(no subject)
Dec. 13th, 2004 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stakebaitTwo of my LJ friends keep appearing and disappearing and reappearing. It makes me feel like Arthur Dent. *clings* I don't care if you're from sector ZZ Plural Z Alpha, please don't undergo sudden total existance failure. I'd miss you.
*****
Today I go with mom to the consent and info visit for upcoming reconstructive surgery. (Not upcoming for another two months, but if Memorial Sloan Kettering wants to do it now, we do it now.) Mild eep. Since this is just cosmetic, unlike the last surgery nothing life or death is really riding on it. On the other hand it's physically more grueling, a longer operation, a longer time in the hospital, a longer time stuck home thereafter. And friend whose mom has gone through it assures me that it really is pretty bad immediately thereafter. But this is what Mom of Mer wants, and having seen the after pictures I can't say as I blame her.
*****
Not as productive a weekend as it ought to have been, but at least I got my house somewhat cleaner and my Slash Wedding Ficathon entry done early. And I read Jaqueline Carey's Banewrecker. If you like high fantasy, I recommend this, even though it's one of those irritating first-book-in-a-series that ends on a cliffhanger and not a conclusion. I really do prefer that each book be able to stand alone, and this one is a two-legged stool. But if I think of it as the first volume in a multi-volume novel, I get less irritated. And what there is of it is really quite good.
It's an archetypal, not to say cliched, Quest Narrative, modelled very closely indeed on Tolkien, though you can see hints of other high fantasy authors here and there. But this is deliberate and necessary, because the twist is that the Big Sauronesque Enemy is at the very least sincere and sympathetic, and quite possibly actually right.
Banewrecker does for high fantasy what Grendel does for Beowulf or Wicked for The Wizard of Oz. In a story like that, you *can't* diverge too far from the details of the model, because it's their familiarity that makes the turning on its head work. So we have elf-equivilents, men and dwarves, but we also have weres, who are sort of wargs and sort of werewolves, and fjetrolls, who have bad press like Orcs but aren't really, and dragons and sorceresses and the Large Tracks of Sere Landscape that hide the Well of Deep Mystic Significance, Oh My.
If you don't like high fantasy no doubt they will all irritate you as much as the originals did, and boy howdy do some of them have the formal diction virus. I mean, do thou take heed, for their speech is as the speech of heralds. But within their archetypes they also have real personalities -- and so far, everyone on both sides has interested me and caught at my sympathy. There are no cardboard cutouts here, and no easy answers.
They also have some quirky and interesting additions -- Urashin the broken half-elf, half-man and his madlings especially, though he is called Child of Three Races at least once too often for my taste. And it's interesting seeing the twisted trees and the spiders from the point of view of someone who has learned to find them beautiful, and see why someone might choose to be a ringwraith.
And then there's the Elf Maiden who inspires by her wisdom and beauty and understanding but doesn't do anything much. So far I actually quite like her, because at least she *tries* to do stuff, and to stretch to understand new points of view. But so far she has inspired quasi-romantic feelings in no less than four men, which is at least one too many, even if it *is* accurate to the Tolkein archetype, and likely enough in a world that contains very few women. (And also, you'd think a man under the influence of desire magic to the point of imagining what were formerly extremely taboo or unattractive women would give a passing thought to the male traveling companion who's actually right there.)
Readers of Kushiel's Dart will be either relieved or disappointed to know there's hardly any sex, though there is a conceptual nod to Carey's thematic preoccupations with the Enemy as the Promethean figure who gave desire to mankind and refused to take it back. I find the idea basically sympathetic -- Carey's thematic preoccupations and mine having a lot in common -- but I am somewhat troubled by the fact that the Galdalf figure's name is based on Malthus. If this turns out to be an allegory in which birth control is the sinister opponent of true, natural desire, I'm going to be very displeased.
OTOH, it doesn't seem likely, given how concerned she is to muddy the waters of good and evil and not merely switch who's wearing the hats. So I'll definitely be reading the next one. I need to know how it ends.
And last but not least, GIP, to show off my mermaid that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cadhla made me ages ago, and I finally found again. It was meant to be my Broken Glass Slippers icon, but given my lack of progress I didn't want to wait.
*****
Today I go with mom to the consent and info visit for upcoming reconstructive surgery. (Not upcoming for another two months, but if Memorial Sloan Kettering wants to do it now, we do it now.) Mild eep. Since this is just cosmetic, unlike the last surgery nothing life or death is really riding on it. On the other hand it's physically more grueling, a longer operation, a longer time in the hospital, a longer time stuck home thereafter. And friend whose mom has gone through it assures me that it really is pretty bad immediately thereafter. But this is what Mom of Mer wants, and having seen the after pictures I can't say as I blame her.
*****
Not as productive a weekend as it ought to have been, but at least I got my house somewhat cleaner and my Slash Wedding Ficathon entry done early. And I read Jaqueline Carey's Banewrecker. If you like high fantasy, I recommend this, even though it's one of those irritating first-book-in-a-series that ends on a cliffhanger and not a conclusion. I really do prefer that each book be able to stand alone, and this one is a two-legged stool. But if I think of it as the first volume in a multi-volume novel, I get less irritated. And what there is of it is really quite good.
It's an archetypal, not to say cliched, Quest Narrative, modelled very closely indeed on Tolkien, though you can see hints of other high fantasy authors here and there. But this is deliberate and necessary, because the twist is that the Big Sauronesque Enemy is at the very least sincere and sympathetic, and quite possibly actually right.
Banewrecker does for high fantasy what Grendel does for Beowulf or Wicked for The Wizard of Oz. In a story like that, you *can't* diverge too far from the details of the model, because it's their familiarity that makes the turning on its head work. So we have elf-equivilents, men and dwarves, but we also have weres, who are sort of wargs and sort of werewolves, and fjetrolls, who have bad press like Orcs but aren't really, and dragons and sorceresses and the Large Tracks of Sere Landscape that hide the Well of Deep Mystic Significance, Oh My.
If you don't like high fantasy no doubt they will all irritate you as much as the originals did, and boy howdy do some of them have the formal diction virus. I mean, do thou take heed, for their speech is as the speech of heralds. But within their archetypes they also have real personalities -- and so far, everyone on both sides has interested me and caught at my sympathy. There are no cardboard cutouts here, and no easy answers.
They also have some quirky and interesting additions -- Urashin the broken half-elf, half-man and his madlings especially, though he is called Child of Three Races at least once too often for my taste. And it's interesting seeing the twisted trees and the spiders from the point of view of someone who has learned to find them beautiful, and see why someone might choose to be a ringwraith.
And then there's the Elf Maiden who inspires by her wisdom and beauty and understanding but doesn't do anything much. So far I actually quite like her, because at least she *tries* to do stuff, and to stretch to understand new points of view. But so far she has inspired quasi-romantic feelings in no less than four men, which is at least one too many, even if it *is* accurate to the Tolkein archetype, and likely enough in a world that contains very few women. (And also, you'd think a man under the influence of desire magic to the point of imagining what were formerly extremely taboo or unattractive women would give a passing thought to the male traveling companion who's actually right there.)
Readers of Kushiel's Dart will be either relieved or disappointed to know there's hardly any sex, though there is a conceptual nod to Carey's thematic preoccupations with the Enemy as the Promethean figure who gave desire to mankind and refused to take it back. I find the idea basically sympathetic -- Carey's thematic preoccupations and mine having a lot in common -- but I am somewhat troubled by the fact that the Galdalf figure's name is based on Malthus. If this turns out to be an allegory in which birth control is the sinister opponent of true, natural desire, I'm going to be very displeased.
OTOH, it doesn't seem likely, given how concerned she is to muddy the waters of good and evil and not merely switch who's wearing the hats. So I'll definitely be reading the next one. I need to know how it ends.
And last but not least, GIP, to show off my mermaid that
cadhla made me ages ago, and I finally found again. It was meant to be my Broken Glass Slippers icon, but given my lack of progress I didn't want to wait.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-12-14 02:31 am (UTC)I wasn't that confused. I just wanted to know what the fuss was about, and I kinda had to listen to some for that. And what Juggalo means, but now I've heard the song and apparently they don't know either. :)