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Feb. 10th, 2003
It's all the same, it's all the same...
Feb. 10th, 2003 08:48 pmNeither critique nor review. Maybe reader response?
I finished Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint last week. I liked it, but it felt familiar. If Dorothy Dunnett wrote Highlander slash, it would come out a bit like this. That's not a bad thing in my mind--and it wasn't that the characters themselves were borrowed--but the problem with a book which has such obvious literary referents is that one ends up making the comparison. And it never goes well: I kept thinking that if this were Dunnett the political plot would have been resolved more neatly; I found myself wishing for the gentle obscurity of The Ringed Castle, not to mention the sense of accomplishment when I realized what was going on.
Despite, or perhaps because of the familiarity, I enjoyed Swordspoint; I think the familiarity covered over the sense that it was only half-written and that the plot didn't quite work. I was going to say that the central relationship ended up overshadowing the story, but I'm not sure that's what it was (although that may be why it felt like fanfic to me). Characters kept acting in ways which seemed out of character in order to further (or further complicate) the plot. But it may be that these issues will be resolved on a reread.
Next is The Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle, one of those books I never got around to reading in high school. I did read the second book in this set (Ancient Light), which may pose a problem, as the ending left a strong impression on me. Something about that book made me nostalgic for the earlier Darkover books; the description of the way the planet smelled, I think, which is odd because I don't have a very strong olfactory memory. I'm hoping that I don't have the same reaction this time, as all my Darkover books are buried in my parents' basement, three thousand miles away.
To continue the comparative theme, I saw Cabaret last night, thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
irishkate. I couldn't help thinking that everyone in it seemed like minor characters from an Alan Furst novel, except more gay (not that Furst is free of queer text and subtext, but not like this). It was a great production and the conceit of seating the audience around little tables with lamps on them, as if they really were at a nightclub, worked very well. Sadly, I had all the wrong referents: the rest of the audience may have been transported to Berlin and the Kit Kat Club, but I was off in Vienna waiting for Mottel Motkevich or (even better) the Zebra Girls.
Meanwhile old things seemed new: I'd also bought a copy of Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody at the Strand. I loved this book as a child and settled down happily for a comforting reread. By the end of the book I was sobbing my eyes out. I forgot quite how uncompromising the book is in its treatment of love, betrayal and loss. My heart ached for Sirius and Kathleen in those dreadful last moments when they both got what they innocently wished for. The book doesn't close off the possibility of happiness, but it ends at the absence of misery instead.
I'd also forgotten how openly children's fantasies of this sort deal with the (perhaps equally open?) prejudices of English society in the seventies; the abuse meeted out to Kathleen solely because she's Irish is pretty horrible, and when it isn't ignored it's treated as an embarrassment by the adults in the book, not a problem. It reminded me of the scene with the Pakistani boy at the opening of Susan Cooper's Silver on the Tree (a scene my husband claims is the key scene for understanding what the Dark is; I'm not sure how that matches up withveejane's observations on the "good" Roman/Briton/Celts and the "bad" Angles/Saxons/Danes, except that the latter seem to arrive with fire and, inevitably, the sword).
I finished Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint last week. I liked it, but it felt familiar. If Dorothy Dunnett wrote Highlander slash, it would come out a bit like this. That's not a bad thing in my mind--and it wasn't that the characters themselves were borrowed--but the problem with a book which has such obvious literary referents is that one ends up making the comparison. And it never goes well: I kept thinking that if this were Dunnett the political plot would have been resolved more neatly; I found myself wishing for the gentle obscurity of The Ringed Castle, not to mention the sense of accomplishment when I realized what was going on.
Despite, or perhaps because of the familiarity, I enjoyed Swordspoint; I think the familiarity covered over the sense that it was only half-written and that the plot didn't quite work. I was going to say that the central relationship ended up overshadowing the story, but I'm not sure that's what it was (although that may be why it felt like fanfic to me). Characters kept acting in ways which seemed out of character in order to further (or further complicate) the plot. But it may be that these issues will be resolved on a reread.
Next is The Golden Witchbreed by Mary Gentle, one of those books I never got around to reading in high school. I did read the second book in this set (Ancient Light), which may pose a problem, as the ending left a strong impression on me. Something about that book made me nostalgic for the earlier Darkover books; the description of the way the planet smelled, I think, which is odd because I don't have a very strong olfactory memory. I'm hoping that I don't have the same reaction this time, as all my Darkover books are buried in my parents' basement, three thousand miles away.
To continue the comparative theme, I saw Cabaret last night, thanks to
irishkate. I couldn't help thinking that everyone in it seemed like minor characters from an Alan Furst novel, except more gay (not that Furst is free of queer text and subtext, but not like this). It was a great production and the conceit of seating the audience around little tables with lamps on them, as if they really were at a nightclub, worked very well. Sadly, I had all the wrong referents: the rest of the audience may have been transported to Berlin and the Kit Kat Club, but I was off in Vienna waiting for Mottel Motkevich or (even better) the Zebra Girls.Meanwhile old things seemed new: I'd also bought a copy of Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody at the Strand. I loved this book as a child and settled down happily for a comforting reread. By the end of the book I was sobbing my eyes out. I forgot quite how uncompromising the book is in its treatment of love, betrayal and loss. My heart ached for Sirius and Kathleen in those dreadful last moments when they both got what they innocently wished for. The book doesn't close off the possibility of happiness, but it ends at the absence of misery instead.
I'd also forgotten how openly children's fantasies of this sort deal with the (perhaps equally open?) prejudices of English society in the seventies; the abuse meeted out to Kathleen solely because she's Irish is pretty horrible, and when it isn't ignored it's treated as an embarrassment by the adults in the book, not a problem. It reminded me of the scene with the Pakistani boy at the opening of Susan Cooper's Silver on the Tree (a scene my husband claims is the key scene for understanding what the Dark is; I'm not sure how that matches up with
veejane's observations on the "good" Roman/Briton/Celts and the "bad" Angles/Saxons/Danes, except that the latter seem to arrive with fire and, inevitably, the sword).