Sometimes First Person Is the Worst Person to Narrate

 Back in July I read this book called Diving Into the Wreck that I got for free so I wasn't expecting a whole lot.  While it was OK, I think what really held it up was that it was written in first person.  I'm not a John Oberon type who thinks you should ONLY write in third-person omniscient past tense; I write in first-person all the time.  The problem is that in some cases first-person just does not work.

In this case a lot of the problem is our character doesn't have a name.  She's referred to as "Boss."  Which, OK, that can work in movies like Layer Cake or The Ghost Writer where the main character is never named, but we can see Daniel Craig and Ewan McGregor so we know what they look like and all that.  Maybe it works in the books those are based on. 

So we don't have a name for the character and being first-person it's hard to describe her unless you use some really clumsy narration like having her say, "I put my blonde hair back into a ponytail and applied makeup around my blue eyes."  That sounds really forced and fortunately the author doesn't do that.  But the problem is by not doing that and using first-person, I really have no idea who this person is or what she looks like or more than the vaguest idea of how old she is.  She left home in her teens and she's been "diving" for at least 20 years so she's probably 35-45...I think.  Like I say in my review, all I can picture is kind of a fuzzy image like when a news show is hiding someone's identity.  It's funny looking at the different editions on Goodreads that not even the cover artists can seem to decide what she looks like as there are 3 different versions:

The other problem in a sci-fi book like this with first-person is there's so much about this universe that doesn't really make sense.  Boss is a "diver" who explores old spaceships and stations.  And apparently this is at least 5000 years in the future.  Yet a lot of the tech is worse than what our astronauts in 2022 have.  Why are they wearing flimsy suits that can kill them if they get cut and only have an hour or two of air?   A drone you can get for $40 on Amazon could probably do more and much safer.  Then there's this "stealth tech" that no one knows how it works even though it was invented by humans.  So there must have been some kind of big disaster or war?  Um...maybe.

See the problem with first-person is it's not natural for the character to give readers the details they really need.  Like what she looks like or how old she is or in the case of a sci-fi universe, why things are the way they are.  It would sound really weird and fake if she did tell you all that stuff.  At the same time, by leaving it all out, I'm just confused and unable to really connect with the character and the universe.

A lot of it might have been forgiven if there were some humor or romance or...much of anything.  There's a little intrigue concerning her father and "stealth tech" but not enough to really sustain it.  Part of the problem might have been this "novel" was actually three novellas then put together into one book.  It would have been hard to have much of a romantic plot with three separate stories later jammed into one book.  But there could still have been some more humor and fun.  I really wanted more Indiana Jones in Space and less poor man's 2001.  That's not entirely the author's fault; I mean I've talked about reader expectations before.  It's just if you're not going to give me what I want, at least give me something else that is interesting.

Anyway, especially if you're writing sci-fi or fantasy, first-person might not be the best way to go about it, because it limits your options.  Choose wisely.