Oracle -- Susan Boulton

Hex

Hex

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I've just started reading Oracle, and I'm so impressed. I love Sue's voice and I love the way she opens the story.

... It was a storm of gun flashes and bright swords, broken promises and murder.

It does exactly what I like in an opening: it persuades me that the writer knows exactly what she's doing and I can trust her.

Other things I love so far: words "as sour as crab apples", the priests absorbing all the visions so they could order the world themselves, and the way that Pugh sees the world and thinks about it being so different from Oracle's way of seeing things.

Really looking forward to reading the rest of this!
 
It's very political, which I like, and which requires a fair bit of attention. I'm enjoying the world as well, though I'm still not completely clear
what happened to Claire (because we haven't been told yet -- it's a very impressive way of setting a question and giving the reader enough to keep them interested in the answer, but not... actually... answering... yet!)

So far almost everything has happened on a train, which makes it feel a little Agatha Christie-like, in a good way.

(and it keeps making me cry!
I think that's the central relationship between Pugh and Claire
)
 
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I have questions! (one of these is from Chapter 20)

Why is it such a big deal that Matthew might be speaking in the Forum? I thought he was pro-reform and so was Calvinward? And I thought Constance was anti-reform? So does she hope that Matthew's radicalism will turn off the more moderate people who might vote pro-reform? But that will only be after he marries Emily, right? So the vote will go through anyway, before he gets the right to speak? It seems like a bit of a jump for Constance to assume that an intelligent man like Matthew would bring down the pro-reform side, especially when he's likely to be influenced by his father and friends.

Or am I wrong and the men in the coach are right, and Constance isn't anti-reform, but just a trouble maker?

And while I'm confused about Emily and Matthew, was it just coincidence that two burned bodies were found under the coach they'd been in? Or weren't the bodies, actually, found, but someone wanted to persuade Constance and the others that Emily and Matthew were dead?


EDIT: Oh. Emily and Matthew are already married. I didn't understand that had happened so quickly!
 
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Sue's at the convention, so I'll tell you what I think are the answers to your questions -- bearing in mind that they may not be the definitive answers.

Constance is a troublemaker, but not a random troublemaker, I think. Her strategy is divide and conquer.

Mathew was against the bill because he thought it was too much of a compromise. If it passed, there would be no real reform, but too many people would feel like something had been accomplished and there would be less chance of a bill he could believe in being passed afterwards. Also, he suspected that his father had intended to compromise all along, and that caused a rift. The others didn't want Mathew to speak, because they knew he would try to defeat the bill. I did think the older characters were a bit insufferable. On the other hand, they would know more about how politics really work.

I felt like he wasn't willing to listen to them, and they weren't willing to listen to him. Which was depressingly like real politics.
 
Thank you, Teresa. That makes a lot of sense.

The political side does remind me a bit of left-wing politics in Europe during the early 20th C. I guess a bit before that too, but I don't know that period as well.

And maybe a little North and South, too.
 
Another question...

Did Oracle want Claire to be caught? So -- why did she make her go to the library? And if she did, why did she fight Carter/ Matthew?
 
Sorry! It's raising all these questions and I want to note them while I'm reading! Come on, read more! Then you can answer them!!

EDIT: I've finished! A lot to think about now. I'll review before the end of the weekend, I think. Does anyone know if there's a sequel...?
 
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Hex:

By that point in the story, what Clare wants and what Oracle wants aren't always the same thing.

As for a sequel, Sue doesn't have any plans right now, but she has certainly prepared the ground, don't you think?
 
I've asked for a sequel. I suspect that she was concentrating so hard on getting Oracle done she had no chance to think about a sequel. I hope now she's got that out of the way ideas will begin to spark. Maybe some of the things that come up in discussion will start her thinking about what the characters would do next. Obviously she has some ideas about the bigger picture.
 
I will get back to the questions tonight, sadly I have a long day at work coming up and won't be able to access the net at all.
 
Here goes some answers. I hope I get the spoiler tag correct.

Agatha Christie-like. Yes, just that. I have always loved the way Christie would place her characters in a very confined situation and then let events play out. She has the past cast a huge shadow on the present and always seemed to have a limited number of characters. I wanted Oracle to have some of the same elements.

With Mathew and Emily's fate, I wanted the police force to keen to cover there own rears and have Mathew so convinced that the system was so corrupt that he would not even think of trying the simple, obvious route. He is young, convinced he is right. A bit like a rabbit in the headlights of his belief of a warped and twisted system that he can't see beyond. To pull it down is he is convinced is the only way, and sadly that way leads often to civil war, because there are others who hold the opposite belief.

Compromise, make the best of what you have with what you have and try not to hurt too many people. Live and in the case of one character die because of the choices you have made. The bill was always about compromise, giving time to allow change to come slowly. Anything that is done quickly, even for the right reasons, can cause the death of hundreds or plunge a country into war.

I wanted to show that in my world things are not black or white, good or bad. Each character has, I hope degrees of both.

Claire by the nature of what she is can act out of character with regards to either side.

As to a sequel. Oh my. Oracle was written as a stand-alone story. Not everything is resolved by a long shot at the end. Though I hope it is a satisfying conclusion for the reader. Yes, I would like to go back and play at some point in Oracle's world, but as yet I am not certain which characters I will take forward as lead ones, and which would become the supporting cast.
 
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Don't be too keen to write a sequel, Susan... There are some good aspects to it, but as many bad imo. You could do yourself a favour by rejecting the idea, even if your fans say, "We really want one! Write one for us!" They will be just as happy if you write an equally good or better novel in a different setting. That you can write a sequel doesn't mean you have to.
 
Some books are meant to be stand-alones, and I agree with you, Stephen, that just because readers want a sequel for such books that is no reason to write one.

The thing is, Oracle doesn't read like it's a stand-alone. It sets up things, predicts things, that never happen or are never explained. I am guessing that the other half of the story is presently residing somewhere at the back of Sue's brain. And if I am right, at some point something is going to spark an idea and bring the whole thing to the front.
 
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