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Reading Thursday
Aug. 11th, 2022 04:25 pmI've finally had both the time and the mental energy to read again, and the books I've finished recently were a good mix. Some worked better than others for me, but all gave me some food for thought.
Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne is a massive step up in quality from her previous (very good) fantasy duology. This new book is the first in a planned epic fantasy series, and draws its inspiration from pre-colonial South Asian history and cultures. It's the kind of epic fantasy I particularly enjoy: most of the major characters are women, and it's the kind of setting where these women's considerable skills and powers are hidden in plain sight from the men around them, precisely because such women seem insignificant or powerless unti the very moment the error of this misperception is dramatically revealed. I often find that religion in pre-industrial epic fantasy settings is treated as an afterthought, or as something cynically wielded as a source of power — a lot of authors seem to shy away from genuine belief — but here the various religions feel three-dimensional and fully integrated into the worldbuilding and the characters' lives. My only minor issue with the book is the number of point-of-view characters — there are far too many, and I think a satisfying story could have been told keeping the points of view to only two or three. But other than that, I loved it. It reminded me of Kate Elliott's epic fantasy, in the best possible way.
Star Mother, by Charlie Holmberg, is a fantasy novel focused on one of my very favourite tropes — humans in relationships with deities or other supernatural beings, and the danger and psychological strain that places on the humans. Holmberg, unlike many other authors who write this kind of story, does a good job at making her deity — in this case a sun god — extremely alien and inhuman, rather than a human being with superpowers. However, her impulse is still to soften the rather horrifying scenario of the book — a cosmology in which stars are celestial children, the result of a liaison between the sun god and human mothers, and the birthing of which will always kill the mother. Authors who set up this kind of scenario have, in my opinion, two options to resolve it. The first is to really lean into the horror of it all, and make the human characters masochists who secretly enjoy the pain and drama and terror of their situation. The second option, which I consider cowardly, is to attempt to soften and justify the demands being made by the non-human character, and give them an out (e.g. the human character is revealed to have supernatural abilities, the supernatural character feels really mopey and bad about things and some handwavy excuse is given). Unfortunately, most authors go with the second option, and Holmberg is no different. So while I enjoyed the premise and some bits of the book, it felt like authorial squeamishness led to some pulled punches in terms of the potential for darkness and weirdness.
Finally, I read The Wife in the Attic by Rose Lerner, a retelling of Jane Eyre with a central f/f romance. This is something where the premise appealled more to me than the execution, and, to be honest I think I really need to stop reading retellings of 'classic' literature. I've read quite a lot in the past few years and almost none of them have worked for me. It's not the retelling itself that is the problem — I adore fairytale and mythology retellings, but there's something vaguer about such source material that I feel doesn't work as well when the source is a nineteenth-century novel or a Shakespeare play. And yet two of my favourite films of all time are Clueless and Ten Things I Hate About You, and I love Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet — so clearly (as well as demonstrating beyond all doubt that I am a cusp millennial from an anglophone country) my problem is the medium rather than the retellings themselves. In any case, interesting idea for a novel, but Lerner packed way too much — class, antisemitism, nineteenth-century abolitionist movements, the Inquisition — into it, meaning that each was given rather superficial treatment. I was probably also ill disposed to think well of the book given it was set in nineteenth-century England and had two glaring instances of American English in the first chapter!
In any case, it's great to be reading again, and even more wonderful to have Thoughts about books, and feel up to sharing those Thoughts on Dreamwidth!
Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne is a massive step up in quality from her previous (very good) fantasy duology. This new book is the first in a planned epic fantasy series, and draws its inspiration from pre-colonial South Asian history and cultures. It's the kind of epic fantasy I particularly enjoy: most of the major characters are women, and it's the kind of setting where these women's considerable skills and powers are hidden in plain sight from the men around them, precisely because such women seem insignificant or powerless unti the very moment the error of this misperception is dramatically revealed. I often find that religion in pre-industrial epic fantasy settings is treated as an afterthought, or as something cynically wielded as a source of power — a lot of authors seem to shy away from genuine belief — but here the various religions feel three-dimensional and fully integrated into the worldbuilding and the characters' lives. My only minor issue with the book is the number of point-of-view characters — there are far too many, and I think a satisfying story could have been told keeping the points of view to only two or three. But other than that, I loved it. It reminded me of Kate Elliott's epic fantasy, in the best possible way.
Star Mother, by Charlie Holmberg, is a fantasy novel focused on one of my very favourite tropes — humans in relationships with deities or other supernatural beings, and the danger and psychological strain that places on the humans. Holmberg, unlike many other authors who write this kind of story, does a good job at making her deity — in this case a sun god — extremely alien and inhuman, rather than a human being with superpowers. However, her impulse is still to soften the rather horrifying scenario of the book — a cosmology in which stars are celestial children, the result of a liaison between the sun god and human mothers, and the birthing of which will always kill the mother. Authors who set up this kind of scenario have, in my opinion, two options to resolve it. The first is to really lean into the horror of it all, and make the human characters masochists who secretly enjoy the pain and drama and terror of their situation. The second option, which I consider cowardly, is to attempt to soften and justify the demands being made by the non-human character, and give them an out (e.g. the human character is revealed to have supernatural abilities, the supernatural character feels really mopey and bad about things and some handwavy excuse is given). Unfortunately, most authors go with the second option, and Holmberg is no different. So while I enjoyed the premise and some bits of the book, it felt like authorial squeamishness led to some pulled punches in terms of the potential for darkness and weirdness.
Finally, I read The Wife in the Attic by Rose Lerner, a retelling of Jane Eyre with a central f/f romance. This is something where the premise appealled more to me than the execution, and, to be honest I think I really need to stop reading retellings of 'classic' literature. I've read quite a lot in the past few years and almost none of them have worked for me. It's not the retelling itself that is the problem — I adore fairytale and mythology retellings, but there's something vaguer about such source material that I feel doesn't work as well when the source is a nineteenth-century novel or a Shakespeare play. And yet two of my favourite films of all time are Clueless and Ten Things I Hate About You, and I love Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet — so clearly (as well as demonstrating beyond all doubt that I am a cusp millennial from an anglophone country) my problem is the medium rather than the retellings themselves. In any case, interesting idea for a novel, but Lerner packed way too much — class, antisemitism, nineteenth-century abolitionist movements, the Inquisition — into it, meaning that each was given rather superficial treatment. I was probably also ill disposed to think well of the book given it was set in nineteenth-century England and had two glaring instances of American English in the first chapter!
In any case, it's great to be reading again, and even more wonderful to have Thoughts about books, and feel up to sharing those Thoughts on Dreamwidth!