
