Reading roundup: Night Witch, Wayfarers + December ramble meme (BtVS)
Another clearing of the decks, fannishly, before I dive into Yuletide reading -- the two books I've finished recently (though there should be at least one and maybe two more for the year, since I'm in the middle of several).
75. Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet -- I'd seen this book pop up on my flist several times, so when it was a Kindle Deal for like $2 (which, thanks to just_ann_now for that tip), I decided to go for it. Too bad I already did that 30 day book meme, because this would've been a good answer for "book you formed an impression of without reading that turned out to be false". Based on... something -- the zany-sounding title? the cover art? -- I ended up with an initial impression of this being something like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- sci-fi/space opera, but in a comedy/parody sense. It's definitely not that; the book is light-hearted, for the most part, but has a very different humour -- and is very deliberately and explicitly Clair. My second impression, partly from vague recollections of aletheiafelinea's write-up awhile back, partly from the first couple of chapters, was of Firefly as written by Tumblr. (I guess it's my year for reading Firefly-as-written-by-the-internet books, since the MCA Hogarth Earthrise books made me think of Firefly-with-furries. But that is neither here nor there.) That one's more accurate, although it misses the things I liked best about the book -- the aliens, and the tiny everyday culture clashes they were all working through with each other (in slightly Tumblr-esque fashion, but still). Spoilers!
What made this book feel Tumblr-y to me were a couple of different things that added up to a general feel: the diversity of the cast (which is great, and even interesting in places, but felt very deliberate in that "bisexual mermaids are valid" Tumblr way. There was even what looked like the token white male ~antagonist early on; fortunately it ended up a bit more complicated than that, but still left a residue of that feeling), the talky setpieces which felt a lot like Tumblr discourse; the little moments which felt a lot like Tumblr not!fic about humans and aliens eating ice cream (there is, in fact, a scene about humans and aliens talking about eating ice cream... though of course it's possible that Tumblr got that idea from the book). But especially there was a certain... unobjectiveness to all of the "good" characters that made me think of Tumblr standards -- the "good" characters are never actually WRONG; they're almost never even petty, or short-tempered after a bad day. The closest to a conflict of this sort between good characters is the one scene where Kizzy wants to expense the fancy soap she's buying for herself, and Rosemary tells her no, and Sissix steps in to put this in context, and the whole thing is resolved in half a page. There are a couple of times a good character is mistaken, like when Rosemary thinks that the crew would hate her if they knew the truth, and there are times when good characters disagree on the correct course of action -- like when Sissix argues that Ohan should be cured and Ashby that their wishes should be respected, but they are very civil about their disagreement (and it's the designated not-entirely-good character who does the questionable thing -- more on Corbin below). It is both refreshing and a little improbable that nobody tries to lie / conceal anything from each other. Problematic actions are immediately called out, and even problematic thoughts are highlighted as problematic, like when Rosemary chides herself for applying human bias to Sissix when they first meet -- that was really the Tumblriest thing of all. And also the way Rosemary is aware of -- and ashamed of -- her privileged ancestry (the actual word is used).
Now, compare that to actual Firefly, which includes people like Jayne, and Mal can be a jerk, too (well, he's alright :P), and River is a loose canon, and Simon can be pompous and also petty, and Wash can be totally unreasonably jealous of Mal. Heck, compare it to the Earthrise books, where Reese is abrupt and grumpy, at least at the start (Ashby is only ever a model gentleman, and a model captain), or Kosmo~oluhi (which is another Firefly-y crew-of-misfits book), where even the "grown-ups" have their prejudices and foibles. The result is that nobody in this book except Corbin (more on whom later, as I said) and maaaybe Ohan (although with a complete lack of agency) gets an actual character arc. Things *happen* to them (although mostly it's talking rather than action things), but they are not really growing through them... I mean, Kizzy learns to deal with fear -- that might be an actual arc, I guess, but it's pretty slight, as arcs go. Ashby just... goes from trusting in his government to protect him to very civily pointing out to them that they failed to do so, because Rosemary points out to him that it's his responsibility as the captain. Jenks has to come to terms with his fear of losing Lovey and then face the reality; this is emotionally affecting, but I didn't get any sense of him actually being changed by any of this. Rosemary... gets the least satisfying to me arc of all, which is "reasonable, competent, well-adjusted stranger gets integrated seamlessly into a well-functioning crew" -- that's not even an ark, that's, like, a very short straight line. Like, these are the arks of a half-hour sitcom (with commercials), not a full-blown NOVEL. Now, this is an aggressively Clair book, like I said, but Goblin Emperor managed a very solid arc with Maia (by putting him in circumstances he was totally unprepared for and having external tension), and even the fluffy, cookie-baking Dreamhealers books had more of an arc than this, by virtue of having the characters actually realize and/or change something about themselves in between going to classical music concerts and ice cream parlours. At least there was some INNER conflict! Here there is no conflict almost at all, because everyone is too damn reasonable.
Except Corbin, who was therefore the most interesting person on the crew to me. Interesting, but I find his arc rather uncomfortable, to be honest, because it seems to want to be several things that undermine each other. At first, I thought Corbin would end up being the designated token white male jerk (the book goes to rather a lot of trouble to make him very white, actually), which I was frowning at because it seemed pretty clear that Corbin was not MERELY a jerk, but had some sort of Asperger's or other non-NT thing going on, too. And it was rather weird that nobody seemed aware / to care about it, especially when we got that scene with Sissix and the Aandrisk woman who was a pariah for being anti-social. Of course, Asperger's or whatever is not an excuse for being a jerk to a coworker (which he undeniably is) or using speciest slurs, but for all the careful awareness of things like different personal space issues with aliens, pronoun usage, "may I try to pronounce your name", etc., it seemed weird to have no acknowledgement of that at all. Then I thought maybe that was what we were leading up to, a realization by the crew that, while being very mindful of the aliens in their midst, they also needed to think of other humans' with the same sort of allowance for variation, which I figured would be saccharine (aww, let's hug him again) but better than my first set of expectations. Instead, Corbin gets a POV an a backstory that quite well explains the way he is, as a combination of nature (his clone-father is bad at people, too) and nurture (the replacement goldfish/raising yourself upbringing by someone who is bad at people), and I like that back story. What I don't like is the way he is very clearly -- and, for the level of fluff in the rest of the narrative, rather brutally -- punished for his misanthrope ways at the start -- severe injury, being paraded about naked, weeping in front of Sissix and being linked to her by her charity (which, again, I felt like required a lot of convoluted conditions so that it had to be specifically Sissix who sponsored him, to, you know, twist the knife). He does become closer to the crew later, which was nice, but even that had an air of him slinking around like a beaten dog. And, I kept expecting him to have a dramatic moment where he helps save the ship, the way Kizzy does with disarming the mines, the way Sissix and Ohan do, getting the ship out of hyperspace, the way Rosemary does with the pirate attack -- but no. The one independent, non-background action he takes is to inject Ohan with the virus antidote -- which totally came out of left field for me, and I feel was only assigned to Corbin because that way Ohan could live while everybody else got to keep their gold stars for respecting their autonomy. Yeah :/
Which is not to say that I didn't *like* the other characters! I liked Kizzy a lot, which surprised me a bit, because it would be so easy for her to be totally twee or over-the-top. As it is, she is, like, Kaylee on speed, but somehow it works out to be charming and engaging and not grating, even when she's behaving lik a sugar-high five-year-old. I liked Jenks, too (and his interesting backstory), and especially his fraternal relationship with Kizzy. And Sissix was great, and I liked the fraternal interplay between her and Ashby (who was otherwise boring to me), too. And Dr Chef was lovely, also. Lovey never really felt like a person to me until the last, very tragic, scene, where she repeats "I don't want to be like this" (and Lovelace getting the body kit afterwards felt very random, too -- though I guess it's the hook for the sequel). So, I liked most of the people on the crew, I just wish they'd gotten something more to do than just be polite and reasonable at each other for 400 pages...
I will say, the romantic relationships in general didn't feel compelling to me at all -- Rosemary crushing on Sissix and giving her what the rest of her feather-family cannot was sweet, but I felt zero chemistry there. I am kind of impressed by the choice to not give Lovey a body or even an avatar, nothing except her voice and words, but it did make it much harder to see Jenks and Lovey's relationship as, well, a relationship -- I mean, this was really INTERESTING, but it made it hard to empathize. And Ashby and Pei was just really boring. Also, the lack of human/human foreground relationships was an interesting choice (they do exist in the background, of course, and even the background ones have some diversity, like with Kizzy's two dads). But certainly nicely diverse, like everything else.
This is a very, VERY talky book. Which is not much of a problem for me, as I like talking in books -- more than action, even. But there is one serious action scene -- the climax where they have to pilot the injured ship out of hyperspace, which comes at, like, the 85% mark. There are two other scenes, by my count, that have SOME action -- the attack by the pirates (which is resolved by talking, but one of the pirates does punch Ashby, and there are guns, and the scene where Kizzy dismantles the mine(s) (and there's also the scene with Corbin in prison, but that's not "action", that's a character being punished by the narrative for being insufficiently enlightened). Everything else is people talking. About their past, about their plans for the future, about their different cultures, about whether or not Lovey getting a body is a good idea, or how to deal with fear, or the way Rosemary feels about her father's actions and whether or not they reflect on her, about the responsibilities of a government to its citizens and for its allies, about Human pacifism and whether it was right or wrong. The alien ~antagonists, which show up at the very end, get some talking in, too. Some of the conversations are really interesting; others are just info dumps or, hmmm, psychology dumps, I guess. But so much talking!
But let's get to the thing about this book I really liked: nicely alien aliens with well-realized cultures and small but omnipresent culture clashes. This part is really well done, although the diversity and careful detail that *is* present made me wonder about things I'd unthinkingly give a pass to in a book that spent less time on the differences between humans and aliens and different alien species. Like, why do all the alien species we see (in detail, anyway) have two sexes? Sure, there is some variety there anyway, like the sex-changing Grum (and the interesting dynamic that sets up, where young individuals are female, and thus warriors are mostly female), and the Toremi have the capacity for parthenogenesis, but they are still male or female at any given time. Even the AIs get genders, apparently. And on a much more minor note, what are the odds that something that's an intoxicant for reptilian Aandrisk (grass wine) would work the same on mammalian humans? But for the most part this worked for me -- all the little references throughout to different things, small and big, having different connotations for different species. For example:
The Aandrisk belief that hatchlings aren't really people, yet, which comes from them being egg clutch-laying, and everything that comes from that -- different attitudes about one's biological children, family structure, even the fact that they do not forbid cloning because they've never seen the point in attempting it -- if biology doesn't matter and it's all nurture, then there's no point to cloning at all. All the stuff with Sianat and the Whisperer virus felt more forced, and the single/plural thing seemed to be there more for making a point about correct gendering, but it was still pretty interesting, along with the ethical dilemmas it raised about forced cure and whether or not someone whose brain is hijacked by a virus can give informed consent and the implications of that, as well as the implications of treatment going against cultural norms, which made me think of B5's "Believers". Small things, too -- Sissix objecting to lemon-scented scrub because it smells like something with which the Aandrisk annoint their dead (although I find it hard to believe that she wouldn't have brought it up to Ashby earlier, though I guess it could be the sort of thing one only remembers when one steps into the bathroom, and by the time you walk out, you've already forgotten about it), or the Grum not having tea/soup-type nourishment because they see hot water as something to sleep in. Oh, and the "everybody does it" things that turn out to be Human specific, like trying to now show fear (although this felt a bit Tumblr not!fic to me; I feel like not showing fear would be more common than that because it seems like a useful fight-or-flight adaptation, but maybe the other races have outgrown it).
Physical differences between the species, too -- I was pleasantly surprised that only a few of the aliens were humanoid, and even those had marked physiological differences from human -- the lizard-people not having visible primary or secondary sex characteristics, the Aeulon not just being space Elves being voiceless, and the different way of communicating they've evolved, and the implications being carried forward to their machinery making no noises, either. Oh, and the way the physical differences are not just external trappings, either -- the fact that cold-blooded Sissix needs to heat her bed before she can type properly, and doesn't eat much -- which leads to her family way overcooking for the Humans' visit because they have no reference for how much Humans eat other than "a lot". And also the way Sissix has no intuitive understanding of how human age lines up with what a child that age can do and needs to have reminders/explanations about that, like with Ashby's nephew and Bear's sister. And that she needs a different vessel to drink from, because she doesn't have lips. The way different species have different gestures for things, some of which are explained explicitly (e.g. Sissix showing Rosemary how to signal assent -- a curved hand rather than a nod) and some of which are just shown (e.g. the Toremi smacking their mouth). And different reactions to alien gestures, too, like Sissix not realizing that someone's holding her hand too long because her "default" for touch is much more prolonged/intimate contact than for Humans. And of course Ashby accidentally making a rude gesture at the bandits by rubbing his eyes, as contrived as that was.
Which is a subset of communication issues between aliens in general, which I thought were handled very well. I really liked that not everybody was fluent in everything, including some not being fluent in Klip (~"Galactic"), people being able to understand but not really speak a language which they've heard a lot but not practiced (like Ashby with Reskitkish). (At first I did wonder why people speaking Hanto -- the language of commerce -- seemed so rare that Rosemary having that ability was a huge deal, but, fine, I guess there aren't too many people I know who learned Mandarin well enough to communicate in it without childhood immersion, which would obviously be harder with an alien species.) And the physical differences between the species meaning that it can be difficult/impossible to learn each other's language -- like picking up only broad meanings of Aeulon skin-color-changing speech (and Kizzy not realizing the Aeulons were communicating among themselves because they were silent), Rosemary not being able to come anywhere close to Dr Chef's name because he has multiple sets of vocal cords and throats (and him being able to speak Klip, but it taking particular effort to synchronize the multiple vocal cords -- I thought that was really clever!), or having to approximate Hanto chin-tentacle gestures with a hand held under one's chin. I thought both the aliens code-mixing from their native language and "improper" speech (e.g. the Sianat Exile trying to remember how to speak Klip after long disuse) were really believably done. Oh, and Kizzy "singing" the Hanto song by just matching the closest words to it in Klip: "Step on some sweet toast! Socks match my hat!" XP And here's another very minor thing I nevertheless really liked -- the names of the languages, which are in all cases (I think) distinct from the name of the alien species, and not even *related* to those species names. Because, I mean, the Humans don't speak Human, right? (I did wonder what those language names meant. Is it a particular language from among many that ended up being the dominant language of the planet, or at least the one used externally, the way English seems to be for Earth? The word for "language"/"speech" or something like "standart"/"common" in the language in question? I have a feeling the author actually knows.
Speaking of worldbuilding, the book doesn't spend all that much time on it, but I did find the history of Earth in this universe quite interesting. It starts out as the usual ravaged Earth, Mars as the first colony deal, but does pretty interesting things afterwards (or at least things I've not encountered much before). Rather than being a beleagured colony of plucky settlers who are viewed as second-class citizens by Earth (which I think is how I've always seen it portrayed in sci-fi), it is instead the refuge of the rich and privileged (probably through a process of gentrification, come to think of it XD) The Exodans partly remaining spacers, partly settling down as colonists made sense, although I'm not sure I totally buy the pacifism that seems so central to their culture. And the Gaiists of various degrees of fanaticism are also something I'm not used to seeing in sci-fi, and I thought were pretty neat (and were an interesting background for Jenks's backstory).
The neologisms annoyed me a little bit at first, just because there seemed to be more of them than there really needed to be -- "scrib" for what's basically a tablet, as far as I could tell; "smash" (drugs), "kick" (either booze generically or a particular kind of booze), "deepod", etc. But possibly it's just been a while since I embarked on a new-to-me space opera universe... But I did like other bits of worldbuilding, like the fact that Kizzy, as a tech, has a better grasp of Aeulon technical things than Aeulon soldiers/pilots, who just point to "that lump with the little knob on it", and shrugging the equivalent of 'you could google it, I guess' when Kizzy asks them about what something on their ship is made of.
So, what's the tally? Very interesting if slightly overly-earnest worldbuilding, mostly likeable characters with not nearly enough conflict, an absolute minimum of plot and character growth, and a narrative that felt... cheerfully judgy, I guess? Like those "friendly reminder" Tumblr posts, you know? I enjoyed reading it, and it's one of the more interesting books I've read this year, and it left me in the mood for more space opera/sci-fi, which is a good sign, but... I couldn't say that I actually *liked* the book, which is a slightly weird place to be. In that regard it feels similar to the way I felt about Watchmaker of Filigree Street (although that one has much stronger structure, I think) -- I enjoyed the ride, I have a lot to say about the journey, I am impressed by the conductor, but I am side-eyeing some of the turns and am unsure about the destination.
76. Ben Aaronovitch, Night Witch (RoL graphic novel collection #2) -- It finally dawned on me why I can't remember whether this title is "Night Witch" or "Night Witches" -- because it's BOTH XD The English and the Russian don't agree, and that's confusing me all to hell. Anyway, now that we're past that amazing insight --
It is so weird to read these RoL graphic novels, because unlike the other tie-in comics I've read, they are actually full of PLOT, and significant character interaction, and really feel like full-fledged canon -- but in a medium that is much harder for me personally to parse. Which makes it really frustrating! -- it's like trying to read a part of the canon in a language I'm not fluent in -- it's THERE, and I can technically consume it, but it takes so much more effort on my part than "regular" canon, and I still feel like I'm probably missing something. An odd feeling, like I said. But it's a series where I'm hungry for every little bit of canon, so of course I'm going to read it. Spoilers from here!
I actually had to read it twice to make sure I understood what was going on, and even then there were a couple of panels I paged back over to for the third time to make sure I had things straight -- that one person was the character I thought they were based on the way the plot unfolded, even though I totally had not recognized them, and to try to figure out the timing of the other two panels vs what was depicted there. I'm still not really sure, after all that. I assume the panel where the gun-wielding guy with the hostages reacts is actually a flashback to when the babushka general shows up, and the Nightingale-breaking-out panels that are intercut with that action are happening later, after he sees the "your turn" note? And what is going on with the timing of the Varvara flashback in the 70s? Is the young self we see part of her stoned vision? I'm assuming that's what's going on with the suddenly-weird artwork style, but it was very confusing. Going over the artwork twice did lead me to notice some things I'd previously missed -- like the faint blue text background that denoted "conversation in Russian", whether it was rendered in Russian or English, or Peter bringing Varvara in prison not just vodka but also smokes and tampons.
Speaking of the Russian -- Ben! Ben, hire me to proofread your Russian, please. I think he must've got an actual Russian to write the dialogue for him, or at any rate it was well done -- although the "we are very pleased that formal-you've decided to join us" bit on the first page read like a translation from English in a way the rest did not. And I really wonder where he dug up Maksim's gardening song, LOL! And the names are all done very well -- patronymics and nicknames and all the things non-Russians normally mess up, which also suggests that he used a Russian-picker for those (although there were two instances where name+patronymic were used where they felt weird -- Syoma and Mila shaking hands (even if it's done as an overcompensation sort of thing) and the drill sergeant addressing WWII!Varvara by patronymic (instead of a barked last name). So I think what must've happened was, he got the names and several variations of them, but didn't run the final product by a "Russian beta". Worse than that, the lettering is off in several spots -- the wrong M, the wrong T, and it took me a while to figure out what the medal was even saying (capital Y is not the letter you're looking for, for starters). Also, missing case ending on "200 metr(OV)". I mean, I didn't actually expect it to do the whole Cyrillic script, but if you're going to do it? do it properly!
On the other hand, the image on the medal, of izbushka on kurjih nozhkah? XD A+ choice. And I also liked the factoid that NKVD (although I don't think that's the right agency at all? beyond being a recognizable Soviet acronym...) would rile up the leshii and herd them out against German troops -- it seems very much like the sort of thing the Soviet army *would* do, if leshii existed, and spin it as the land itself rising up against the invaders. I'm a bit waffly on the level of klyukva in this outing (refreshingly absent in earlier Varvara appearances). Like the way vodka is mentioned half a dozen times; I can't even say any individual instance was out of character or whatever, but man, that's a lot of vodka. I did appreciate Varvara herself lampshading it ("I've been English three times longer than I was Russian, but all it takes is five minutes of conversation adn a medal, and I revert to stereotype"). I also really liked Mila's tirade about wanting to go back to Russia "because I find myself getting nostalgic about Pushkin. And I hate Aleksander fucking Pushkin." -- that was a great line. And I missed it on first read-through, but I also really liked, once I caught it, Mila approaching her daughter speaking Russian, with a very Russian endearment (I call O "myshonok", which means "little mouse", and it works especially well in this case, because I'm assuming she'd told her daughter to hide/be quiet like a little mouse, too), and she runs towards her yelling "Mummy!" very much like an English kid, and later on, the color of the bubbles shows that Mila is speaking Russian to the daughter but the little girl is speaking English to her. So, on balance, the language stuff was pretty well done, although it could've been impeccably done with one more pass by a Russian speaker, so the little leftover mistakes annoy me. (BTW, if anybody reading this wants translations of specific lines, I'm happy to oblige!)
I was very happy to get a Varvara-centric story after she's been MIA in the last two books -- getting more backstory and a glimpse of the young Varvara, and a look at her relationship with the Soviet/Russian government over time. Her comments on Russian politics/organy continued to strike me as very true to form (and that's a nice primer on post-coup Russia, actually). I liked seeing her interaction with Nightingale -- quid pro quo, which explains some things. And I guess she's a softer touch than I'd previously suspected, but then, who is not, for an old army comrade's family? And I guess random bystanders, too. But the important question is: So, who's going to write me post-WWII Anya/Varya fic, then? And speaking of old army comrades, and also of Russian names, babushka general's name is Veronika Aronovna Denisova, which raises so many questions on my mind. So, of course, no one who is not at least half Jewish would have a patronymic like that. I actually googled whether Denisov could be a Jewish name, and... maybe? At least I found several Denisovs who are Jewish, although they could be Jewish from the mother's side only, of course, which would not be the case here. Anyway, assuming that's all intentional, I kind of want to hear her story, too. It's bound to be interesting, to say the least...
The other very plot-interesting part of all this was Lesley, which, honestly, I'm still fairly puzzled by, as in The Hanging Tree. We do seem to get the advantage of her unfiltered-through-Peter's-feelings POV (or at least I assume the green "voiceover" text is her and not Varvara), and it's rather... stark: "You know what Peter's mistake is? He thinks there's a line. Between good and evil, order and chaos, the Dark Side of the Force and the Light. Between good coppers and career criminals. There IS a line. But not there. The line is between us and them. Between those that make their own choices. And those that don't." The scene between Lesley and Varvara is also really interesting, especially Varvara (as far as I can tell -- see, this is what I mean about the medium being frustrating to me) saying, "You've put your faith in the wrong person" and Lesley replying, "Perhaps I'm not as easily impressed as you" (a dig at Varvara's crush on Nightingale? :P) And interesting to have the revelation that Varvara was familiar with the strip club of Doctor Moreau from the favor she did for the Russians in the 70s. Not aware and/or bothered enough for it to prevent her from working for the Faceless Man early on, though. Anyway, Lesley continues to be frustrating to me with her motivation fairly unclear. The conversations with the Faceless Man where she says "I feel like somebody else" while looking at the photo with her face scratched out was powerful but still opaque. It's pretty clear that she is still set on protecting Peter from outright harm and makes no secret of it from the Faceless Man -- I'm assuming that sending the mobsters after Bev is part of that, because if they'd gone after Peter, yes, Nightingale would've, like she said, "wade in and take you apart", but that definitely doesn't seem like her reason for steering them away from that course of action. Anyway, so, just more Lesley flailing on top of the pile of THT-related Lesley flail... :/ (Also, interesting that The Faceless Man seems to think he's got a Xanatos Gambit going, considering he really isn't any sort of criminal mastermind, as we saw in THT.)
The case felt true to the spirit of the books -- people being people, in messy but human ways, with Peter's cynical but non-judgy narration. Various other things I liked: Peter and Walid geeking it up with thermodynamics and infrared cameras while Nightingale facepalms (this was in the preview pages, but is still adorable), Bev's room being a godawful mess (at least until the Russians cleaned it up) and her "all shall love me and despair" shirt, Molly's reaction to Nightingale being kidnapped, and Nightingale in captivity -- slightly mussed on camera, placidly doing the crossword after cleaning his plate, and, of course, taking the place apart to a measured internal monologue.
Looking at the ratio of Peter-and-Nightingale related things on the list and not, I wonder if BA is seeing these comics as a way to tell some of the stories/give us some glimpses at things that don't lend themselves as well to the first-person POV of the novels. That could be interestingf for sure! But see above for my complaing about this being a difficult medium for me. And I do love the other characters so, I definitely want to enjoy their stories and sides...
And the little vignettes at the back: Is the "General Vodka" scene the bit Peter alludes to in Foxglove Summer, or did these two geniuses try to get Varvara drunk twice? :P Nightingale + jazz vignette was cute, too, but my favorite is the Beverley Brook Conservation Society one. Heh.
Currently reading: halfway through True Pretenses (which egelantier's December meme answer not long ago finally got me to get and read, after a long time of planning to get around to it), a third into Grand Central Arena (from q99's long-ago rec, because I felt like more sci-fi-with-aliens after the Wayfarers book), a third into The Obelisk Gate (and reading slowly), and also at the very beginning of Monster Hunter International #5.
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And a belated fannish December ramble meme for which I'd missed the date:
Dec 23: Top three songs from "Once More with Feeling!" (deeplyunhip)
Great question! I was actually a bit surprised, when I finally watched it, how well Once More with Feeling worked for me, considering I'm not big on musicals, and the other "gimmicky" episodes ("Hush", "Restless") didn't work for me as well, because I was a bit annoyed by the gimmickness ("The Body" worked just fine, of course, but it's damn powerful for reasons other than the gimmick, of course). Actually, I went back and looked at my immediate episode reaction, and I guess I *had* found it gimmicky at the time, more than "Hush", but it looks like my opinion has changed meanwhile (which, it's been almost 4 years, whoa!) My favorite songs from OMWF haven't changed though! --
1) My favorite is definitely "I'll Never Tell", the Anya/Xander duet. First of all, I prefer funny songs, and this one is both funny and full of really clever doggerel-type rhymes -- exactly my sort of thing. Second, I'm also a fan of songs/rhymes that hint at one ending to a line then substitute another, so the "tight... embrace" stuff made me giggle. And third, I do love both Xander and Anya as characters, and this is before their relationship took a turn for the not-so-fun, which gives it a further nostalgic air in retrospect.
2) The "Walk Through the Fire" composite song. Musically it's probably my favorite of the lot, and it's a pretty great encapsulation of the whole season. Which I may not care for as much as the earlier ones, but it's an impressive job for a single song, which still contains some funny lines. It's the most haunting of the set, and the one that exemplifies the episode for me, I guess.
3) "Under Your Spell", which is kind of an odd one for me. It's neither my thing musically nor do I care about the lyrics, but I'm honestly rather impressed that Joss Whedon got away with the last stanza, and the accompanying scene, because, wow.
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And speaking of Yuletide reading, I'm progressing very, very slowly (as in, have only finished up the B's), but might as well post the two recs so far:
Ant-Man movie: Smoothie Dreams (Scott/Luis, 2k, Teen, set during their time in prison but cheerful, because, well, Luis) -- Just a cute, funny little fic that feels as warm and adorable as the movie, for a ship I didn't realize I could be totally on board for until I read it
The Broken Earth series: Syenite, Cliffside (Syen/Alabaster/Innon, missing scene from the start of their relationship; 2.5k, Mature, spoilers only for Fifth Season) -- I didn't even care for this ship in the book, but in style and worldbuilding and overall feel this reads very much like a little piece of canon, which is very, very impressive.
75. Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet -- I'd seen this book pop up on my flist several times, so when it was a Kindle Deal for like $2 (which, thanks to just_ann_now for that tip), I decided to go for it. Too bad I already did that 30 day book meme, because this would've been a good answer for "book you formed an impression of without reading that turned out to be false". Based on... something -- the zany-sounding title? the cover art? -- I ended up with an initial impression of this being something like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- sci-fi/space opera, but in a comedy/parody sense. It's definitely not that; the book is light-hearted, for the most part, but has a very different humour -- and is very deliberately and explicitly Clair. My second impression, partly from vague recollections of aletheiafelinea's write-up awhile back, partly from the first couple of chapters, was of Firefly as written by Tumblr. (I guess it's my year for reading Firefly-as-written-by-the-internet books, since the MCA Hogarth Earthrise books made me think of Firefly-with-furries. But that is neither here nor there.) That one's more accurate, although it misses the things I liked best about the book -- the aliens, and the tiny everyday culture clashes they were all working through with each other (in slightly Tumblr-esque fashion, but still). Spoilers!
What made this book feel Tumblr-y to me were a couple of different things that added up to a general feel: the diversity of the cast (which is great, and even interesting in places, but felt very deliberate in that "bisexual mermaids are valid" Tumblr way. There was even what looked like the token white male ~antagonist early on; fortunately it ended up a bit more complicated than that, but still left a residue of that feeling), the talky setpieces which felt a lot like Tumblr discourse; the little moments which felt a lot like Tumblr not!fic about humans and aliens eating ice cream (there is, in fact, a scene about humans and aliens talking about eating ice cream... though of course it's possible that Tumblr got that idea from the book). But especially there was a certain... unobjectiveness to all of the "good" characters that made me think of Tumblr standards -- the "good" characters are never actually WRONG; they're almost never even petty, or short-tempered after a bad day. The closest to a conflict of this sort between good characters is the one scene where Kizzy wants to expense the fancy soap she's buying for herself, and Rosemary tells her no, and Sissix steps in to put this in context, and the whole thing is resolved in half a page. There are a couple of times a good character is mistaken, like when Rosemary thinks that the crew would hate her if they knew the truth, and there are times when good characters disagree on the correct course of action -- like when Sissix argues that Ohan should be cured and Ashby that their wishes should be respected, but they are very civil about their disagreement (and it's the designated not-entirely-good character who does the questionable thing -- more on Corbin below). It is both refreshing and a little improbable that nobody tries to lie / conceal anything from each other. Problematic actions are immediately called out, and even problematic thoughts are highlighted as problematic, like when Rosemary chides herself for applying human bias to Sissix when they first meet -- that was really the Tumblriest thing of all. And also the way Rosemary is aware of -- and ashamed of -- her privileged ancestry (the actual word is used).
Now, compare that to actual Firefly, which includes people like Jayne, and Mal can be a jerk, too (well, he's alright :P), and River is a loose canon, and Simon can be pompous and also petty, and Wash can be totally unreasonably jealous of Mal. Heck, compare it to the Earthrise books, where Reese is abrupt and grumpy, at least at the start (Ashby is only ever a model gentleman, and a model captain), or Kosmo~oluhi (which is another Firefly-y crew-of-misfits book), where even the "grown-ups" have their prejudices and foibles. The result is that nobody in this book except Corbin (more on whom later, as I said) and maaaybe Ohan (although with a complete lack of agency) gets an actual character arc. Things *happen* to them (although mostly it's talking rather than action things), but they are not really growing through them... I mean, Kizzy learns to deal with fear -- that might be an actual arc, I guess, but it's pretty slight, as arcs go. Ashby just... goes from trusting in his government to protect him to very civily pointing out to them that they failed to do so, because Rosemary points out to him that it's his responsibility as the captain. Jenks has to come to terms with his fear of losing Lovey and then face the reality; this is emotionally affecting, but I didn't get any sense of him actually being changed by any of this. Rosemary... gets the least satisfying to me arc of all, which is "reasonable, competent, well-adjusted stranger gets integrated seamlessly into a well-functioning crew" -- that's not even an ark, that's, like, a very short straight line. Like, these are the arks of a half-hour sitcom (with commercials), not a full-blown NOVEL. Now, this is an aggressively Clair book, like I said, but Goblin Emperor managed a very solid arc with Maia (by putting him in circumstances he was totally unprepared for and having external tension), and even the fluffy, cookie-baking Dreamhealers books had more of an arc than this, by virtue of having the characters actually realize and/or change something about themselves in between going to classical music concerts and ice cream parlours. At least there was some INNER conflict! Here there is no conflict almost at all, because everyone is too damn reasonable.
Except Corbin, who was therefore the most interesting person on the crew to me. Interesting, but I find his arc rather uncomfortable, to be honest, because it seems to want to be several things that undermine each other. At first, I thought Corbin would end up being the designated token white male jerk (the book goes to rather a lot of trouble to make him very white, actually), which I was frowning at because it seemed pretty clear that Corbin was not MERELY a jerk, but had some sort of Asperger's or other non-NT thing going on, too. And it was rather weird that nobody seemed aware / to care about it, especially when we got that scene with Sissix and the Aandrisk woman who was a pariah for being anti-social. Of course, Asperger's or whatever is not an excuse for being a jerk to a coworker (which he undeniably is) or using speciest slurs, but for all the careful awareness of things like different personal space issues with aliens, pronoun usage, "may I try to pronounce your name", etc., it seemed weird to have no acknowledgement of that at all. Then I thought maybe that was what we were leading up to, a realization by the crew that, while being very mindful of the aliens in their midst, they also needed to think of other humans' with the same sort of allowance for variation, which I figured would be saccharine (aww, let's hug him again) but better than my first set of expectations. Instead, Corbin gets a POV an a backstory that quite well explains the way he is, as a combination of nature (his clone-father is bad at people, too) and nurture (the replacement goldfish/raising yourself upbringing by someone who is bad at people), and I like that back story. What I don't like is the way he is very clearly -- and, for the level of fluff in the rest of the narrative, rather brutally -- punished for his misanthrope ways at the start -- severe injury, being paraded about naked, weeping in front of Sissix and being linked to her by her charity (which, again, I felt like required a lot of convoluted conditions so that it had to be specifically Sissix who sponsored him, to, you know, twist the knife). He does become closer to the crew later, which was nice, but even that had an air of him slinking around like a beaten dog. And, I kept expecting him to have a dramatic moment where he helps save the ship, the way Kizzy does with disarming the mines, the way Sissix and Ohan do, getting the ship out of hyperspace, the way Rosemary does with the pirate attack -- but no. The one independent, non-background action he takes is to inject Ohan with the virus antidote -- which totally came out of left field for me, and I feel was only assigned to Corbin because that way Ohan could live while everybody else got to keep their gold stars for respecting their autonomy. Yeah :/
Which is not to say that I didn't *like* the other characters! I liked Kizzy a lot, which surprised me a bit, because it would be so easy for her to be totally twee or over-the-top. As it is, she is, like, Kaylee on speed, but somehow it works out to be charming and engaging and not grating, even when she's behaving lik a sugar-high five-year-old. I liked Jenks, too (and his interesting backstory), and especially his fraternal relationship with Kizzy. And Sissix was great, and I liked the fraternal interplay between her and Ashby (who was otherwise boring to me), too. And Dr Chef was lovely, also. Lovey never really felt like a person to me until the last, very tragic, scene, where she repeats "I don't want to be like this" (and Lovelace getting the body kit afterwards felt very random, too -- though I guess it's the hook for the sequel). So, I liked most of the people on the crew, I just wish they'd gotten something more to do than just be polite and reasonable at each other for 400 pages...
I will say, the romantic relationships in general didn't feel compelling to me at all -- Rosemary crushing on Sissix and giving her what the rest of her feather-family cannot was sweet, but I felt zero chemistry there. I am kind of impressed by the choice to not give Lovey a body or even an avatar, nothing except her voice and words, but it did make it much harder to see Jenks and Lovey's relationship as, well, a relationship -- I mean, this was really INTERESTING, but it made it hard to empathize. And Ashby and Pei was just really boring. Also, the lack of human/human foreground relationships was an interesting choice (they do exist in the background, of course, and even the background ones have some diversity, like with Kizzy's two dads). But certainly nicely diverse, like everything else.
This is a very, VERY talky book. Which is not much of a problem for me, as I like talking in books -- more than action, even. But there is one serious action scene -- the climax where they have to pilot the injured ship out of hyperspace, which comes at, like, the 85% mark. There are two other scenes, by my count, that have SOME action -- the attack by the pirates (which is resolved by talking, but one of the pirates does punch Ashby, and there are guns, and the scene where Kizzy dismantles the mine(s) (and there's also the scene with Corbin in prison, but that's not "action", that's a character being punished by the narrative for being insufficiently enlightened). Everything else is people talking. About their past, about their plans for the future, about their different cultures, about whether or not Lovey getting a body is a good idea, or how to deal with fear, or the way Rosemary feels about her father's actions and whether or not they reflect on her, about the responsibilities of a government to its citizens and for its allies, about Human pacifism and whether it was right or wrong. The alien ~antagonists, which show up at the very end, get some talking in, too. Some of the conversations are really interesting; others are just info dumps or, hmmm, psychology dumps, I guess. But so much talking!
But let's get to the thing about this book I really liked: nicely alien aliens with well-realized cultures and small but omnipresent culture clashes. This part is really well done, although the diversity and careful detail that *is* present made me wonder about things I'd unthinkingly give a pass to in a book that spent less time on the differences between humans and aliens and different alien species. Like, why do all the alien species we see (in detail, anyway) have two sexes? Sure, there is some variety there anyway, like the sex-changing Grum (and the interesting dynamic that sets up, where young individuals are female, and thus warriors are mostly female), and the Toremi have the capacity for parthenogenesis, but they are still male or female at any given time. Even the AIs get genders, apparently. And on a much more minor note, what are the odds that something that's an intoxicant for reptilian Aandrisk (grass wine) would work the same on mammalian humans? But for the most part this worked for me -- all the little references throughout to different things, small and big, having different connotations for different species. For example:
The Aandrisk belief that hatchlings aren't really people, yet, which comes from them being egg clutch-laying, and everything that comes from that -- different attitudes about one's biological children, family structure, even the fact that they do not forbid cloning because they've never seen the point in attempting it -- if biology doesn't matter and it's all nurture, then there's no point to cloning at all. All the stuff with Sianat and the Whisperer virus felt more forced, and the single/plural thing seemed to be there more for making a point about correct gendering, but it was still pretty interesting, along with the ethical dilemmas it raised about forced cure and whether or not someone whose brain is hijacked by a virus can give informed consent and the implications of that, as well as the implications of treatment going against cultural norms, which made me think of B5's "Believers". Small things, too -- Sissix objecting to lemon-scented scrub because it smells like something with which the Aandrisk annoint their dead (although I find it hard to believe that she wouldn't have brought it up to Ashby earlier, though I guess it could be the sort of thing one only remembers when one steps into the bathroom, and by the time you walk out, you've already forgotten about it), or the Grum not having tea/soup-type nourishment because they see hot water as something to sleep in. Oh, and the "everybody does it" things that turn out to be Human specific, like trying to now show fear (although this felt a bit Tumblr not!fic to me; I feel like not showing fear would be more common than that because it seems like a useful fight-or-flight adaptation, but maybe the other races have outgrown it).
Physical differences between the species, too -- I was pleasantly surprised that only a few of the aliens were humanoid, and even those had marked physiological differences from human -- the lizard-people not having visible primary or secondary sex characteristics, the Aeulon not just being space Elves being voiceless, and the different way of communicating they've evolved, and the implications being carried forward to their machinery making no noises, either. Oh, and the way the physical differences are not just external trappings, either -- the fact that cold-blooded Sissix needs to heat her bed before she can type properly, and doesn't eat much -- which leads to her family way overcooking for the Humans' visit because they have no reference for how much Humans eat other than "a lot". And also the way Sissix has no intuitive understanding of how human age lines up with what a child that age can do and needs to have reminders/explanations about that, like with Ashby's nephew and Bear's sister. And that she needs a different vessel to drink from, because she doesn't have lips. The way different species have different gestures for things, some of which are explained explicitly (e.g. Sissix showing Rosemary how to signal assent -- a curved hand rather than a nod) and some of which are just shown (e.g. the Toremi smacking their mouth). And different reactions to alien gestures, too, like Sissix not realizing that someone's holding her hand too long because her "default" for touch is much more prolonged/intimate contact than for Humans. And of course Ashby accidentally making a rude gesture at the bandits by rubbing his eyes, as contrived as that was.
Which is a subset of communication issues between aliens in general, which I thought were handled very well. I really liked that not everybody was fluent in everything, including some not being fluent in Klip (~"Galactic"), people being able to understand but not really speak a language which they've heard a lot but not practiced (like Ashby with Reskitkish). (At first I did wonder why people speaking Hanto -- the language of commerce -- seemed so rare that Rosemary having that ability was a huge deal, but, fine, I guess there aren't too many people I know who learned Mandarin well enough to communicate in it without childhood immersion, which would obviously be harder with an alien species.) And the physical differences between the species meaning that it can be difficult/impossible to learn each other's language -- like picking up only broad meanings of Aeulon skin-color-changing speech (and Kizzy not realizing the Aeulons were communicating among themselves because they were silent), Rosemary not being able to come anywhere close to Dr Chef's name because he has multiple sets of vocal cords and throats (and him being able to speak Klip, but it taking particular effort to synchronize the multiple vocal cords -- I thought that was really clever!), or having to approximate Hanto chin-tentacle gestures with a hand held under one's chin. I thought both the aliens code-mixing from their native language and "improper" speech (e.g. the Sianat Exile trying to remember how to speak Klip after long disuse) were really believably done. Oh, and Kizzy "singing" the Hanto song by just matching the closest words to it in Klip: "Step on some sweet toast! Socks match my hat!" XP And here's another very minor thing I nevertheless really liked -- the names of the languages, which are in all cases (I think) distinct from the name of the alien species, and not even *related* to those species names. Because, I mean, the Humans don't speak Human, right? (I did wonder what those language names meant. Is it a particular language from among many that ended up being the dominant language of the planet, or at least the one used externally, the way English seems to be for Earth? The word for "language"/"speech" or something like "standart"/"common" in the language in question? I have a feeling the author actually knows.
Speaking of worldbuilding, the book doesn't spend all that much time on it, but I did find the history of Earth in this universe quite interesting. It starts out as the usual ravaged Earth, Mars as the first colony deal, but does pretty interesting things afterwards (or at least things I've not encountered much before). Rather than being a beleagured colony of plucky settlers who are viewed as second-class citizens by Earth (which I think is how I've always seen it portrayed in sci-fi), it is instead the refuge of the rich and privileged (probably through a process of gentrification, come to think of it XD) The Exodans partly remaining spacers, partly settling down as colonists made sense, although I'm not sure I totally buy the pacifism that seems so central to their culture. And the Gaiists of various degrees of fanaticism are also something I'm not used to seeing in sci-fi, and I thought were pretty neat (and were an interesting background for Jenks's backstory).
The neologisms annoyed me a little bit at first, just because there seemed to be more of them than there really needed to be -- "scrib" for what's basically a tablet, as far as I could tell; "smash" (drugs), "kick" (either booze generically or a particular kind of booze), "deepod", etc. But possibly it's just been a while since I embarked on a new-to-me space opera universe... But I did like other bits of worldbuilding, like the fact that Kizzy, as a tech, has a better grasp of Aeulon technical things than Aeulon soldiers/pilots, who just point to "that lump with the little knob on it", and shrugging the equivalent of 'you could google it, I guess' when Kizzy asks them about what something on their ship is made of.
So, what's the tally? Very interesting if slightly overly-earnest worldbuilding, mostly likeable characters with not nearly enough conflict, an absolute minimum of plot and character growth, and a narrative that felt... cheerfully judgy, I guess? Like those "friendly reminder" Tumblr posts, you know? I enjoyed reading it, and it's one of the more interesting books I've read this year, and it left me in the mood for more space opera/sci-fi, which is a good sign, but... I couldn't say that I actually *liked* the book, which is a slightly weird place to be. In that regard it feels similar to the way I felt about Watchmaker of Filigree Street (although that one has much stronger structure, I think) -- I enjoyed the ride, I have a lot to say about the journey, I am impressed by the conductor, but I am side-eyeing some of the turns and am unsure about the destination.
76. Ben Aaronovitch, Night Witch (RoL graphic novel collection #2) -- It finally dawned on me why I can't remember whether this title is "Night Witch" or "Night Witches" -- because it's BOTH XD The English and the Russian don't agree, and that's confusing me all to hell. Anyway, now that we're past that amazing insight --
It is so weird to read these RoL graphic novels, because unlike the other tie-in comics I've read, they are actually full of PLOT, and significant character interaction, and really feel like full-fledged canon -- but in a medium that is much harder for me personally to parse. Which makes it really frustrating! -- it's like trying to read a part of the canon in a language I'm not fluent in -- it's THERE, and I can technically consume it, but it takes so much more effort on my part than "regular" canon, and I still feel like I'm probably missing something. An odd feeling, like I said. But it's a series where I'm hungry for every little bit of canon, so of course I'm going to read it. Spoilers from here!
I actually had to read it twice to make sure I understood what was going on, and even then there were a couple of panels I paged back over to for the third time to make sure I had things straight -- that one person was the character I thought they were based on the way the plot unfolded, even though I totally had not recognized them, and to try to figure out the timing of the other two panels vs what was depicted there. I'm still not really sure, after all that. I assume the panel where the gun-wielding guy with the hostages reacts is actually a flashback to when the babushka general shows up, and the Nightingale-breaking-out panels that are intercut with that action are happening later, after he sees the "your turn" note? And what is going on with the timing of the Varvara flashback in the 70s? Is the young self we see part of her stoned vision? I'm assuming that's what's going on with the suddenly-weird artwork style, but it was very confusing. Going over the artwork twice did lead me to notice some things I'd previously missed -- like the faint blue text background that denoted "conversation in Russian", whether it was rendered in Russian or English, or Peter bringing Varvara in prison not just vodka but also smokes and tampons.
Speaking of the Russian -- Ben! Ben, hire me to proofread your Russian, please. I think he must've got an actual Russian to write the dialogue for him, or at any rate it was well done -- although the "we are very pleased that formal-you've decided to join us" bit on the first page read like a translation from English in a way the rest did not. And I really wonder where he dug up Maksim's gardening song, LOL! And the names are all done very well -- patronymics and nicknames and all the things non-Russians normally mess up, which also suggests that he used a Russian-picker for those (although there were two instances where name+patronymic were used where they felt weird -- Syoma and Mila shaking hands (even if it's done as an overcompensation sort of thing) and the drill sergeant addressing WWII!Varvara by patronymic (instead of a barked last name). So I think what must've happened was, he got the names and several variations of them, but didn't run the final product by a "Russian beta". Worse than that, the lettering is off in several spots -- the wrong M, the wrong T, and it took me a while to figure out what the medal was even saying (capital Y is not the letter you're looking for, for starters). Also, missing case ending on "200 metr(OV)". I mean, I didn't actually expect it to do the whole Cyrillic script, but if you're going to do it? do it properly!
On the other hand, the image on the medal, of izbushka on kurjih nozhkah? XD A+ choice. And I also liked the factoid that NKVD (although I don't think that's the right agency at all? beyond being a recognizable Soviet acronym...) would rile up the leshii and herd them out against German troops -- it seems very much like the sort of thing the Soviet army *would* do, if leshii existed, and spin it as the land itself rising up against the invaders. I'm a bit waffly on the level of klyukva in this outing (refreshingly absent in earlier Varvara appearances). Like the way vodka is mentioned half a dozen times; I can't even say any individual instance was out of character or whatever, but man, that's a lot of vodka. I did appreciate Varvara herself lampshading it ("I've been English three times longer than I was Russian, but all it takes is five minutes of conversation adn a medal, and I revert to stereotype"). I also really liked Mila's tirade about wanting to go back to Russia "because I find myself getting nostalgic about Pushkin. And I hate Aleksander fucking Pushkin." -- that was a great line. And I missed it on first read-through, but I also really liked, once I caught it, Mila approaching her daughter speaking Russian, with a very Russian endearment (I call O "myshonok", which means "little mouse", and it works especially well in this case, because I'm assuming she'd told her daughter to hide/be quiet like a little mouse, too), and she runs towards her yelling "Mummy!" very much like an English kid, and later on, the color of the bubbles shows that Mila is speaking Russian to the daughter but the little girl is speaking English to her. So, on balance, the language stuff was pretty well done, although it could've been impeccably done with one more pass by a Russian speaker, so the little leftover mistakes annoy me. (BTW, if anybody reading this wants translations of specific lines, I'm happy to oblige!)
I was very happy to get a Varvara-centric story after she's been MIA in the last two books -- getting more backstory and a glimpse of the young Varvara, and a look at her relationship with the Soviet/Russian government over time. Her comments on Russian politics/organy continued to strike me as very true to form (and that's a nice primer on post-coup Russia, actually). I liked seeing her interaction with Nightingale -- quid pro quo, which explains some things. And I guess she's a softer touch than I'd previously suspected, but then, who is not, for an old army comrade's family? And I guess random bystanders, too. But the important question is: So, who's going to write me post-WWII Anya/Varya fic, then? And speaking of old army comrades, and also of Russian names, babushka general's name is Veronika Aronovna Denisova, which raises so many questions on my mind. So, of course, no one who is not at least half Jewish would have a patronymic like that. I actually googled whether Denisov could be a Jewish name, and... maybe? At least I found several Denisovs who are Jewish, although they could be Jewish from the mother's side only, of course, which would not be the case here. Anyway, assuming that's all intentional, I kind of want to hear her story, too. It's bound to be interesting, to say the least...
The other very plot-interesting part of all this was Lesley, which, honestly, I'm still fairly puzzled by, as in The Hanging Tree. We do seem to get the advantage of her unfiltered-through-Peter's-feelings POV (or at least I assume the green "voiceover" text is her and not Varvara), and it's rather... stark: "You know what Peter's mistake is? He thinks there's a line. Between good and evil, order and chaos, the Dark Side of the Force and the Light. Between good coppers and career criminals. There IS a line. But not there. The line is between us and them. Between those that make their own choices. And those that don't." The scene between Lesley and Varvara is also really interesting, especially Varvara (as far as I can tell -- see, this is what I mean about the medium being frustrating to me) saying, "You've put your faith in the wrong person" and Lesley replying, "Perhaps I'm not as easily impressed as you" (a dig at Varvara's crush on Nightingale? :P) And interesting to have the revelation that Varvara was familiar with the strip club of Doctor Moreau from the favor she did for the Russians in the 70s. Not aware and/or bothered enough for it to prevent her from working for the Faceless Man early on, though. Anyway, Lesley continues to be frustrating to me with her motivation fairly unclear. The conversations with the Faceless Man where she says "I feel like somebody else" while looking at the photo with her face scratched out was powerful but still opaque. It's pretty clear that she is still set on protecting Peter from outright harm and makes no secret of it from the Faceless Man -- I'm assuming that sending the mobsters after Bev is part of that, because if they'd gone after Peter, yes, Nightingale would've, like she said, "wade in and take you apart", but that definitely doesn't seem like her reason for steering them away from that course of action. Anyway, so, just more Lesley flailing on top of the pile of THT-related Lesley flail... :/ (Also, interesting that The Faceless Man seems to think he's got a Xanatos Gambit going, considering he really isn't any sort of criminal mastermind, as we saw in THT.)
The case felt true to the spirit of the books -- people being people, in messy but human ways, with Peter's cynical but non-judgy narration. Various other things I liked: Peter and Walid geeking it up with thermodynamics and infrared cameras while Nightingale facepalms (this was in the preview pages, but is still adorable), Bev's room being a godawful mess (at least until the Russians cleaned it up) and her "all shall love me and despair" shirt, Molly's reaction to Nightingale being kidnapped, and Nightingale in captivity -- slightly mussed on camera, placidly doing the crossword after cleaning his plate, and, of course, taking the place apart to a measured internal monologue.
Looking at the ratio of Peter-and-Nightingale related things on the list and not, I wonder if BA is seeing these comics as a way to tell some of the stories/give us some glimpses at things that don't lend themselves as well to the first-person POV of the novels. That could be interestingf for sure! But see above for my complaing about this being a difficult medium for me. And I do love the other characters so, I definitely want to enjoy their stories and sides...
And the little vignettes at the back: Is the "General Vodka" scene the bit Peter alludes to in Foxglove Summer, or did these two geniuses try to get Varvara drunk twice? :P Nightingale + jazz vignette was cute, too, but my favorite is the Beverley Brook Conservation Society one. Heh.
Currently reading: halfway through True Pretenses (which egelantier's December meme answer not long ago finally got me to get and read, after a long time of planning to get around to it), a third into Grand Central Arena (from q99's long-ago rec, because I felt like more sci-fi-with-aliens after the Wayfarers book), a third into The Obelisk Gate (and reading slowly), and also at the very beginning of Monster Hunter International #5.
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And a belated fannish December ramble meme for which I'd missed the date:
Dec 23: Top three songs from "Once More with Feeling!" (deeplyunhip)
Great question! I was actually a bit surprised, when I finally watched it, how well Once More with Feeling worked for me, considering I'm not big on musicals, and the other "gimmicky" episodes ("Hush", "Restless") didn't work for me as well, because I was a bit annoyed by the gimmickness ("The Body" worked just fine, of course, but it's damn powerful for reasons other than the gimmick, of course). Actually, I went back and looked at my immediate episode reaction, and I guess I *had* found it gimmicky at the time, more than "Hush", but it looks like my opinion has changed meanwhile (which, it's been almost 4 years, whoa!) My favorite songs from OMWF haven't changed though! --
1) My favorite is definitely "I'll Never Tell", the Anya/Xander duet. First of all, I prefer funny songs, and this one is both funny and full of really clever doggerel-type rhymes -- exactly my sort of thing. Second, I'm also a fan of songs/rhymes that hint at one ending to a line then substitute another, so the "tight... embrace" stuff made me giggle. And third, I do love both Xander and Anya as characters, and this is before their relationship took a turn for the not-so-fun, which gives it a further nostalgic air in retrospect.
2) The "Walk Through the Fire" composite song. Musically it's probably my favorite of the lot, and it's a pretty great encapsulation of the whole season. Which I may not care for as much as the earlier ones, but it's an impressive job for a single song, which still contains some funny lines. It's the most haunting of the set, and the one that exemplifies the episode for me, I guess.
3) "Under Your Spell", which is kind of an odd one for me. It's neither my thing musically nor do I care about the lyrics, but I'm honestly rather impressed that Joss Whedon got away with the last stanza, and the accompanying scene, because, wow.
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And speaking of Yuletide reading, I'm progressing very, very slowly (as in, have only finished up the B's), but might as well post the two recs so far:
Ant-Man movie: Smoothie Dreams (Scott/Luis, 2k, Teen, set during their time in prison but cheerful, because, well, Luis) -- Just a cute, funny little fic that feels as warm and adorable as the movie, for a ship I didn't realize I could be totally on board for until I read it
The Broken Earth series: Syenite, Cliffside (Syen/Alabaster/Innon, missing scene from the start of their relationship; 2.5k, Mature, spoilers only for Fifth Season) -- I didn't even care for this ship in the book, but in style and worldbuilding and overall feel this reads very much like a little piece of canon, which is very, very impressive.