June Book Review, Part 2
Jul. 28th, 2010 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadydaveI leave for vacation in... five minutes!
A Murderous Procession, by Ariana Franklin
The latest in the Mistress of the Art of Death books, which are basically CSI: Medieval England. Except this one is technically CSI: Medieval Europe, as the main character is accompanying Henry II's daughter to Sicily, but whatever. Anyways, Dr. Adelia Aguilar, MD has been trained at the University of Palermo as, basically, a medieval forensic pathologist; she was sent to England to solve a mystery for Henry II, who has kept her there ever since because he is both extremely pragmatic and a douche, and darn if all these mysteries don't keep popping up! As she accompanies Princess Joanna across the continent, it seems that she's being stalked by a previous villain seeking his revenge! Dun dun DUUUUUUUN.
Apart from the first one, which was pretty awesome (a female medieval doctor and ex-crusader team up to FIGHT CRIME), I'm not a huge fan of this series. The medieval mystery-solving is really cool, so I keep reading, but the writing often degenerates into author tracts that generally annoy me. Like Franklin's historical hard-on for Henry II -- okay, I get that he got a bad rap for the whole Thomas Á Becket thing and was actually a decent ruler who introduced a lot of reforms, but there's no need to CONSTANTLY REPEAT THIS AND IDOLIZE EVERY SINGLE THING HE DOES. More disturbingly, she elevates him at the expense of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who despite historically being an epic BAMF is characterized as childish and "far from Henry's intellectual equal". BLARGH, FEMINIST FAIL.
I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but Franklin DID successfully confound me about the identity of Adelia's stalker -- I knew the obvious suspect was a red herring, but thought the actual killer was a historical figure and thus discounted him (though in retrospect, she definitely dropped some major clues). Sneaky!
Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett
This is definitely one of the Discworld books I love in spite of itself -- it's got a lot of awesome, but also has some flaws on the technical level that prevent it from reaching the heights of some of Pterry's other stuff. However, the plot is pretty great (Jeremy, a slightly crazed watchmaker, has been commissioned to make the world's most accurate clock; unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us) he is unwittingly bringing about the end of the world, and so Death, his granddaughter Susan, the History Monk Lu Tze, and his apprentice Lobsang all set out to stop him) and it manages to make fun of fairy tales, the Matrix, and chocolate all at once, FTW.
It's biggest problem, I think, is that while we get awesome character interactions in the first part, during the climax they all fall to the wayside, and so we don't really get to see how the EPIC PLOT changes everyone's relationships. Jeremy in particular falls right out of the story, even though his personality is strong enough that you'd think it would show up, and we don't get a resolution to his stuff with Myria LeJean (or even Igor). The stuff with Lobsang (aside: I keep wanting to write that as "Lobsaang") and Susan ends up feeling rushed for that reason, too, since they don't get too much to do together before shit goes down. (I also find it kind of weird that Lobsang's "obscure child has ~SPECIAL DESTINY~" storyline was played pretty much straight; usually Pterry mocks that stuff like it's his job. Which it kind of is. I guess Jeremy is supposed to complicate that, but it's still written with uncharacteristic srsness.)
This isn't actually a complaint, but I find it exceedingly strange that a book all about the nature of Time has no obvious Doctor Who jokes. It's a British cultural institution! With so many targets! I mean, I guess Lu Tze is kind of Doctor-ish, and the presence of Susan and her grandfather could be a nod to the show even if Pterry has said he didn't base her off Doctor Who's Susan, but still. And now I kinda want Pterry to write more about the History Monks so he can riff on new Who and Torchwood (even though he thinks it's properly good, WTF) because that would be awesome.
In conclusion: WANNA WANNA BIKKIT.
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
This book is basically the antidote to Thomas Hardy and Wuthering Heights, or really anything where the drama depends on dysfunctional people who insist on staying in one place out in the country instead of running away to find a better life, or get psychological help. When Flora Poste (who is basically an upper class Jeeves) is orphaned, she decides that instead of getting a job to support herself, she will impose on her relatives' hospitality, and secretly engineer their betterment in repayment. Thus she ends up at Cold Comfort Farm, ancestral home of the bug-nuts Starkadders, and begins to shoo them towards marriage, therapy, vacation, acting careers -- whatever will make them the least crazy. And it's hilarious.
Though Gibbons makes fun of EVERYONE with her social satire, possibly my favorite bits were when she skewers literary pretension. Not only does she roundly mock Mybug, an itinerant intellectual trying to prove Branwell Brontë OBVIOUSLY wrote all of the Brontës' books, because girls aren't that awesome (and who is convinced that women won't sleep with him because they're all frigid), but in my favorite running gag, she also assigns ratings (one to four stars!) to random passages in her book, based on how great they are as examples of the genre (i.e. filled with godawful purple prose).
And as a bonus, Gibbons set the novel in THE FUTURE! when she wrote it in 1932, so there's all sorts of fun steampunk gadgets banging around! Including an airplane named Speed Cop II. This book is basically made of win, is what I'm saying.
A Murderous Procession, by Ariana Franklin
The latest in the Mistress of the Art of Death books, which are basically CSI: Medieval England. Except this one is technically CSI: Medieval Europe, as the main character is accompanying Henry II's daughter to Sicily, but whatever. Anyways, Dr. Adelia Aguilar, MD has been trained at the University of Palermo as, basically, a medieval forensic pathologist; she was sent to England to solve a mystery for Henry II, who has kept her there ever since because he is both extremely pragmatic and a douche, and darn if all these mysteries don't keep popping up! As she accompanies Princess Joanna across the continent, it seems that she's being stalked by a previous villain seeking his revenge! Dun dun DUUUUUUUN.
Apart from the first one, which was pretty awesome (a female medieval doctor and ex-crusader team up to FIGHT CRIME), I'm not a huge fan of this series. The medieval mystery-solving is really cool, so I keep reading, but the writing often degenerates into author tracts that generally annoy me. Like Franklin's historical hard-on for Henry II -- okay, I get that he got a bad rap for the whole Thomas Á Becket thing and was actually a decent ruler who introduced a lot of reforms, but there's no need to CONSTANTLY REPEAT THIS AND IDOLIZE EVERY SINGLE THING HE DOES. More disturbingly, she elevates him at the expense of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who despite historically being an epic BAMF is characterized as childish and "far from Henry's intellectual equal". BLARGH, FEMINIST FAIL.
I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but Franklin DID successfully confound me about the identity of Adelia's stalker -- I knew the obvious suspect was a red herring, but thought the actual killer was a historical figure and thus discounted him (though in retrospect, she definitely dropped some major clues). Sneaky!
Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett
This is definitely one of the Discworld books I love in spite of itself -- it's got a lot of awesome, but also has some flaws on the technical level that prevent it from reaching the heights of some of Pterry's other stuff. However, the plot is pretty great (Jeremy, a slightly crazed watchmaker, has been commissioned to make the world's most accurate clock; unbeknownst to him (but knownst to us) he is unwittingly bringing about the end of the world, and so Death, his granddaughter Susan, the History Monk Lu Tze, and his apprentice Lobsang all set out to stop him) and it manages to make fun of fairy tales, the Matrix, and chocolate all at once, FTW.
It's biggest problem, I think, is that while we get awesome character interactions in the first part, during the climax they all fall to the wayside, and so we don't really get to see how the EPIC PLOT changes everyone's relationships. Jeremy in particular falls right out of the story, even though his personality is strong enough that you'd think it would show up, and we don't get a resolution to his stuff with Myria LeJean (or even Igor). The stuff with Lobsang (aside: I keep wanting to write that as "Lobsaang") and Susan ends up feeling rushed for that reason, too, since they don't get too much to do together before shit goes down. (I also find it kind of weird that Lobsang's "obscure child has ~SPECIAL DESTINY~" storyline was played pretty much straight; usually Pterry mocks that stuff like it's his job. Which it kind of is. I guess Jeremy is supposed to complicate that, but it's still written with uncharacteristic srsness.)
This isn't actually a complaint, but I find it exceedingly strange that a book all about the nature of Time has no obvious Doctor Who jokes. It's a British cultural institution! With so many targets! I mean, I guess Lu Tze is kind of Doctor-ish, and the presence of Susan and her grandfather could be a nod to the show even if Pterry has said he didn't base her off Doctor Who's Susan, but still. And now I kinda want Pterry to write more about the History Monks so he can riff on new Who and Torchwood (even though he thinks it's properly good, WTF) because that would be awesome.
In conclusion: WANNA WANNA BIKKIT.
Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons
This book is basically the antidote to Thomas Hardy and Wuthering Heights, or really anything where the drama depends on dysfunctional people who insist on staying in one place out in the country instead of running away to find a better life, or get psychological help. When Flora Poste (who is basically an upper class Jeeves) is orphaned, she decides that instead of getting a job to support herself, she will impose on her relatives' hospitality, and secretly engineer their betterment in repayment. Thus she ends up at Cold Comfort Farm, ancestral home of the bug-nuts Starkadders, and begins to shoo them towards marriage, therapy, vacation, acting careers -- whatever will make them the least crazy. And it's hilarious.
Though Gibbons makes fun of EVERYONE with her social satire, possibly my favorite bits were when she skewers literary pretension. Not only does she roundly mock Mybug, an itinerant intellectual trying to prove Branwell Brontë OBVIOUSLY wrote all of the Brontës' books, because girls aren't that awesome (and who is convinced that women won't sleep with him because they're all frigid), but in my favorite running gag, she also assigns ratings (one to four stars!) to random passages in her book, based on how great they are as examples of the genre (i.e. filled with godawful purple prose).
And as a bonus, Gibbons set the novel in THE FUTURE! when she wrote it in 1932, so there's all sorts of fun steampunk gadgets banging around! Including an airplane named Speed Cop II. This book is basically made of win, is what I'm saying.