Reading roundup (Kate Daniels, Warchild), December meme: canon that should have a bigger fandom
69. Ilona Andrews, Magic Shifts -- funny story: I apparently had this book sitting in my email for about six months, and I probably wouldn't have noticed if LJ's notifications hadn't crapped out and I hadn't had to switch to Gmail from my regular Yahoo mail. But it worked out perfectly, because I found the book right at a time when I was in the mood for something pretty light and familiar, and none of the other series I follow had new books out (except Vorkosigan, of course, but I'd already read that, plus it was a weird installment.) So, thank you egelantier for thinking of me, and thanks, LJ, for being messed up, I guess. Anyway, this was cute!
Spoilers! I like it that Kate and Curran are shut of all the Pack stuff -- the Pack was never that interesting to me. Of course, it looks like most of the regulars are following them anyway, but I do like Barnabas, and I'd rather have them as wacky neighbors than all this Beast Lord and Consort nonsense. I didn't much care for all the stuff with Mahon, whom I do like, but I could see that as in-character, and he did the right thing in the end, so, fine. And I did always like the Mercenery Guild, so I'm curious to see what Kate and Curran make of it now. It also never stopped being amusing how people kept telling Kate what an asshole Curran was with Curran right there; I mean, he is, but he took it well.
I was definitely not expecting Kate to have a stroke, of all things, but that was actually an interesting place to go, and I wonder if it will affect how she acts in the future, her sense of self-preservation in general.
I barely remember the plot -- something with djinn? ghouls? -- but that's totally not the point. I enjoyed Kate's visit to the Casino and what we saw of Ghastek, who's always been one of my favorites -- and LOL at Kate giving him a mug for Christmas and him actually using it. And Kate noticing that he's lost some weight and needs to eat more. And I liked that Ghastek was the one who figured out that the human host's abilities affect what the djinn-possessed giant can do. My favorite part, of course, as of late, was Roland inviting Kate and family to dinner, and the implication that he and Julie have spent some time together, apparently? The whole thing with Ghastek guessing it was at Applebees but being unable to convey it and Kate and Rowena critiquing his apple drawing skills was also pretty funny. It was neat to get Roland's side of the story of his relationship with Kate's mother. And the news that Roland apparently drops in on his mother-in-law... I would've liked more Hugh, of course, but at least it sounds like we should see him around as an antagonist while he's in exile and Roland has plausible deniability.
And even Kate and Curran and Julie domesticity was cute, especially breakfast as the family meal. I also found it cute that Kate is all hurt that Julie prefers a tomahawk to a sword as a weapon. Oh, and I don't remember Luther from a previous book, if we've met him before (apparently he was in Magic Slays?), but I liked him here quite a lot. I guess he's coming back because Kate needs a wizard buddy, now that Saiman has well and truly washed his hands of her?
I liked Kate Sherlock-Holmes-ing the rogue ghouls she came hunting in the beginning, and being dogged at investigating as well as beating people up -- she is a character I buy as a PI, somewhat to my own surprise, because she does have a tendency to work within the system, which so many lone heroes do not. Although I still didn't think her guessing that Eduardo's stalker was his father was a bit of a stretch. I liked the way Kate's short-term memory loss was handled; I was all prepared for a lengthy plot complication hung on her not being able to remember stuff, but she figured everything back out quite quickly, and guessed most of the rest -- everything important, anyway. And I appreciated that this was not used to generate gratuitous relationship drama with Curran, either. (Also, Kate using the amnesia to troll Ascanio was pretty amusing.)
Oh, and the digression on quantum mechanics was unexpected, but not too mangled, compared to my usual complaints about "science" in these books. It did bug me that Kate kept referring to the "wind scorpion" as an insect (it's got the wrong number of legs for that!) but I'm also willing to believe Kate wouldn't care about the distinction.
Quotes:
"the People, my father's pet cult/undead petting zoo"
Ghastek: "One does no simply ring Roland/"
"Oh boy. I supposed I would get a lecture on the dangers of wandering into Mordor next."
Kate, imagining Mahon's wishes: "Wish one, Curran is the Beast lord. Wish two, George is his consort. Wish three, you turn into an even bigger bear."
70. Karin Lowachee, Warchild -- shared by ikel89, who read it while visiting your_insomnia. I'd heard about the series before and it sounded interesting, but never went to the trouble of tracking it down. I had somehow formed an impression that the book was something like Ender's Game, which it isn't, really. And some parts of it worked for me much better than others; fortunately the part that worked for me best was the longest and last, so I finished the book on a high note, and with the intent to read on in the series; back when I was reading the earlier sections, I did not think that would be the case. Spoilers from here!
Here's the part that worked least well for me: everything on Aaian-na. The striv didn't feel to me either alien enough to be interesting as a people or human/fleshed out enough to be interesting as individuals. And either the culture itself or Jos's place in it made it hard for me to connect with anything in this section, except for Jos clutching onto Nico as a life-preserver. I did like Jos and Nico getting to know each other initially, the way Nico comes across as not-quite-human because of where and how he was raised, the way they learn each other's language, all that stuff. It also felt believable to me, if not healthy, how Jos would latch onto him after losing everyone he's even known on Mukudori and the traumatic experience with Falcone. But there was a lot of other stuff in this section that I just made me want to skim, because the pacing and aesthetics were not really working for me.
Oh, and I should probably put Ash-dan under this category as well: he didn't work for me as an antagonist, either in his motivation or his methods. He was just so petty when dealing with Jos, who is just a kid at the time, and it's hard to believe that Nico has no better way of dealing with him than catching him in the act. I mean, possibly if I'd been more willing to delve into the philosophy and culture or the striv and all that importance placed on place-ness, it would've made more sense to me? But it wasn't worth the effort for me, so it didn't.
Stuff that worked for me somewhat: Falcone, both the prologue and the section towards the end where Jos encounters him again. It's well done; in retrospect, I even think the second-person POV in the beginning works OK, for the unreliable narrator/dissociating Jos. It is genuinely skin-crawly, and I did like the way this experience continued to affect Jos for the rest of the book, stunt or at least influence his interactions with everyone. I also liked the closure he finally got with Falcone, that this was something he needed, and got, and that Azarcon both understood and was grateful and had himself apparently transcended the need for personally killing Falcone. I thought Azarcon and Evan as foils of what Jos had gone through were both interestingly done, and the relationship between Jos and Evan was a painful but compelling one. All that felt realistic, but not a lot of fun, so while I can appreciate what the book was doing here, I can't say I enjoyed reading about it.
The part I actually liked was most everything to do with Macedon, enlistment and training and missions, the fellow jets and the way Jos came to feel about them, the responsibility he felt to and for them without necessarily feeling like he was one of them until the very end. I liked the range of personalities we got with the jets, and Dorr and Azarcon (and his "strong suggestions") ended up being characters I actually liked, unlike everybody else in the book. The chapters dealing with Kris Rilke's death worked especially well for me; that Jos knew Kris could expose him and still tried his best to save him, was horrified to have been the cause of his death.
I think my brain is running low, because just as I found I had to work to follow Sapkowski's worldbuilding, I had to apply some effort here, too. Some worldbuilding bits I appreciated; I liked, for instance, that the slur word for the aliens ("strit") and the legitimate shortened version of what they call themselves ("striv") were only a letter apart, and the way Jos switches between the two, and between "symp" and "sympathizer" (slur and regular word for the humans who are siding with the aliens in the EarthHub/alien conflict) and the things it connotes. Other aspects just felt fairly gratuitous to me, like claling soldiers "soljets" and things like "meedees" and "pollies" and so on. I totally get what Lowachee is going for there, but it's not novel or interesting enough to justify the low-level confusion of getting used to these things at first, and not nearly drastic enough, I think, if it's meant to show the evolution of language over centuries. But shipboard slang, like "mano" and "fem" and such did work OK for me. So, hit or miss, in general.
I've started reading Burndive, the second book, which I did not realize would follow a different character. But I'm looking forward to maybe seeing Azarcon senior again.
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I've been reading MUNCLE fic (for the movie), or at least the cheerful fic I could find -- this fandom seems to really like torture and angst! -- and came across this very cute one: Cake is the Language of Love (Napoleon/Illya, Teen), which takes off from the fact that "Napoleon"" is the name of a popular cake in Russia, which is a) adorable and b) I'm glad somebody went there. :D
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December ramble meme, day 13: The book/movie/TV show you wish there was a bigger fandom for, and why (prompted by luckweaver)
The real answer to this is the Dragaera books by Steven Brust, but I have a separate prompt for that for a couple of days from now. So, I'll answer this part of the question then, too. But meanwhile, let me think of another fandom :)
The last couple of years, my answer to this was also Rivers of London, the book series by Ben Aaronovitch about Peter Grant, magical copper in contemporary London. Here is my rambly squee about it from a past December meme. All of that still holds.
Fandom has been growing, admittedly! There are now 282 works on Ao3 (where a couple of years ago there were only a dozen), and it seems like this should be a big year for it on Yuletide, at least looking at offers/requests -- and there are already 3 stories tagged RoL in the Yuletide collection for this year -- not a lot of fandoms beating that. And I guess there's some meta on Tumblr, though I do wish it would just come back/over to riversoflondon, where it's possible to have an actual conversation. Tumblr's also pretty good at fancasts.
But I don't think it's a real critical mass of fandom, unfortunately -- just a handful of very dedicated, very talented individuals (for which I'm already very grateful, don't get me wrong!) I'd love there to be a megafandom for these, though, because there's a lot of stuff you don't really get until a fandom grows to a certain size (I've been browsing the Man from UNCLE fandom stuff and feeling this very acutely. Although I suppose I should consider the lack of A/B/O fic in RoL a blessing :P). Such as:
- Fanart: A lot more people write fic than can draw, in general, so even in active fic fandoms, you don't get fanart typically until they're fairly large. Some art finally started appearing, like this, but this is basically just one fanartist's view, and I'd love to have more options to choose from. (I do really like their Peter, Toby, but the others don't really match my mental images. And I want Kumar and Abigail and Dom and everyone!)
- Icons: Not that many people use icons anymore, but there are folks still making them. These books are so quotable, and really call out for text icons. ( I made some, but I am really not very good, and they deserve to be iconized by someone who is.) And, like, icons of significant architecture and stuff.
- Meta: Like I said, there is some meta on Tumblr, and we even had some discussions in riversoflondon in preparation for book 5 coming out. But... a small fandom tends to become an echo chamber, in the absence of fresh ideas or people arguing. I want Knight2King or Sherlock BBC level of speculation explaining the event at the end of Broken Homes. I want far-out suggestions for the identity of the Faceless Man.
- Crossovers: All the crossovers! I'd love to see more crossovers with the Dresden Files, because the first person smartass narrations are compatible, but Peter and Harry are SUCH different people, it would be really fun to watch them interact. There are a ton of "urban fantasy in London" canons these days, and I want crossovers with all of them! The Folly responding to some new bit of mayhem caused by Matthew Swift, some kind of fusion with the Alex Verus-verse (especially now that Alex is hanging around with the Keepers), or alternate timeframe fic set in one of the magical Regency canons (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, for instance). All the fusions! Peter as an excited Muggleborn sorted into Ravenclaw and Lesley as a perky Slytherin, totally unperturbed by her Mudblood status. Peter as captain of a courier dragon (would you trust him with anything bigger?), Stephanopoulos as a gruff Longwing captain, Varvara and her ice-breather (I know it's not canonical, but you know she'd have one) who is as unimpressed by anything as she is. His Dark Materials fusions, where Peter has a magpie daemon (or, OK, starling, fine, canon), and Nightingale has not a nightingale, IDK, something elegant and badass, some kind of big cat? a panther? -- and the thing that happened at Ettersberg tore everybody's daemons away, but Nightingale's somehow survived, and that's probably why he's aging backwards (there actually is a RoL/HDM fusion out there, which I liked, but there need to be MORE). RoL with psychic wolves, superhero AU, RoL IN SPACE, ALL THE CROSSOVERS!
But if the question was asking more along the lines of why these books DESERVE to have a bigger fandom, rather than why I WANT them to, then, how about a top 10:
1. It's an urban fantasy police procedural -- two great tastes that are even better together. I like both genres, and have been searching for a well-done melding of them for ages, with no avail until the RoL books came along. The urban fantasy part is great (a little more on that below), but the police procedural aspects are actually even more impressive to me. Because the mundane cops are intelligent and fun characters in their own rights, deserving of both the magical characters' and the readers' respect, and the magical cops are still cops -- they follow chain of command and custody, and file paperwork, and call for backup and get authorization before dashing into magical circumstances -- it's really great.
2. Really fun first person narration. I realize (with some surprise) that first person is not everybody's cup of tea, but I love first-person voices that have a lot of individuality and personality, and Peter definitely delivers. The narration is very British, quite a bit of slang, which I gather can be a roadblock for some readers, but I absolutely loved everything about it, everything from wry observations and cynicism to digressions on architecture and geeky allusions (because Peter is a huge dork) to magic geekery (see: Peter being a huge dork). I mostly don't *like* protagonists very much, preferring secondary characters and sidekicks, but Peter is both a really entertaining narrator, a good driver of plot, and somebody I would be really happy to hang out with as a person -- this REALLY doesn't happen very often. And the series is such that you can really see the protagonist grow, believably and gradually but impressively, from the young cop who doesn't know magic even exists into someone who can manage a case mostly solo and as the sole magical expert on the ground by book 5. I have heard that some readers find Peter uncomfortably opaque as a POV character (and have also heard an interesting reader-advanced explanation for it -- that it's something believable in the adult child of an addict), but the times when we do see through to the parts he usually doesn't show are also very well done.
3. Geeky allusions actually deserve their own bullet point. Like, it's not uncommon for urban fantasy heroes to be fans of real-world fantasy classics (Harry Dresden mentions Pratchett and LotR and plays D&D, Kate Daniels adores The Princess Bride, etc.), but Peter takes it to a whole new level. He's a Doctor Who fan, Star Trek fan, apparently, makes references to Harry Potter (pretty much constantly, one gathers from his mentor's weary reaction to it), Tolkien, Avatar: the Last Airbender, etc. And he's not alone, either. Kumar and Peter trying to out-geek each other in Whispers Under Ground was one of my favorite things about that book, and why I'm eagerly awaiting more cases that have reason to involve the BTP, so Kumar can make another appearance. I was also incredibly charmed when it turned out that Stephanopoulos, gruff and slightly terrifying detective inspector, got his Unseen University reference because her partner (wife?) apparently reads bits of Pratchett aloud at the breakfast table, like you do. Even the Faceless Man (the main antagonist) is apparently a fan of Tolkien (see icon), albeit one with a nasty sense of humour.
4. London as character. As mentioned above, there are a lot of urban fantasies set in London these days, and I enjoyed most of them I tried to various degrees, including older things, like Gaiman's Neverwhere. One of the things that comes across very well in the RoL books is that sense of place -- they are both written and narrated by someone who's clearly a Londoner to the core, with local's genuine exasperated-fond attitude. Again, I've heard some readers find the abundance of London landmarks and trivia disorienting, and I've heard semi-serious recommendations to read the book with a "London A to Z" guide for reference. But, having spent half a dozen days in London over two visits, i was just fine. Maybe I'm just used to being spatially adrift because I'm terrible with directions? But, anyway, seeing places I recognize is definitely a bonus, and the rest just goes over my head at worst. But it definitely has a very strong sense of place, which I do like, both when settings are real and when they're fictional, and I think this series is a good example of that done very well. And this London feels like a real, vibrant, bustling modern metropolis, just as it should.
5. This is probably a good segue into talking about the diversity in these books, which I mean both in the narrower Tumblr-favored sense -- Peter is a bi-racial protagonist, with a mother from Sierra Leone and a white father, there are other POCs in the books ("Somali ninja girl" fellow cop Sahra Guleed, Jaget Kumar of the BTP, Abigail Kumara who keeps getting mistaken for Peter's sister), including most of the local "pantheon" of river gods; there are queer characters (the aforementioned DI Stephanopoulos, Peter's temporary partner Dom in book 5 and his boyfriend/fiance, one of the jazzmen in Peter's father's new band, the bereaved husband of an apparent suicide victim). In general, there is no default whiteness (or straightness, though, being straight himself, presumably, Peter is less aware of those nuances) in this series, as the London "extras" tend to be just as diverse as one would expect in a city like that. And this is handled deftly and in-character-ly: Peter is a cop, he's been trained to notice (and guess at) things like race, for easier identification later, as well as someone who is innately aware of race because of his own background. It feels very natural, both to the setting and the narrator, with none of the "points for effort" diversity bingo stuff that even books I like that are clearly trying to do a good job of this tend to fall into. And it never feels stereotypical (or not for long; Stephanopoulos may start out as a "scary dyke" stereotype, maybe, because all Peter knows about her at the time are the Met gossip and jokes, but as soon as Peter gets to know her, it's clear she's a full-fledged, interesting character, and one I came to like very much), or forced, or the only thing defining these characters. Moreover, the diversity doesn't end there. There is also a sense of diversity of religion (e.g. Guleed as a practicing Muslim, Dr Walid as another, who converted, a background character who gave up her association with the Catholic church when her son came out to her as gay, etc.), and I appreciate Peter's background as a second-gen child with an immigrant parent (and the way his relationship with his mother, the immigrant, and that side of the family works). And, of course, Peter is very aware of class differences throughout, and in book 5 urban vs rural differences, and the interplay between all of these things. I found it all very nicely layered, but without getting in the way of the fun of the story.
6. Secondary characters that are awesome! I, along with pretty much everybody else, first and foremost fell for Gentleman Scholar extraordinnaire, Thomas Nightingale, who took out two Tiger tanks with fireballs in WWII (a fact that Peter, in permanent fanboy mode, just can't get over) and goes spelunking in sewers in an immaculate white Burberry coat. Lesley May, about whom more below, but here let's just say that I really like it that she is an excellent cop, a better cop than Peter, which everybody starting with Peter acknowledges. As mentioned above, I love geeky British Transit Police cop Jaget Kumar, who found engineering not exciting enough and does spelunking for fun, and DC Miriam Stephanopoulos, who is sort of the representative of the mundane cops in the series at this point, and Dr Waleed, who gets really excited about showing MRI scans of brains destroyed by magic and unusual creatures (as well as being a gastroenterologist in his day job), and Abigail Kumara, who will probably take over the world at some point now that Peter blabbed to her about magic, and Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina, who ended up becoming one of my favorite characters, enormously to my surprise, because I think this is the first Russian character written by a Western author that I actually like unreservedly. Also, the secondary characters are allowed to have their own opinions, opposite to Peter's in some cases, which are nevertheless not dismissed by either Peter or the books. And Aaronovitch is pretty good at drawing memorable extras, too, which is important in a mystery serial, where you meet a lot of witnesses and victims' families and so on.
7. Because the preceding paragraph is already long enough, I'm going to make the relationships between Peter and the other characters its own bullet. Peter and Nightingale's is, of course, at the heart of the series -- and I love the way their mentor/student relationship and growing friendship are drawn. (If one is not averse to mentor/student and age difference shipping, there's also a lot of room for that. I normally *am* averse to mentor/student relationships, but not in this case, because despite the age and power differential, I do buy Peter and Nightingale as sufficiently equal where it matters to have a non-squicky relationship. They are partners, and Peter has plenty to teach Nightingale, too, as he's learning magic from him.) I also really like the relationship between Peter and Lesley, which feels absolutely real to me as an established friendship, devoid of Nice Guy-ness even though Peter has a crush on her. I've liked the way their relationship adjusted throughout the five books, through everything that has happened. And then there's Peter's relationship with his parents -- and, for starters, the fact that a fantasy hero actually HAS parents who are alive, and whom he drops in on for dinner. It's a pretty fraught relationship, nicely complex for very valid reasons, too. Also, it's just really refreshing to see a protagonist with both a found family and a blood family that he's close to, though neither set of relationships is without complications.
8. The way the book deals with disability/life-altering injury. It's hard to talk about this without spoilers, but let's just say that I was impressed that the injured character was neither permanently sidelined nor magically healed, that their interaction with the world was definitely changed, both in terms of what they could do and other people's perceptions and their own reactions and worldview. It was respectfully done, painful and life-changing but not the end of everything. And just the way all characters, in general, from important secondaries to random extras, do not just shrug off either physical or psychological trauma,
9. The magic. I really like magic-as-science, and this series is a very good example of it. Newtonian magic feels like it makes sense, but I also like the way that most practitioners don't seem to care much HOW it makes sense, just nerds like Peter. I love his empirical approach to magic, and the way Dr Waleed cheers him on in that. And although we haven't seen much of it yet, just hints, I do like the intimation that there are other types of magic out there, different from the Newtonian magic of Latin and gestures, different schools of thought. Also Newton as the founder of British magic is just kind of delightful to me, and makes a lot of sense. I also like the way the institutions of magic are different, from what we've seen -- magic in Germany and the USSR. That's also something I hope we see more of later in the series.
10. The humour. The books are really funny, at least to me. A lot of this is courtesy of Peter's narration, the geeky references that I get a kick out of, the banter between clever characters or ranting by people like Seawoll, or nightingale's dry humour. Some of it is just people being people, with all their contradictions and foibles, which tends to be pretty funny on its own, observed and pointed out by Peter. There are invariably quotes that make me laugh and situations that make me smile.
I mean, the books are not perfect. I think Aaronovitch might be getting better at plots, or possibly my expectations have adjusted, but his pacing is still weird. And the anthropomorphic personifications generally don't work for me, where they do in other books. But I get so much enjoyment from the series for the reasons above, that none of that really matters. And that's why everybody (for whom those arguments sound compelling, that is) should read these books :D
Spoilers! I like it that Kate and Curran are shut of all the Pack stuff -- the Pack was never that interesting to me. Of course, it looks like most of the regulars are following them anyway, but I do like Barnabas, and I'd rather have them as wacky neighbors than all this Beast Lord and Consort nonsense. I didn't much care for all the stuff with Mahon, whom I do like, but I could see that as in-character, and he did the right thing in the end, so, fine. And I did always like the Mercenery Guild, so I'm curious to see what Kate and Curran make of it now. It also never stopped being amusing how people kept telling Kate what an asshole Curran was with Curran right there; I mean, he is, but he took it well.
I was definitely not expecting Kate to have a stroke, of all things, but that was actually an interesting place to go, and I wonder if it will affect how she acts in the future, her sense of self-preservation in general.
I barely remember the plot -- something with djinn? ghouls? -- but that's totally not the point. I enjoyed Kate's visit to the Casino and what we saw of Ghastek, who's always been one of my favorites -- and LOL at Kate giving him a mug for Christmas and him actually using it. And Kate noticing that he's lost some weight and needs to eat more. And I liked that Ghastek was the one who figured out that the human host's abilities affect what the djinn-possessed giant can do. My favorite part, of course, as of late, was Roland inviting Kate and family to dinner, and the implication that he and Julie have spent some time together, apparently? The whole thing with Ghastek guessing it was at Applebees but being unable to convey it and Kate and Rowena critiquing his apple drawing skills was also pretty funny. It was neat to get Roland's side of the story of his relationship with Kate's mother. And the news that Roland apparently drops in on his mother-in-law... I would've liked more Hugh, of course, but at least it sounds like we should see him around as an antagonist while he's in exile and Roland has plausible deniability.
And even Kate and Curran and Julie domesticity was cute, especially breakfast as the family meal. I also found it cute that Kate is all hurt that Julie prefers a tomahawk to a sword as a weapon. Oh, and I don't remember Luther from a previous book, if we've met him before (apparently he was in Magic Slays?), but I liked him here quite a lot. I guess he's coming back because Kate needs a wizard buddy, now that Saiman has well and truly washed his hands of her?
I liked Kate Sherlock-Holmes-ing the rogue ghouls she came hunting in the beginning, and being dogged at investigating as well as beating people up -- she is a character I buy as a PI, somewhat to my own surprise, because she does have a tendency to work within the system, which so many lone heroes do not. Although I still didn't think her guessing that Eduardo's stalker was his father was a bit of a stretch. I liked the way Kate's short-term memory loss was handled; I was all prepared for a lengthy plot complication hung on her not being able to remember stuff, but she figured everything back out quite quickly, and guessed most of the rest -- everything important, anyway. And I appreciated that this was not used to generate gratuitous relationship drama with Curran, either. (Also, Kate using the amnesia to troll Ascanio was pretty amusing.)
Oh, and the digression on quantum mechanics was unexpected, but not too mangled, compared to my usual complaints about "science" in these books. It did bug me that Kate kept referring to the "wind scorpion" as an insect (it's got the wrong number of legs for that!) but I'm also willing to believe Kate wouldn't care about the distinction.
Quotes:
"the People, my father's pet cult/undead petting zoo"
Ghastek: "One does no simply ring Roland/"
"Oh boy. I supposed I would get a lecture on the dangers of wandering into Mordor next."
Kate, imagining Mahon's wishes: "Wish one, Curran is the Beast lord. Wish two, George is his consort. Wish three, you turn into an even bigger bear."
70. Karin Lowachee, Warchild -- shared by ikel89, who read it while visiting your_insomnia. I'd heard about the series before and it sounded interesting, but never went to the trouble of tracking it down. I had somehow formed an impression that the book was something like Ender's Game, which it isn't, really. And some parts of it worked for me much better than others; fortunately the part that worked for me best was the longest and last, so I finished the book on a high note, and with the intent to read on in the series; back when I was reading the earlier sections, I did not think that would be the case. Spoilers from here!
Here's the part that worked least well for me: everything on Aaian-na. The striv didn't feel to me either alien enough to be interesting as a people or human/fleshed out enough to be interesting as individuals. And either the culture itself or Jos's place in it made it hard for me to connect with anything in this section, except for Jos clutching onto Nico as a life-preserver. I did like Jos and Nico getting to know each other initially, the way Nico comes across as not-quite-human because of where and how he was raised, the way they learn each other's language, all that stuff. It also felt believable to me, if not healthy, how Jos would latch onto him after losing everyone he's even known on Mukudori and the traumatic experience with Falcone. But there was a lot of other stuff in this section that I just made me want to skim, because the pacing and aesthetics were not really working for me.
Oh, and I should probably put Ash-dan under this category as well: he didn't work for me as an antagonist, either in his motivation or his methods. He was just so petty when dealing with Jos, who is just a kid at the time, and it's hard to believe that Nico has no better way of dealing with him than catching him in the act. I mean, possibly if I'd been more willing to delve into the philosophy and culture or the striv and all that importance placed on place-ness, it would've made more sense to me? But it wasn't worth the effort for me, so it didn't.
Stuff that worked for me somewhat: Falcone, both the prologue and the section towards the end where Jos encounters him again. It's well done; in retrospect, I even think the second-person POV in the beginning works OK, for the unreliable narrator/dissociating Jos. It is genuinely skin-crawly, and I did like the way this experience continued to affect Jos for the rest of the book, stunt or at least influence his interactions with everyone. I also liked the closure he finally got with Falcone, that this was something he needed, and got, and that Azarcon both understood and was grateful and had himself apparently transcended the need for personally killing Falcone. I thought Azarcon and Evan as foils of what Jos had gone through were both interestingly done, and the relationship between Jos and Evan was a painful but compelling one. All that felt realistic, but not a lot of fun, so while I can appreciate what the book was doing here, I can't say I enjoyed reading about it.
The part I actually liked was most everything to do with Macedon, enlistment and training and missions, the fellow jets and the way Jos came to feel about them, the responsibility he felt to and for them without necessarily feeling like he was one of them until the very end. I liked the range of personalities we got with the jets, and Dorr and Azarcon (and his "strong suggestions") ended up being characters I actually liked, unlike everybody else in the book. The chapters dealing with Kris Rilke's death worked especially well for me; that Jos knew Kris could expose him and still tried his best to save him, was horrified to have been the cause of his death.
I think my brain is running low, because just as I found I had to work to follow Sapkowski's worldbuilding, I had to apply some effort here, too. Some worldbuilding bits I appreciated; I liked, for instance, that the slur word for the aliens ("strit") and the legitimate shortened version of what they call themselves ("striv") were only a letter apart, and the way Jos switches between the two, and between "symp" and "sympathizer" (slur and regular word for the humans who are siding with the aliens in the EarthHub/alien conflict) and the things it connotes. Other aspects just felt fairly gratuitous to me, like claling soldiers "soljets" and things like "meedees" and "pollies" and so on. I totally get what Lowachee is going for there, but it's not novel or interesting enough to justify the low-level confusion of getting used to these things at first, and not nearly drastic enough, I think, if it's meant to show the evolution of language over centuries. But shipboard slang, like "mano" and "fem" and such did work OK for me. So, hit or miss, in general.
I've started reading Burndive, the second book, which I did not realize would follow a different character. But I'm looking forward to maybe seeing Azarcon senior again.
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I've been reading MUNCLE fic (for the movie), or at least the cheerful fic I could find -- this fandom seems to really like torture and angst! -- and came across this very cute one: Cake is the Language of Love (Napoleon/Illya, Teen), which takes off from the fact that "Napoleon"" is the name of a popular cake in Russia, which is a) adorable and b) I'm glad somebody went there. :D
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December ramble meme, day 13: The book/movie/TV show you wish there was a bigger fandom for, and why (prompted by luckweaver)
The real answer to this is the Dragaera books by Steven Brust, but I have a separate prompt for that for a couple of days from now. So, I'll answer this part of the question then, too. But meanwhile, let me think of another fandom :)
The last couple of years, my answer to this was also Rivers of London, the book series by Ben Aaronovitch about Peter Grant, magical copper in contemporary London. Here is my rambly squee about it from a past December meme. All of that still holds.
Fandom has been growing, admittedly! There are now 282 works on Ao3 (where a couple of years ago there were only a dozen), and it seems like this should be a big year for it on Yuletide, at least looking at offers/requests -- and there are already 3 stories tagged RoL in the Yuletide collection for this year -- not a lot of fandoms beating that. And I guess there's some meta on Tumblr, though I do wish it would just come back/over to riversoflondon, where it's possible to have an actual conversation. Tumblr's also pretty good at fancasts.
But I don't think it's a real critical mass of fandom, unfortunately -- just a handful of very dedicated, very talented individuals (for which I'm already very grateful, don't get me wrong!) I'd love there to be a megafandom for these, though, because there's a lot of stuff you don't really get until a fandom grows to a certain size (I've been browsing the Man from UNCLE fandom stuff and feeling this very acutely. Although I suppose I should consider the lack of A/B/O fic in RoL a blessing :P). Such as:
- Fanart: A lot more people write fic than can draw, in general, so even in active fic fandoms, you don't get fanart typically until they're fairly large. Some art finally started appearing, like this, but this is basically just one fanartist's view, and I'd love to have more options to choose from. (I do really like their Peter, Toby, but the others don't really match my mental images. And I want Kumar and Abigail and Dom and everyone!)
- Icons: Not that many people use icons anymore, but there are folks still making them. These books are so quotable, and really call out for text icons. ( I made some, but I am really not very good, and they deserve to be iconized by someone who is.) And, like, icons of significant architecture and stuff.
- Meta: Like I said, there is some meta on Tumblr, and we even had some discussions in riversoflondon in preparation for book 5 coming out. But... a small fandom tends to become an echo chamber, in the absence of fresh ideas or people arguing. I want Knight2King or Sherlock BBC level of speculation explaining the event at the end of Broken Homes. I want far-out suggestions for the identity of the Faceless Man.
- Crossovers: All the crossovers! I'd love to see more crossovers with the Dresden Files, because the first person smartass narrations are compatible, but Peter and Harry are SUCH different people, it would be really fun to watch them interact. There are a ton of "urban fantasy in London" canons these days, and I want crossovers with all of them! The Folly responding to some new bit of mayhem caused by Matthew Swift, some kind of fusion with the Alex Verus-verse (especially now that Alex is hanging around with the Keepers), or alternate timeframe fic set in one of the magical Regency canons (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, for instance). All the fusions! Peter as an excited Muggleborn sorted into Ravenclaw and Lesley as a perky Slytherin, totally unperturbed by her Mudblood status. Peter as captain of a courier dragon (would you trust him with anything bigger?), Stephanopoulos as a gruff Longwing captain, Varvara and her ice-breather (I know it's not canonical, but you know she'd have one) who is as unimpressed by anything as she is. His Dark Materials fusions, where Peter has a magpie daemon (or, OK, starling, fine, canon), and Nightingale has not a nightingale, IDK, something elegant and badass, some kind of big cat? a panther? -- and the thing that happened at Ettersberg tore everybody's daemons away, but Nightingale's somehow survived, and that's probably why he's aging backwards (there actually is a RoL/HDM fusion out there, which I liked, but there need to be MORE). RoL with psychic wolves, superhero AU, RoL IN SPACE, ALL THE CROSSOVERS!
But if the question was asking more along the lines of why these books DESERVE to have a bigger fandom, rather than why I WANT them to, then, how about a top 10:
1. It's an urban fantasy police procedural -- two great tastes that are even better together. I like both genres, and have been searching for a well-done melding of them for ages, with no avail until the RoL books came along. The urban fantasy part is great (a little more on that below), but the police procedural aspects are actually even more impressive to me. Because the mundane cops are intelligent and fun characters in their own rights, deserving of both the magical characters' and the readers' respect, and the magical cops are still cops -- they follow chain of command and custody, and file paperwork, and call for backup and get authorization before dashing into magical circumstances -- it's really great.
2. Really fun first person narration. I realize (with some surprise) that first person is not everybody's cup of tea, but I love first-person voices that have a lot of individuality and personality, and Peter definitely delivers. The narration is very British, quite a bit of slang, which I gather can be a roadblock for some readers, but I absolutely loved everything about it, everything from wry observations and cynicism to digressions on architecture and geeky allusions (because Peter is a huge dork) to magic geekery (see: Peter being a huge dork). I mostly don't *like* protagonists very much, preferring secondary characters and sidekicks, but Peter is both a really entertaining narrator, a good driver of plot, and somebody I would be really happy to hang out with as a person -- this REALLY doesn't happen very often. And the series is such that you can really see the protagonist grow, believably and gradually but impressively, from the young cop who doesn't know magic even exists into someone who can manage a case mostly solo and as the sole magical expert on the ground by book 5. I have heard that some readers find Peter uncomfortably opaque as a POV character (and have also heard an interesting reader-advanced explanation for it -- that it's something believable in the adult child of an addict), but the times when we do see through to the parts he usually doesn't show are also very well done.
3. Geeky allusions actually deserve their own bullet point. Like, it's not uncommon for urban fantasy heroes to be fans of real-world fantasy classics (Harry Dresden mentions Pratchett and LotR and plays D&D, Kate Daniels adores The Princess Bride, etc.), but Peter takes it to a whole new level. He's a Doctor Who fan, Star Trek fan, apparently, makes references to Harry Potter (pretty much constantly, one gathers from his mentor's weary reaction to it), Tolkien, Avatar: the Last Airbender, etc. And he's not alone, either. Kumar and Peter trying to out-geek each other in Whispers Under Ground was one of my favorite things about that book, and why I'm eagerly awaiting more cases that have reason to involve the BTP, so Kumar can make another appearance. I was also incredibly charmed when it turned out that Stephanopoulos, gruff and slightly terrifying detective inspector, got his Unseen University reference because her partner (wife?) apparently reads bits of Pratchett aloud at the breakfast table, like you do. Even the Faceless Man (the main antagonist) is apparently a fan of Tolkien (see icon), albeit one with a nasty sense of humour.
4. London as character. As mentioned above, there are a lot of urban fantasies set in London these days, and I enjoyed most of them I tried to various degrees, including older things, like Gaiman's Neverwhere. One of the things that comes across very well in the RoL books is that sense of place -- they are both written and narrated by someone who's clearly a Londoner to the core, with local's genuine exasperated-fond attitude. Again, I've heard some readers find the abundance of London landmarks and trivia disorienting, and I've heard semi-serious recommendations to read the book with a "London A to Z" guide for reference. But, having spent half a dozen days in London over two visits, i was just fine. Maybe I'm just used to being spatially adrift because I'm terrible with directions? But, anyway, seeing places I recognize is definitely a bonus, and the rest just goes over my head at worst. But it definitely has a very strong sense of place, which I do like, both when settings are real and when they're fictional, and I think this series is a good example of that done very well. And this London feels like a real, vibrant, bustling modern metropolis, just as it should.
5. This is probably a good segue into talking about the diversity in these books, which I mean both in the narrower Tumblr-favored sense -- Peter is a bi-racial protagonist, with a mother from Sierra Leone and a white father, there are other POCs in the books ("Somali ninja girl" fellow cop Sahra Guleed, Jaget Kumar of the BTP, Abigail Kumara who keeps getting mistaken for Peter's sister), including most of the local "pantheon" of river gods; there are queer characters (the aforementioned DI Stephanopoulos, Peter's temporary partner Dom in book 5 and his boyfriend/fiance, one of the jazzmen in Peter's father's new band, the bereaved husband of an apparent suicide victim). In general, there is no default whiteness (or straightness, though, being straight himself, presumably, Peter is less aware of those nuances) in this series, as the London "extras" tend to be just as diverse as one would expect in a city like that. And this is handled deftly and in-character-ly: Peter is a cop, he's been trained to notice (and guess at) things like race, for easier identification later, as well as someone who is innately aware of race because of his own background. It feels very natural, both to the setting and the narrator, with none of the "points for effort" diversity bingo stuff that even books I like that are clearly trying to do a good job of this tend to fall into. And it never feels stereotypical (or not for long; Stephanopoulos may start out as a "scary dyke" stereotype, maybe, because all Peter knows about her at the time are the Met gossip and jokes, but as soon as Peter gets to know her, it's clear she's a full-fledged, interesting character, and one I came to like very much), or forced, or the only thing defining these characters. Moreover, the diversity doesn't end there. There is also a sense of diversity of religion (e.g. Guleed as a practicing Muslim, Dr Walid as another, who converted, a background character who gave up her association with the Catholic church when her son came out to her as gay, etc.), and I appreciate Peter's background as a second-gen child with an immigrant parent (and the way his relationship with his mother, the immigrant, and that side of the family works). And, of course, Peter is very aware of class differences throughout, and in book 5 urban vs rural differences, and the interplay between all of these things. I found it all very nicely layered, but without getting in the way of the fun of the story.
6. Secondary characters that are awesome! I, along with pretty much everybody else, first and foremost fell for Gentleman Scholar extraordinnaire, Thomas Nightingale, who took out two Tiger tanks with fireballs in WWII (a fact that Peter, in permanent fanboy mode, just can't get over) and goes spelunking in sewers in an immaculate white Burberry coat. Lesley May, about whom more below, but here let's just say that I really like it that she is an excellent cop, a better cop than Peter, which everybody starting with Peter acknowledges. As mentioned above, I love geeky British Transit Police cop Jaget Kumar, who found engineering not exciting enough and does spelunking for fun, and DC Miriam Stephanopoulos, who is sort of the representative of the mundane cops in the series at this point, and Dr Waleed, who gets really excited about showing MRI scans of brains destroyed by magic and unusual creatures (as well as being a gastroenterologist in his day job), and Abigail Kumara, who will probably take over the world at some point now that Peter blabbed to her about magic, and Varvara Sidorovna Tamonina, who ended up becoming one of my favorite characters, enormously to my surprise, because I think this is the first Russian character written by a Western author that I actually like unreservedly. Also, the secondary characters are allowed to have their own opinions, opposite to Peter's in some cases, which are nevertheless not dismissed by either Peter or the books. And Aaronovitch is pretty good at drawing memorable extras, too, which is important in a mystery serial, where you meet a lot of witnesses and victims' families and so on.
7. Because the preceding paragraph is already long enough, I'm going to make the relationships between Peter and the other characters its own bullet. Peter and Nightingale's is, of course, at the heart of the series -- and I love the way their mentor/student relationship and growing friendship are drawn. (If one is not averse to mentor/student and age difference shipping, there's also a lot of room for that. I normally *am* averse to mentor/student relationships, but not in this case, because despite the age and power differential, I do buy Peter and Nightingale as sufficiently equal where it matters to have a non-squicky relationship. They are partners, and Peter has plenty to teach Nightingale, too, as he's learning magic from him.) I also really like the relationship between Peter and Lesley, which feels absolutely real to me as an established friendship, devoid of Nice Guy-ness even though Peter has a crush on her. I've liked the way their relationship adjusted throughout the five books, through everything that has happened. And then there's Peter's relationship with his parents -- and, for starters, the fact that a fantasy hero actually HAS parents who are alive, and whom he drops in on for dinner. It's a pretty fraught relationship, nicely complex for very valid reasons, too. Also, it's just really refreshing to see a protagonist with both a found family and a blood family that he's close to, though neither set of relationships is without complications.
8. The way the book deals with disability/life-altering injury. It's hard to talk about this without spoilers, but let's just say that I was impressed that the injured character was neither permanently sidelined nor magically healed, that their interaction with the world was definitely changed, both in terms of what they could do and other people's perceptions and their own reactions and worldview. It was respectfully done, painful and life-changing but not the end of everything. And just the way all characters, in general, from important secondaries to random extras, do not just shrug off either physical or psychological trauma,
9. The magic. I really like magic-as-science, and this series is a very good example of it. Newtonian magic feels like it makes sense, but I also like the way that most practitioners don't seem to care much HOW it makes sense, just nerds like Peter. I love his empirical approach to magic, and the way Dr Waleed cheers him on in that. And although we haven't seen much of it yet, just hints, I do like the intimation that there are other types of magic out there, different from the Newtonian magic of Latin and gestures, different schools of thought. Also Newton as the founder of British magic is just kind of delightful to me, and makes a lot of sense. I also like the way the institutions of magic are different, from what we've seen -- magic in Germany and the USSR. That's also something I hope we see more of later in the series.
10. The humour. The books are really funny, at least to me. A lot of this is courtesy of Peter's narration, the geeky references that I get a kick out of, the banter between clever characters or ranting by people like Seawoll, or nightingale's dry humour. Some of it is just people being people, with all their contradictions and foibles, which tends to be pretty funny on its own, observed and pointed out by Peter. There are invariably quotes that make me laugh and situations that make me smile.
I mean, the books are not perfect. I think Aaronovitch might be getting better at plots, or possibly my expectations have adjusted, but his pacing is still weird. And the anthropomorphic personifications generally don't work for me, where they do in other books. But I get so much enjoyment from the series for the reasons above, that none of that really matters. And that's why everybody (for whom those arguments sound compelling, that is) should read these books :D