The book in question is Lisa Brackmann's ROCK PAPER TIGER, released just this month. I got interested in the novel after reading about it on literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog. I was trekking through the internet, looking for advice on pitching to an agent, and Mr. Bransford presented Ms. Brackmann's novel query as a primo example of how to do it right. I took the advice, polished up a query for my own book, and proceeded to get only 80% rejections. (Which meant it was a major step up.)
Earlier this month, Mr. Bransford held a competition on his blog in honor of the newly released novel. ROCK PAPER TIGER is marketed as a thriller, and so he wanted readers to post short excerpts of thrilling scenes of their own. I managed to come in the top five among 200 or so entries, and won a query critique. I was stoked.
So far, Ms. Brackmann's novel had been pretty good to me, so I decided I owed it to her to pick up a copy, give it a read, and tell the internet how great it is.
Let’s start with the query:
The Beijing '08 Olympics are over, the war in Iraq is lost, and former National Guard medic Ellie McEnroe is stuck in China, trying to lose herself in the alien worlds of performance artists and online gamers. When a chance encounter with a Chinese Muslim dissident drops her down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, Ellie must decide who to trust among the artists, dealers, collectors and operatives claiming to be on her side – in particular, a mysterious organization operating within a popular online game.
ROCK PAPER TIGER is a fast-paced, 108,000 word mainstream novel set in a China where the ultra-modern and cutting-edge clash with ancient neighborhoods and traditions, and in an America where the consequences of war reverberate long after the troops have come home. It will appeal to fans of William Gibson’s books with contemporary settings, Laura Lippman’s strong female protagonists, and almost anybody’s whacked-out travelogues about the world’s more surreal places.
Also, her ex-husband has a voice like chocolate.
Now, a disclaimer. I’m a prospective author, and when I read a book there are always moments when I wonder how I would have done things differently. That happened a lot with this book because, despite our very different writing styles and the wildly different tones and plots, I kept coming across all these eerie synchronicities. American main character, trained as an EMT, traveling across a foreign country in search of a missing friend, vexed by a former lover, with key plot elements involving online roleplaying games, and occasional interactions with people identified only with mental nicknames like Suit #2. And both our main characters end up with significant leg injuries.
I want to give the book a fair shake. So, despite being confronted with my goatee-wearing doppelganger, was the book any good? Yes it was, I think, though I feel like it was mis-marketed. By the bold colors of the cover and the emphasis on ‘thrillers’ by its agent, I went in expecting more action and intensity, and if not explosions, at least a climax where the main character risks everything to defeat the bad guys at the last possible moment. On those lines, I was disappointed, because it’s not that sort of book.
What I got out of ROCK PAPER TIGER was an examination of the nature of uncertainty and disappointment. The novel presents a character who is tossed between multiple powerful forces that wish to do ill to her, to her friends, or just to the world around her, and she is powerless to really change anything. She’s up against governments and extra-governmental entities, and since she has no power to oppose them, the best she can hope for is to thwart them by fleeing, refusing to cooperate, and enduring the harm they inflict.
In places, I felt like the book didn’t do enough with the elements it presented, or perhaps that in the process of editing some plot threads were cut and left just a tad frayed. Ellie joins up with a resistance cell avoiding Chinese censorship filters by communicating via an online roleplaying game, but she herself never really does much in the game. (She has some gold farmers power-level her. Amusing, at least.) Likewise, after spending half the book ducking and fleeing from a handful of asshole antagonists who deserve a good come-uppance, Ellie never gets to the point where she goes after them. She flees enough until she wins.
Don’t take this the wrong way. The book was so engrossing I would have finished it in one sitting if not for silly things like needing to sleep. The places Ellie finds herself during her forced flight paint a vivid picture of China in transition from sprawling rural nation to modern techno-corporate empire. And I rooted for her as she braved unfamiliar worlds (both real and massively multiplayer) to try to help the man she cares about. But her efforts amount to only the faintest hints of success, and in the end, both Ellie and the reader have to content themselves with survival, not victory.
It’s not satisfying, but it’s a fair commentary on how, even if you powerless to fight the ills of the world, there’s still value in refusing to compromise your ideals. The marketing made me expect a glitzy action thriller, but maybe those unfulfilled expectations are just another facet of the book’s point.
Final word. It’s not a simple book, and thank God for that. I love it when a book gets me thinking.
While I have you here, I've just started a blog - Places I Haven't Been Yet. It's very much a work in progress, but please come by and check it out. I'm fascinated by traveling and going on quests, whether that means meeting strangers on a Greyhound bus, attending gaming conventions and falling in love, struggling to get my time travel cyberpunk pirate romance novel published, or just losing 15 pounds by Labor Day. I plan to offer weekly scenic wallpapers I find across the internet, share some of my fiction, and talk about places I haven't been yet.