Escapism (March Reading)
Apr. 15th, 2009 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aseHalf a Crown (Jo Walton / ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
papersky): Third in the series. I... don't have a lot to say about this. British democracy is sort of saved from fascism by British debutante traditions? Maybe? I lost my focus somewhere in there, and can't see what the heck Walton was trying to do. I find myself engaged by the characters even while I want to beat them with their own flimsy assumptions - really, Carmichael, what made you think Elvira was anything like safe, standing in your shadow? - and I was entertained in my puzzlement, but the fact that I'm reacting on an in-book character level and not intuitively feeling the themes* means I'm in no rush to reread. There is a sensibility here that I appreciate (most ironic sedar in 2008 fiction), but also an approach to genre and story-telling that isn't meshing with my approach to reading. Also, between this and Little Brother, I am done with based-on-Gitmo headgames in my fiction for a while.
*I'm finding Watsonian and not Doylist reasons, in other words.
Y: the Last Man: 8-10: Kimono Dragons, Motherland, Whys and Wherefores (Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra): As previously mentioned, if you laid out a checklist of things I like in fiction, this hits pretty much every single one of them, right down to the bittersweet "sixty years later" epilogue. (Good news: humanity survives. Bad news: if you wait long enough, everyone dies.)charlie_ego and I had very different reactions to the McGuffin, because we approached it with different expectations, and if I were taking my time I would use this as an example of genre expectations and reader enjoyment, and will cheerfully expand if you give me an excuse.
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Jared Diamond): Why did Europeans take over the world? Conversely, why did other aggregates of humanity not spread their influence across the globe? I think my comments to toraks pretty much sum my reaction: great idea, but so broad many details may be quibbled. I think it's important to remember that the book was published in 1997 and research keeps messing with Diamond's ideas. Corn dating, diseases we gave to cattle, other stuff I just haven't seen yet, but I'm sure is out there. Also, people other than me have complained they get bored with Diamond beating the reader over the head with his broad thesis (geography's influence on food production is the ultimate cause of The World As We Know It). I enjoyed seeing different examples of the same idea, but I can also see how other people might roll their eyes as he reiterates the Failure To Take Over The World checklist for the Americas, Africa, New Guinea, Australia, etc etc etc.So I think it's awesome, but I also think it should be read with a critical eye.
Uhura's Song (Janet Kagan): I mentioned tonorabombay I was reading this, and she said, "oh, the proto-furry novel?" I think the original ST tie-in novels weren't as rigidly policed then as some franchises are now. What struck me was not the furries, but the original characters. The novel could be described as Mary Sue Buckles A Swash and Saves a World. The plot - McCoy is stuck behind medical quarantine when plague strikes a planet of Federation cat-people, and the Enterprise races to another world to seek a cure - conveniently lets Kagan slip in a major original character, short and plucky Dr. Evan Wilson, who becomes the darling of the senior staff. Evan Wilson is very like Tocohol Susumo, a protagonist in Kagan's original novel Hellspark, which might be all right if this were not an ST novel. Or if I had read it when I was ten (hi, Timothy Zahn!). One does not expect an author's favorite new character to explain Spock to the aliens, make friends with Uhura and Scotty and Chekhov and the aliens, explain James Kirk to himself, and placate even McCoy from afar. And she has a shiny personal space skiff.
It's a little much.
On the flip side, Kagan invests some of that energy in the rest of the characters: the original characters with fur also come off as people (with tails); Uhura and Chekhov are critical players. Uhura gets to do anthropological xenolinguistics (I think that's what you'd call her extrapolation from events recorded as an oral / musical history), and Chekhov has secret live-off-the-land superpowers. Without them, all of Spock's logic and Kirk's leadership skills and McCoy and Wilson's mad science could not have carried the day. This was a team effort! I don't know if this is true for all Trek tie-in novels, but I appreciated Uhura and Chekhov's involvement. Entertaining, but the most lightweight of fluff.
I reread random parts of The Gate of Ivory (Doris Egan) because it's comfort reading. Lightweight, transparent prose, a sense of humor compatible with mine, a plot that doesn't challenge my attention span.
papersky): Third in the series. I... don't have a lot to say about this. British democracy is sort of saved from fascism by British debutante traditions? Maybe? I lost my focus somewhere in there, and can't see what the heck Walton was trying to do. I find myself engaged by the characters even while I want to beat them with their own flimsy assumptions - really, Carmichael, what made you think Elvira was anything like safe, standing in your shadow? - and I was entertained in my puzzlement, but the fact that I'm reacting on an in-book character level and not intuitively feeling the themes* means I'm in no rush to reread. There is a sensibility here that I appreciate (most ironic sedar in 2008 fiction), but also an approach to genre and story-telling that isn't meshing with my approach to reading. Also, between this and Little Brother, I am done with based-on-Gitmo headgames in my fiction for a while. *I'm finding Watsonian and not Doylist reasons, in other words.
Y: the Last Man: 8-10: Kimono Dragons, Motherland, Whys and Wherefores (Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra): As previously mentioned, if you laid out a checklist of things I like in fiction, this hits pretty much every single one of them, right down to the bittersweet "sixty years later" epilogue. (Good news: humanity survives. Bad news: if you wait long enough, everyone dies.)
charlie_ego and I had very different reactions to the McGuffin, because we approached it with different expectations, and if I were taking my time I would use this as an example of genre expectations and reader enjoyment, and will cheerfully expand if you give me an excuse.Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (Jared Diamond): Why did Europeans take over the world? Conversely, why did other aggregates of humanity not spread their influence across the globe? I think my comments to toraks pretty much sum my reaction: great idea, but so broad many details may be quibbled. I think it's important to remember that the book was published in 1997 and research keeps messing with Diamond's ideas. Corn dating, diseases we gave to cattle, other stuff I just haven't seen yet, but I'm sure is out there. Also, people other than me have complained they get bored with Diamond beating the reader over the head with his broad thesis (geography's influence on food production is the ultimate cause of The World As We Know It). I enjoyed seeing different examples of the same idea, but I can also see how other people might roll their eyes as he reiterates the Failure To Take Over The World checklist for the Americas, Africa, New Guinea, Australia, etc etc etc.So I think it's awesome, but I also think it should be read with a critical eye.
Uhura's Song (Janet Kagan): I mentioned to
norabombay I was reading this, and she said, "oh, the proto-furry novel?" I think the original ST tie-in novels weren't as rigidly policed then as some franchises are now. What struck me was not the furries, but the original characters. The novel could be described as Mary Sue Buckles A Swash and Saves a World. The plot - McCoy is stuck behind medical quarantine when plague strikes a planet of Federation cat-people, and the Enterprise races to another world to seek a cure - conveniently lets Kagan slip in a major original character, short and plucky Dr. Evan Wilson, who becomes the darling of the senior staff. Evan Wilson is very like Tocohol Susumo, a protagonist in Kagan's original novel Hellspark, which might be all right if this were not an ST novel. Or if I had read it when I was ten (hi, Timothy Zahn!). One does not expect an author's favorite new character to explain Spock to the aliens, make friends with Uhura and Scotty and Chekhov and the aliens, explain James Kirk to himself, and placate even McCoy from afar. And she has a shiny personal space skiff.It's a little much.
On the flip side, Kagan invests some of that energy in the rest of the characters: the original characters with fur also come off as people (with tails); Uhura and Chekhov are critical players. Uhura gets to do anthropological xenolinguistics (I think that's what you'd call her extrapolation from events recorded as an oral / musical history), and Chekhov has secret live-off-the-land superpowers. Without them, all of Spock's logic and Kirk's leadership skills and McCoy and Wilson's mad science could not have carried the day. This was a team effort! I don't know if this is true for all Trek tie-in novels, but I appreciated Uhura and Chekhov's involvement. Entertaining, but the most lightweight of fluff.
I reread random parts of The Gate of Ivory (Doris Egan) because it's comfort reading. Lightweight, transparent prose, a sense of humor compatible with mine, a plot that doesn't challenge my attention span.