The Cold Commands
21 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Books Tags: books, fantasy, review, richard morgan, sf
I’d like to say that The Cold Commands is a satisfactory or entertaining sequel to Richard Morgan’s The Steel Remains, but those who have read the latter would know that I was lying through my teeth; it couldn’t be either. So I will go with ‘appropriate.’ Other adjectives to describe it as a novel include ‘enthralling,’ ‘chilling’, and ‘relentless’.
You could probably read this without having read the first book, but personally I wouldn’t recommend it; partly because things make more sense in context, and partly because The Steel Remains is excellent.
The enthralling part comes largely from the characters: the situations they find themselves in and their development as people. As with the first book, the story is largely told from the perspective of Ringil, Egar and Archeth. Ringil is recovering – slowly – from his time with the dwenda Seethlaw, but he has changed: not only older, maybe wiser, definitely sorer, but in some even more intangible ways also involving blue fire and interest from the dark gods themselves. Ringil is a delightfully ironic take on the stereotypical fantasy hero; he’s a warrior, wields a sword gifted to him by non-humans, and has a strong sense of justice… but he’s also homosexual in a world that doesn’t accept that, has been disowned by his family and forgotten by most of the world, and doesn’t particularly want to fight most of the time. On the other hand, Egar Dragonbane quite likes fighting, almost as much as he likes having sex. Exiled from his home on the barren steppes, Egar is struggling to come to terms again with city living and his one-time mistress. Egar is definitely more in the Conan tradition, and provides an interesting contrast to Ringil, with the added benefit of more brains that nomadic barbarians have classically been awarded. Also, more humour. Rounding out a truly unlikely trio is Archeth, I think the most interesting of the three. She’s a half-breed – half human, half Kiriath, the now-absent one-time allies of the humans – which means she has access to and some control over what might be magic or might be highly advanced technology (there’s definitely some playing with the old Clarke adage here). She too is homosexual, leading to some difficulties, which combined with the fact that she is female and has the ear of the emperor – sometimes – leads to clashes with religious authorities. On top of all of this is her continuing anguish at having been left behind by the Kiriath, which she feels both as a betrayal, and as a failure on her part, of not being good enough to accompany them. These three came together many years before the events in even The Steel Remains, to deal with the threat posed by the Dragons. The Steel Remains was mostly about their individual adventures and problems, with those issues coming together towards the end to reveal the beginnings of a very interesting pattern. Here, they have their own chapters, but the links between them are more obvious and their private fights and confrontations more definitely, if still obscurely, connected.
Chilling and relentless describe the overall plot; both are to be expected in a novel by Richard Morgan. The Steel Remains left our (anti)heroes having defeated a possible dwenda invasion, and feeling slightly uncomfortable about what that might mean for their world. Dwenda are still something of an issue in this sequel, but there are other maybe-threats too, such as the Dark Court, the gods worshipped by some, who are paying an disturbing level of interest to the goings-on of individuals like Ringil; and something, or possibly someone, that appears to have newly come from the absent Kiriath but without a user’s manual. Plus there’s the everyday, run of the mill threats like a mildly crazy emperor (who might feed you to the octopus), unpleasantly near-crazy religious zealots, and inter-city strife over trade and slavery. The relentless part comes from the steady pace of things going wrong or new problems being discovered. It’s not frenetic, in that the characters are not running from one thing to the other unless they’re being chased; instead it’s like a normal few months where almost nothing goes to plan, and problems pile up on top of each other slowly and steadily. Ringil, Egar and Archeth find themselves involved in problems they would actually rather not have anything to do with, thanks all the same, but don’t seem to have a choice about. All of that is chilling, too, as is the uncomfortable knowledge that while there are some happy times for the three protagonists, this is unlikely to all end well. And then there’s the deft and clever world and secondary characters created by Morgan; that’s chilling too, because they are so very real. For example, the various cities and their politicking, internal and external, are intricate and recognisable, and quite clearly keep going about their business without much concern for the events being portrayed in the novel. Then there’s the slavery, newly legalised in a number of states. Slavery, and the treatment of slaves, is often portrayed in an unemotional way – as a business opportunity. It’s clearly not because Morgan approves of slavery; Ringil in particular works rather hard to stamp it out. But the presentation of how it could become normal very quickly is indeed chilling because of its plausibility. And the way that people appear to have forgotten recent history, too, is both plausible and recognisable.
Overall this is an enthralling piece of fiction, ticking a lot of boxes for me: quirky and original characters; action that’s well-described and gritty without being in love with gore; deft world building that doesn’t swamp the story; and a story that leaves me desperate for more. I am fairly sure that there should be a third book about Ringil and his grim band (not that I’ve seen anything official about that), which makes me very happy indeed.
Galactic Suburbia 51
21 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Books, Podcasts Tags: books, connie willis, fantasy, feminism, galactic suburbia, jon armstrong, podcast, sf
In which women aren’t funny, don’t write important books, but come in handy as assassins and thieves. You can get us from iTunes or download us from Galactic Suburbia.
News
Connie Willis named SFWA Grand Master
Liz Bourke on Strange Horizons & the art of the mean review
Survey shows that men (as well as women) often play characters of the other gender while gaming – in many cases, men are bored with or alienated by the big musclebound male characters, which game designers think they want. Sound familiar?
Hoyden about Town are asking for guest bloggers to crosspost their Australian Women Writers Challenge reviews on Hoyden (ASIF also keen to do so)
More on feminine tosh: a good solid article in the Australian media (shock!) about the women in literature issues of recent months (and, you know, decades).
Have we been following the “Women aren’t funny” stoush that played out in NYT? This interesting development.
DC Comics – cancellations & new titles – Tansy is especially excited by World’s Finest (featuring the Earth 2 Huntress & Power Girl)
Stranger with My Face – Women in Horror film festival in Hobart, Tasmania – 17-19 February
Tansy’s book launch for Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three) on 2 February at Hobart Bookshop, 5:30pm.
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alex: Ashes to Ashes season 2; Dr Who season 1; Rocannon’s World, Ursula le Guin; The Declaration, Gemma Malley; Grey, Jon Armstrong; The Collected Works of TS Spivet, Reif Larsen. BBC 4 “Cat Women of the Moon” podcast
Tansy: Destination: Nerva (Big Finish, audio), Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon, The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, DVD Extras Include Murder, by Nev Fountain
Alisa: absorbed in novel submissions; The Big Bang Theory; Swordspoint Audiobook, written and performed by Ellen Kushner
GS Award will be proclaimed… in a short while!
Winner of Alex’s Yarn giveaway: Jo
Tansy: Creature Court trilogy give away!
Email to tell us about one book you read after we talked about it on GS to be eligible
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Grey, by Jon Armstrong
14 Jan 2012 3 Comments
in Books Tags: books, fantasy, jon armstrong, review
I’m glad I read YARN first, because if I had read this first I don’t think I would have picked it up. That’s a long way of saying that this book isn’t nearly as good as the second (which is really a prequel).
GREY is focussed on the spoilt son of a big-time CEO, and his flouncing around when he doesn’t get everything his own way. It has overtones of Romeo and Juliet with – I can’t believe I’m saying this – even more pretensions, and less soul. (Also no Mercutio.) Michael is being set up to marry the daughter of a CEO whose company his own family’s company is merging. Things go wrong, Michael has to start thinking about what he wants from life, things go more wrong. Very quickly.
One of the things I loved about YARN was its world-building. I really enjoyed the attention to detail of rooms, clothes, and architecture that Armstrong lavished on his made-up world – and the language that went with a world’s total obsession with fashion. I didn’t get the same detail or interest here. The attention to fashion is still present, and is indeed one of the things that sets Michael apart from his father: Michael has dedicated himself to grey, rather than the (literally) eye-watering colour combinations of his father’s set. To the point of burning the cones in one eye so that it can only see greys. However, discussion of the slubs (which feature heavily in YARN), the ‘Ceutical Wars, the “families” and their hold over the world – these things are skimmed over with not enough depth or tantalising clues to serve as much of an insight into this bizarre world. For me, it ended up making the world and the story just so much froth.
I also struggled to connect with Michael. My co-conspirators on Galactic Suburbia had a number of issues with Tane, the narrator of YARN, but I found him an interesting and engaging enough character that I didn’t mind riding along with him. Michael just got annoying. He’s pretentious, a bit of a whiner, spoiled, and entirely too self-obsessed for most of the novel. And not in very interesting ways.
Look, I finished it, so clearly I didn’t hate it; if I could I would have given it 3.5. Possibly I finished it because I found it an incredibly fast read, mostly because the plot itself is frenetically paced. Reading it and imagining the events feels like being caught up in a whirlwind as Michael gets pushed here and there and visits this person and finds that out and oh costume change! One thing I did hate was Michael’s father’s taste in music. I understand – well, I presume – that the music of the Ultras is meant to be an ironic take on modern pop and rock and its idiocy, as well as the dark undertones of violence etc etc… but the fact that their music can actually kill because it’s so loud, but even more that some of the performers have turned killing into part of their stage routine? Not. Cool.
Definitely read YARN. If you end up being really interested in what else Armstrong imagines for that world, read GREY. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t bother.
Galactic Suburbia: now half a century old
06 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Books, Podcasts Tags: batman, books, fantasy, galactic suburbia, hugos, james tiptree jr, podcast, sf, terry pratchett, ursula le guin, YA
In which we leap happily back and forth (with occasional ranting) over those fine lines between feminist critique and anti-female assumptions, plus share our bumper collection of holiday culture consumed. Happy New Year from the Galactic Suburbia crew!
NEWS AND LINKS
Hugo nominations open and we’re gonna have our say
Aqueduct Press will be publishing Brit Mandelo’s thesis, “WE WUZ PUSHED: On Joanna Russ & Radical Truth-telling”!
Islamic superhero comic turned animated series The 99 to screen in Australia (ABC3)
Amanda Palmer’s wedding post
Great piece on how the very idea of ‘Mary Sue’ is sexist, ties into this episode’s theme about the criticism of female characters.
The wealth of powerful girl heroes in today’s YA
WHAT CULTURE HAVE WE CONSUMED?
Alisa: Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal; The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman (with cover art by Kathleen Jennings); The Vampire Diaries; Primeval; The 99; Planetary; Homeland and Boxcutters.
Alex: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon, Julie Phillips; Changing Planes, Ursula le Guin; Perchance to Dream, Lisa Mantchev; Twilight Robbery, Frances Hardinge; Chronicles of Chrestomanci vol 1, Diana Wynne Jones. DOA and Going Postal.
Tansy: The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman; Beauty Queens, Libba Bray; Snuff by Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (TV) – Batman (animated) & My First Batman Book by David Katz, David Tennant & Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing (DIGITAL THEATRE DOWNLOAD AWW YEAH).
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
Perchance to Dream of theatres and adventure
03 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in Books Tags: books, fantasy, lisa mantchev, review, shakespeare, YA
A delightful read, although not as good as the first in the series, Eyes Like Stars. (This discussion contains some spoilers for that book.)
Having discovered who her mother is and wanting to rescue Nate, who might be the love of her life and has been kidnapped by the Sea Goddess Sedna, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith – Bertie – sets out into the world with four miscreant fairies and one devious air-elemental. And this is where one really big difference between the first and second books occurs: the setting. Where the casual magic of the Theatre Illuminata kind of made sense because it’s a theatre, and it seems to occupy a space not really connected to a particular time or space, the ‘real’ world is meant to be just that. So the magic of Bertie’s words, and of some of the other characters met along the way, seemed slightly more out of place. Perhaps this is because I was expecting the story to be more grounded in particularity – perhaps Bertie’s ‘real’ (non-theatre) world isn’t meant to be any more ‘my’ real world at all.
That’s maybe a quibble, but it did still sit at the back of my mind gnawing a bit. There were a couple of other things that gnawed, including Bertie’s relationship with and attitude towards both Nate and Ariel. I’m not a fan of the love triangle at the best of times, and this one made me uncomfortable because I couldn’t tell which one I thought she would, or should, end up with! Perhaps silly, but there you go. I also occasionally had difficulty telling whether something was actually happening to Bertie in the real world, or whether it was a dream, or if it was happening for real but in an other place. It may well be that Mantchev was blurring boundaries deliberately, but I found that this confusion threw me out of the story occasionally.
Nonetheless, I did enjoy this novel. Mantchev has a delightful turn of phrase and it’s fast-moving enough that I basically read it in a sitting (helps that I am on holidays). Bertie continues to be an enjoyable and engaging heroine, who develops by necessity as she encounters difficulties and as she considers the holds that people have on her, and how to be her own person. The fairies are still winsome and incorrigible, and have renewed my own interest in pie. Ariel… continues to be problematic. I don’t especially like The Tempest, but should I ever bother to see it again I will certainly have difficulty viewing him without Mantchev-glasses (I will also suffer from Dan-Simmons-glasses when watching Caliban, so maybe I really ought not to see it again. Oh so sad). The plot, as I said, was fast-moving and had some fun bits, but I think suffers with comparison to the first book. That was so tight, and focussed around one really core issue, that it felt utterly of a piece. Here, although rescuing Nate is central, the action feels more episodic and bound together much more loosely.
I’m intrigued that there is a third (and, I think, final) book in the series; it will be very interesting to see where Mantchev takes Bertie et al next.
Twilight Robbery: the new(ish) Frances Hardinge novel
01 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in Books Tags: books, fantasy, frances hardinge, review, YA
Reading Frances Hardinge is all about Saracen, for me. Saracen the evil-eyed bully-boy goose.
Of course, there is also Mosca, his owner. This is a world where so many little gods – the Beloved – are worshipped that rather than having their own day, the Beloved have certain hours of a day devoted to them; being born in a Beloved’s time determines your name and, in people’s eyes, your very nature. Mosca was born at the time of Palpitattle, He Who Keeps Flies out of Jam and Butterchurns – Lord of the Flies, if you will. It is an inauspicious name, to say the least, and Mosca’s fierce black eyes and equally fierce temper, and occasional propensity for playing fast and loose with the strict letter of the law, do not help her case. Nor does her ownership and protectiveness of a certain winged warrior. She is wonderful.
There’s also Eponymous Clent, Mosca’s… well. Friend? Protector? She wouldn’t like either of those terms. Co-conspirator, perhaps; ally, usually. Swindler, con-man, runner-away-from-debts and hater of Saracen, Eponymous can usually be relied on to talk his and Mosca’s way out of the trouble that he or she has managed to talk them into. Except at the beginning of this story, where he is in a debtor’s prison and for some reason the town doesn’t seem willing to accept poetry in lieu of actual currency.
Saracen plays a small, though vital, part in the story, just as he did in the preceding novel, Fly By Night - one of my favourite YA books. This time, despite the important role Mosca and Eponymous played in Mandelion, they find themselves once again on the road with little coin for bread or board. Deciding to head for the other side of the river, they find themselves in Toll, a town which prides itself on having the only real bridge across the Langfeather. As with many towns with such a precious commodity and monopoly, Toll is pretty smug. It’s also really, really weird, with some serious discrepancies between Toll-by-Day and Toll-by-Night, which of course Mosca and Eponymous and Saracen end up finding out all about. They just can’t seem to help themselves; start off with a good con or maybe a chance at a reward, ending up uncovering all sorts of interesting things that all sorts of interesting people would prefer to keep covered, thanks all the same, and can I roast your goose?
Hardinge has a wonderful way with words, and is a deft hand at descriptive prose; she’s created a really interesting world here. It’s a fantasy insofar as it’s not our she’s writing about; but at the same time there it’s not magical, nor steampunk. It’s just a world maybe on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution, quite comfortable in itself as a rule even if most cities and provinces aren’t entirely sure who should be ruling them. I really hope there is more Mosca Mye to come.
Boxing Day Super Mega Podcast #2
27 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Books, Podcasts Tags: books, fantasy, podcast, sf
Stolen largely from Jonathan:
The day after Christmas is a special one, dedicated to winding down after a day of feasting and gift giving, laughter and merriment. Things slow down – unless you have a taste for the mega-discount sales – and people tend to relax with family.
This Boxing Day, a bunch of participants in Australian podcasting joined together to record The Second Annual Boxing Day Super Mega Podcast. Participating were:
- Alex, Alisa, and Tansy from Galactic Suburbia;
- Ian and Kirstyn from The Writer and the Critic; and
- Gary and Jonathan from The Coode St Podcast.
Sadly, Grant from Bad Film Diaries couldn’t make it.
What we ended up with was seven seven people talking, in a fairly organised manner, about their highlights of 2011 and what they’re looking forward to in 2012. Because I [Jonathan] was doing the engineering for this there was a stuff up and the first 20 minutes of the podcast were lost forever. Alex and I did a quick do-over and new intro which we think works pretty well. Either way, we all hope you enjoy it, and that you check out our individual podcasts which will be coming out in the next weeks and months.
You can listen to the recording here, or stream it from iTunes via The Coode St Podcast.
The lottery: Catherynne Valente’s Omikuji Project
23 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Books Tags: books, catherynne valente, collection, fantasy, omikuji project, review
Oh my goodness I loved this collection so much.
I’ve had a hit and miss record with Valente over the last few years. The novel Palimpsest did absolutely nothing for me – I found it impossible to get into and the premise didn’t interest me that much either. I could, though, appreciate the beauty of her language, which made it perhaps more frustrating not to enjoy it as a piece of writing. I’ve liked her short stories more, although again not all of them – there have been a few which frustrated me, a couple because I think they were trying too hard and a couple of others because I just didn’t GET what she was trying to do.
And then there’s this collection.
I signed up for the Omikuji Project recently, because I found out about it when Valente was considering shutting it down for having too few subscribers. The deal is, you pay a certain amount and you get a short story – written just for the subscribers – every month, on beautiful paper with an envelope sealed with wax (apparently; haven’t got my first one yet). This collection is the first two years’ worth of those stories, made available via Lulu, and I figured I would buy it to have nearly the full set.
Many of these stories are riffs on fairy stories, which can be a dangerous thing to approach, but I don’t think Valente hits a bum note with any of them.
I would normally just talk about my favourites in a collection, but I feel like I want to mention every single one of them… so the TL; DR version is just: it’s beautiful. Well worth getting from Lulu.
“The Glass Gear” is a delightful, wistful and bittersweet spin on Cinderella, while the three parts of “A Hole to China” are about a child who attempts to dig just that, and what she discovers at the centre of the earth (hint: not what you were expecting. Whatever you were expecting, not that). “The Kunstkammer of Dr Ampersand” is a travel guide explaining a curio cabinet and OH I WANT that novel! Love triangles, heart-of-darkness experiences… it would be poignant and beautiful, like the cabinet. “How to Build a Ladder to the Sun in Six Simple Steps” takes the idea of planetary spheres of influence in intriguing directions, while “The Pine Witch Counts her Knuckle Bones” takes the idea of natural witchcraft and makes it… greener. Valente gets vicious on Chaucer and Boccaccio with “The Legend of Good Women,” and although I’ve not read all of either of the male-authored accounts I know exactly what she is stabbing at here, and she does it well. “Mullein” is one of the most poignant of the collection, a rather heart-breaking little story about the lengths someone might go to for love, and the reader is definitely left wondering whether it’s worth it or not (although I don’t think the characters are). “That Which lets the Light In” is probably my least favourite, perhaps because I am not as familiar with the Russian stories that she is playing with. A story, or set of stories, I am more familiar with feature in ” A Postcard from the End of the World,” which combines Norse and Greek myths into a homely little story about apples (kind of), and “How to raise a Minotaur” sees your Cretan labyrinth, picks it apart, and puts it back together again with added nuance, contemporaneity and a little bit more hope. “The Economy of Clouds” reverses the traditional perspective of Jack and the Beanstalk; “The Still” is a slightly creepy story about girls and plums. I adored “The Wedding” – the idea of the mismatched couple, or mismatched families, is a banal staple of romantic comedies but this – a human and a rime giant? Delightful. “Reading Borges in Buenos Aires” reminded me that I have been meaning to read more Borges – I’ve only read one collection, and that many years ago – and it also connected in a weird way to The Dervish House, because of its ideas of cities as books with social geography that can be read. “The Folklore of Sleep” didn’t work particularly for me, although I appreciated what she was doing both with the idea of sleep as fundamental but more deeply with the idea of what makes individuals and how others react to that. I think the only clearly SF story in the collection is “Oh, the Snow-Bound Earth, the Golden Moon,” and it would make a wonderful novel too: children and an abandoned lunar colony, where they’re all given lunar names and don’t understand the Earth. Two of the stories in the collection are actually first chapters of novels finished over this period, from Deathless and The Habitation of the Blessed. As a result of reading them here, I must read the former and will be avoiding the latter studiously (which I already guessed based on their blurbs). I only understood the title of “The Opposite of Mary” as I was looking back over it today, and that because last week at church the sermon was about Mary’s response to the annunciation. In this story, there is no announcement of imminent divine arrival, but rather just a divine presence… in the shed, with the tools. And the human interaction is humanly motivated. It’s quite an interesting take, for me, on the idea of such interactions. Valente apparently wrote “Blue with those Tears” almost as a challenge to herself because she loathes other stories of Atlanteans so much – and in typical Valente fashion she cannot leave the idea unproblematised. “The Consultant” was inspired by a friend suggesting the need for a fairy tale consultant, and showcases Valente’s depth of knowledge about the subject. And finally, “Grandmother Euphrosyne” is a wonderful, slightly cranky story – just like a grandmother – that brings in Greek myth and family relationships in a beautiful, beautiful way.
The last thing to say about this collection is that aside from the glorious prose, there are pictures to go with every story – which I believe are largely from the community of Omikuji recipients (can’t wait to join them!), and also the beginning of the letters that Valente sends with each story, which contribute to the larger meta-narrative. This is a really special set of stories.
Galactic Suburbia 48
11 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Books, Podcasts Tags: books, connie willis, fantasy, galactic suburbia, jasper fforde, podcast, sf, terry pratchett
After our producer went to the effort of getting this out almost minutes after we finished recording, this is a belated set of show notes…
In which we save the Tasmanian Devils, take on the Classics, review cars, discover that toy fandom exists, plan to read LOTS of Australian women writers, and Wonder Woman still doesn’t have pants. You can get us from iTunes or from
News
Coffeeandink on The Erasure of women writers in SF and Fantasy
Mur Lafferty – My Problem With Classics
Open letter to publishers: book bloggers are not your bitches
Kate Gordon’s Devil Auction – help to save the Tasmanian Devils! (kitten pictures with TEETH)
Australian Women Writers Challenge – sign up now
Jason Nahrung posted a list of the books he plans to read for the challenge – let us know what yours are!
In association with this, Tansy produced a list of award-winning SF/Fantasy books by Australian women.
Please keep sending in your suggestions for a Galactic Suburbia Award – we hope to have a plan for this by our 50th episode and are loving reading the tweets and emails so far.
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa: Bellwether by Connie Willis; American Horror Story; Yarn by Jon Armstrong
Tansy: Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor; Jingo & The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett, Shortpacked, a webcomic about toy fandom, obsessed people, lots of GLBTQ characters and feminist commentary on pop culture such as this strip about False Equivalence.
Alex: Coode St podcast with Ursula le Guin, and also with Ian McDonald and Alistair Reynolds; Spook Country, William Gibson; One of Our Thursdays is Missing, Jasper Fforde; Pirates of the Caribbean 4!
Feedback from Kitty of Panel2Panel:
Reasoning With Vampires
Kitty’s post about why Marvel has no equivalent hero to Wonder Woman
TANSY RECS for DC comics that don’t treat women appallingly:
Birds of Prey (start as early as possible, either with the Chuck Dixon issues which are pretty good, or the Gail Simone run which is #56-108)
Power Girl: A New Beginning & Aliens and Apes – Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner
Catwoman run by Ed Brubaker
Stephanie Brown Batgirl: Batgirl Rising, The Flood etc.
Secret Six, Gail Simone
Batwoman. Anything with Batwoman.
I HAVE NOT YET FOUND THE PERFECT WONDER WOMAN TRADE TO RECOMMEND. But I do think anyone interested in comics history could get value from reading her first year of adventures, available as Wonder Woman Chronicles Vol. One
Marvel dude saying we don’t have to have female characters
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
One of our Thursdays is missing
08 Dec 2011 4 Comments
in Books Tags: books, fantasy, jasper fforde, review
Sadly, I have been Disappointed.
I was an early fan of Fforde – I adored The Eyre Affair and the next two, to the point where I actually went to an event to hear Fforde speak, which is not usually my thing. I’ve read the rest of the Thursday books and continued to enjoy them, and his other stuff too. So I was excited when I heard there was a new Thursday book.
It did not live up to my expectations. And the main reason is that it felt gimmicky. Which is a ridiculous thing to say because the Thursday books are nothing BUT gimmicks, yet here… it just didn’t work. Maybe there were too many, maybe I was hoping for more substance, maybe I haven’t read enough of the books Fforde was riffing off. I read it all the way to the end, because I did want to know how it was going to be resolved, but… I read it in 24 hours because it was a very easy read, not because I was utterly enthralled.
There were bits I enjoyed. This novel actually has a very clever gimmick at its core which allows for all sorts of interesting discussion: the book is not centred on Thursday Next at all. It is centred on the written Thursday Next – that is, the character playing her in BookWorld, the one who is acting for all of those readers who encounter Thursday in the first five books. Head hurt yet? Clever though, yes? So there’s a whole heap of discussion and some angst about how Thursday ought to be played, and – most humorously and self-referentially – discussion about the fact that the Thursday books are basically unread at this time in the (fictional) world, which itself has all sorts of consequences.
One of the gimmicks that I enjoyed at first but then wore thin was the discussion of BookWorld, where the vast majority of the novel takes place. I like this idea a lot, and there are some interesting insights into genre politics and so on. But it was never quite clear whether Fforde was trying to be subversive, in his discussion of genre and who was dealing well and who <i>should</i> be doing well and which genre had influence on each other etc etc, or… whether he was making observations and assumptions. Because he did both. Which got confusing, since – um, was that bit subversive, or do you actually mean that potentially insulting thing you just said about that genre? Which added a layer of annoyance I could have done without.
Look, if you haven’t read a Thursday book, don’t start here. DO read The Eyre Affair, because it is wonderful, even if – like me – you have read no Dickens. If you are a long-time Thursday fan, I can’t see me talking you out of reading this one. But… borrow it from a library, or buy it second hand.
