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Mar. 27th, 2007 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnI didn't feel like doing anything last week. So I read a lot.
-Privilege of the Sword (Kushner) - I wanted to like this book. Some bits I liked a great deal-- I did like Katherine (the main character). I thought it was a nice touch that she liked petticoats. I loved the soap-opera book/play, and loved all the scenes between Katherine and her teachers, especially the Master. And I did like Artemisia. And I was SO afraid that Katherine would turn out to be a Mary Sue Master Swordswoman, but Kushner sidestepped that trap neatly.
However... I thought the plot left a bit to be desired. I guess it's a bit my fault, as I've been rereading a lot of Brust and Bujold lately, and they are the masters of well-crafted, superbly-engineered plots that tidy up the loose ends and tie everything together in an elaborate and elegant bow. This was more... like a hairball. None of the subplots seemed to connect to anything, and the main plot seemed just kind of stupid. Perhaps it would help if I read the preceding books? (Which I tried to do, but my Annoying Library seems to have a mission statement never to have the first books of series.) I'd read a couple of short stories set in the same universe, so at least I was vaguely familiar with the names.
Duke Alec: Niece, you will learn swordfighting so that you can defend yourself and so that I can have an excuse to visit my lover.
Richard: So remind me why we can't go off together and live happily ever after?
Duke Alec: Because I must be in the city!
Richard: Why?
Duke Alec: Because mumble mumble.
Lord Ferris: I am Evil. So pardon me while I do some evil things as superfluous subplots. Okay. Now to prove I am Evil, I will insult you! Also I will insult your niece.
Duke Alec: You are the 53rd person to insult my niece! Therefore I must fly into a rage and kill you. Oops, because of my murder now I have to flee the city and live happily ever after, even though all the reasons I can't leave the city are still presumably the same. Except I was cleverly vague about explaining them the first time.
Katherine and supporting cast: We'll also live happily ever after as Duchess and such, though we have no actual experience in politics besides some very amateur spying work.
...Am I missing something? Also, it seems that Ferris has always been the villain of these books, in which case I don't understand why Alec didn't kill him years ago. Or at the beginning of this book. I mean, it all seems very arbitrary to me. No reason seems to be given why now was the proper time to kill him. Especially if a well-placed murder was all that was keeping him from Richard.
Also, this is a really dumb point, but all the characters kept saying, "Oh my god!" And every time they said it I would think, "Wait! What is the religion here? Lessee... looks like Dumas-era France what with the swords and all, so maybe some sort of degenerate Catholicsm? Or perhaps the lowercase indicates they're all Deists? I guess it can't be polytheism... hmm... So, like, how exactly does the economy of Riverside sustain itself, anyway?" See, when you hit a discordant note like that it just breaks the spell of suspension-of-disbelief. And it makes me sad, because Kushner writes too well to lose me due to a stupid detail like that.
-Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar and Daughter of Time. All![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mistful's fault. Why did I not know about her before now? Daughter of Time won my heart with its description of the bestsellers Grant has by his bed, as well as its characterization of Mary Queen of Scots as "silly." (Well, she was!) However, I do kinda wish I'd read it before reading the Weir. Because Grant would say, "Clearly x means Richard didn't kill the Princes," and I'd be all, "But what about Y?"
Brat Farrar had no such problems, and I adored it. Tey ... reminds me vaguely of Agatha Christie, in that it's very English and almost cuddly, only stronger and better. Like, I actually care about Tey's characters.
-The Eyre Affair (Fforde), which I've heard is good. I had a really difficult time getting into it, mostly because I feel like it's trying too hard to be witty and flippant and oh-time-travel-isn't-it-cute, and look-the-heroine-is-named-Thursday-Next-isn't-that-cute, and the literary references are often kind of clunky ("Look!! Jane Eyre doesn't marry Rochester in this universe!!") - I'm much more a fan of my literary references being tossed off effortlessly, like Sayers does. Make it look easy! Also, it interfered with my actually caring about the characters-- I was really kind of not very interested in the narrator's tribulations. On the other hand? The Richard-III-recast-as-Rocky-Horror ("When is the winter of our discontent?" "Now is the winter...") was just awesome and made up for a lot.
-Privilege of the Sword (Kushner) - I wanted to like this book. Some bits I liked a great deal-- I did like Katherine (the main character). I thought it was a nice touch that she liked petticoats. I loved the soap-opera book/play, and loved all the scenes between Katherine and her teachers, especially the Master. And I did like Artemisia. And I was SO afraid that Katherine would turn out to be a Mary Sue Master Swordswoman, but Kushner sidestepped that trap neatly.
However... I thought the plot left a bit to be desired. I guess it's a bit my fault, as I've been rereading a lot of Brust and Bujold lately, and they are the masters of well-crafted, superbly-engineered plots that tidy up the loose ends and tie everything together in an elaborate and elegant bow. This was more... like a hairball. None of the subplots seemed to connect to anything, and the main plot seemed just kind of stupid. Perhaps it would help if I read the preceding books? (Which I tried to do, but my Annoying Library seems to have a mission statement never to have the first books of series.) I'd read a couple of short stories set in the same universe, so at least I was vaguely familiar with the names.
Duke Alec: Niece, you will learn swordfighting so that you can defend yourself and so that I can have an excuse to visit my lover.
Richard: So remind me why we can't go off together and live happily ever after?
Duke Alec: Because I must be in the city!
Richard: Why?
Duke Alec: Because mumble mumble.
Lord Ferris: I am Evil. So pardon me while I do some evil things as superfluous subplots. Okay. Now to prove I am Evil, I will insult you! Also I will insult your niece.
Duke Alec: You are the 53rd person to insult my niece! Therefore I must fly into a rage and kill you. Oops, because of my murder now I have to flee the city and live happily ever after, even though all the reasons I can't leave the city are still presumably the same. Except I was cleverly vague about explaining them the first time.
Katherine and supporting cast: We'll also live happily ever after as Duchess and such, though we have no actual experience in politics besides some very amateur spying work.
...Am I missing something? Also, it seems that Ferris has always been the villain of these books, in which case I don't understand why Alec didn't kill him years ago. Or at the beginning of this book. I mean, it all seems very arbitrary to me. No reason seems to be given why now was the proper time to kill him. Especially if a well-placed murder was all that was keeping him from Richard.
Also, this is a really dumb point, but all the characters kept saying, "Oh my god!" And every time they said it I would think, "Wait! What is the religion here? Lessee... looks like Dumas-era France what with the swords and all, so maybe some sort of degenerate Catholicsm? Or perhaps the lowercase indicates they're all Deists? I guess it can't be polytheism... hmm... So, like, how exactly does the economy of Riverside sustain itself, anyway?" See, when you hit a discordant note like that it just breaks the spell of suspension-of-disbelief. And it makes me sad, because Kushner writes too well to lose me due to a stupid detail like that.
-Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar and Daughter of Time. All
mistful's fault. Why did I not know about her before now? Daughter of Time won my heart with its description of the bestsellers Grant has by his bed, as well as its characterization of Mary Queen of Scots as "silly." (Well, she was!) However, I do kinda wish I'd read it before reading the Weir. Because Grant would say, "Clearly x means Richard didn't kill the Princes," and I'd be all, "But what about Y?" Brat Farrar had no such problems, and I adored it. Tey ... reminds me vaguely of Agatha Christie, in that it's very English and almost cuddly, only stronger and better. Like, I actually care about Tey's characters.
-The Eyre Affair (Fforde), which I've heard is good. I had a really difficult time getting into it, mostly because I feel like it's trying too hard to be witty and flippant and oh-time-travel-isn't-it-cute, and look-the-heroine-is-named-Thursday-Next-isn't-that-cute, and the literary references are often kind of clunky ("Look!! Jane Eyre doesn't marry Rochester in this universe!!") - I'm much more a fan of my literary references being tossed off effortlessly, like Sayers does. Make it look easy! Also, it interfered with my actually caring about the characters-- I was really kind of not very interested in the narrator's tribulations. On the other hand? The Richard-III-recast-as-Rocky-Horror ("When is the winter of our discontent?" "Now is the winter...") was just awesome and made up for a lot.
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Date: 2007-04-17 08:29 pm (UTC)