Sore Legs, Shakespeare and Steampunk
My right leg is not handling the fluctuating humidity well. Right now I have a great raw patch on my lower right calf that is the result of two large blisters bursting and one bandage that got saturated with water and lymphatic fluid and that pulled off a strip of waterlogged skin when I changed the stupid thing. The leg is very tender and is not handling pressure well. (I don't mean 80 pounds of pressure, like with the lymphatic pump. I'm talking "the pressure of socks.") Two parts of the raw patch are in the process of healing, but the leaking leg is still a nuisance, and a painful one.
I went to one of the branches of my town library yesterday to pick up some books I had on reserve and checked out the DVD section while I was there. To all of you who have been recommending that I watch various Shakespeare productions, I can say with all honesty that there was not a single Shakespearean play or movie present. Nothing under the names of the plays, nothing under the directors' names, nothing under Shakespeare, nothing under BBC. I did see a Verdi opera of one of the plays, but I thought that was reaching a bit.
I have now found a new series that I adore--the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger. So far, I've only read the first two books, Soulless and Changeless--I think the third, Blameless, is coming out this fall, and Carriger is in the process of writing Heartless.
And oh my God, is this a wonderful series. It takes place in a steampunk alternate reality where the knowledge that vampires, werewolves and ghosts exist has been a part of human life since the Renaissance. All groups are thoroughly integrated into human society; Queen Victoria has a vampire and a werewolf for advisors (not to mention myriad human advisors); there's an organization called BUR which is a cross between a bureaucratic agency and Scotland Yard, Supernatural Division (and which employs humans, vampires, ghosts and werewolves without batting an eyelash); vampires actually have pamphlets on the rules of proper behavior that they hand out to newborn vampires on the subject of safe and unsafe people and places around the vampire hive (attacking random humans is considering to be extraordinarily rude and a disgrace to the hive queen); and there are humans who want to become vampires ("drones") and werewolves ("clavigers") and who will work for the aforementioned for years to prove that they can survive the transformation. (Most people--even drones and clavigers--don't survive the initial attack. You REALLY have to want to risk your life for a very slim chance.)
Most important, though, is the fact that modern people** know that vampires and werewolves are not soulless monsters, but people who possess an excess of soul which allows them to defy death.***
But, of course, since there are people who have an excess of soul, there are, naturally, people who possess no souls at all. These are the preternaturals, who can touch a vampire or a werewolf and temporarily restore either to human form and who can touch the body belonging to a ghost and instantly exorcise the ghost. One such preternatural is the heroine of the title, Miss Alexia Tarabotti, a soulless and sarcastic spinster of twenty-six with a logical and scientific mind and a very useful parasol. She is quite the most active female protagonist--in fact, one of the most active protagonists, period--that I've seen for ages. I heart her immensely.
Also, one of her closest friends is an extraordinarily gay vampire who also happens to be a brilliant spy. (Picture Anthony Blanche from Brideshead Revisited as a vampire, put him in a Rococo drawing room, and you've got it.) And his favorite drone is a Bertie Wooster-analog called Biffy who is very obviously in love with the vampire--and whose affections are very definitely reciprocated. In the second book, a lesbian inventor who favors men's clothing shows up...and she repeatedly gets Alexia all hot and bothered, though Alexia doesn't know why.
Moreover, one of the characters, Mr. MacDougall, was a real person, as was his campaign to weigh the soul.
This is the passage where I fell in love with the series. The narration is discussing a physically unimpressive werewolf:
"He was not very big, mostly because he was not a very big human, and the basic principles of conservation of mass still applied whether supernatural or not. Werewolves had to obey the laws of physics just like everyone else."
I confess my first thought was OH MY GOD THANK YOU FOR GETTING THIS. So often authors make exceptions when physics and mathematics when such things would unduly inconvenience the protagonists or their love interests, and that leaves me screaming, "Science does not work that way!" (Of course a lot of science in steampunk is made up, and necessarily so, but the basic principles aren't, at least in this series.)
You need to read this series. It's adventurous and funny and the world fits together brilliantly. I only have two complaints about it:
1)That there are only two books so far; and
2) That I didn't write the series.
But thank God, somebody did.
** I.e., not Americans. Americans are considered hopelessly superstitious and dangerously hostile to supernatural people. Consequently, America is regarded as a barbaric land--one that's trying, but that has a long way to go to catch up.
***Ghosts are people who have an excess of soul but who are not turned by vampires or werewolves. Since ghosts eventually deteriorate and go mad, this is not a great option.
I went to one of the branches of my town library yesterday to pick up some books I had on reserve and checked out the DVD section while I was there. To all of you who have been recommending that I watch various Shakespeare productions, I can say with all honesty that there was not a single Shakespearean play or movie present. Nothing under the names of the plays, nothing under the directors' names, nothing under Shakespeare, nothing under BBC. I did see a Verdi opera of one of the plays, but I thought that was reaching a bit.
I have now found a new series that I adore--the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger. So far, I've only read the first two books, Soulless and Changeless--I think the third, Blameless, is coming out this fall, and Carriger is in the process of writing Heartless.
And oh my God, is this a wonderful series. It takes place in a steampunk alternate reality where the knowledge that vampires, werewolves and ghosts exist has been a part of human life since the Renaissance. All groups are thoroughly integrated into human society; Queen Victoria has a vampire and a werewolf for advisors (not to mention myriad human advisors); there's an organization called BUR which is a cross between a bureaucratic agency and Scotland Yard, Supernatural Division (and which employs humans, vampires, ghosts and werewolves without batting an eyelash); vampires actually have pamphlets on the rules of proper behavior that they hand out to newborn vampires on the subject of safe and unsafe people and places around the vampire hive (attacking random humans is considering to be extraordinarily rude and a disgrace to the hive queen); and there are humans who want to become vampires ("drones") and werewolves ("clavigers") and who will work for the aforementioned for years to prove that they can survive the transformation. (Most people--even drones and clavigers--don't survive the initial attack. You REALLY have to want to risk your life for a very slim chance.)
Most important, though, is the fact that modern people** know that vampires and werewolves are not soulless monsters, but people who possess an excess of soul which allows them to defy death.***
But, of course, since there are people who have an excess of soul, there are, naturally, people who possess no souls at all. These are the preternaturals, who can touch a vampire or a werewolf and temporarily restore either to human form and who can touch the body belonging to a ghost and instantly exorcise the ghost. One such preternatural is the heroine of the title, Miss Alexia Tarabotti, a soulless and sarcastic spinster of twenty-six with a logical and scientific mind and a very useful parasol. She is quite the most active female protagonist--in fact, one of the most active protagonists, period--that I've seen for ages. I heart her immensely.
Also, one of her closest friends is an extraordinarily gay vampire who also happens to be a brilliant spy. (Picture Anthony Blanche from Brideshead Revisited as a vampire, put him in a Rococo drawing room, and you've got it.) And his favorite drone is a Bertie Wooster-analog called Biffy who is very obviously in love with the vampire--and whose affections are very definitely reciprocated. In the second book, a lesbian inventor who favors men's clothing shows up...and she repeatedly gets Alexia all hot and bothered, though Alexia doesn't know why.
Moreover, one of the characters, Mr. MacDougall, was a real person, as was his campaign to weigh the soul.
This is the passage where I fell in love with the series. The narration is discussing a physically unimpressive werewolf:
"He was not very big, mostly because he was not a very big human, and the basic principles of conservation of mass still applied whether supernatural or not. Werewolves had to obey the laws of physics just like everyone else."
I confess my first thought was OH MY GOD THANK YOU FOR GETTING THIS. So often authors make exceptions when physics and mathematics when such things would unduly inconvenience the protagonists or their love interests, and that leaves me screaming, "Science does not work that way!" (Of course a lot of science in steampunk is made up, and necessarily so, but the basic principles aren't, at least in this series.)
You need to read this series. It's adventurous and funny and the world fits together brilliantly. I only have two complaints about it:
1)That there are only two books so far; and
2) That I didn't write the series.
But thank God, somebody did.
** I.e., not Americans. Americans are considered hopelessly superstitious and dangerously hostile to supernatural people. Consequently, America is regarded as a barbaric land--one that's trying, but that has a long way to go to catch up.
***Ghosts are people who have an excess of soul but who are not turned by vampires or werewolves. Since ghosts eventually deteriorate and go mad, this is not a great option.