(no subject)
So the Stranger is looking for an advertising sales coordinator.
. . . I'm actually kind of tempted to apply. It's not exactly something I'd want to do for a long while, but it'd be a chance to work at the Stranger. And they have benefits.
It's very strange being in Seattle with the thought that I'll be moving here (hopefully) by the end of the year. Reading the Stranger becomes an exercise not in just checking out the latest Savage Love, but in checking the classifieds for inexpensive apartments. ($675 studios in Queen Anne? ♥_♥) Walking around Pike Street Market, I start wondering if I could afford to buy fresh veggies there on a weekly basis. Even the weather seems different: I start to think about how one strategically dresses for Seattle rain, how one bikes in Seattle rain, et cetera.
But before I can move to Seattle, I need to get to Valdez for Bad Hamlet's reading and get ready to direct Robin Hood in July. I should probably put some time into that latter; I have to let my TD know how I want to do Sherwood Forest.
ETA: OH, in other news, one of the books I picked up at Powell's the other day was Prospero Lost, by L. Jagi Lamplighter, which I think would be relevant to the interests of many of my f-list.
So I'm halfway through, at this point, and I've been finding the whole thing vaguely irksome. THe book is narrated by Miranda, who, some 500 years after the events of The Tempest, is still around and in charge of Prospero, Inc. Prospero retired a few years ago, and her seven half-siblings have scattered to the winds, leaving her running the company. At the beginning of the book, she finds a note from her father -- whom she hasn't seen in months -- warning her that she and her siblings may be in terrible danger from some powers called the Three Shadowed Ones. At around the same time, one of her servants, Mab (more on him in a minute) comes in to tell her that her brother Mephistopheles has been arrested in Chicago. Between finding out what Mephistopheles is up to and searching for Prospero, adventure ensues.
So what's irksome here? Well, the worldbuilding is awkwardly done, for one; it took me most of a hundred and fifty pages to figure out for certain that this is a world where magic exists but is not common knowledge. Lamplighter tends to teeter between giving not quite enough background information and giving just too much. As writing problems go, though, that's fairly minor. The action moves at a reasonable clip. It's . . . this is damning by faint praise, I know, but it reminds me a little of reading The Da Vinci Code. The writing isn't stellar, but I keep turning pages.
But what really bothers me is the character of Miranda. Miranda is immortal, having been pledged to the service of the divine Eurynome at a young age. (Her family gets a share in immortality as well, because by being a Handmaiden of Eurynome, Miranda gets access to the Water of Life at the end of the world.) Eurynome is a fairly communicative divinity -- she guides Miranda to an evil object and leads her to a safe haven, all via intuition -- but she won't tell Miranda how to level up from Handmaiden to Sibyl. Miranda bemoans this fact about once a chapter, when she's not busy being annoyed at Mephistopheles' crazy antics or being a quite accomplished sorceress. Or tsking over Mab's constant grumbles about how much he'd like his freedom.
'Cause see here's the thing. Mab is the spirit of a Nor'easterly wind, given fleshly form by Prospero, who has modeled himself after Humphrey Bogart and every other noir PI you've ever seen. He's basically Castiel -- except he's a slave. Miranda's power comes from the Staff of Winds, a flute that she can use to command the Aerie Ones, like Mab and Ariel (who's still around; Prospero may have told Shakespeare that the agreement was for thirteen years of service and that he released all his servants, but whoops, turns out it was actually a thousand years of service and he released none of them). In Ariel's brief appearance, he begs Miranda for his freedom in the same words he uses in The Tempest. Mab constantly reminds Miranda that he's in her power and that if he had the means to, he would destroy her flute. Both are loyal servants and don't seem to have anything against Miranda personally, but both would clearly like to be free.
Miranda reacts to all these pleas with disdain, authority, or inattention, then blithely whistles up Aerie Ones to speed her boats, protect her from rain, or break into locked warehouses. In one staggeringly disingenuous moment, she says in narration:
My childhood had been spent upon an island that was barely more than rock and heavens. The Aerie Spirits continually orchestrated storms at Father's behest. Hardly a day went by without the howling of winds and the crash of thunder, and I had reveled in every moment of it! That my brother Erasmus, who had known me nearly all my life, could believe I had asked for the flute because I desired to seize control of Father's servants was mind-boggling.
. . . Except, of course, that by using the flute to conjure up the wild weather she so adores, Miranda is seizing control of Prospero's servants. She owns these spirits that her father trapped and sees nothing wrong in either her father's or her own actions. Our heroine owns slaves and hero-worships the man who enslaved them in the first place.
A few things give me hope, though. Details are being revealed that suggest Prospero was actually kind of an asshole, and Mab is calling Miranda out on the fact that she and her family have enslaved his free will. It suggests that while Miranda may be kind of irksome and awful, Lamplighter may be doing it on purpose. Maybe Miranda's supposed to be an unreliably narrator, and this is all building up to the shattering of her delusions.
. . . I'm actually kind of tempted to apply. It's not exactly something I'd want to do for a long while, but it'd be a chance to work at the Stranger. And they have benefits.
It's very strange being in Seattle with the thought that I'll be moving here (hopefully) by the end of the year. Reading the Stranger becomes an exercise not in just checking out the latest Savage Love, but in checking the classifieds for inexpensive apartments. ($675 studios in Queen Anne? ♥_♥) Walking around Pike Street Market, I start wondering if I could afford to buy fresh veggies there on a weekly basis. Even the weather seems different: I start to think about how one strategically dresses for Seattle rain, how one bikes in Seattle rain, et cetera.
But before I can move to Seattle, I need to get to Valdez for Bad Hamlet's reading and get ready to direct Robin Hood in July. I should probably put some time into that latter; I have to let my TD know how I want to do Sherwood Forest.
ETA: OH, in other news, one of the books I picked up at Powell's the other day was Prospero Lost, by L. Jagi Lamplighter, which I think would be relevant to the interests of many of my f-list.
So I'm halfway through, at this point, and I've been finding the whole thing vaguely irksome. THe book is narrated by Miranda, who, some 500 years after the events of The Tempest, is still around and in charge of Prospero, Inc. Prospero retired a few years ago, and her seven half-siblings have scattered to the winds, leaving her running the company. At the beginning of the book, she finds a note from her father -- whom she hasn't seen in months -- warning her that she and her siblings may be in terrible danger from some powers called the Three Shadowed Ones. At around the same time, one of her servants, Mab (more on him in a minute) comes in to tell her that her brother Mephistopheles has been arrested in Chicago. Between finding out what Mephistopheles is up to and searching for Prospero, adventure ensues.
So what's irksome here? Well, the worldbuilding is awkwardly done, for one; it took me most of a hundred and fifty pages to figure out for certain that this is a world where magic exists but is not common knowledge. Lamplighter tends to teeter between giving not quite enough background information and giving just too much. As writing problems go, though, that's fairly minor. The action moves at a reasonable clip. It's . . . this is damning by faint praise, I know, but it reminds me a little of reading The Da Vinci Code. The writing isn't stellar, but I keep turning pages.
But what really bothers me is the character of Miranda. Miranda is immortal, having been pledged to the service of the divine Eurynome at a young age. (Her family gets a share in immortality as well, because by being a Handmaiden of Eurynome, Miranda gets access to the Water of Life at the end of the world.) Eurynome is a fairly communicative divinity -- she guides Miranda to an evil object and leads her to a safe haven, all via intuition -- but she won't tell Miranda how to level up from Handmaiden to Sibyl. Miranda bemoans this fact about once a chapter, when she's not busy being annoyed at Mephistopheles' crazy antics or being a quite accomplished sorceress. Or tsking over Mab's constant grumbles about how much he'd like his freedom.
'Cause see here's the thing. Mab is the spirit of a Nor'easterly wind, given fleshly form by Prospero, who has modeled himself after Humphrey Bogart and every other noir PI you've ever seen. He's basically Castiel -- except he's a slave. Miranda's power comes from the Staff of Winds, a flute that she can use to command the Aerie Ones, like Mab and Ariel (who's still around; Prospero may have told Shakespeare that the agreement was for thirteen years of service and that he released all his servants, but whoops, turns out it was actually a thousand years of service and he released none of them). In Ariel's brief appearance, he begs Miranda for his freedom in the same words he uses in The Tempest. Mab constantly reminds Miranda that he's in her power and that if he had the means to, he would destroy her flute. Both are loyal servants and don't seem to have anything against Miranda personally, but both would clearly like to be free.
Miranda reacts to all these pleas with disdain, authority, or inattention, then blithely whistles up Aerie Ones to speed her boats, protect her from rain, or break into locked warehouses. In one staggeringly disingenuous moment, she says in narration:
My childhood had been spent upon an island that was barely more than rock and heavens. The Aerie Spirits continually orchestrated storms at Father's behest. Hardly a day went by without the howling of winds and the crash of thunder, and I had reveled in every moment of it! That my brother Erasmus, who had known me nearly all my life, could believe I had asked for the flute because I desired to seize control of Father's servants was mind-boggling.
. . . Except, of course, that by using the flute to conjure up the wild weather she so adores, Miranda is seizing control of Prospero's servants. She owns these spirits that her father trapped and sees nothing wrong in either her father's or her own actions. Our heroine owns slaves and hero-worships the man who enslaved them in the first place.
A few things give me hope, though. Details are being revealed that suggest Prospero was actually kind of an asshole, and Mab is calling Miranda out on the fact that she and her family have enslaved his free will. It suggests that while Miranda may be kind of irksome and awful, Lamplighter may be doing it on purpose. Maybe Miranda's supposed to be an unreliably narrator, and this is all building up to the shattering of her delusions.