Reading roundup, vacation edition
44. Jordan L. Hawk, Maelstrom (Whyborne & Griffin #7) -- so, I'm all caught up. I'm a bit ambivalent about this one, though I enjoyed it on the whole. SPOILERS from here
On the one hand, it had a number of things I liked -- quite a lot of Niles, including, dare I hope, Whyborne maybe actually getting some traction on his daddy issues and the seeds of an actual reconciliation; Griffin giving Niles advice on handling Whyborne; Niles and Persephone meeting and him trying to build a relationship with her; Niles and Heliabel seeing each other again, however briefly, after her transformation -- basically, in case you can't tell, the thing I most want from these books is the Whybornes being a dysfunctional-but-trying-their-best human/ketoi blended family -- and, in non Niles-centric things, Christine and Iskander and their ketoi-decorated wedding, Miss Parkhurst transferring her doomed Whyborne crush to Persephone, and (because I do like the Whyborne vs industrial progress setups) Griffin's car and Whyborne's vendetta against it -- this stuff is even funnier now that we have Griffin's excited POV in direct counterpoint to Whyborne's stick-in-the-mud grumbling. I also liked the scene with Durfree and Farr, the bickering museum employees (whom Griffin suspects of being lovers) who get caught in mind-control crossfire, and Whyborne-in-bradley's-body dealing with his newfound physical strength (and having a much harder time dealing with killing something physically than he seems to do killing by magic, I noticed). So, this is a lot of things I liked.
On the other hand, it also had, quite prominently, the things that bug me about the execution of this series -- Stanford being apparently the only recurring antagonist Hawk can come up with, which got old several books ago; Whyborne setting up these persistent narratives in his head where people couldn't possibly actually love/respect/care for him and are in fact just betraying and manipulating him -- I'm glad we're done playing that out with Griffin, but it's gotten old with Niles too at this point -- the "my father is buying my friends so they would not complain when he replaces me" thing was so annoying; and especially the oart where several ostensibly intelligent characters, one of them a professional detective, confidently act on really stupid assumptions about who the bad guy is, ignoring the very obvious twist -- I'm talking about, of course, everyone immediately assuming that the culprit at the museum is the librarian, Mr Quinn, dismissing Osborne as a suspect entirely for no good reason. That was my biggest gripe about the book, probably, because it was so DUMB, and nobody even mentioned Osborne, or maybe keeping an eye on more than one person in the suspect pool. But I did like the revelation about Mr Quinn's family (the sister and nieces), because I've always liked the weirdo.
There's also the revelation about Widdershins, which even gets a POV of its own, and... eh. The Lovecraftian mythology is one of the least interesting parts of the series for me, second only to Whyborne angst, probably, in how little I care about it. Tying everything back to the mastrers is... OK, I guess, but I don't actually care about the apocalyptic conflict obviously being set up. I'm also not entirely sure I fully grasp what it means for Whyborne to BE Widdershins, but I also don't really care. But I did like the revelation that the Maelstrom is an actual conscious entity with sort of the same backstory as the umbra and the ketoi -- made for one purpose, as a tool, but having become self-actualized and opposing its old masters. And we got yet another instance of this thing Hawk really likes, where one part of a pair of lovers gets to see the other through the eyes of something vast and inhuman, and vice versa.
I'm not sure what sort of coherent impression this all adds up to... It is very mucha book in the series, which works for me in ways and for reasons the other books do, and annoys me in the same ways as the other books, too, with the balance being about average, but a fun read on the whole. There.
Quotes:
Iskander: "[The wedding at Whyborne House] was supposed to be normal, supposed to impress society and keep them from sneering at her for marrying a-a half-breed. Instead I'll be lucky if Crhistine doesn't walk down the aisle wearing a squid on her head!"
Christine: "Whyborne is going to walk me down the aisle in his proper body. It's going to be perfect, even if I have to kill every one of these bastards myself!"
45-46. Olga Gromyko, Kosmotehnoluhi (vol. 1 and 2) -- I'm so sad this is the end of the series, because I really love this bunch of idiots and their found family, and the last two installments, with the wonderful illustrations by nimue_18, have been even more fun for that. Well, actually, Oluhi 3 had felt a bit random and episodic, though still fun, but this one's back to having an actual arc that fits thematically into the series, and doing some interesting things with it -- I think it was a beter book than the predecessor. OK, it's not totally the end, there is also a collection of "extra" stuff coming out very soon, and I'm happy about that, of course, though some of it I read back when it was author fanfic (volha says, 50/50 old vs new stuff). But it's not quite the same as a full-fledged book. But, anyway, about the book I actually read: Spoilers from here!
I was a bit apprehensive about the addition of Lance to the cast and crew, but it actually worked really well, and I thought Gromyko handled it very neatly, showing that not every "faulty" cyborg was the same, which simultaneously makes Lance his own character, gives him his own compelling arc (instead of just rehashing Dan's from earlier), underlines how much of Dan's personality is genuinely personality rather just an artefact of being a cyborg with a mind of his own, and gives Dan an interesting arc as well, including letting him make some actual mistakes because he doesn't realize that Lance is NOT the same as him. It's actually some pretty deft character work, and I really liked it.
Lance himself, feral and lost, works well as both victim and liability. His fixation on cats (and the sad reason behind it), his love for cartoon bunnies, his indifference to junk food and the way he makes the choice to eat people food after all once he finds out why the DEX mix, which he would've previously called his favorite food, is as efficient and easy on digestion -- he is very coherent, in a way that's at once sad and gives hope for him "growing up" into a more self-sufficient person. Dan's role of reluctant and frequently frustrated big brother was great, and I liked that Pollina was making mistakes with Lance out of the best intentions but eventually found a way to care for him on his own terms. But, of course, my favorite Lance relationship was with Ted, not just because Ted is my favorite, but also because Ted's easy-going approach to almost everything worked so well with the feral cyborg/little kid in Lance.
I was worried for a bit that Lance becoming a pilot meant that Ted would leave the crew or that something would happen to him (I have Serenity trauma, OK), so was very happy when that didn't happen and the whole crew stayed together. And the whole crew did shine here and get some good character moments; even Mikhalych got to have some fun, with the camping and reliving his scoutmaster days. And Veniamin got to be a hero twice over, knocking out Lance when they first bag him and then bringing him back with CPR because he reacts out of instinct the way one would with a fellow human, when Lance's processor and all numbers and limits discount him for dead. Pollina and the fruit of her dreams was unexpected poignant, especially when she ended up feeding her piece to Lance so the dream would remain a dream. Ted and Dan are still my favorites, of course, and they had some fun and awesome moments together, the chief of which, of course, was the race, with the two of them working together and bickering lightly and doing so well (even if I'd been wishing for them to win, second place does make more sense), but also just the little moments between them, Dan asking Ted to buy him pastries and Ted buying him ice cream (and not even offering one to Lance, 'which made both cyborgs happy'), and Ted advising Dan on big brother duties.
About the only thing that didn't entirely work for me was the Stanislav side of this, with Rzhavy Volk and all that stuff from the past and how it turned out Volk was actually in charge of DEX-company all of a sudden. The resolution is also very deus ex machina; I mean, intentionally so, with the 'albatross' coming to their sudden rescue -- although the explanation for this, tying it back to their Shoarr reflector canons, was pretty hilarious.
Actually, there was another thing I didn't like, and that was the resolution with Kira; not that I mind Ted/Kira -- I actually thought it was pretty cute -- but I'd been hoping for the fling between them to be initiated in some less silly way. But I did like the rest of Kira's crew/entourage, especially the doctor grandma who remembers Veniamin as a young man. And speaking of new characters introduced in this book, I also liked Strelok, and was very sad that his Belochka had been killed. You can't expect everyone to be rescued, even in a light-hearted comedic space opera, but I'd been hoping she would be, and the last glimpse of Strelok, with the illusion of her in smoke around him, was probably the most poignant moment in the book for me.
The resolution with the DEX-company scandal being blown open and sentient cyborgs coming forward was probably the best conclusion to the thematic arc that could believably be wrapped up in a single book, and the trick with taking advantage of the "highest reward" of the freaky aliens and having Dan and Lance be essentially untouchable because they are now officially members of that race was also a nice touch. I was also amused to see that Irel, the investigator from the previous book, with the cyborg-like demeanor, turned out to be a cyborg after all -- a 'sorvannyj' Bond model. And the glimpse back at Alik and Vadim going mad with him, but in a caring fashion, was nice, too, including the moment of bonding between Alik and Dan.
47. Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor and Park -- I liked it. But as I was reading, I was mentally comparing it and my enjoyment of it to Fangirl (the other Rainbow Rowell book I've read); I think this may be the better book, but I enjoyed Fangirl more, because it was more funny and less depressing (and L was of the same mind, as far as enjoyment).
I'd been aware of Eleanor and Park for a while -- actually well before I heard about Fangirl, IIRC, but I wasn't sure if it would work for me, because I'd heard the teens bonded through comic books and music, and these are two things I really don't care about. As it turned out, this is true, but the comic books involved are ones I was at least somewhat familiar with (X-Men, Watchmen, Batman -- through cartoons if nothing else, in the case of the last one). The music I truly did not care about, but the book still worked for me in spite of that. Spoilers from here!
Also, Eleanor and Park is actually less grim than I'd been expecting. I think intentionally, the beginning sets one up to suspect that it will end with Eleanor's death, and her POV builds on that, so that at a certain point L actually stopped reading because she was finding racing towards that (presumed) conclusion distressing. But I read ahead and reported back that it was actually not as tragic as she was expecting, and she promptly finished the book herself after that. Even when it starts looking like Eleanor will escape her scary abusive stepfather, I was still not sure the happy(ish) ending would not be simply that Park helped her escape from the terrible situation and they had the not-one-full-year of loving each other, and then go their separate ways to different relationships, as Eleanor heals and Park moves on -- Eleanor's dismissal of Romeo and Juliet (which I agree with, btw, from a romance perspective) made that very plausible. Even the actual happy(ish) ending we get is merely a tentatively hopeful one -- Eleanor feeling ready to reach out at last, and Park still waiting for her, a second chance at a relationship, the first chance at a normal teenage relationship, really. Which worked for me with the tone of the book, no easy solutions.
The cover copy, or a review I found, talked about Eleanor and Park being two misfits finding friendship and love, and that feels a little too symmetric for me, because I didn't feel like Eleanor's and Park's situations were at all equivalent. I mean, they are not meant to be -- Park has his own problems of course, with his father, and with looking different, and with being the only (half)-Korean kid in his school, but this struck me as perfectly normal teenage kid stuff, while Eleanor's problems are definitely not that universal but much more serious than that. There is enough symmetry in the book, with Eleanor being unable to not hold her head high and Park constantly feeling like he has to hide, and learning from her how not to do that -- it's mutual growth, not a one-sided rescue, which I liked. But Park felt very much like the kids I went to school with, so I had a hard time seeing him as some kind of big-time misfit. (I also had trouble buying the guyliner thing, which had felt random and extraneous. I mean, it's a very physical symbol of him now being willing to stand out and do something that may get people to ridicule him, but I had a hard time seeing that he'd WANT to do that particular thing -- like, where had that come from? But maybe I just don't get the guyliner impulse... *shrug*)
I liked Eleanor, the mixture of pride and fear in her, her admission that she could not save her younger siblings and just had to focus on saving herself, the way she thinks about her relationships with her mother and her deadbeat father, pretty much everything about her, though it was hard to read. Fortunately, I have no first hand or even second-hand experience of the kind of terrible living situation Eleanor is in, with Richie the abusive, possibly murderous scum, or even the biological parents who abandon her in different ways, but to my eye everything about that situation was very well done. I found the view of the younger kids especially chilling, from aggressive, manipulative Maisie, to Ben acting younger than his age and scared of the dark, to Mouse wetting the bed, the dynamic between them and between each of them and Eleanor. It was heartbreaking, as were, for different reasons, the scenes between Eleanor and her beautiful, worn-down mother, the little gifts she brings, and the "rationality on the far side of madness" which is her justification of staying with Richie despite the abuse. It was very chilling, and I was glad to see, in Park's POV at the end, that Eleanor's mother looks to have left Richie and taken the kids after Eleanor's escape, thank god.
Park himself is considerably less compelling to me than Eleanor, but what I liked best about the book, probably, were Park's parents, who are both flawed and both very much full-fledged characters and people, even though the story is not about them and we only see them through the kids' eyes. I love that Park's mother and father are still totally in love after all these years and their romantic Korean War meeting, that they don't always agree on parenting but negotiate and try to make accommodations for each other's perspectives but sometimes exercise veto power. And I especially love that while we start out seeing Park's father as a bully and a rude jerk and his mother as shallow and prissy, they are revealed to be caring and deep (though still imperfect) people as the narrative goes on. The scene where Park's mother sees Eleanor with the rest of her family and realizes the mannish clothing is not just an affectation but poverty, and changes her attitude very sharply, was very poignant to me, and her trying to help Eleanor after that, even when it was mostly in ways that Eleanor did not want, was something I really liked about the book. And I also liked Park's father being simultaneously pissed about the guyliner and 100% serious about protecting Eleanor to the best of his abilities, because he knows Richie and it's the right thing to do. In short, Parks' parents were completely believable to me as parents -- who love Park deeply and want the best for him, even when they may be wrong about what the best thing for him really is, due to their own blindspots and prejudices.
I guess, as I read over that above, that the things that worked best for me about E&P were the same things that worked best for me about Fangirl -- the family relationships, the loving ones between flawed, even dysfunctional people and the ones so broken there may not be a way to salvage them. Rowell is good at both of these, I think, and the ones in E&P are more nuanced, which probably does make it the better book.
On a similar note, I was happy to see that Mean Girl Tina and her Crude Jock boyfriend were also shown to have some redeeming qualities (when they help out Eleanor when Richie is looking for her), without that making up for Tina's awful treatment of Eleanor at school or the crude and ignorant stuff Steve says. Tina's bullying is horrible, but as with Park's parents, it was good to see an acknowledged range between "regular" horrible and the Richie's behavior.
Definitely glad I read it, and it cements Rowell for me as an author to watch/try reading. It even reignited my interest in reading Carry On somewhat. Eventually. Maybe.
Currently reading: Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, which is totally different from anything I had expected, and such gorgeous prose, and N.K.Jemisin's The Fifth Season, which is every bit as dark as everyone has been saying, but also seems to be as GOOD as everyone has been saying (and I say this as someone for whom Jemisin's earlier books were pretty meh).
*
For my own (and anybody else who cares) records: Good news = Brust has finished the Paarfi book -- Magister Valley (??), ~160k. Bad news = he is finding the Vallista rewrite "daunting" (which is maybe fitting for a book like Vallista to require a significant rewrite, but :(
On the one hand, it had a number of things I liked -- quite a lot of Niles, including, dare I hope, Whyborne maybe actually getting some traction on his daddy issues and the seeds of an actual reconciliation; Griffin giving Niles advice on handling Whyborne; Niles and Persephone meeting and him trying to build a relationship with her; Niles and Heliabel seeing each other again, however briefly, after her transformation -- basically, in case you can't tell, the thing I most want from these books is the Whybornes being a dysfunctional-but-trying-their-best human/ketoi blended family -- and, in non Niles-centric things, Christine and Iskander and their ketoi-decorated wedding, Miss Parkhurst transferring her doomed Whyborne crush to Persephone, and (because I do like the Whyborne vs industrial progress setups) Griffin's car and Whyborne's vendetta against it -- this stuff is even funnier now that we have Griffin's excited POV in direct counterpoint to Whyborne's stick-in-the-mud grumbling. I also liked the scene with Durfree and Farr, the bickering museum employees (whom Griffin suspects of being lovers) who get caught in mind-control crossfire, and Whyborne-in-bradley's-body dealing with his newfound physical strength (and having a much harder time dealing with killing something physically than he seems to do killing by magic, I noticed). So, this is a lot of things I liked.
On the other hand, it also had, quite prominently, the things that bug me about the execution of this series -- Stanford being apparently the only recurring antagonist Hawk can come up with, which got old several books ago; Whyborne setting up these persistent narratives in his head where people couldn't possibly actually love/respect/care for him and are in fact just betraying and manipulating him -- I'm glad we're done playing that out with Griffin, but it's gotten old with Niles too at this point -- the "my father is buying my friends so they would not complain when he replaces me" thing was so annoying; and especially the oart where several ostensibly intelligent characters, one of them a professional detective, confidently act on really stupid assumptions about who the bad guy is, ignoring the very obvious twist -- I'm talking about, of course, everyone immediately assuming that the culprit at the museum is the librarian, Mr Quinn, dismissing Osborne as a suspect entirely for no good reason. That was my biggest gripe about the book, probably, because it was so DUMB, and nobody even mentioned Osborne, or maybe keeping an eye on more than one person in the suspect pool. But I did like the revelation about Mr Quinn's family (the sister and nieces), because I've always liked the weirdo.
There's also the revelation about Widdershins, which even gets a POV of its own, and... eh. The Lovecraftian mythology is one of the least interesting parts of the series for me, second only to Whyborne angst, probably, in how little I care about it. Tying everything back to the mastrers is... OK, I guess, but I don't actually care about the apocalyptic conflict obviously being set up. I'm also not entirely sure I fully grasp what it means for Whyborne to BE Widdershins, but I also don't really care. But I did like the revelation that the Maelstrom is an actual conscious entity with sort of the same backstory as the umbra and the ketoi -- made for one purpose, as a tool, but having become self-actualized and opposing its old masters. And we got yet another instance of this thing Hawk really likes, where one part of a pair of lovers gets to see the other through the eyes of something vast and inhuman, and vice versa.
I'm not sure what sort of coherent impression this all adds up to... It is very mucha book in the series, which works for me in ways and for reasons the other books do, and annoys me in the same ways as the other books, too, with the balance being about average, but a fun read on the whole. There.
Quotes:
Iskander: "[The wedding at Whyborne House] was supposed to be normal, supposed to impress society and keep them from sneering at her for marrying a-a half-breed. Instead I'll be lucky if Crhistine doesn't walk down the aisle wearing a squid on her head!"
Christine: "Whyborne is going to walk me down the aisle in his proper body. It's going to be perfect, even if I have to kill every one of these bastards myself!"
45-46. Olga Gromyko, Kosmotehnoluhi (vol. 1 and 2) -- I'm so sad this is the end of the series, because I really love this bunch of idiots and their found family, and the last two installments, with the wonderful illustrations by nimue_18, have been even more fun for that. Well, actually, Oluhi 3 had felt a bit random and episodic, though still fun, but this one's back to having an actual arc that fits thematically into the series, and doing some interesting things with it -- I think it was a beter book than the predecessor. OK, it's not totally the end, there is also a collection of "extra" stuff coming out very soon, and I'm happy about that, of course, though some of it I read back when it was author fanfic (volha says, 50/50 old vs new stuff). But it's not quite the same as a full-fledged book. But, anyway, about the book I actually read: Spoilers from here!
I was a bit apprehensive about the addition of Lance to the cast and crew, but it actually worked really well, and I thought Gromyko handled it very neatly, showing that not every "faulty" cyborg was the same, which simultaneously makes Lance his own character, gives him his own compelling arc (instead of just rehashing Dan's from earlier), underlines how much of Dan's personality is genuinely personality rather just an artefact of being a cyborg with a mind of his own, and gives Dan an interesting arc as well, including letting him make some actual mistakes because he doesn't realize that Lance is NOT the same as him. It's actually some pretty deft character work, and I really liked it.
Lance himself, feral and lost, works well as both victim and liability. His fixation on cats (and the sad reason behind it), his love for cartoon bunnies, his indifference to junk food and the way he makes the choice to eat people food after all once he finds out why the DEX mix, which he would've previously called his favorite food, is as efficient and easy on digestion -- he is very coherent, in a way that's at once sad and gives hope for him "growing up" into a more self-sufficient person. Dan's role of reluctant and frequently frustrated big brother was great, and I liked that Pollina was making mistakes with Lance out of the best intentions but eventually found a way to care for him on his own terms. But, of course, my favorite Lance relationship was with Ted, not just because Ted is my favorite, but also because Ted's easy-going approach to almost everything worked so well with the feral cyborg/little kid in Lance.
I was worried for a bit that Lance becoming a pilot meant that Ted would leave the crew or that something would happen to him (I have Serenity trauma, OK), so was very happy when that didn't happen and the whole crew stayed together. And the whole crew did shine here and get some good character moments; even Mikhalych got to have some fun, with the camping and reliving his scoutmaster days. And Veniamin got to be a hero twice over, knocking out Lance when they first bag him and then bringing him back with CPR because he reacts out of instinct the way one would with a fellow human, when Lance's processor and all numbers and limits discount him for dead. Pollina and the fruit of her dreams was unexpected poignant, especially when she ended up feeding her piece to Lance so the dream would remain a dream. Ted and Dan are still my favorites, of course, and they had some fun and awesome moments together, the chief of which, of course, was the race, with the two of them working together and bickering lightly and doing so well (even if I'd been wishing for them to win, second place does make more sense), but also just the little moments between them, Dan asking Ted to buy him pastries and Ted buying him ice cream (and not even offering one to Lance, 'which made both cyborgs happy'), and Ted advising Dan on big brother duties.
About the only thing that didn't entirely work for me was the Stanislav side of this, with Rzhavy Volk and all that stuff from the past and how it turned out Volk was actually in charge of DEX-company all of a sudden. The resolution is also very deus ex machina; I mean, intentionally so, with the 'albatross' coming to their sudden rescue -- although the explanation for this, tying it back to their Shoarr reflector canons, was pretty hilarious.
Actually, there was another thing I didn't like, and that was the resolution with Kira; not that I mind Ted/Kira -- I actually thought it was pretty cute -- but I'd been hoping for the fling between them to be initiated in some less silly way. But I did like the rest of Kira's crew/entourage, especially the doctor grandma who remembers Veniamin as a young man. And speaking of new characters introduced in this book, I also liked Strelok, and was very sad that his Belochka had been killed. You can't expect everyone to be rescued, even in a light-hearted comedic space opera, but I'd been hoping she would be, and the last glimpse of Strelok, with the illusion of her in smoke around him, was probably the most poignant moment in the book for me.
The resolution with the DEX-company scandal being blown open and sentient cyborgs coming forward was probably the best conclusion to the thematic arc that could believably be wrapped up in a single book, and the trick with taking advantage of the "highest reward" of the freaky aliens and having Dan and Lance be essentially untouchable because they are now officially members of that race was also a nice touch. I was also amused to see that Irel, the investigator from the previous book, with the cyborg-like demeanor, turned out to be a cyborg after all -- a 'sorvannyj' Bond model. And the glimpse back at Alik and Vadim going mad with him, but in a caring fashion, was nice, too, including the moment of bonding between Alik and Dan.
47. Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor and Park -- I liked it. But as I was reading, I was mentally comparing it and my enjoyment of it to Fangirl (the other Rainbow Rowell book I've read); I think this may be the better book, but I enjoyed Fangirl more, because it was more funny and less depressing (and L was of the same mind, as far as enjoyment).
I'd been aware of Eleanor and Park for a while -- actually well before I heard about Fangirl, IIRC, but I wasn't sure if it would work for me, because I'd heard the teens bonded through comic books and music, and these are two things I really don't care about. As it turned out, this is true, but the comic books involved are ones I was at least somewhat familiar with (X-Men, Watchmen, Batman -- through cartoons if nothing else, in the case of the last one). The music I truly did not care about, but the book still worked for me in spite of that. Spoilers from here!
Also, Eleanor and Park is actually less grim than I'd been expecting. I think intentionally, the beginning sets one up to suspect that it will end with Eleanor's death, and her POV builds on that, so that at a certain point L actually stopped reading because she was finding racing towards that (presumed) conclusion distressing. But I read ahead and reported back that it was actually not as tragic as she was expecting, and she promptly finished the book herself after that. Even when it starts looking like Eleanor will escape her scary abusive stepfather, I was still not sure the happy(ish) ending would not be simply that Park helped her escape from the terrible situation and they had the not-one-full-year of loving each other, and then go their separate ways to different relationships, as Eleanor heals and Park moves on -- Eleanor's dismissal of Romeo and Juliet (which I agree with, btw, from a romance perspective) made that very plausible. Even the actual happy(ish) ending we get is merely a tentatively hopeful one -- Eleanor feeling ready to reach out at last, and Park still waiting for her, a second chance at a relationship, the first chance at a normal teenage relationship, really. Which worked for me with the tone of the book, no easy solutions.
The cover copy, or a review I found, talked about Eleanor and Park being two misfits finding friendship and love, and that feels a little too symmetric for me, because I didn't feel like Eleanor's and Park's situations were at all equivalent. I mean, they are not meant to be -- Park has his own problems of course, with his father, and with looking different, and with being the only (half)-Korean kid in his school, but this struck me as perfectly normal teenage kid stuff, while Eleanor's problems are definitely not that universal but much more serious than that. There is enough symmetry in the book, with Eleanor being unable to not hold her head high and Park constantly feeling like he has to hide, and learning from her how not to do that -- it's mutual growth, not a one-sided rescue, which I liked. But Park felt very much like the kids I went to school with, so I had a hard time seeing him as some kind of big-time misfit. (I also had trouble buying the guyliner thing, which had felt random and extraneous. I mean, it's a very physical symbol of him now being willing to stand out and do something that may get people to ridicule him, but I had a hard time seeing that he'd WANT to do that particular thing -- like, where had that come from? But maybe I just don't get the guyliner impulse... *shrug*)
I liked Eleanor, the mixture of pride and fear in her, her admission that she could not save her younger siblings and just had to focus on saving herself, the way she thinks about her relationships with her mother and her deadbeat father, pretty much everything about her, though it was hard to read. Fortunately, I have no first hand or even second-hand experience of the kind of terrible living situation Eleanor is in, with Richie the abusive, possibly murderous scum, or even the biological parents who abandon her in different ways, but to my eye everything about that situation was very well done. I found the view of the younger kids especially chilling, from aggressive, manipulative Maisie, to Ben acting younger than his age and scared of the dark, to Mouse wetting the bed, the dynamic between them and between each of them and Eleanor. It was heartbreaking, as were, for different reasons, the scenes between Eleanor and her beautiful, worn-down mother, the little gifts she brings, and the "rationality on the far side of madness" which is her justification of staying with Richie despite the abuse. It was very chilling, and I was glad to see, in Park's POV at the end, that Eleanor's mother looks to have left Richie and taken the kids after Eleanor's escape, thank god.
Park himself is considerably less compelling to me than Eleanor, but what I liked best about the book, probably, were Park's parents, who are both flawed and both very much full-fledged characters and people, even though the story is not about them and we only see them through the kids' eyes. I love that Park's mother and father are still totally in love after all these years and their romantic Korean War meeting, that they don't always agree on parenting but negotiate and try to make accommodations for each other's perspectives but sometimes exercise veto power. And I especially love that while we start out seeing Park's father as a bully and a rude jerk and his mother as shallow and prissy, they are revealed to be caring and deep (though still imperfect) people as the narrative goes on. The scene where Park's mother sees Eleanor with the rest of her family and realizes the mannish clothing is not just an affectation but poverty, and changes her attitude very sharply, was very poignant to me, and her trying to help Eleanor after that, even when it was mostly in ways that Eleanor did not want, was something I really liked about the book. And I also liked Park's father being simultaneously pissed about the guyliner and 100% serious about protecting Eleanor to the best of his abilities, because he knows Richie and it's the right thing to do. In short, Parks' parents were completely believable to me as parents -- who love Park deeply and want the best for him, even when they may be wrong about what the best thing for him really is, due to their own blindspots and prejudices.
I guess, as I read over that above, that the things that worked best for me about E&P were the same things that worked best for me about Fangirl -- the family relationships, the loving ones between flawed, even dysfunctional people and the ones so broken there may not be a way to salvage them. Rowell is good at both of these, I think, and the ones in E&P are more nuanced, which probably does make it the better book.
On a similar note, I was happy to see that Mean Girl Tina and her Crude Jock boyfriend were also shown to have some redeeming qualities (when they help out Eleanor when Richie is looking for her), without that making up for Tina's awful treatment of Eleanor at school or the crude and ignorant stuff Steve says. Tina's bullying is horrible, but as with Park's parents, it was good to see an acknowledged range between "regular" horrible and the Richie's behavior.
Definitely glad I read it, and it cements Rowell for me as an author to watch/try reading. It even reignited my interest in reading Carry On somewhat. Eventually. Maybe.
Currently reading: Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter, which is totally different from anything I had expected, and such gorgeous prose, and N.K.Jemisin's The Fifth Season, which is every bit as dark as everyone has been saying, but also seems to be as GOOD as everyone has been saying (and I say this as someone for whom Jemisin's earlier books were pretty meh).
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For my own (and anybody else who cares) records: Good news = Brust has finished the Paarfi book -- Magister Valley (??), ~160k. Bad news = he is finding the Vallista rewrite "daunting" (which is maybe fitting for a book like Vallista to require a significant rewrite, but :(