Resurrections by Roz Kaveney
I am off to Eastercon in a little bit. Just for the day, sadly, but there are lots of fabulous people I'm excited to see again, and I'm bringing along a book or two I hope to get signed :D
The subject of fabulous people and signed books has made me realise I never posted about Roz Kaveney's “Resurrections”. This is a scandal and outrage.
It's the third book in a quartet, and is where a lot of ongoing mysteries pay off: obviously this review could very easily be STUFFED with spoilers. I am going to avoid them heroically, however.
So these books are up the street of a LOT of you, I think. They're dual-POV, which is always fun, telling two stories in two different styles and over different stretches of time, although of course they're connected. One story is about Emma and Caroline, who room together at Cambridge until Caroline is unexpectedly eaten by a demonic creature. Death spurs both Emma and Caroline into declaring themselves and YAY LESBIAN LOVIN'. Except for how Caroline being a ghost precludes much in the way of physical lovin'. Anyway, THEY FIGHT EVIL. And have a mysterious boss who points them in the direction of evil to fight - 'who is the Boss' is an ongoing mystery for the first two books.
The style for Emma and Caroline, in the modern day, is modern and approachable and often snarky. Emma's superpower is basically briskness, which is brilliant. (And never lacks compassion.) Mara's story is somewhat more epic in tone.
Mara was human once, but that was thousands of years ago; when her lovers were murdered, she became... a god-hunter, is probably the best way to describe it. In Kaveney's world, one central way to become a god is by working the Rituals of Blood; Mara's purpose and driving mission is to stop such activities. Her story, as is being told to Crowley, spans thousands of years and is full of incident and awesomeness and cool people, both real and imagined. (Mara is an inveterate name-dropper.) Very educational too, because Mara refers to a lot of different historical people and events in passing. You don't need to know about them to understand, but they add something if you do, and I've spent happy hours wikiwalking off of them.
Both their stories come to a kind of peak here, though Mara's tale of her own life has never been chronological. We get two great tales of Alexandria, centuries apart. Emma's story is also wonderful in this novel: Emma goes to Hell and fights various nasties in an attempt to save her ghostly girlfriend from Lucifer, and ends up bringing down an evil and corrupt regime. This is a relatively conventional narrative (though with lots of really interesting twists). Then the story becomes about what comes after - how to negotiate a power vacuum, how to help the bystanders and victims left after the revolution, whether those who were complicit in what came before can help bring in a new era. And Emma is just tireless. ♥
The prose is gorgeous in itself, and there's some really great dialogue, especially in Emma and Caroline's back-and-forth. It's full of colour and vivid, memorable characters who never tip over into COLOUR and SPIRIT to the extent that you feel shouted at by their whimsy. Also, the third book is my favourite so far. It's exciting, it's engaging intellectually, it's stuffed with LGBTQ characters, it gave me MANY EMOTIONS due to spoilery things, and it has some great twists.
I JUST WANT YOU ALL TO READ THESE, because they're great and I would like some Yuletide fic (esp porn involving any combination of Mara, Emma and Caroline, because I am only human) but also because I want to talk to people about the twists and reveals in Revelations. Kaveney plays fair with them, and I guessed them mostly, but in a fun way.
There is one twist in particular that is probably my favourite twist of the last five years. It was so great. I had the perfect twist experience, which is that there was a clue about fifteen pages before the reveal, and immediately went omg... OMG OMG OMG, as I thought back to everything else, and spent the next fifteen pages hoping against hope that the awesome reveal was true AND THEN IT WAS HALLELUJAH. It's just so delightful.
Those of you who've read are welcome to spoil in comments but please put a warning in the subject line/first line.
And now I'm going to quote a few of my favourite lines from Revelations because the prose really is very pretty. These are more spoilery but not for any of the OMG twists or anything. It's difficult though - a lot of my favourite lines are perfect because this is the third book, and they reflect really nicely on the characters and themes and imagery that have come before, so if you're coming to it cold they won't have the same effect. Still, pretty.
Lucifer has this perpetual need to prove himself. Thousands of years, and he still wants to be the one Jah loves the best.
He is not what we made him, but what we helped him make himself.
And for a second, I saw the world as both of them had been taught to see it, all structures and supports and beams, all in proportion except for the bits that were not, and all planned in advance, not only by an architect but by the person who costed everything, and bought the best materials.
There is more to Josh than that, of course, wherever he is, but he always had that side, and I think it is the fundamental truth of Judas, and what he has become.
The hinges of the world, they never creak as they turn.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/323568.html. Comment wherever you like :)
The subject of fabulous people and signed books has made me realise I never posted about Roz Kaveney's “Resurrections”. This is a scandal and outrage.
It's the third book in a quartet, and is where a lot of ongoing mysteries pay off: obviously this review could very easily be STUFFED with spoilers. I am going to avoid them heroically, however.
So these books are up the street of a LOT of you, I think. They're dual-POV, which is always fun, telling two stories in two different styles and over different stretches of time, although of course they're connected. One story is about Emma and Caroline, who room together at Cambridge until Caroline is unexpectedly eaten by a demonic creature. Death spurs both Emma and Caroline into declaring themselves and YAY LESBIAN LOVIN'. Except for how Caroline being a ghost precludes much in the way of physical lovin'. Anyway, THEY FIGHT EVIL. And have a mysterious boss who points them in the direction of evil to fight - 'who is the Boss' is an ongoing mystery for the first two books.
The style for Emma and Caroline, in the modern day, is modern and approachable and often snarky. Emma's superpower is basically briskness, which is brilliant. (And never lacks compassion.) Mara's story is somewhat more epic in tone.
Mara was human once, but that was thousands of years ago; when her lovers were murdered, she became... a god-hunter, is probably the best way to describe it. In Kaveney's world, one central way to become a god is by working the Rituals of Blood; Mara's purpose and driving mission is to stop such activities. Her story, as is being told to Crowley, spans thousands of years and is full of incident and awesomeness and cool people, both real and imagined. (Mara is an inveterate name-dropper.) Very educational too, because Mara refers to a lot of different historical people and events in passing. You don't need to know about them to understand, but they add something if you do, and I've spent happy hours wikiwalking off of them.
Both their stories come to a kind of peak here, though Mara's tale of her own life has never been chronological. We get two great tales of Alexandria, centuries apart. Emma's story is also wonderful in this novel: Emma goes to Hell and fights various nasties in an attempt to save her ghostly girlfriend from Lucifer, and ends up bringing down an evil and corrupt regime. This is a relatively conventional narrative (though with lots of really interesting twists). Then the story becomes about what comes after - how to negotiate a power vacuum, how to help the bystanders and victims left after the revolution, whether those who were complicit in what came before can help bring in a new era. And Emma is just tireless. ♥
The prose is gorgeous in itself, and there's some really great dialogue, especially in Emma and Caroline's back-and-forth. It's full of colour and vivid, memorable characters who never tip over into COLOUR and SPIRIT to the extent that you feel shouted at by their whimsy. Also, the third book is my favourite so far. It's exciting, it's engaging intellectually, it's stuffed with LGBTQ characters, it gave me MANY EMOTIONS due to spoilery things, and it has some great twists.
I JUST WANT YOU ALL TO READ THESE, because they're great and I would like some Yuletide fic (esp porn involving any combination of Mara, Emma and Caroline, because I am only human) but also because I want to talk to people about the twists and reveals in Revelations. Kaveney plays fair with them, and I guessed them mostly, but in a fun way.
There is one twist in particular that is probably my favourite twist of the last five years. It was so great. I had the perfect twist experience, which is that there was a clue about fifteen pages before the reveal, and immediately went omg... OMG OMG OMG, as I thought back to everything else, and spent the next fifteen pages hoping against hope that the awesome reveal was true AND THEN IT WAS HALLELUJAH. It's just so delightful.
Those of you who've read are welcome to spoil in comments but please put a warning in the subject line/first line.
And now I'm going to quote a few of my favourite lines from Revelations because the prose really is very pretty. These are more spoilery but not for any of the OMG twists or anything. It's difficult though - a lot of my favourite lines are perfect because this is the third book, and they reflect really nicely on the characters and themes and imagery that have come before, so if you're coming to it cold they won't have the same effect. Still, pretty.
Lucifer has this perpetual need to prove himself. Thousands of years, and he still wants to be the one Jah loves the best.
He is not what we made him, but what we helped him make himself.
And for a second, I saw the world as both of them had been taught to see it, all structures and supports and beams, all in proportion except for the bits that were not, and all planned in advance, not only by an architect but by the person who costed everything, and bought the best materials.
There is more to Josh than that, of course, wherever he is, but he always had that side, and I think it is the fundamental truth of Judas, and what he has become.
The hinges of the world, they never creak as they turn.
This was originally posted at http://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/323568.html. Comment wherever you like :)