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Entry tags:
Fairytales & Books
Finally on LJ! What the heck is going on with it? Sheesh!
I've been in a storm of reading some books that've been recced by readers over at Hathor.
The first one I dove into this past weekend was The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente. The other, which I read until about 3:30am this morning, was Feed by Mira Grant/Seanan Macguire. I lost track of Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, but I'll return to that one; it's complex, so I'll have to restart it, I think. Another book I've been slowly rereading is The Waters Rising by Sherri Tepper.
Tepper, a writer who writes with strong, often overstated themes, but always progressive and feminist...ergh, her book is problematic. It's based in the same world as her much earlier novel Plague of Angels, only further into the future. Tepper enjoys setting her SF/F books in pseudo fairy-tale worlds, or with fairytale ish characters. So, although Waters is a very different different book from In the Night Garden, let me tackle them both, because it was through reading In the Night Garden that I became motivated to write anything about Waters Rising.
The Waters Rising...where to start. Argh! Okay, it shares a main character with Plague of Angels-Abasio. It's an undeterminant number of years in the future from where he started. Mysteriously, the waters of earth are rising, and even more mysteriously, it's all fresh water, so the entire ecology of the earth is changing yet again. The reason I've been so reluctant to write about Waters is because it's so *scattered*. It's a mish-mash of odd talking creatures, unbelievable metamorphasis among the characters, and a bizarre mix of science and fantasy. The earlier book Plague of Angels worked better, was tighter, and used the tropes of fairy tales more effectively. In this case, it's not happening. It's almost as if Tepper thought this wild idea might as well mesh with that wild idea, and sewed it all together with a generations' long plot, coincidence and a total WTFery.
Part of the WTFery has to do with the main character, Xulai. She is coded as a far future Chinese girl (she's pictured on the cover). She starts out as a young girl, appearing to be around ten years old when Abasio meets her, and he develops feelings about her at odds with her appearance that admittedly kind of skeeve him out. But that's okay! Because she's actually NOT ten years old, and conveniently ages to a young nubile 19 year old girl when her magic camoflague wears off. Abasio is at least two or three or more times her age. It's difficult to say how much older, but let's just say...uhhh. If I relayed the plot, which mixes in assassin cybernetic monsters from the Big Kill times eons ago, an octopus sea king that speaks English (just like Horse) and is a sagelike being willing to help land creatures adapt to the rising waters, well, it's a good thing it's Tepper writing this, because I don't know if anyone else could remotely pull this sort of here-and-there plot together. And even she doesn't do it, either.
Moving on to The Night Garden! The Night Garden has to be one of the more intricately woven books I've read in a long while. No character is a minor character, and every character introduced as a secondary character in another character's story ends up in a story of their own, where their story is told and they become their own main character in their own lifestory. It's fabulous. Valente plays on her creatures' expectations of their futures-they know they're living in a fairytale, yet are surprised when the script doesn't go the way they think it will. And she plays on the readers' expectations of where and what the story is all about. It's slyly feminist. Rapunzel isn't who or what you think she is, and neither is the bartender she eventually meets. And the bartender discovers that his long-ago love is no longer who he wants her to be, and she has her own purpose (and always did). Stepmothers are kind and loving, and her daughters are jealous. Beasts are well-spoken and civilized, and humans are beastly. Everything is turned upside down in this world with its own mythology and religions of living stars and gods and creatures. It truly is a fantastical world of fairy fantasy.
There's a second book in the trilogy that's out, and I already bought it. The story in the first book just stops. Some story threads are wrapped up, but the frame story isn't resolved. Who is the girl telling the story? Why was she cursed with the tattoos around her eyes? The third book isn't out, but I'm eagerly awaiting it! After I finish the second book, of course.
I've been in a storm of reading some books that've been recced by readers over at Hathor.
The first one I dove into this past weekend was The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente. The other, which I read until about 3:30am this morning, was Feed by Mira Grant/Seanan Macguire. I lost track of Perdido Street Station by China Mieville, but I'll return to that one; it's complex, so I'll have to restart it, I think. Another book I've been slowly rereading is The Waters Rising by Sherri Tepper.
Tepper, a writer who writes with strong, often overstated themes, but always progressive and feminist...ergh, her book is problematic. It's based in the same world as her much earlier novel Plague of Angels, only further into the future. Tepper enjoys setting her SF/F books in pseudo fairy-tale worlds, or with fairytale ish characters. So, although Waters is a very different different book from In the Night Garden, let me tackle them both, because it was through reading In the Night Garden that I became motivated to write anything about Waters Rising.
The Waters Rising...where to start. Argh! Okay, it shares a main character with Plague of Angels-Abasio. It's an undeterminant number of years in the future from where he started. Mysteriously, the waters of earth are rising, and even more mysteriously, it's all fresh water, so the entire ecology of the earth is changing yet again. The reason I've been so reluctant to write about Waters is because it's so *scattered*. It's a mish-mash of odd talking creatures, unbelievable metamorphasis among the characters, and a bizarre mix of science and fantasy. The earlier book Plague of Angels worked better, was tighter, and used the tropes of fairy tales more effectively. In this case, it's not happening. It's almost as if Tepper thought this wild idea might as well mesh with that wild idea, and sewed it all together with a generations' long plot, coincidence and a total WTFery.
Part of the WTFery has to do with the main character, Xulai. She is coded as a far future Chinese girl (she's pictured on the cover). She starts out as a young girl, appearing to be around ten years old when Abasio meets her, and he develops feelings about her at odds with her appearance that admittedly kind of skeeve him out. But that's okay! Because she's actually NOT ten years old, and conveniently ages to a young nubile 19 year old girl when her magic camoflague wears off. Abasio is at least two or three or more times her age. It's difficult to say how much older, but let's just say...uhhh. If I relayed the plot, which mixes in assassin cybernetic monsters from the Big Kill times eons ago, an octopus sea king that speaks English (just like Horse) and is a sagelike being willing to help land creatures adapt to the rising waters, well, it's a good thing it's Tepper writing this, because I don't know if anyone else could remotely pull this sort of here-and-there plot together. And even she doesn't do it, either.
Moving on to The Night Garden! The Night Garden has to be one of the more intricately woven books I've read in a long while. No character is a minor character, and every character introduced as a secondary character in another character's story ends up in a story of their own, where their story is told and they become their own main character in their own lifestory. It's fabulous. Valente plays on her creatures' expectations of their futures-they know they're living in a fairytale, yet are surprised when the script doesn't go the way they think it will. And she plays on the readers' expectations of where and what the story is all about. It's slyly feminist. Rapunzel isn't who or what you think she is, and neither is the bartender she eventually meets. And the bartender discovers that his long-ago love is no longer who he wants her to be, and she has her own purpose (and always did). Stepmothers are kind and loving, and her daughters are jealous. Beasts are well-spoken and civilized, and humans are beastly. Everything is turned upside down in this world with its own mythology and religions of living stars and gods and creatures. It truly is a fantastical world of fairy fantasy.
There's a second book in the trilogy that's out, and I already bought it. The story in the first book just stops. Some story threads are wrapped up, but the frame story isn't resolved. Who is the girl telling the story? Why was she cursed with the tattoos around her eyes? The third book isn't out, but I'm eagerly awaiting it! After I finish the second book, of course.