Mar. 22nd, 2011

lenora_rose: At Tara in this fateful hour, I call on all heaven with its power... (At this Fateful Hour)
A lot is going on in life - some good, some...not. But a LOT of stress. Big stuff. For Colin, for me, for the lot of us.(Except the cats, they're fine). That's about all I feel like saying, but it's part of why I've been quiet. We've been seeing people a lot, which is a plus.

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On another note, Martha Wells' The Cloud Roads is fabulous and should be read by just about everybody. As is usual for her books. I sit there agape that she very nearly lost her career before this, and I thank everything she stuck it out, and Jennifer Jackson loved her, and the publisher released the book. She's probably one of the best writers out there.She has ONE weakness, which is an occasional colloquialism that sounds a bit too modern. (She's also very fond of slightly sarcastic dialogue, but this is a strength as often as a weakness.)

In this case, she produced a book set in a world where there don't seem to be any humans, though several humanoid races. And shows again, at least with her main character, a deft hand at remembering the gestures and thinking of the species. They're similar enough to humans that things like Moon's Trust Issues (Not called such, but pretty easy to describe so) are reasonable and familiar, but there are definite moments when there's no doubt the race is its own thing and not just humans with some nifty powers.

Rave rave rave. As it should be. I want the next one NOW.

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Much less satisfying was Koji Suzuki's Paradise. It's told in three sections, a prehistoric tribe (Starting in north Asia, but with members ending up both in the American desert and the South Pacific), then an American ship getting wrecked, coping iwth betrayal, canniballism, revenge, etc., encountering a South Pacific Island in the 1700s or so, and lastly, a story set in the 1990's (roughly modern to the time it was written) about a crazy music composer getting lost in a cave. All three are meant to be the love story of the same two people reborn. This is a conceit I have to admit I have little sympathy with (All this fate for two damn people? Look, there are seven billion of us these days. And even in earlier eras, we weren't that unique. Get over it. Love is a fabulous thing, and I wish everyone I know to find a good match filled with laughter and trust and support. But it ain't *worth waiting thousands of years and several rebirths for* special.)

But even going with the conceit for the moment, since I did know that going in, it didn't help that the middle section trod right into problematic territory as it dealt with the "innocent island paradise". I mean, the entire population of the islands was wiped out save for the one special girl, unless I badly misread the bit with the tsunami. Which meant they only existed for the sake of giving birth to half of a Twoo Wuv couple. Ugh. (I'm not sure what I think of the two prehistoric peoples as drawn. I don't think they're problematic of themselves, though one pretty much plays the role of savage attacker and not much else.)

For another thing, in every section, the only female character we actually spend any time with is the love interest. In the first section, the major female character is won by men. Twice, once willingly and once by violence - and her reasons for yielding peacefully to her own rape are half reasonable and half eye-rolling frustratingly bad. She does end up in charge of a tribe, along with her daughter - who's pretty much the only other female character - so some points for that, but it seems to happen mostly via luck, and a conveniently timed disease, With any mention of skill or wisdom coming after.

In the middle section, the named men outnumber the named women worse than in any other section, since so much time is spent with the boat. Once it does reach the island, though, evne then it focuses on the lvoe interest. The rest of the women are just there; universally beautiful, and nearly captured for slave trade, but even the love interest seems to mainly have a convenient vision then get rescued. In the last section, there are no other women, period, even in passing, though she gets an essential part in saving the hero. And granted, there are also all of two men who get more than two pages of time in that section. Even so, argh.
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Started Amanda Downum's The Drowning City finally. So far, so good. I'm loving the setting, and the people as we see them so far..

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