(no subject)
The Dragon of the Lost Sea series is always going to be the Laurence Yep fantasy of my heart (and I'm so mad I forgot to nominate it for Yuletide this year!) but now I've finished his City Trilogy, which is also PRETTY CHARMING.
As I said when I wrote up the first book, this is super roller-coaster everything-and-the-kitchen-sink fantasy. An evil industrialist is trying to build a mythological super-weapon to conquer the AU 1940s! The only people who can stop him are a RAGTAG BAND OF MISFITS: a 12-year-old Kushite princess diplomat's daughter who's accidentally sworn her soul to a warrior goddess, her tiny griffin friend, a street urchin who is the reincarnation of the greatest enemy of dragonkind, his equally urchin-y money-loving tanuki bff who would just like to be home in San Francisco, and a world-weary exiled dragon assassin who wandered in from a much grittier book and is constantly wondering how she got stuck babysitting ALL THESE HUMAN CHILDREN, OH MY GOD.
Bit players and supporting characters include the goddess Pele, the god Dionysus, a Sogdian caravan train, a couple of ifrits, a secret Utopian society of foxes and polar bears hanging out in the North Pole, the semi-sentient Aurora Borealis, the North Wind, and an evil vizier. AMONG OTHERS. What I am saying is that THERE IS A LOT GOING ON IN THESE BOOKS.
My favorite, of course, is Bayang the dragon assassin. The development of the emotional arc between her and Accidentally Reincanated Baby Dragon Enemy Leech is really the heart of the story (whenever the story has time in between all the roller-coaster hijinks to have a heart).
BAYANG: Last week I was supposed to assassinate him, but now I have all these urges to tell him to put on a scarf before he goes outside . . .
BAYANG: . . . oh no . . . I think . . . I'm falling in Mom with him . . .
LEECH: Bayang look at me look at me I'm going to go take these dangerous weapons and go flying!
BAYANG: You put those weapons DOWN young man it is not SAFE
LEECH: YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM
LEECH: Also you systematically hunted down and slaughtered every single one of my past lives, so it's kind of hard to actually trust that you have my best interests at heart here :(
BAYANG: I know, our love is star-crossed and can never be :( :(
Why are there not more stories about star-crossed familial love? "Our households are at war, and there is all this terrible history that divides us, but I just want to adopt you!" Can we make this a narrative trope?
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/348173.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
As I said when I wrote up the first book, this is super roller-coaster everything-and-the-kitchen-sink fantasy. An evil industrialist is trying to build a mythological super-weapon to conquer the AU 1940s! The only people who can stop him are a RAGTAG BAND OF MISFITS: a 12-year-old Kushite princess diplomat's daughter who's accidentally sworn her soul to a warrior goddess, her tiny griffin friend, a street urchin who is the reincarnation of the greatest enemy of dragonkind, his equally urchin-y money-loving tanuki bff who would just like to be home in San Francisco, and a world-weary exiled dragon assassin who wandered in from a much grittier book and is constantly wondering how she got stuck babysitting ALL THESE HUMAN CHILDREN, OH MY GOD.
Bit players and supporting characters include the goddess Pele, the god Dionysus, a Sogdian caravan train, a couple of ifrits, a secret Utopian society of foxes and polar bears hanging out in the North Pole, the semi-sentient Aurora Borealis, the North Wind, and an evil vizier. AMONG OTHERS. What I am saying is that THERE IS A LOT GOING ON IN THESE BOOKS.
My favorite, of course, is Bayang the dragon assassin. The development of the emotional arc between her and Accidentally Reincanated Baby Dragon Enemy Leech is really the heart of the story (whenever the story has time in between all the roller-coaster hijinks to have a heart).
BAYANG: Last week I was supposed to assassinate him, but now I have all these urges to tell him to put on a scarf before he goes outside . . .
BAYANG: . . . oh no . . . I think . . . I'm falling in Mom with him . . .
LEECH: Bayang look at me look at me I'm going to go take these dangerous weapons and go flying!
BAYANG: You put those weapons DOWN young man it is not SAFE
LEECH: YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM
LEECH: Also you systematically hunted down and slaughtered every single one of my past lives, so it's kind of hard to actually trust that you have my best interests at heart here :(
BAYANG: I know, our love is star-crossed and can never be :( :(
Why are there not more stories about star-crossed familial love? "Our households are at war, and there is all this terrible history that divides us, but I just want to adopt you!" Can we make this a narrative trope?
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/348173.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.