Meh (January Reading)

[ase]

Short, because I read lots and lots of guy-on-guy smut written by women fan fiction instead. Done now.

Melusine (Sarah Monette/truepenny): The Virtu has guarded the ancient city of Melusine from its worst excesses for centuries. Pity it got busted. And really pity this isn't about the Virtu at all, it's about the two PoV characters: the angstful aristocrat Felix, who spends most of the book insane and angsting, and Mildmay the Fox, cat burglar with history. Mildmay gets to be snarky. Felix gets to be Justin Warrick.

I seem to recall hearing someone defining genre as "a group of books talking to each other" (paraphrased, and totally forgot who said, sorry), and I think Melusine is very genre, by that definition. It's obviously fantasy - it's got magic, and is clearly set in a place not here - but if you comb through truepenny's livejournal, there's some other stuff going on, too. There's an LJ midlist SF/F conversation that is happening in the internet zone around the truepenny, matociquala, and papersky friend lists that I suspect contributed a lot to the book. Not in specifics, but in aims and messing-with-tropes choices: in genre, if you will. I think that, if the book is read with this in mind, it may be very interesting, but I'm not really part of that conversation, so I think I read a very different novel than the conversant.

From that perspective, there were two serious problems with the novel: madmen make terrible narrators, and as Mildmay says at one point, "there ain't much to be said about walking across Kekropia aside from the boredom of it." Monette does a good job of keeping the story moving during the traveling-bit, at least. Maybe Felix will be more likable in the next book, when he's not stark raving mad or on the edge of it. Also, the novel manages to smack one of my narrative hot buttons in the first twenty pages. I am deeply pissed that I haven't yet learned that "lush" is code for "abusive sex, explicitly described. Put down the nice novel and walk away." It gets better eventually, but it takes a really long time.

Tentative thematic summation:

"Don't what? Treat you like a person instead of an object? Don't acknowledge that you have been shamefully misused and betrayed?"
"Please." My face felt like it was on fire. "It doesn't matter." (Melusine p.421 HC)

This is two guys talking. About feelings. See why I have issues?

I have to reserve full judgment until June, when the second half (The Virtu) is published, but at the moment I'm mostly reading it to see what happens to Mildmay.

The Crystal Cave (Mary Stewart): Merlin, pre-Arthur. First book of a trilogy. Kept me amused while I was reading, but I'm in no rush to read the other two books. Considering this was a novel about Merlin, there was remarkably little of the mystic or numinous about it, a consideration that may cut negatively and positively, depending on how long it's been since your last high fantasy binge. Also, dramatic irony of conclusion not as riveting as author might have hoped.

This Can't Be Happening at Macdonald Hall! and The Zucchini Warriors (Gordon Korman, Bruno and Boots series): Canadian boarding school duo wreaks havoc in 100 pages or less. Introduction by way of "fan fiction that radically revised our childhood reading memories." Written when the author was in his teens, and at boarding school, and it shows. On here for completion; nothing important to say about them.

Comments

[kd5mdk.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall hearing someone defining genre as "a group of books talking to each other" (paraphrased, and totally forgot who said, sorry),

Lois said it.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Thanks; I thought so, but couldn't remember where.