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highlyeccentricCurrently Reading: SRB, 'The Demon's Covenant'; Hawkeye vol 3; Henry James, Portrait of a Lady
Recently Finished:
Silver On The Tree by Susan Cooper
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well, it was nice to finish the series, but this was not the best-structured of the lot. It was beautiful, with delightfully woven myth and literary references, but the great final question of Free Will fell terribly flat, since hardly anyone involved had exercised much free will along the way. I am now assigning Merriman to the Cryptic Manipulative Magical Mentor's Drinking Club (he will drink whiskey with Gandalf, Aslan, Dumbledore, and various others). The three non-magical children got particularly short shrift: their 'tests', especially the boys, were particularly frail, and there was no strong sense of what else they could have done and how they could've done it.
On the other hand: like all the others, this was *absolutely, intricately pretty*, which is worth a lot.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a.. peculiar book. The quality of the prose is high: Ishiguro's narrator voices are engaging and I read at a fairly fast pace. I like the general premise, the meditation on mixed-race societies and on healing after war. BUT. It's obvious that Ishiguro isn't a historical/fantasy writer and I got the feeling he didn't _care_ as much about the social questions he raised as he did about the airy-fairy questions of memory and love. I have a strong suspicion I've read the 'Arthur brokers peace between Saxons and Britons, but it's tenuous and eventually his hand is forced and it all gets away from him' logic somewhere before - it's not medieval, but someone's done it. And they, whoever they were, did it *better*. This book needed to be about 1/4 longer in order to better flesh out the social aspects and deal with the fall-out of the death of the dragon.
Also I have absolutely no idea what to make of the ending, with the boatman, and I can't even tell if it's deliberately opaque or not. It might be supposed to leave you wondering if the boatman has tricked them, but if so, it's not signalled clearly whether it's MEANT to be ambiguous and what the other option is.
Among Others by Jo Walton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book's strengths: excellent narrator voice; interesting, sharp insights on the world around her; immensely attractive evocation of the experience of being a teen sci-fi nerd, and what books come to mean in that context. Decent world-buidling re: fairies, magic, etc.
This book's weakness: plot, what plot? Nothing *happens*. There's about 1/3 of a plot missing: the book begins after the boss battle and proceeds to a peculiar final showdown where the protagonist is Now Free of Her Mother, but never explains what the boss battle was or how it had taken place. I expected asynchronous narration, telling the story of the 'main' events in retrospective, which is what I got, only most of them were missing. How did M&M discover the plot? How did they prevent it? WHO KNOWS.
Characterisation: Their mother is a ridiculous villain, her only motivation explained as 'crazy' and 'egotistical'. The only way this makes sense, given the scarcity of information on the actual conflict between mother and daughters, is if the mother is seriously mentally ill (narcissistic? untreated bipolar? IDEK i am not here for diagnosing flat characters) and Mori is, reasonably enough, traumatised by neglectful parenting but also delusional herself. If that was what we were meant to take away then the storytelling is fucking lazy for refusing to engage properly with the protag's experience and her mother's. If that wasn't meant to be the take-away then doubly lazy: why does this woman have no character? TL;DR Sarah Rees Brennan did 10 million times better with the 'malevolent magic-addled mother' plot.
Issues/subplots: there are SO MANY LOOSE ENDS in this. But the most irresponsible is the bit where the protag's father made a move on her, was rebuffed, and then neither he nor the protag EVER DEALT WITH IT AGAIN.
Walton/Mori criticises 'Teen Problem' books but I can't help but feel that if Walton had more respect for the genre she might not have left that great irresponsible gaping hole. Less offensive but still lazy writing, the witch-aunts and the part where Daniel is being abused by said witch-aunts is acknowledged but never dealt with properly.
Conclusion, what conclusion: it was crap. The showdown with her mother was crap. The reunion with the Three Important Men In Her Life was crap. Great gaping questions remain - *what* did Wim tell her father to get him and Samuel down to Wales? How did Daniel evade the witch-sisters? Is no one going to notice that Mori is acting extremely peculiarly? What became of her mother wandering around in the hills anyway?
The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a re-read, but I haven't got a goodreads review of it for some reason. Short commentary: I LOVE THIS BOOK. IT IS VERY EXCELLENT. Also it is 10 million times better work than Among Others.
In 2009 I picked up K's copy of this, and she wouldn't let me take it away so I went promptly down to Kinokunia to demand my own copy because I could not continue to exist without it. In 2015 I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to find I had not brought my hard copies to Europe with me, so I bought the whole series in e-book and then devoured the first one in a single evening.
Recently Finished:
Silver On The Tree by Susan CooperMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Well, it was nice to finish the series, but this was not the best-structured of the lot. It was beautiful, with delightfully woven myth and literary references, but the great final question of Free Will fell terribly flat, since hardly anyone involved had exercised much free will along the way. I am now assigning Merriman to the Cryptic Manipulative Magical Mentor's Drinking Club (he will drink whiskey with Gandalf, Aslan, Dumbledore, and various others). The three non-magical children got particularly short shrift: their 'tests', especially the boys, were particularly frail, and there was no strong sense of what else they could have done and how they could've done it.
On the other hand: like all the others, this was *absolutely, intricately pretty*, which is worth a lot.
The Buried Giant by Kazuo IshiguroMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was a.. peculiar book. The quality of the prose is high: Ishiguro's narrator voices are engaging and I read at a fairly fast pace. I like the general premise, the meditation on mixed-race societies and on healing after war. BUT. It's obvious that Ishiguro isn't a historical/fantasy writer and I got the feeling he didn't _care_ as much about the social questions he raised as he did about the airy-fairy questions of memory and love. I have a strong suspicion I've read the 'Arthur brokers peace between Saxons and Britons, but it's tenuous and eventually his hand is forced and it all gets away from him' logic somewhere before - it's not medieval, but someone's done it. And they, whoever they were, did it *better*. This book needed to be about 1/4 longer in order to better flesh out the social aspects and deal with the fall-out of the death of the dragon.
Also I have absolutely no idea what to make of the ending, with the boatman, and I can't even tell if it's deliberately opaque or not. It might be supposed to leave you wondering if the boatman has tricked them, but if so, it's not signalled clearly whether it's MEANT to be ambiguous and what the other option is.
Among Others by Jo WaltonMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book's strengths: excellent narrator voice; interesting, sharp insights on the world around her; immensely attractive evocation of the experience of being a teen sci-fi nerd, and what books come to mean in that context. Decent world-buidling re: fairies, magic, etc.
This book's weakness: plot, what plot? Nothing *happens*. There's about 1/3 of a plot missing: the book begins after the boss battle and proceeds to a peculiar final showdown where the protagonist is Now Free of Her Mother, but never explains what the boss battle was or how it had taken place. I expected asynchronous narration, telling the story of the 'main' events in retrospective, which is what I got, only most of them were missing. How did M&M discover the plot? How did they prevent it? WHO KNOWS.
Characterisation: Their mother is a ridiculous villain, her only motivation explained as 'crazy' and 'egotistical'. The only way this makes sense, given the scarcity of information on the actual conflict between mother and daughters, is if the mother is seriously mentally ill (narcissistic? untreated bipolar? IDEK i am not here for diagnosing flat characters) and Mori is, reasonably enough, traumatised by neglectful parenting but also delusional herself. If that was what we were meant to take away then the storytelling is fucking lazy for refusing to engage properly with the protag's experience and her mother's. If that wasn't meant to be the take-away then doubly lazy: why does this woman have no character? TL;DR Sarah Rees Brennan did 10 million times better with the 'malevolent magic-addled mother' plot.
Issues/subplots: there are SO MANY LOOSE ENDS in this. But the most irresponsible is the bit where the protag's father made a move on her, was rebuffed, and then neither he nor the protag EVER DEALT WITH IT AGAIN.
Walton/Mori criticises 'Teen Problem' books but I can't help but feel that if Walton had more respect for the genre she might not have left that great irresponsible gaping hole. Less offensive but still lazy writing, the witch-aunts and the part where Daniel is being abused by said witch-aunts is acknowledged but never dealt with properly.
Conclusion, what conclusion: it was crap. The showdown with her mother was crap. The reunion with the Three Important Men In Her Life was crap. Great gaping questions remain - *what* did Wim tell her father to get him and Samuel down to Wales? How did Daniel evade the witch-sisters? Is no one going to notice that Mori is acting extremely peculiarly? What became of her mother wandering around in the hills anyway?
The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees BrennanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a re-read, but I haven't got a goodreads review of it for some reason. Short commentary: I LOVE THIS BOOK. IT IS VERY EXCELLENT. Also it is 10 million times better work than Among Others.
In 2009 I picked up K's copy of this, and she wouldn't let me take it away so I went promptly down to Kinokunia to demand my own copy because I could not continue to exist without it. In 2015 I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to find I had not brought my hard copies to Europe with me, so I bought the whole series in e-book and then devoured the first one in a single evening.
Re: Among Others as memoir
Date: 2015-09-22 06:42 pm (UTC)The problem is that the book doesn't then function as a coherent fantasy novel, because the parts of the story Walton would have to make up in order to make the narrative coherent weren't in Walton's life.
Re: Among Others as memoir
Date: 2015-09-22 07:11 pm (UTC)