I started my reread of The Fellowship of the Ring this week, and though it’s going slowly I’m having fun with it, especially with how passive-aggressive Bilbo is in his will.
I have been feeling pretty crappy in my guts this past week or so, and I’m seeing a doctor today, so hopefully we’ll clear up exactly what is going on down there. In the meantime, have a Saturday Note.
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Which is Worse: Angelopolis or Hounded?
I feel as if this has come up a bit since my Hounded sporking concluded. One of the things I said repeatedly was that while I think Hounded is a bad novel, it’s not as bad as Angelopolis. Some people seemed to argue with that, and I want to start this Saturday Note setting the record straight:
Angelopolis is the worse novel of the two. That is, I think, an objective fact. We could split hairs on the details, but overall I think it’s clear that Angelopolis is terrible. Hounded may be an annoying and unfunny male power fantasy wish fulfillment novel, but Angelopolis is downright incoherent at times. The novel ends with evil angels killing everything out of nowhere and a third of the world getting wrecked by nuclear meltdown. And one of the villains eats a penis (that’s not a metaphor or anything).
But is it possible that even if Angelopolis is the objectively worse novel, that it’s maybe… more bearable? Maybe it’s worse to analyze, but actually more fun to read than Hounded? In a “So Bad, It’s Hilarious” sort of way?
Hm…
It was suggested to me (here) that the difference is the tone. Angelopolis is a conspiracy thriller drama, whereas Hounded is a comedy-flavored action urban fantasy. When drama doesn’t work, it can be incredibly amusing. You laugh at the melodrama, at the ridiculousness of the situations that characters are taking seriously, at the absurd plot twists. Comedy is something different entirely; when a comedy isn’t funny, it’s not fun to watch or read. Seeing someone throw a bunch of jokes that aren’t funny at you, it’s just grating.
Which is part of the thing with Hounded: it’s supposed to be funny, and to do that it keeps throwing joke after joke at you when it doesn’t fit. In the final battle, there’s a bit where a bird poops on the main villain’s face, and Atticus’s dog quotes South Park at us. It’s so annoying because it’s so obviously meant to be funny, but instead it reads as the author being juvenile and stupid.
Atticus gives the EMT a wedgie twice and we’re supposed to find this the height of humor.
Angelopolis doesn’t have quite the same problem. There’s not a lot of humor; the little that there is also falls flat. But it’s blocked out by all of the drama and infodumps. The drama that happens is random and weird; so it tends to fall flat. The thing that makes it worse, in my eyes, is that the angelologists are essentially Nazis, complete with their own Nephilim concentration camps, and the similarities are not really brought up and the motives are only kind of questioned a couple of times by our “heroes.”
That was probably the sticking point with me. Other than Eno eating a penis, the thing that sticks out for making Angelopolis an atrocity of a novel that never should have gotten published is how genocidal the protagonists are. Hounded has a lot of problems, it’s clearly a white power fantasy, and there are some racially and ethnically-insensitive bits, but none of the main characters are okay with ethnic cleansing, which sadly cannot be said about Angelopolis.
There are some similarities between the two novels though. Both are fond of using Informed Attributes, or Telling rather than Showing, though in different ways. Hounded tells us time and time again, out of his own mouth and from other characters, that Atticus is a paranoid, cautious, and clever man, when he is really nothing of the sort. Upon finding out that the villain he’s been dodging for thousands of years knows where he lives, he reacts by… calmly going about his business, and not bothering to change his schedule at all. When he finds out that the bad guys are watching his house, he avoids his house, and then goes to all the public places he’s known to frequent.
Angelopolis does something similar in that the book keeps telling us that Verline is an incredible angel hunter, the best agent the angelologists have. At the end of the novel they pick him as their leader, the one who will lead them against the apocalypse that’s apparently happening (but never explained), citing his leadership skills and his strategic mind. Except he’s never shown any of those talents throughout the novel. He frequently goes off to do his own thing without telling his teammates, gets captured or detained, and has to be bailed out. He loses every fight he gets in, and doesn’t understand basic strategy or how to pursue objectives. His main skill seems to be that he knows how to hotwire vehicles. Verlaine never knows what he’s doing, and the other characters act like he’s a super spy.
I mean, it’s arguably worse in Hounded, because Atticus is such an awful character, and it’s written from his point of view. So half the novel is him talking about how great he is, and getting everything he wants, and all the other characters bending over backwards to either give him what he wants or not get in his way. And that is perhaps what makes Hounded so much more obviously irritating as a book--it’s written from the point of view of a guy who thinks he’s brilliant and funny and clever and he’s obviously not. He’s the sort of guy you want to slap upside the head.
Angelopolis isn’t annoying in that regard. But I don’t think Angelopolis is that funny either, as a failed drama. Mostly because it’s just so confusing. Even before you get to the ending, you have characters doing...things that don’t make much sense. There comes a point where one of the villains says, “Tell me what’s going on!” and the protagonist is as confused as the reader, because by all rights she should know too, and the book never explains why she doesn’t. The most coherent parts of the novel are the infodumps, which are all stupid and self-contradictory if you can get past the boredom of reading them.
I got mad reading it, but only at the end, and only because I was confused. Hounded made me mad because… well, it’s like talking to an obnoxious dudebro teenager who thinks he’s all that. But if you actually analyze Angelopolis it’s more infuriating; if you don’t, it’s just really, really boring, and for me that’s worse. I’d rather be feeling something than just sitting there bored, which is what Angelopolis made me feel.
On a surface level, it’s boring. On a deeper level, it’s infuriating.
Hounded’s just annoying all the way through, no matter how you slice it.
Take your pick as to which is worse.
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