books in a garden
Jun. 17th, 2012 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aamcnamaraEven in London, there are books. In my life there are always books. And I think that the additional bag I was planning on acquiring during my trip here...may end up mostly filled with books. (I only have bought three so far, but then I have just finished reading the third one.)
The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford: I bought this thinking "it will have lots of puzzles and hints and things and it will take me a while to figure it all out! excellent!" And it delivered! I am entertained by his brain. "So we'll write an alternate-history novel about defeating Byzantium, and put vampires in it, and magic that works the way that magic did in that time period, and then have the central meeting of the point-of-view characters be a locked-room murder mystery, and also actually it should be a book about Richard III." Um. Yes, please. I went and looked up Jo Walton's review of this on Tor.com afterward, and she mentions in comments that it's okay to read this with only as much knowledge of Richard III as Daughter Of Time gives you--which I can personally attest to. That being said, this is the sort of book where I want to read it again, but I feel like I ought to do historical research beforehand, because I know I'd get a lot more out.
The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan: This book is...huh. Well. As object lesson I will say that one day I got off the train, got on the bus, started reading, and then went "Wait, my stop is the first one after where I got on?" because I got wrapped up in it so rapidly. I could tell there were probably structural things going on under the surface; the prose and narrative style was what grabbed me. It was really interesting, seeing my own expectations going in and how the actual book reflected/distorted those. (Which it did in a very up-front way.) Also worth rereading, though possibly not when I might miss bus stops. Queer characters, messes with your brain and puts it back together again, sort-of-Lovecraftian horror, "dark fantasy", literary shenanigans...yeah. I am reminded of Brust's Cool Shit theory of novels.
Range of Ghosts, Elizabeth Bear: I kept going "I should find that book!" and going into bookstores and looking for it and not finding it, and then I did find it once but it was while I was determinedly Not Buying Things (the Mall of America does this to my brain) so I didn't get it...and I saw it at Forbidden Planet and went "Oh yes that one". This was a much more straightforward kind of book than either of the others, which was admittedly kind of a relief. And yet it also subverted expectations in various ways--but the form of epic fantasy is much more familiar to me than the forms that Ford and Kiernan are playing with.
So I have more definite feelings about this book. One of which is that Samarkar is awesome. I am going to read the sequels, and Samarkar is a big part of why. (Another one is complicated power dynamics and politics and a very textured world and realism in things like travel logistics, having to use the bathroom, and people getting pregnant when they have sex without any manner of birth control.) I have always been a fan of a) princesses and b) wizards, and Samarkar is both although not at the same time. My twelve-year-old self would've been pretty pleased with her, I think.
Which is why I have to mention the other thing, which is that yes, the world of this story is full of awesome women, but also Edene gets basically fridged for the whole novel (after sleeping with Our Hero for all of one chapter) and when she does manage to do something with agency, it turns out it's because it suits the purpose of a dude. I am pretty sure that she's going to end up being some all-powerful necromancer queen or something, because That Is How These Things Work, but in the meantime--um. Yeah. (Meanwhile, Temur is off trying valiantly to find her and ending up vaguely with someone else. I appreciate the realism, but Everyone Falls For The Hero is not my favorite trope.)
Also there weren't any queer people and I always look forward to queer people in Bear's novels because there are usually several of them and at least if they end tragically, they typically don't have it much worse than the straight people do. And I don't think there were any in Range of Ghosts. I guess I will have to hope for Samarkar being attracted to women in the rest of the trilogy! That would make her perfect character-crush material for me.
All that being said, note that I will totally be reading the other two, and it was a neat book that did some very interesting things, and etc. I just apparently have Feelings about it as well.
Today I went to the Chelsea Physic Garden. I sat on a bench and read and wrote a bit in my notebook and took a bunch of pictures of trees and banks of shrubbery and neatly-planted beds. And I may have come up with an idea for a new short story. Like rereading The Dragon Waiting, this is something I'll have to do historical research for, but hopefully I will not be lazy and will write it/do the job properly.
I still think Whisper-Trail is horrible. I wrote about 70 words on it yesterday and then I gave up. Maybe if I leave it alone for a while it will get better? -/useless hopes-
The Dragon Waiting, John M. Ford: I bought this thinking "it will have lots of puzzles and hints and things and it will take me a while to figure it all out! excellent!" And it delivered! I am entertained by his brain. "So we'll write an alternate-history novel about defeating Byzantium, and put vampires in it, and magic that works the way that magic did in that time period, and then have the central meeting of the point-of-view characters be a locked-room murder mystery, and also actually it should be a book about Richard III." Um. Yes, please. I went and looked up Jo Walton's review of this on Tor.com afterward, and she mentions in comments that it's okay to read this with only as much knowledge of Richard III as Daughter Of Time gives you--which I can personally attest to. That being said, this is the sort of book where I want to read it again, but I feel like I ought to do historical research beforehand, because I know I'd get a lot more out.
The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan: This book is...huh. Well. As object lesson I will say that one day I got off the train, got on the bus, started reading, and then went "Wait, my stop is the first one after where I got on?" because I got wrapped up in it so rapidly. I could tell there were probably structural things going on under the surface; the prose and narrative style was what grabbed me. It was really interesting, seeing my own expectations going in and how the actual book reflected/distorted those. (Which it did in a very up-front way.) Also worth rereading, though possibly not when I might miss bus stops. Queer characters, messes with your brain and puts it back together again, sort-of-Lovecraftian horror, "dark fantasy", literary shenanigans...yeah. I am reminded of Brust's Cool Shit theory of novels.
Range of Ghosts, Elizabeth Bear: I kept going "I should find that book!" and going into bookstores and looking for it and not finding it, and then I did find it once but it was while I was determinedly Not Buying Things (the Mall of America does this to my brain) so I didn't get it...and I saw it at Forbidden Planet and went "Oh yes that one". This was a much more straightforward kind of book than either of the others, which was admittedly kind of a relief. And yet it also subverted expectations in various ways--but the form of epic fantasy is much more familiar to me than the forms that Ford and Kiernan are playing with.
So I have more definite feelings about this book. One of which is that Samarkar is awesome. I am going to read the sequels, and Samarkar is a big part of why. (Another one is complicated power dynamics and politics and a very textured world and realism in things like travel logistics, having to use the bathroom, and people getting pregnant when they have sex without any manner of birth control.) I have always been a fan of a) princesses and b) wizards, and Samarkar is both although not at the same time. My twelve-year-old self would've been pretty pleased with her, I think.
Which is why I have to mention the other thing, which is that yes, the world of this story is full of awesome women, but also Edene gets basically fridged for the whole novel (after sleeping with Our Hero for all of one chapter) and when she does manage to do something with agency, it turns out it's because it suits the purpose of a dude. I am pretty sure that she's going to end up being some all-powerful necromancer queen or something, because That Is How These Things Work, but in the meantime--um. Yeah. (Meanwhile, Temur is off trying valiantly to find her and ending up vaguely with someone else. I appreciate the realism, but Everyone Falls For The Hero is not my favorite trope.)
Also there weren't any queer people and I always look forward to queer people in Bear's novels because there are usually several of them and at least if they end tragically, they typically don't have it much worse than the straight people do. And I don't think there were any in Range of Ghosts. I guess I will have to hope for Samarkar being attracted to women in the rest of the trilogy! That would make her perfect character-crush material for me.
All that being said, note that I will totally be reading the other two, and it was a neat book that did some very interesting things, and etc. I just apparently have Feelings about it as well.
Today I went to the Chelsea Physic Garden. I sat on a bench and read and wrote a bit in my notebook and took a bunch of pictures of trees and banks of shrubbery and neatly-planted beds. And I may have come up with an idea for a new short story. Like rereading The Dragon Waiting, this is something I'll have to do historical research for, but hopefully I will not be lazy and will write it/do the job properly.
I still think Whisper-Trail is horrible. I wrote about 70 words on it yesterday and then I gave up. Maybe if I leave it alone for a while it will get better? -/useless hopes-
no subject
Date: 2012-06-17 09:58 pm (UTC)For future reference: Andrew Plotkin has created a concordance for TDW. It is necessarily incomplete (and sadly neglected of late) but it's a thing of beauty and help nonetheless.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-18 08:57 pm (UTC)