I opened up a random chapter of Mother of Learning, and I have come to decision.
MoL's prose is alright.
In fact, with a very reasonable definition of what "prose" is, I would outright concede that MoL has good prose.
Now, there's something that's adjacent to prose, that often gets lumped into it, which MoL does not have.
Which is where I suspect the disconnect is happening
It's essentially the set of values that arises from the "show don't tell" memeplex
It's about a subtlety, a graceful delivery of ideas, implications instead of exposition
It's about specific details and sensory reification, rather than summary.
Actually no wait, I might know how to explain this concisely.
When people are talking about prose, at least part of what they're talking about is imagery
And I definitely find that to be lacking in MoL
When reading through the descriptions in the random chapter I opened up, what kept disappointing me was the scene construction and presentation of ideas
Consider this paragraph:
They decided to try Zorian’s idea anyway. The execution turned out to be a little more complicated than Zorian had thought it would be. Apparently Zach alone was not threatening enough to whip the entire group of chameleon drakes into a frenzy and make them leave their lair. After all, he was just one man. He might have been ungodly powerful, but that wasn’t something that could be gleaned at first sight. Thus, the drakes initially simply sent a group of five young drakes to deal with him. Of course, when Zach effortlessly slaughtered those five, the entire cenote grew more agitated… but not agitated enough to rush out and swarm him. They felt pretty safe in their cenote base, so they just massed themselves together and decided to wait and see if Zach would actually dare attack them in their home. Inconveniently for Zorian, they picked the orb cave as their rallying point.
It's a vague progression, with entire beats brushed side in short sentences
Now, the stakes aren't very high, so I dont think the best call here would have been to unfurl into this a 1k word full fledged scene or something
But like, what do chameleon drakes look like, how do they behave? What manner of "effortless slaughter" takes place, what does it mean for the cenote to "grow more agitated"?
You don't need to spend much time describing these things, but you can describe them
I dont think this passage would be much longer if it named a single spell zach casted, if it named a single specific thing the drakes did, or mentioned something about their scales or how they hide in thier watering hole nest
There's just so little here to anchor you in the scene
As i skim over other parts of the chapter, I find myself vindicated in judging MoL has have decent prose
What MoL has, specifically, is good explanatory prose. It's great at conveying information
What MoL lacks — and what so many people associate with "good" prose — is evocative prose.
Just so i'm not picking on a single example:
House Letova was a fairly important House in Falkrinea. They were a new House, having achieved their status due to their knowledge of certain unique potions that nobody else could figure out how to make, but their future looked rather promising. Their potion business was booming, giving them plenty of money to throw around to make themselves heard and boost their political influence in Falkrinea and elsewhere.
Naturally, they guarded the secrets of their alchemy very, very closely. They invested a great deal of their newfound wealth into security, well aware that if their competitors managed to get their hands on their secrets their ascent to greatness would be greatly jeopardized.
Today, Zach and Zorian were trying to break into House Letova’s alchemy repository. They weren’t doing it because they honestly wanted to steal their alchemical secrets, though Zorian would take a look at their records if they succeeded, simply to satisfy his curiosity. No, they were doing it because they wanted to practice their ability to break into secure areas.
Would it hurt to mention a single anchoring detail about what the potions do or what ingredients they use?
What does it mean to guard secrets "very, very closely"? How impressive are their vaults, how flashy is it when they throw money around?
Again, this isn't an important scene — (context is they're literally just practicing infiltration for the one break-in that actually matters) — but it would not take more than a few sentences (less, if you simply edit in new clauses) to give me something to associate with House Letova besides the name and abstract, ungrounded ideas of secrecy, wealth, and recent fortune.
Imagery, evocativeness — another thing lacking is depth. There's nothing to dig into these passages. What the characters are doing here is simply observing the reality in front of them and addressing the problems therein. Nothing here is a commentary on their characters, nothing is filtered through a perspective. None of this means anything deeper.
This, what might sound like a diss at objective reality and pragmatic approaches, could come across like an objection to rational fiction in general — and indeed, if I were a hater of rational fiction, I Could use MoL's shortcomings as ammo to attack the genre.
But these things are not at all in tension. Fundamentally, the principle here is that what one character sees when they observe a chameleon drake is not what another characters sees, and is not what a chameleon drake is. Do they see an ugly, gnarled monster? Do they see a elegant product of evolution? Do they see a mindless obstacle to their goals, do they see poor creatures ignorant of how ill-equiped and ill-positioned they are for this outside context problem?
Like, do Zach and Zorian have any opinion at all on how House Letova choses to use their wealth or guard their secrets? Do they have differing approaches in how they infiltrate that reflect their personalities?
Nothing goes unsaid, nothing is left to subtext. There's virtues to this — I think there exist good reasons to write this way and good reasons to want to read something written this way, it isn't lesser — but evaluated by the standards of prose, there's definitely something empty to it.
Thank you for reading my blog post
If you sat through all of that, you may be interested in the genuine article. After writing this cursory explanation of prose, I eventually refined my thoughts into what I think is a much more insightful piece about the qualities prose can exhibit. Years before that, I always wrote a more elaborate essay about shot don't tell, if you'd like an idea of how and why MoL-like prose could be fleshed