Reading Wednesday
Nov. 8th, 2017 06:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Mallory Ortberg. A collection of “retold fairy tales” – or so says the blurb, but I think I’d describe it as a collection of short stories that, while they certainly play with fairy tale motifs and plots, aren’t quite producing new fairy tales, no more than The Bloody Chamber or Into the Woods are fairy tales. Besides, Ortberg takes her inspiration from sources beyond traditional folklore: here we have Shakespeare, the Bible, The Wind in the Willows, and Frog and Toad are friends, among others.
I’m a huge fan of Ortberg, which is the main reason I wanted to read this collection as soon as I knew it existed (though I am also a fan of fairy tale retellings, so that aspect didn’t hurt), but I mainly think of her as a comedian. Though she can be very funny, that sense of humor isn't much evident in this book. These stories are dark, casting a cynical eye over society and human relationships, with a few genuinely scary moments.
My favorite stories were 'The Daughter Cells', a take on Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid from the point of view of the mermaid. I mean, I suppose the original was from the point of the view of the mermaid as well, but this is a story where the whole worldview is oriented to creatures that live in the ocean, and to breathe dry air or be unable to regenerate limbs or live behind doors are just odd cultural quirks that must be tolerated in those poor humans. Another favorite was 'The Rabbit', in which the Velveteen Rabbit does not become Real through love of a child, but through stealing the child’s life-force. It’s creepy and sociopathic and I just loved it.
On the other hand, I really wanted to like 'The Thankless Child', a mix of King Lear and Cinderella (and how have I never noticed those parallels before? The three daughters, the youngest one good but oppressed, the missing mother). Parts of it are wonderful, particularly the insistent demands of the godmother for the youngest child to love her and only her – that was absolutely chilling in an understated way. There’s an interesting take on gender roles here as well, with “husband” and “wife” being placements one decides on after marrying, more job titles than gender roles. On the other hand, I’m not exactly sure what happened at the end, in that way of literary fiction that is so concerned with being subtle it crosses the line into incomprehensible. It’s not the only story with a bit of that, but this was the piece that suffered the worst.
I did enjoy this collection overall, even if it wasn’t quite what I expected. For a sample of Ortberg's writing in a similar vein, check out this retelling of Donkeyskin by her. If you like that, you’re sure to like this book as well.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Portal of a Thousand Worlds by Dave Duncan. A fantasy novel being advertised as “Game of Thrones but in Ancient China”, so of course I had to read it. Did it hold up to that? Well, the politics and backstories are necessarily going to be shallower when you don’t have seven books to fill, but I think it’s a fair comparison.
Portal of a Thousand Worlds is set in what felt to me like vaguely early Qing Dynasty era (1600-1700s), but with fantasy elements such as a widespread network of assassins who have a little bit of magic, just enough to change their appearances (okay, maybe there's more than one Game of Thrones connection) and a giant door carved into a mountainside that supposedly opens once every few thousand years. No one's quite what happens when it opens, since generally no witnesses survive. Unfortunately for fantasy-China's stability, when the book begins portents suggest that it's due to open next year.
The plot mostly centers around the current emperor, a young man left severely mentally disabled after an attempted poisoning. His mother, the empress, has kept this a secret and is ruling in his stead, but the time has come for the emperor to sire an heir, and he's incapable of doing so. Horse, a member of that assassin's guild who's too nice to want to kill anyone, is smuggled into the palace to provide a look-alike sperm donor, but when he falls in love with one of his new concubines, he realizes that he's trapped in the court with no way back out. Meanwhile, a rebel army (with a bit of a Taiping Rebellion vibe) has risen in the south, firmly convinced that the real emperor is dead and determined to overthrow the "corrupt" empress.
In a separate plot thread, another member of the assassin's guild is cheerfully murdering his way to wealth and seducing the daughters of rich merchants along the way. Silky (the assassin) and Verdant Harmony (that merchant's daughter) end up married and surprisingly well-suited to one another. Seriously, Verdant might have been my favorite character in the book, and I would love a sequel watching her grow into herself.
In yet a third plot-thread, a young peasant boy named Sunlight is identified as the "Firstborn", the "Urfather", a Dalai Lama-like spiritual figure who is continually reincarnated with the full memory of his previous lives, much worshipped, feared, and respected for his wisdom. He sets out to broker peace between the emperor and the rebel army, but the hard part will be convincing anyone he is who he says he is.
I do have some complaints about the book. Many of the characters didn't feel quite three-dimensional, and Duncan seems to have a weird hatred for eunuchs. Not a single one could appear on the page without repeated descriptions of how they were smelly and devious. (Maybe this is my own bias, since I think I'm oddly predisposed to liking fictional eunuchs, but really, Duncan? Not a single sympathetic one?) The ending and the reveal of what’s up with the portal felt a bit underdeveloped/deus ex machina when they arrived. But despite these problems, I’m so goddamn glad to read an epic fantasy that manages to finish its story in one volume that I’ll forgive almost anything. Not to mention how refreshing it is to read an epic fantasy that's not set in vaguely medieval Europe! For the sake of those factors, I ended up more pleased by Portal of a Thousand Worlds than not.
What are you currently reading?
Unforgivable Love by Sophfronia Scott. A retelling of Les Liaisons Dangereuses set in Harlem in the 1940s. What an excellent premise! :D
The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror by Mallory Ortberg. A collection of “retold fairy tales” – or so says the blurb, but I think I’d describe it as a collection of short stories that, while they certainly play with fairy tale motifs and plots, aren’t quite producing new fairy tales, no more than The Bloody Chamber or Into the Woods are fairy tales. Besides, Ortberg takes her inspiration from sources beyond traditional folklore: here we have Shakespeare, the Bible, The Wind in the Willows, and Frog and Toad are friends, among others.
I’m a huge fan of Ortberg, which is the main reason I wanted to read this collection as soon as I knew it existed (though I am also a fan of fairy tale retellings, so that aspect didn’t hurt), but I mainly think of her as a comedian. Though she can be very funny, that sense of humor isn't much evident in this book. These stories are dark, casting a cynical eye over society and human relationships, with a few genuinely scary moments.
My favorite stories were 'The Daughter Cells', a take on Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid from the point of view of the mermaid. I mean, I suppose the original was from the point of the view of the mermaid as well, but this is a story where the whole worldview is oriented to creatures that live in the ocean, and to breathe dry air or be unable to regenerate limbs or live behind doors are just odd cultural quirks that must be tolerated in those poor humans. Another favorite was 'The Rabbit', in which the Velveteen Rabbit does not become Real through love of a child, but through stealing the child’s life-force. It’s creepy and sociopathic and I just loved it.
On the other hand, I really wanted to like 'The Thankless Child', a mix of King Lear and Cinderella (and how have I never noticed those parallels before? The three daughters, the youngest one good but oppressed, the missing mother). Parts of it are wonderful, particularly the insistent demands of the godmother for the youngest child to love her and only her – that was absolutely chilling in an understated way. There’s an interesting take on gender roles here as well, with “husband” and “wife” being placements one decides on after marrying, more job titles than gender roles. On the other hand, I’m not exactly sure what happened at the end, in that way of literary fiction that is so concerned with being subtle it crosses the line into incomprehensible. It’s not the only story with a bit of that, but this was the piece that suffered the worst.
I did enjoy this collection overall, even if it wasn’t quite what I expected. For a sample of Ortberg's writing in a similar vein, check out this retelling of Donkeyskin by her. If you like that, you’re sure to like this book as well.
I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.
Portal of a Thousand Worlds by Dave Duncan. A fantasy novel being advertised as “Game of Thrones but in Ancient China”, so of course I had to read it. Did it hold up to that? Well, the politics and backstories are necessarily going to be shallower when you don’t have seven books to fill, but I think it’s a fair comparison.
Portal of a Thousand Worlds is set in what felt to me like vaguely early Qing Dynasty era (1600-1700s), but with fantasy elements such as a widespread network of assassins who have a little bit of magic, just enough to change their appearances (okay, maybe there's more than one Game of Thrones connection) and a giant door carved into a mountainside that supposedly opens once every few thousand years. No one's quite what happens when it opens, since generally no witnesses survive. Unfortunately for fantasy-China's stability, when the book begins portents suggest that it's due to open next year.
The plot mostly centers around the current emperor, a young man left severely mentally disabled after an attempted poisoning. His mother, the empress, has kept this a secret and is ruling in his stead, but the time has come for the emperor to sire an heir, and he's incapable of doing so. Horse, a member of that assassin's guild who's too nice to want to kill anyone, is smuggled into the palace to provide a look-alike sperm donor, but when he falls in love with one of his new concubines, he realizes that he's trapped in the court with no way back out. Meanwhile, a rebel army (with a bit of a Taiping Rebellion vibe) has risen in the south, firmly convinced that the real emperor is dead and determined to overthrow the "corrupt" empress.
In a separate plot thread, another member of the assassin's guild is cheerfully murdering his way to wealth and seducing the daughters of rich merchants along the way. Silky (the assassin) and Verdant Harmony (that merchant's daughter) end up married and surprisingly well-suited to one another. Seriously, Verdant might have been my favorite character in the book, and I would love a sequel watching her grow into herself.
In yet a third plot-thread, a young peasant boy named Sunlight is identified as the "Firstborn", the "Urfather", a Dalai Lama-like spiritual figure who is continually reincarnated with the full memory of his previous lives, much worshipped, feared, and respected for his wisdom. He sets out to broker peace between the emperor and the rebel army, but the hard part will be convincing anyone he is who he says he is.
I do have some complaints about the book. Many of the characters didn't feel quite three-dimensional, and Duncan seems to have a weird hatred for eunuchs. Not a single one could appear on the page without repeated descriptions of how they were smelly and devious. (Maybe this is my own bias, since I think I'm oddly predisposed to liking fictional eunuchs, but really, Duncan? Not a single sympathetic one?) The ending and the reveal of what’s up with the portal felt a bit underdeveloped/deus ex machina when they arrived. But despite these problems, I’m so goddamn glad to read an epic fantasy that manages to finish its story in one volume that I’ll forgive almost anything. Not to mention how refreshing it is to read an epic fantasy that's not set in vaguely medieval Europe! For the sake of those factors, I ended up more pleased by Portal of a Thousand Worlds than not.
What are you currently reading?
Unforgivable Love by Sophfronia Scott. A retelling of Les Liaisons Dangereuses set in Harlem in the 1940s. What an excellent premise! :D
