Fantasy Retread (October Reading)
Nov. 2nd, 2007 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseA Swiftly Tilting Planet (Madeleine L'Engle): Reread. Charles Wallace and the unicorn Gaudior have really cool adventures. I am frustrated that Mrs. O'Keefe is redeemed just in time to die; it's a willful simplification of family dynamics, and lacks the tension of the lesson that, however interestingly tragic your life may be, you can still be a pain in the neck. However, the rest of the book is fun, and makes interesting use of the Lorica of St. Patrick. Contrast this with fantasy series whose Epic Poetry of Prophecy is... not interesting.
Parable of the Talents (Octavia Butler): Also a reread. I like Parable of the Sower more, but I think Talents may be the better book. It uses the contrasting narrative voices well, and I like the device of the entire book being told through written words, however improbable. History is written by the victors - and the bystanders - and the people too stubborn to stop writing, and reflects those different perspectives. Sometimes, one must question who won. I keenly feel the mother-daughter estrangement, Asha / Larkin's bitter insight and refusal to fall into Lauren Olamina's orbit. When I was younger I had more sympathy for Marc, Lauren's minister brother, but now I have understanding without necessarily sympathy. Marc and Asha manage "alone together" quite well. You can tell how much Butler engages me because I get all tangled in character and motivation and lose perspective on the fact that this is all fiction.
Many Waters (Madeleine L'Engle): Still rereading! My least favorite of the Wrinkle quartet. Similar manifestations of evil show up in L'Engle's Wrinkle novels and Diane Duane's Wizard series; evil is something other, is the cruel man offscreen or the destroyer cloaked in soft, wasteful lies. Evil is pretty clearly telegraphed as such; these aren't the universes of good intentions harming people.
This is a major issue for me in Many Waters, since it deals with the wickedness of Man before the biblical Flood. Only it doesn't, really: we see the Good Family of Noah and the Bad Family of - drat, the book's at the library, the one with the red-haired seductress! - but we don't see what the rest of the people of the oasis, let alone the world, have done to deserve death by drowning. There's a hazy sense that people are mean, and a less hazy sense that the Nephilim are up to no good, but there isn't a lot of evidence that most people are really evil most of the time. This was a major detractor and kept me from enjoying the rest of the book as much. Also, the Yalith-Teglah desire vs seduction plot didn't do a lot for me.
Tehanu (Ursula K. Le Guin): Yes, I did my best to reread the entire series, except for The Other Wind. I understand why, thirty years later, Le Guin might have felt the original trilogy didn't serve her goals, but I am less sympathetic to the execution of her patch-work. Several scenes do logical jumps I still barely follow, three rereads later, and I am displeased with Spark's plotline. (Moment of truth? I want a story where he sells Oak Farm and uses the money to buy a legitimate ship, co-financed by his ex-pirate boyfriend. If Spark doesn't know Tenar, well, I'm willing to imagine that Tenar doesn't know Spark, either. I want everyone to be complicated and more than they seem. Call it the iceberg theory of characterization.)
Anyway. Logical jumps. I am unhappy with the oblique Moss-Tenar discussions of celibacy; I am unhappy with the implication that "normal people" have no recourse against magery, and can only be saved by summoning a dragon (name that quote! "No matter who subtle the wizard, a knife in the back will seriously cramp his style"), and I am frustrated by Le Guin still not figuring out how to make a non-heroic story interesting. However, I find the romantic plot so cute! I am possibly not supposed to, but there it is: I think Tenar and Ged make a good partnership, magery or no.
A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin): The first Earthsea book, where evil is the Old Powers and your own shadow. Le Guin does heartstopping moments of poetry and fun ethnological worldbuilding, and I am unfazed by its age. The story holds up well enough for me.
Power skimmed Tales from Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin), which is exactly as I remember it. It turns out some pieces imprinted deeper than I thought, which goes to show the power of a good storytelling idea, even in the face of raving alchemists.
Bloodchild and Other Stories (Octavia Butler): Also a reread, because some days nothing will please you but a bloodcurdling love story with male pregnancy. There's two short essays in the back, and story notes after each story, which I like because it shows another angle of Butler's thoughts, and lets me sputter, "but - but -" when I slam into the places I thought one thing and she thought something else.
Notes on particular stories: "Bloodchild" will always have a special place in my heart for being completely alien; "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" is like Hell crossed with proto-Clay's Ark; I actually managed to wipe "Near of Kin" out of my memory, which shows where my lines lie; "Speech Sounds" has one of the best twist endings ever; "Crossover" scares the daylights out of me. Questions?
Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind (Keith Devlin): Nonfiction. Devlin on logic, and attempts to apply logic to human communication, and how this has spectacularly failed to produce good working models of how people talk to each other. Eleven or twelve chapters, and I'm not sure if I've retained anything more than the briefest highlights of any of it. It's a topic well-treated by someone who knows what they're talking about, but it's dense; I picked this up in late August, and only now finished it. Someone who knows more about logic - in other words, isn't starting from "what is logic?" - may find this an easier read.
The Marquisarde (Louise Marley): Professional flutist and Parisian Ebriel Serique runs into the flip side of priviledge when her husband and daughter are killed in a terrorist raid that might be anything but. Her grief and hunger for revenge propel her into a well-heeled resistance group and the path of James Running Bull.
The driving elements of the plot are the Line of Demarcation separating the first world haves from the third world have nots, and the authoritative actions of General Glass, cardboard villain. The Line was drawn sometime after a vaguely referenced energy crisis collapsed into extensive fighting, including biochemical and nuclear warfare. The Haves were saved by inventor Ethan Fleck's development of an all-purpose fuel cell, and the have-nots are shut out of Europe, North America, and parts of Asia by border surveillance and guns.
However, Fleck is a benevolent sort of inventor, and from his home on Star Hotel One (the only space station mentioned in the text) he orchestrates his personal resistance to the first world's embargos, censorship and general propensity toward evil totalitarianism. Ebriel rocky development from grieving woman bent on revenge to functioning member of the Chain (Fleck's resistance group) take up most of the book. It's an interesting story arc because Ebriel is constantly thwarted in her expectations. The Maquisards of WWII were armed resistance fighters; she is rescued from unwilling confinement by a group who resists the InCo hegemony, but primarily through other means than conflict. Not that this phases Ebriel, at first -
"Si," said Pilar, smiling. "We are the little shrub that trips the soldier - what do you call it?
Ebriel exclaimed, "Ah! The maquis? You are the resistance! The maquis!"
- Ebriel names them the maquis, with all the romantic WW2 associations that conjures, but the women of this resistance call themselves the Chain, and emphasize the human capital of the nations outside the Line. The one major issue I have with them is their fearless leader, Ethan Fleck, and his fucking benevolent attitude whenever he tells a grown woman to call him Papa. To say I hated this only begins to encompass my extraordinary dislike, which nearly threw me out of the book every single time someone said it.
I should say something about the romance plot and James Running Bull. So. He is there, he has manpain about his alcoholic, abusive father (both traits he dad gets over during the book, through the power of being ashamed in front of your grown son or something - the horror! You're an old, mean alcoholic, and your son assimilated in your inebriated absence!) and about his allegiance to the International Cooperative Alliance, and mostly gets over his angst. I think I perceive Captain Bull as an even more uptight stick-in-the-mud than the author intended. This may be why my reaction to Bull's horror of the military black ops squad was, "yeah, and? Oh wait, did your Native American upbringing fail to inform you that the white Europeans can and will play dirty?"
Ebriel and James get their happy ending, after some angst. I am pleased that the narrative focus was on Ebriel, but I'm unhappy that James' plot was handled awkwardly. I can see the parallel experience of learning their happy hegemony isn't that happy that the author was reaching for, but it wasn't always executed well.
Overall, good idea, hampered by one personal quirk, a weak B-for-Boy plot, and some strangely passive prose. However, I am sufficiently intrigued I'm poking around for other books Louise Marley's written.
Parable of the Talents (Octavia Butler): Also a reread. I like Parable of the Sower more, but I think Talents may be the better book. It uses the contrasting narrative voices well, and I like the device of the entire book being told through written words, however improbable. History is written by the victors - and the bystanders - and the people too stubborn to stop writing, and reflects those different perspectives. Sometimes, one must question who won. I keenly feel the mother-daughter estrangement, Asha / Larkin's bitter insight and refusal to fall into Lauren Olamina's orbit. When I was younger I had more sympathy for Marc, Lauren's minister brother, but now I have understanding without necessarily sympathy. Marc and Asha manage "alone together" quite well. You can tell how much Butler engages me because I get all tangled in character and motivation and lose perspective on the fact that this is all fiction.
Many Waters (Madeleine L'Engle): Still rereading! My least favorite of the Wrinkle quartet. Similar manifestations of evil show up in L'Engle's Wrinkle novels and Diane Duane's Wizard series; evil is something other, is the cruel man offscreen or the destroyer cloaked in soft, wasteful lies. Evil is pretty clearly telegraphed as such; these aren't the universes of good intentions harming people.
This is a major issue for me in Many Waters, since it deals with the wickedness of Man before the biblical Flood. Only it doesn't, really: we see the Good Family of Noah and the Bad Family of - drat, the book's at the library, the one with the red-haired seductress! - but we don't see what the rest of the people of the oasis, let alone the world, have done to deserve death by drowning. There's a hazy sense that people are mean, and a less hazy sense that the Nephilim are up to no good, but there isn't a lot of evidence that most people are really evil most of the time. This was a major detractor and kept me from enjoying the rest of the book as much. Also, the Yalith-Teglah desire vs seduction plot didn't do a lot for me.
Tehanu (Ursula K. Le Guin): Yes, I did my best to reread the entire series, except for The Other Wind. I understand why, thirty years later, Le Guin might have felt the original trilogy didn't serve her goals, but I am less sympathetic to the execution of her patch-work. Several scenes do logical jumps I still barely follow, three rereads later, and I am displeased with Spark's plotline. (Moment of truth? I want a story where he sells Oak Farm and uses the money to buy a legitimate ship, co-financed by his ex-pirate boyfriend. If Spark doesn't know Tenar, well, I'm willing to imagine that Tenar doesn't know Spark, either. I want everyone to be complicated and more than they seem. Call it the iceberg theory of characterization.)
Anyway. Logical jumps. I am unhappy with the oblique Moss-Tenar discussions of celibacy; I am unhappy with the implication that "normal people" have no recourse against magery, and can only be saved by summoning a dragon (name that quote! "No matter who subtle the wizard, a knife in the back will seriously cramp his style"), and I am frustrated by Le Guin still not figuring out how to make a non-heroic story interesting. However, I find the romantic plot so cute! I am possibly not supposed to, but there it is: I think Tenar and Ged make a good partnership, magery or no.
A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin): The first Earthsea book, where evil is the Old Powers and your own shadow. Le Guin does heartstopping moments of poetry and fun ethnological worldbuilding, and I am unfazed by its age. The story holds up well enough for me.
Power skimmed Tales from Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin), which is exactly as I remember it. It turns out some pieces imprinted deeper than I thought, which goes to show the power of a good storytelling idea, even in the face of raving alchemists.
Bloodchild and Other Stories (Octavia Butler): Also a reread, because some days nothing will please you but a bloodcurdling love story with male pregnancy. There's two short essays in the back, and story notes after each story, which I like because it shows another angle of Butler's thoughts, and lets me sputter, "but - but -" when I slam into the places I thought one thing and she thought something else.
Notes on particular stories: "Bloodchild" will always have a special place in my heart for being completely alien; "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" is like Hell crossed with proto-Clay's Ark; I actually managed to wipe "Near of Kin" out of my memory, which shows where my lines lie; "Speech Sounds" has one of the best twist endings ever; "Crossover" scares the daylights out of me. Questions?
Goodbye, Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind (Keith Devlin): Nonfiction. Devlin on logic, and attempts to apply logic to human communication, and how this has spectacularly failed to produce good working models of how people talk to each other. Eleven or twelve chapters, and I'm not sure if I've retained anything more than the briefest highlights of any of it. It's a topic well-treated by someone who knows what they're talking about, but it's dense; I picked this up in late August, and only now finished it. Someone who knows more about logic - in other words, isn't starting from "what is logic?" - may find this an easier read.
The Marquisarde (Louise Marley): Professional flutist and Parisian Ebriel Serique runs into the flip side of priviledge when her husband and daughter are killed in a terrorist raid that might be anything but. Her grief and hunger for revenge propel her into a well-heeled resistance group and the path of James Running Bull.
The driving elements of the plot are the Line of Demarcation separating the first world haves from the third world have nots, and the authoritative actions of General Glass, cardboard villain. The Line was drawn sometime after a vaguely referenced energy crisis collapsed into extensive fighting, including biochemical and nuclear warfare. The Haves were saved by inventor Ethan Fleck's development of an all-purpose fuel cell, and the have-nots are shut out of Europe, North America, and parts of Asia by border surveillance and guns.
However, Fleck is a benevolent sort of inventor, and from his home on Star Hotel One (the only space station mentioned in the text) he orchestrates his personal resistance to the first world's embargos, censorship and general propensity toward evil totalitarianism. Ebriel rocky development from grieving woman bent on revenge to functioning member of the Chain (Fleck's resistance group) take up most of the book. It's an interesting story arc because Ebriel is constantly thwarted in her expectations. The Maquisards of WWII were armed resistance fighters; she is rescued from unwilling confinement by a group who resists the InCo hegemony, but primarily through other means than conflict. Not that this phases Ebriel, at first -
"Si," said Pilar, smiling. "We are the little shrub that trips the soldier - what do you call it?
Ebriel exclaimed, "Ah! The maquis? You are the resistance! The maquis!"
- Ebriel names them the maquis, with all the romantic WW2 associations that conjures, but the women of this resistance call themselves the Chain, and emphasize the human capital of the nations outside the Line. The one major issue I have with them is their fearless leader, Ethan Fleck, and his fucking benevolent attitude whenever he tells a grown woman to call him Papa. To say I hated this only begins to encompass my extraordinary dislike, which nearly threw me out of the book every single time someone said it.
I should say something about the romance plot and James Running Bull. So. He is there, he has manpain about his alcoholic, abusive father (both traits he dad gets over during the book, through the power of being ashamed in front of your grown son or something - the horror! You're an old, mean alcoholic, and your son assimilated in your inebriated absence!) and about his allegiance to the International Cooperative Alliance, and mostly gets over his angst. I think I perceive Captain Bull as an even more uptight stick-in-the-mud than the author intended. This may be why my reaction to Bull's horror of the military black ops squad was, "yeah, and? Oh wait, did your Native American upbringing fail to inform you that the white Europeans can and will play dirty?"
Ebriel and James get their happy ending, after some angst. I am pleased that the narrative focus was on Ebriel, but I'm unhappy that James' plot was handled awkwardly. I can see the parallel experience of learning their happy hegemony isn't that happy that the author was reaching for, but it wasn't always executed well.
Overall, good idea, hampered by one personal quirk, a weak B-for-Boy plot, and some strangely passive prose. However, I am sufficiently intrigued I'm poking around for other books Louise Marley's written.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-07 02:02 am (UTC)A. a boarding-school novel that
B. had RAD COOL KEEN 'classroom scenes' (the battle room), and
C. insanely abusive fellow-students and teachers, who
D. had a secret agenda (the teachers. The sadistic student was your standard bully character).
If that appeals, read it. If not, don't. :->
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-07 03:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-07 02:45 pm (UTC)*embarrassed*