Reading Wedne– Thursday
May. 21st, 2015 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
Revenge of the Rose by Nicole Galland. I read this as part of my 'clearing off the bookshelves' project, as I am incredibly susceptible to buying historical fiction without knowing anything about it. In this case, it didn't work out for me. This novel is set in the 12th century Holy Roman Empire, and focuses on Willem, a young knight, Willem's beautiful sister, and Willem's best friend Jouglet, the emperor's personal musician. The writing was bland, the characters shallow, and the plot was much closer to "these are some dumb deus ex machina coincidences" than "wow, how neatly it all ties together!", which presumably is what the author was going for. But my biggest problem with the book involves a major spoiler, so I'm going to put it behind a cut:The emperor's musician is eventually revealed to be a woman. Now, I am normally totally down for "woman dresses as a man for the freedom it allows her"! It is one of my favorite narrative tropes. But this book goes really far with it before finally giving the reader this reveal; about two hundred pages and, more importantly, after Willem and Jouglet have kissed and had a serious discussion about whether Willem would get into a relationship with another man. I was so ready for a gay historical romance!
But fine, that's not what this book wanted to be. Still, since it went to such lengths to confuse the question of Jouglet's identity, I expected there to be some interesting commentary on gender roles, or desire, or something. But, nope. Revenge of the Rose is not at all interested in those topics. Instead, there's several hundred more pages to fill up with scandal about Willem and Jouglet trying to keep their relationship a secret, everyone assuming they're gay, and Willem trying to talk Jouglet into revealing herself because that will apparently make everything okay. But this is the problem: in the actual 1100s, a woman dressing as a man and taking on a political role (since Jouglet is a spy and adviser for the emperor) would have been considered just as perverse and sacrilegious as two men sleeping together! Possibly moreso! It would not have made everything okay! And the thing is, I can enjoy it when a historical novel decides to throw accuracy out the window for the sake of fun, but Revenge of the Rose had plenty of other female characters constrained by vaguely accurate gender roles. Women's virginity and dowries are major parts of the plot, and multiple female characters are forced into cloister by their male relatives. Just... none of this applied to Jouglet. For some reason.
So, in summary: not recommended.
As the Crow Flies by Craig Johnson. I meant to read something more productive next, but Revenge of the Rose was so terrible that I needed a palate cleanser. As the Crow Flies is the 8th book in the Walt Longmire series, which I've slowly been making my way through, and is one of my favorites from it so far. In this one, Sheriff Longmire is helping to plan his daughter's wedding when he witnesses a woman jump – or fall, or be pushed – from a cliff. The investigation is taken over by Lolo Long, the newly-appointed local tribal police chief (the death, and most of the book, takes place on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation). A lot of the book is taken up with the relationship between Longmire and Long; she's short-tempered, violent, and refuses to apologize, none of which are good traits for a cop to have. Longmire tries to teach her to be a better cop, and frankly, someone constantly emphasizing how important it is not to get angry might be the only police-oriented narrative I want to read about right now.
Anyway, there were multiple minor characters I enjoyed and hope to see again in future books, there was a ton of cute interaction between Longmire and his best friend Henry Standing Bear, and the sequence where Longmire takes peyote was fantastic.
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. It feels a bit weird reviewing this; I mean really, what am I going to say that hasn't been said before? I'd never read or seen this before, and my expectations from cultural osmosis were a bit off from what it actually was. I expected most of the focus to be on the romance, so all of the battle scenes stuff about Roman politics was a bit of a surprise. I enjoyed it! But again... Shakespeare. It feels weird to call it enjoyable. I'd like to watch a production of this now, if anyone has a favorite film version to recommend?
What are you currently reading?
Haven't started anything else yet!
Revenge of the Rose by Nicole Galland. I read this as part of my 'clearing off the bookshelves' project, as I am incredibly susceptible to buying historical fiction without knowing anything about it. In this case, it didn't work out for me. This novel is set in the 12th century Holy Roman Empire, and focuses on Willem, a young knight, Willem's beautiful sister, and Willem's best friend Jouglet, the emperor's personal musician. The writing was bland, the characters shallow, and the plot was much closer to "these are some dumb deus ex machina coincidences" than "wow, how neatly it all ties together!", which presumably is what the author was going for. But my biggest problem with the book involves a major spoiler, so I'm going to put it behind a cut:
But fine, that's not what this book wanted to be. Still, since it went to such lengths to confuse the question of Jouglet's identity, I expected there to be some interesting commentary on gender roles, or desire, or something. But, nope. Revenge of the Rose is not at all interested in those topics. Instead, there's several hundred more pages to fill up with scandal about Willem and Jouglet trying to keep their relationship a secret, everyone assuming they're gay, and Willem trying to talk Jouglet into revealing herself because that will apparently make everything okay. But this is the problem: in the actual 1100s, a woman dressing as a man and taking on a political role (since Jouglet is a spy and adviser for the emperor) would have been considered just as perverse and sacrilegious as two men sleeping together! Possibly moreso! It would not have made everything okay! And the thing is, I can enjoy it when a historical novel decides to throw accuracy out the window for the sake of fun, but Revenge of the Rose had plenty of other female characters constrained by vaguely accurate gender roles. Women's virginity and dowries are major parts of the plot, and multiple female characters are forced into cloister by their male relatives. Just... none of this applied to Jouglet. For some reason.
So, in summary: not recommended.
As the Crow Flies by Craig Johnson. I meant to read something more productive next, but Revenge of the Rose was so terrible that I needed a palate cleanser. As the Crow Flies is the 8th book in the Walt Longmire series, which I've slowly been making my way through, and is one of my favorites from it so far. In this one, Sheriff Longmire is helping to plan his daughter's wedding when he witnesses a woman jump – or fall, or be pushed – from a cliff. The investigation is taken over by Lolo Long, the newly-appointed local tribal police chief (the death, and most of the book, takes place on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation). A lot of the book is taken up with the relationship between Longmire and Long; she's short-tempered, violent, and refuses to apologize, none of which are good traits for a cop to have. Longmire tries to teach her to be a better cop, and frankly, someone constantly emphasizing how important it is not to get angry might be the only police-oriented narrative I want to read about right now.
Anyway, there were multiple minor characters I enjoyed and hope to see again in future books, there was a ton of cute interaction between Longmire and his best friend Henry Standing Bear, and the sequence where Longmire takes peyote was fantastic.
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare. It feels a bit weird reviewing this; I mean really, what am I going to say that hasn't been said before? I'd never read or seen this before, and my expectations from cultural osmosis were a bit off from what it actually was. I expected most of the focus to be on the romance, so all of the battle scenes stuff about Roman politics was a bit of a surprise. I enjoyed it! But again... Shakespeare. It feels weird to call it enjoyable. I'd like to watch a production of this now, if anyone has a favorite film version to recommend?
What are you currently reading?
Haven't started anything else yet!
