6-Star Reviews Part 49: Shaman

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Zecora time!  Honestly, I didn't like her character all that much when she was introduced; speaking in couplets is just too gimmicky for me.  But that's neither here nor there.  What's here is this bit you're just now reading, and what's there is the review proper.  After the break, TheMechanic's Shaman.

Impressions before reading:  Since I just mentioned that I've always found Zecorah's speech patterns affectatious, it's worth noting that I've heard that this story has one of the better explanations for why she talks that way.  Other than that, there's not a lot to go on here; all the author's description tells me is that this is an origin story, and he hasn't even included any additional tags.

Zero-ish spoiler summary:  Zecora reminisces about her youth, spent among her native tribe, and the duties by which she remains bound to her village.


Thoughts after reading:  One of the worse ways to introduce a viewpoint character's physical description is to have them look in a mirror and describe what they see.  The reason this doesn't really work is because it's contrived; we all look in mirrors all the time, but usually we're just seeing if our hair's straight, if there's something in our teeth, etc.  Few and far between are the occasions where I've stood in front of one and run down a checklist of my defining physical characteristics, and to have a character do so for the sake of showing the reader what they look like is just lazy storytelling.

Shaman reads like a character backstory version of this pitfall.  The first few paragraphs tell us that Zecora is preparing to be contacted by her home tribe, so she's sitting in front of a ceremonial fire waiting for them to complete a ceremony that will summon her spirit.  While she's waiting, she decides to review the highlights of her entire pre-Ponyville life, in chronological order.  This is hardly the worst thing in the world, from a writing standpoint (it's perfectly reasonable that she'd be thinking about her home and her childhood under the circumstances, after all.  What I object to is the comprehensiveness and narrative cohesion of her thoughts--they don't read like idle memories, but rather like someone who's speaking to an audience from a prepared script), but it's contrived and kind of dull.

The story itself has some interesting elements, but many of these are never satisfactorily fleshed out.  The spirits with whom the tribe communes appear to be an intriguing mix of western European fey (mischievous and inscrutable, both benevolent and malignant in turn, bound by strange and unexplained rules) and tribal deities (representatives of specific thoughts/objects/phenomena, able to hear and grant prayers in exchange for gifts, prayer, or sacrifices).  A lot could have been done with these entities, but they are left tragically underdeveloped.

As for the rhyming... well, I think I was probably oversold on it.  This story gives a perfectly adequate explanation for why Zecora talks the way she does, don't get me wrong.  But it wasn't like the heavens parted and my eyes were suddenly opened to some great and unspeakable truth, which was more or less the impression I'd gotten from a couple of recommendations I've read; my reaction was more along the lines of, "Well, I guess that's as good an explanation as any."  That's not a story criticism--as I said, the reason given here works just fine for me.  I just want to make sure readers don't go in expecting more than there going to get.  Being let down by something good because one was expecting something great is no fun at all.

There's a small spoiler I want to mention.  I thought about letting it slide, but it kind of bugged me, so here it is:

So, the part of the story after Zecora treats Azizi's scorpion sting?  The implication there is that he plowed her so hard that she couldn't walk home, right?  And then the whole thing gets played for laughs, with the villagers even going so far as to compose a bawdy about it when word gets around.  Well, that's sort of a major mood shift compared to everything else in the entire story.  It's just so completely out of place, sandwiched between Zecora's attempts to save Azizi's life and her journey to the spirit world, that I found it off-putting.

Also, at the end?  The fact that the first song Azizi's daughter wants to learn to begin her bardic career is the one about how her dad's such a monster in the sack that his then-girlfriend couldn't walk straight after he finished with her is really, really creepy.

That aside, I thought the story was very interesting as a glimpse into Zecora's life, but it didn't really stand as a story in its own right.  In the end, there's no real conflict--at least, none in the sense of "a driving force which propels the story forward."  There's just Zecora, thinking about all the stuff she's done over the years.  And while some of that stuff is interesting in its own right, the story as a whole ends up being dull despite its brevity.

Star rating:  ★★☆☆☆ (what does this mean?)

In the end, the execution didn't impress me, and the most interesting parts of the story don't receive the development they need to really shine.  Still, Shaman is strong at a conceptual level; the idea of Zecora's backstory as presented is fundamentally intriguing.

Recommendation:  If origin stories are your thing, this one has some fascinating elements to it.  But as an actual story, it doesn't hold up to the other works I've reviewed.  I'd recommend this to people interested in zebra culture generally and Zecora specifically, but not for anyone just looking for a good read.

Next time:  Moonlight Over Midnight, by EsperDerek