Get Your Feminist On (January Reading)
Feb. 15th, 2007 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseA Brother's Price (Wen Spencer): Regency romance set in a world where women outnumber men about ten to one. This is a really cool idea; my favorite thing in the world is wacky worldbuilding ideas, which is why I love the sf/f field so much. So why not take a wacky idea, and explore it in the context of a standard plot. Is there any more paint-by-numbers cliche than a regency? However, regencies are implausible and silly, and this is no exception. The plucky grandchild of thieves and army spies marries royalty for Twu Wuv? Um, no. So it's my profound problem: there's this one great worldbuilding thought, and one really clever concept for integrating a novel idea with a cliche plot, but I dislike the Cinderella romance of the plucky country gentry and the dashing, swashbuckling royalty. Also, the secondary effects are incompletely considered. This is one of the books which is lots of fun to talk about, I think, because it's got one really cool idea embedded in workday prose and slightly cracked worldbuilding.
Shiva's Fire (Suzanne Fisher Staples): Children's/YA. Parvati is born on the first day of the life-giving monsoon, the day a tornado wrecks her village. She grows up in the shadow of this tragedy, surrounded by unlikely miracles and her love of dance.
Staples seems to have written the bharata natyam equivalent of a "go to ballet boarding school" book, and manages a nice fusion of "go to dance school" with South Indian culture. Miraculous events are presented as Things That Happen, which are often two-edged. I've been reading Staples since Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind provided a vivid demonstration that first person present tense can be used to really suck readers in, so I may be a bit biased toward her writing. With that in mind, I think she approached the material in an interesting fashion: Parvati's surprising episodes with dance and music are presented in a matter-of-fact way that reminds me of magical realism. I don't think that's the genre Staples is trying to write; I'd say she's going for a child's novel infused with the feel of Hindu religious epics. She scores fairly well on that front. The late-novel romance is resolved in a way that works very well on the story level, but that annoys me slightly in a larger context.
SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Parvati decides to stay with her dancing, which makes sense because it's what she does: it's the constant throughout the story. Meanwhile, Cute Not-Boyfriend elects to oppose his father's wishes and go to America to become a doctor. Which is what he wants, so fine. It's a fine ending for this story, being true to the characters as presented, but it bugs me a bit that the young woman makes the culturally conservative choice, reinforcing the norms, while the young man gets to choose to move outside of those norms. I could argue the implications back and forth for a five-paragraph essay, but the gist is that it works in this case.
The Ghost Sister (Liz Williams): First contact with a long-lost Earth colony, complicated by the crippling disability one of the natives is burdened with. There is a heavy-handed subplot about inflexible religious conservatives which drags down the worldbuilding, which isn't bad. The plot with the older woman as open-minded adventurer is a gentle departure from the sf/f norm. This is the sort of book that's okay for an afternoon, but that would be greatly enhanced by tipsy 2 AM IM chats about feminist motifs and fake sci-fi illnesses.
I finally finished The Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh, which is about what you'd expect from Cherryh: trust no one; keep your family close; outlive the bastards. Your perception is wrong, always, but if you are bold and desperate, you may bring your enemies to ruin.
I also reread Green Mars and Blue Mars, the back two-thirds of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, and The Martians, which reads as if someone had pulled out the "work in progress - does this fit?" drawer and dumped it into book form. I will never stop quibbling with the educational system as presented: how do your offspring of back-to-nature hunter-gatherers compete with the pampered urban youth? And what about the descendants of those asteroid exiles? How much of your history do you get to shed when your parents are Martian exiles? KSR presents a glowing vision of the unified Martian culture, but the writing doesn't entirely bear out authorial intent. Possibly I am missing something, but from my perspective, Blue Mars fails to carry the second-order worldbuilding effects to a logical conclusion. This drives me nuts because the first two books are awesome, and the third comes out a little cute in comparison. (I am looking at Sax and Ann as I say this. Yes, high "awwwww, sweet!" factor, but a little convenient.) There is a book I like a lot more hiding in the BM worldbuiling.
The Martians includes the novella "Green Mars" (not to be confused with the novel of the same name), which somehow makes mountain climbing the most awesome thing that I am too chicken to do, and "A Martian Romance", which is not elegiac.
I love Green Mars with all of my heart. The revolution sequence is awesome. Definite desert island book.
Shiva's Fire (Suzanne Fisher Staples): Children's/YA. Parvati is born on the first day of the life-giving monsoon, the day a tornado wrecks her village. She grows up in the shadow of this tragedy, surrounded by unlikely miracles and her love of dance.
Staples seems to have written the bharata natyam equivalent of a "go to ballet boarding school" book, and manages a nice fusion of "go to dance school" with South Indian culture. Miraculous events are presented as Things That Happen, which are often two-edged. I've been reading Staples since Shabanu: Daughter of the Wind provided a vivid demonstration that first person present tense can be used to really suck readers in, so I may be a bit biased toward her writing. With that in mind, I think she approached the material in an interesting fashion: Parvati's surprising episodes with dance and music are presented in a matter-of-fact way that reminds me of magical realism. I don't think that's the genre Staples is trying to write; I'd say she's going for a child's novel infused with the feel of Hindu religious epics. She scores fairly well on that front. The late-novel romance is resolved in a way that works very well on the story level, but that annoys me slightly in a larger context.
SPOILER PARAGRAPH: Parvati decides to stay with her dancing, which makes sense because it's what she does: it's the constant throughout the story. Meanwhile, Cute Not-Boyfriend elects to oppose his father's wishes and go to America to become a doctor. Which is what he wants, so fine. It's a fine ending for this story, being true to the characters as presented, but it bugs me a bit that the young woman makes the culturally conservative choice, reinforcing the norms, while the young man gets to choose to move outside of those norms. I could argue the implications back and forth for a five-paragraph essay, but the gist is that it works in this case.
The Ghost Sister (Liz Williams): First contact with a long-lost Earth colony, complicated by the crippling disability one of the natives is burdened with. There is a heavy-handed subplot about inflexible religious conservatives which drags down the worldbuilding, which isn't bad. The plot with the older woman as open-minded adventurer is a gentle departure from the sf/f norm. This is the sort of book that's okay for an afternoon, but that would be greatly enhanced by tipsy 2 AM IM chats about feminist motifs and fake sci-fi illnesses.
I finally finished The Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh, which is about what you'd expect from Cherryh: trust no one; keep your family close; outlive the bastards. Your perception is wrong, always, but if you are bold and desperate, you may bring your enemies to ruin.
I also reread Green Mars and Blue Mars, the back two-thirds of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, and The Martians, which reads as if someone had pulled out the "work in progress - does this fit?" drawer and dumped it into book form. I will never stop quibbling with the educational system as presented: how do your offspring of back-to-nature hunter-gatherers compete with the pampered urban youth? And what about the descendants of those asteroid exiles? How much of your history do you get to shed when your parents are Martian exiles? KSR presents a glowing vision of the unified Martian culture, but the writing doesn't entirely bear out authorial intent. Possibly I am missing something, but from my perspective, Blue Mars fails to carry the second-order worldbuilding effects to a logical conclusion. This drives me nuts because the first two books are awesome, and the third comes out a little cute in comparison. (I am looking at Sax and Ann as I say this. Yes, high "awwwww, sweet!" factor, but a little convenient.) There is a book I like a lot more hiding in the BM worldbuiling.
The Martians includes the novella "Green Mars" (not to be confused with the novel of the same name), which somehow makes mountain climbing the most awesome thing that I am too chicken to do, and "A Martian Romance", which is not elegiac.
I love Green Mars with all of my heart. The revolution sequence is awesome. Definite desert island book.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-16 04:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-16 07:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-16 02:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-16 07:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-16 04:25 pm (UTC)The first two books sound really interesting! Thanks!
Doesn't look like the Staples book is available here easily. oh well.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-16 07:42 pm (UTC)A Brother's Price is one of those books I want people to read so I can tear apart the worldbuilding and build a wackier version. It's a novel very much in conversation with other novels.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-17 03:10 pm (UTC)Yeah, as a used book only though. Besides, I try not to buy too many books these days... ha ha. ;-p
The university library doesn't have it, but maybe I'll find it here someday!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-17 04:48 am (UTC)In that case, you might also like Dan Simmons' novella "On K2 with Kanakaredes". It, KSR's "Green Mars", and AC Clarke's "The Sentenel" would be three stories in a dream SF anthology about mountaineering.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-19 08:24 pm (UTC)Actually, that sounds like a cool project for WSFA Press. However, we are significantly lacking in local mountains.