wednesday reads
I am home! And I have a keyboard! So I can finally write about the stuff I've been reading. Short list:
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
The Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
An Ever-Fixed Mark by AMarguerite (novel-length Pride and Prejudice fanfic)
The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I read The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which I liked a lot. It is quite long, with four narrators (some of whom don't actually interact until well more than halfway through the book), and there are a whole lot of preliminary events before the plot really gets underway, so some might think it a slow book. (I actually enjoyed much of the preliminaries, possibly even more than the 'main event'.) Going into it, I knew there was canon f/f, but I actually guessed wrong about the parties involved, and that is possibly why I didn't feel engaged by the actual relationship.
The narrators are Tané, a young woman in training (at the start of the book) for the High Sea Guard of Seiiki, a not-Japanese island that is rigorously xenophobic and protected by water dragons and their riders; Ead, a woman from a mysterious not-Arabian land who is presently an attendant to Queen Sabran of Inys, which is not-England, using her secret assassin and magical skills to protect her; Niclays Roos, an alchemist from not-Netherlands, who had been in the service of the not-English queen until he pissed her off and was banished to the single trading post of not-Japan where foreigners are permitted; and Arteloth Beck, a not-English lord and one of the not-English queen's closest friends. Uh, from this description you can probably tell that this fantasy world sort of maps onto our world, though the nations are really more distinct from their real counterparts than I make it sound. Oh, also there are evil fire-breathing wyrms that serve the Nameless One, who is apparently the daddy of all wyrms who wants to take over the world, so that's the ultimate conflict set up right there. (And yes, that makes me think of He Who Must Not Be Named...)
Because of the varying POVs making me get to know certain characters more intimately, and because a large part of Tané's early narrative is driven by her close friendship with other women, I was thinking the book was headed toward Tané/Ead. But no! It's Ead/Sabran, which is basically lady knight/queen and so I should have eaten it up, but somehow I never warmed to Sabran, so the relationship didn't draw me in. This world appears to have no strong feelings against same-sex relationships other than that they don't produce children, which is a necessity for the nobility, of course, which is certainly an issue that shows up in the book, though mostly in the context of a past relationship.
I liked the early chapters about Tané's trial competitions to earn her spot more than the ones about Queen Sabran's court. I also liked the Exciting Adventures of Arteloth, once he is sent on a diplomatic mission to a nation (in not-Europe; perhaps not-Spain?) that has already fallen to the Nameless One. I was less interested in Niclays Roos' narrative; mostly he's an unsympathetic character. Also, when things started definitely working toward the Good vs Evil conflict it felt a bit anticlimactic, because so many important turning points had already occurred by then. I think of narrative arcs (for the purpose of writing them) as a sawtooth of climaxes, each surpassing the one before, but this book felt to me as though the later climaxes didn't top the previous ones. The general stakes were higher, but the personal stakes were not.
Anyway, I nominated some of the characters for Yuletide, though I'm still dithering about which particular combination I want to request, as I have a few very different stories I'd like to read.
I also read The Lords of the North, the third book in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories series that have been made into the TV show The Last Kingdom, and I really loved it - so far it's my favorite of the series. The action is straightforward, Uhtred's journey for revenge on Kjartan and Sven - though that journey itself is not straightforward. There's just so much (dark) humor in Uhtred's retelling of his misadventures, how he ruefully admits now, as he looks back on his life, that his plans were brought low by inexorable fate. And also, I love Sihtric and Finan from the TV series, and so seeing them on the page was really delightful. It was definitely interesting to note the differences between the book and the show.
The third "book" I read was the Pride and Prejudice soulmark AU An Ever-Fixed Mark by
AMarguerite, which
luzula had recommended. I enjoyed but didn't love P&P, but this was a delightful romp along the lines of Lost in Austen, a clever riff on the original with diverging (and converging) plot lines, and cameos from other Austen works (and Wellington!).
I'm not actually a fan of the soulmate/soulmark trope, so the examination and deconstruction was more of an exercise in me going, "yep, there's a problem, good point." And also since I'm not a huge fan of the original, I didn't have an issue with some of the plot changes. I thought the author did a good job of using what readers know of the original to avoid rehashing the entire novel, while still taking it in a different direction. I do wish the author had used a beta reader, (or a better beta), because there were a lot of typos, missing words, misspelled names (Georgiana was often Georgianna) and dialogue/ideas that were repeated from earlier (which I noticed because reading the whole thing at once, vs as a WIP where one might not). I did think that the (very) ending was a bit contrived and unbelievable - I can't imagine that such great friends as Kitty and Georgiana wouldn't have a) showed each other their soulmarks, considering that Georgiana showed Elizabeth hers, or b) not immediately have figured out the context and meaning. I mean, I was still pleased by (and expected) that development, but it was overly cheesy!
Finally, I read the short novel (maybe a novella?) The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick. This was a Tor free e-book, first published in 2005, but it seems distressingly relevant today given that it's about literal aliens (or rather, dark-skinned humans from another dimension/reality/world) in a US refugee border camp. The best of science fiction (to my mind) comments on society by taking us outside of our known society and presenting it from the outside; this could have been over-the-top pointed, and maybe it is in a few places, but really, it's a solid and engaging story as well as an indictment of the way the United States dehumanizes immigrants, and the way that understanding and empathy and love are crucial for living in a society. This is also going to be a Yuletide fandom, so if you grabbed it from Tor when it was available, I encourage you to read it!
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
The Lords of the North by Bernard Cornwell
An Ever-Fixed Mark by AMarguerite (novel-length Pride and Prejudice fanfic)
The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I read The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, which I liked a lot. It is quite long, with four narrators (some of whom don't actually interact until well more than halfway through the book), and there are a whole lot of preliminary events before the plot really gets underway, so some might think it a slow book. (I actually enjoyed much of the preliminaries, possibly even more than the 'main event'.) Going into it, I knew there was canon f/f, but I actually guessed wrong about the parties involved, and that is possibly why I didn't feel engaged by the actual relationship.
The narrators are Tané, a young woman in training (at the start of the book) for the High Sea Guard of Seiiki, a not-Japanese island that is rigorously xenophobic and protected by water dragons and their riders; Ead, a woman from a mysterious not-Arabian land who is presently an attendant to Queen Sabran of Inys, which is not-England, using her secret assassin and magical skills to protect her; Niclays Roos, an alchemist from not-Netherlands, who had been in the service of the not-English queen until he pissed her off and was banished to the single trading post of not-Japan where foreigners are permitted; and Arteloth Beck, a not-English lord and one of the not-English queen's closest friends. Uh, from this description you can probably tell that this fantasy world sort of maps onto our world, though the nations are really more distinct from their real counterparts than I make it sound. Oh, also there are evil fire-breathing wyrms that serve the Nameless One, who is apparently the daddy of all wyrms who wants to take over the world, so that's the ultimate conflict set up right there. (And yes, that makes me think of He Who Must Not Be Named...)
Because of the varying POVs making me get to know certain characters more intimately, and because a large part of Tané's early narrative is driven by her close friendship with other women, I was thinking the book was headed toward Tané/Ead. But no! It's Ead/Sabran, which is basically lady knight/queen and so I should have eaten it up, but somehow I never warmed to Sabran, so the relationship didn't draw me in. This world appears to have no strong feelings against same-sex relationships other than that they don't produce children, which is a necessity for the nobility, of course, which is certainly an issue that shows up in the book, though mostly in the context of a past relationship.
I liked the early chapters about Tané's trial competitions to earn her spot more than the ones about Queen Sabran's court. I also liked the Exciting Adventures of Arteloth, once he is sent on a diplomatic mission to a nation (in not-Europe; perhaps not-Spain?) that has already fallen to the Nameless One. I was less interested in Niclays Roos' narrative; mostly he's an unsympathetic character. Also, when things started definitely working toward the Good vs Evil conflict it felt a bit anticlimactic, because so many important turning points had already occurred by then. I think of narrative arcs (for the purpose of writing them) as a sawtooth of climaxes, each surpassing the one before, but this book felt to me as though the later climaxes didn't top the previous ones. The general stakes were higher, but the personal stakes were not.
Anyway, I nominated some of the characters for Yuletide, though I'm still dithering about which particular combination I want to request, as I have a few very different stories I'd like to read.
I also read The Lords of the North, the third book in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Stories series that have been made into the TV show The Last Kingdom, and I really loved it - so far it's my favorite of the series. The action is straightforward, Uhtred's journey for revenge on Kjartan and Sven - though that journey itself is not straightforward. There's just so much (dark) humor in Uhtred's retelling of his misadventures, how he ruefully admits now, as he looks back on his life, that his plans were brought low by inexorable fate. And also, I love Sihtric and Finan from the TV series, and so seeing them on the page was really delightful. It was definitely interesting to note the differences between the book and the show.
The third "book" I read was the Pride and Prejudice soulmark AU An Ever-Fixed Mark by
AMarguerite, which
luzula had recommended. I enjoyed but didn't love P&P, but this was a delightful romp along the lines of Lost in Austen, a clever riff on the original with diverging (and converging) plot lines, and cameos from other Austen works (and Wellington!).
I'm not actually a fan of the soulmate/soulmark trope, so the examination and deconstruction was more of an exercise in me going, "yep, there's a problem, good point." And also since I'm not a huge fan of the original, I didn't have an issue with some of the plot changes. I thought the author did a good job of using what readers know of the original to avoid rehashing the entire novel, while still taking it in a different direction. I do wish the author had used a beta reader, (or a better beta), because there were a lot of typos, missing words, misspelled names (Georgiana was often Georgianna) and dialogue/ideas that were repeated from earlier (which I noticed because reading the whole thing at once, vs as a WIP where one might not). I did think that the (very) ending was a bit contrived and unbelievable - I can't imagine that such great friends as Kitty and Georgiana wouldn't have a) showed each other their soulmarks, considering that Georgiana showed Elizabeth hers, or b) not immediately have figured out the context and meaning. I mean, I was still pleased by (and expected) that development, but it was overly cheesy!
Finally, I read the short novel (maybe a novella?) The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick. This was a Tor free e-book, first published in 2005, but it seems distressingly relevant today given that it's about literal aliens (or rather, dark-skinned humans from another dimension/reality/world) in a US refugee border camp. The best of science fiction (to my mind) comments on society by taking us outside of our known society and presenting it from the outside; this could have been over-the-top pointed, and maybe it is in a few places, but really, it's a solid and engaging story as well as an indictment of the way the United States dehumanizes immigrants, and the way that understanding and empathy and love are crucial for living in a society. This is also going to be a Yuletide fandom, so if you grabbed it from Tor when it was available, I encourage you to read it!
Crossposted from isis at Dreamwidth where there are
comments. | Comment at Dreamwidth