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Fantasy Retread (October Reading)
Nov. 2nd, 2007 03:09 pmA Swiftly Tilting Planet (Madeleine L'Engle): Reread. Charles Wallace and the unicorn Gaudior have really cool adventures. ( I am frustrated by Mom O'Keefe spoilers. )
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.
( Many Waters spoilers. )
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, and other spoilers. )
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.
( I liked the idea, but the execution was shaky. Spoilers! )
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.
( Many Waters spoilers. )
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, and other spoilers. )
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.
( I liked the idea, but the execution was shaky. Spoilers! )
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.
