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Vote for Walter A. O'Brien—fight the fare increase
I have a Charlie Card! After my physical therapy appointment this morning, I met ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rushthatspeaks in Davis Square and we headed out to Downtown Crossing to replace my expired card and their stolen one. It was a surprisingly painless process. Rush was handed a new pair of cards straight off. I took a number and waited in line and after about five minutes was handed my new card by the MBTA employee who had transferred the stored value from the old one. We were out of there in the time it took to try to remember the RKO films of Val Lewton. (We missed three.) We concluded it was because we'd gone bracing ourselves for an afternoon of administrative hell à la DMV, therefore the law of best-laid plans dictated it was no big deal. If we'd gone in casually and optimistically, the process would have been crowded and awful and taken the rest of the day.
To reward ourselves anyway, we went to the Eldo Cake House in Chinatown and bought the best pork buns. I discovered sadly that the preserved egg in my lotus bun was slightly denser than I wanted to bite, but the lotus paste reminded me how much I just want to make some. It doesn't look astronomically more difficult than azuki bean. Note to self: possibly most inexpensive lunch in months, as well as one of the best. A person really has to work to spend ten dollars in that bakery. We tried to visit the ICA to see Nick Cave's (no relation) Soundsuits, but they're closed on Mondays. At least we found out the new cards work. We repaired to Porter Square Books, whence Rush went home withgaudior and I went home with a book, stopping first at ex-Shaw's to pick up a variety of dairy products. derspatchel and I made a hybrid form of noodles and cheese tonight: Annie's shells, hot dogs, cheddar-and-spiced-breadcrumb topping. Our toaster oven is mighty. I ate coconut-milk ice cream and finished the book.
Here's a story. In a war-locked border town where a prizefight is the only ticket out, an adolescent girl trains to take down the champion who killed her brother in a rigged match. Here's another story. In a demilitarized zone that has lost its name, a gang of church orphans resurrect the legend of the town's patron saint to avenge the abuses of the occupying soldiers and the local families that enable them. Here's another. In a future of pandemic flu and unstable nations, the "Lost Boys" were bred to be super-soldiers—fearless, fast-burning—but some of them wanted nothing more than freedom and family, and none of them knew they could leave children behind. All of these stories are Santa Olivia (2009), the first non-Kushiel novel I've read by Jacqueline Carey and far and away my favorite. Did I mention the queer coming-of-age romance? It's that, too. The book is at least three different genres of pulp all gloriously spliced together with overtones of superhero mythology and the noir-ish kind of B-picture where the girl who thought she was a gold-digger falls for her hard-luck true love after all. And it's not any kind of pastiche: it is a very solid, near-future science fiction novel whose protagonist is named Loup Garron not because she is actually a werewolf (under which circumstances, no) but because the tabloids called her father and his kind "wolf-men," though no one knows for sure what the non-human parts of them were. One of the lovely, characteristic touches of the book is that she never finds out and it doesn't matter. I suspect it was a difficult book to market; I don't think it's YA, although the majority of the story takes place during Loup's adolescence, and it's not at all paranormal in either the technical or genre senses, although the design tries its hardest not to give that away. The cover, which shows a slender, backlit figure in tight boots and a billowing cutaway coat, is about as one hundred percent wrong for this novel as it could have been without whitewashing. (Loup's mother is Latina, her father Haitian-born. Loup herself is brown-skinned—the text does use "caramel" a couple of times—with her father's natural hair. Her half-brother is fair-haired, blue-eyed, an American soldier's son. Santa Olivia was part of Texas before it became plague-wasted Outpost 12 in the cordon between warring Mexico and the United States.) Personally I am not sure why everyone doesn't want to buy a novel with all the elements I have described above, especially the matter-of-fact queerness, especially the boxing, especially the varied cast of characters mostly of color, especially the setting which is dystopian only if so are many army-patrolled places in the present day, but I do not work for Grand Central Publishing. Sadly, I am informed that the sequel is not worth pursuing; fortunately, the book ends like it doesn't need one. Ignore the back-cover text, which is of the species strictly speaking accurate, misses everything about the book, and enjoy.
P.S. I have just realized that what Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" reminds me of most is Siouxsie & The Banshees' "Strange Fruit." I was listening to Through the Looking Glass (1987) and those swaying, bell-tolling chords were suddenly familiar. They're not congruent songs, but something in the sound. I can never tell if this sort of thing is just my brain or not.
rushthatspeaks in Davis Square and we headed out to Downtown Crossing to replace my expired card and their stolen one. It was a surprisingly painless process. Rush was handed a new pair of cards straight off. I took a number and waited in line and after about five minutes was handed my new card by the MBTA employee who had transferred the stored value from the old one. We were out of there in the time it took to try to remember the RKO films of Val Lewton. (We missed three.) We concluded it was because we'd gone bracing ourselves for an afternoon of administrative hell à la DMV, therefore the law of best-laid plans dictated it was no big deal. If we'd gone in casually and optimistically, the process would have been crowded and awful and taken the rest of the day.To reward ourselves anyway, we went to the Eldo Cake House in Chinatown and bought the best pork buns. I discovered sadly that the preserved egg in my lotus bun was slightly denser than I wanted to bite, but the lotus paste reminded me how much I just want to make some. It doesn't look astronomically more difficult than azuki bean. Note to self: possibly most inexpensive lunch in months, as well as one of the best. A person really has to work to spend ten dollars in that bakery. We tried to visit the ICA to see Nick Cave's (no relation) Soundsuits, but they're closed on Mondays. At least we found out the new cards work. We repaired to Porter Square Books, whence Rush went home with
gaudior and I went home with a book, stopping first at ex-Shaw's to pick up a variety of dairy products. derspatchel and I made a hybrid form of noodles and cheese tonight: Annie's shells, hot dogs, cheddar-and-spiced-breadcrumb topping. Our toaster oven is mighty. I ate coconut-milk ice cream and finished the book.Here's a story. In a war-locked border town where a prizefight is the only ticket out, an adolescent girl trains to take down the champion who killed her brother in a rigged match. Here's another story. In a demilitarized zone that has lost its name, a gang of church orphans resurrect the legend of the town's patron saint to avenge the abuses of the occupying soldiers and the local families that enable them. Here's another. In a future of pandemic flu and unstable nations, the "Lost Boys" were bred to be super-soldiers—fearless, fast-burning—but some of them wanted nothing more than freedom and family, and none of them knew they could leave children behind. All of these stories are Santa Olivia (2009), the first non-Kushiel novel I've read by Jacqueline Carey and far and away my favorite. Did I mention the queer coming-of-age romance? It's that, too. The book is at least three different genres of pulp all gloriously spliced together with overtones of superhero mythology and the noir-ish kind of B-picture where the girl who thought she was a gold-digger falls for her hard-luck true love after all. And it's not any kind of pastiche: it is a very solid, near-future science fiction novel whose protagonist is named Loup Garron not because she is actually a werewolf (under which circumstances, no) but because the tabloids called her father and his kind "wolf-men," though no one knows for sure what the non-human parts of them were. One of the lovely, characteristic touches of the book is that she never finds out and it doesn't matter. I suspect it was a difficult book to market; I don't think it's YA, although the majority of the story takes place during Loup's adolescence, and it's not at all paranormal in either the technical or genre senses, although the design tries its hardest not to give that away. The cover, which shows a slender, backlit figure in tight boots and a billowing cutaway coat, is about as one hundred percent wrong for this novel as it could have been without whitewashing. (Loup's mother is Latina, her father Haitian-born. Loup herself is brown-skinned—the text does use "caramel" a couple of times—with her father's natural hair. Her half-brother is fair-haired, blue-eyed, an American soldier's son. Santa Olivia was part of Texas before it became plague-wasted Outpost 12 in the cordon between warring Mexico and the United States.) Personally I am not sure why everyone doesn't want to buy a novel with all the elements I have described above, especially the matter-of-fact queerness, especially the boxing, especially the varied cast of characters mostly of color, especially the setting which is dystopian only if so are many army-patrolled places in the present day, but I do not work for Grand Central Publishing. Sadly, I am informed that the sequel is not worth pursuing; fortunately, the book ends like it doesn't need one. Ignore the back-cover text, which is of the species strictly speaking accurate, misses everything about the book, and enjoy.
P.S. I have just realized that what Lana Del Rey's "Video Games" reminds me of most is Siouxsie & The Banshees' "Strange Fruit." I was listening to Through the Looking Glass (1987) and those swaying, bell-tolling chords were suddenly familiar. They're not congruent songs, but something in the sound. I can never tell if this sort of thing is just my brain or not.
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That book sounds amazing.
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I don't know if I can promise to introduce it into popular usage, but I'm pretty sure I can guarantee an in-joke.
That book sounds amazing.
I recommend it! It's in print and easy to locate.
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Nine
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I liked it!
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Actually, my huge fondness for Lana del Rey was a source of instant bonding between me and one of the women in the jail--who's actually only the same age as the ninja girl, which … well, let's just say, Tumblr-fashion, that it gives me lots of feels.
In a demilitarized zone that has lost its name, a gang of church orphans resurrect the legend of the town's patron saint to avenge the abuses of the occupying soldiers and the local families that enable them. I TOTALLY want to read that. I'm going to go look for the book.
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"Video Games" is actually the only one I've heard. If you recommend her, I'll try others.
Actually, my huge fondness for Lana del Rey was a source of instant bonding between me and one of the women in the jail--who's actually only the same age as the ninja girl, which … well, let's just say, Tumblr-fashion, that it gives me lots of feels.
Yes. I'm glad you bonded.
I TOTALLY want to read that. I'm going to go look for the book.
Enjoy!
Lana del Rey
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---L.
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There's even a shout-out to the Greek Myrmidons.
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---L.
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NO REGRETS.
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Heh. I like sharing things I enjoy!
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The pork buns sound delicious. And the book sounds fascinating. I didn't get far into the first Kushiel book, and I'm not sure if it was a case of distraction, a case of Not Really My Kink But Sometimes Close Enough To Frustrate, or something else entirely, but this one I might have to track down sometime.
All hail the mighty toaster oven!
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I enjoyed Kushiel's Dart—I own it, I've re-read it—although I would have preferred the language to be more of the kind of lush I like rather than the kind I want to edit; I tried Kushiel's Chosen and bounced; I read portions of Kushiel's Avatar because
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That's always frustrating. I find myself wondering if I bounced off some bit of pseudo-Celticism in Dart? I don't remember that, but it's possible. I'm pretty sure I read that one sometime after I ended up throwing the final Celts-in-Space novel written by the widow of the late Reigning Male Monarch of Lizards* at the wall, and I may have been in an overly sensitive state. (See this post for details.)
The existence of high-profile kink-positive mainstream fantasy continues, however, to make me happy.
I'm glad for that as well. Not being my kink doesn't mean anything more than that it's not my kink, at least as long as it's not the atrocious Not My Kink But Sometimes An Evil Parody of My Kink of a J*hn N*rm*n's Planet Bore.
*I'm being cautious, just in case she makes a habit of googling her name. I'd rather not bring wank into your LJ.
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What did you like about it?
Now, her first duology is dead boring...nobody in there had the least sense of humor.
If that was Banewreaker/Godslayer, it pretty much lost me with the titles; I never picked up either. They looked in the vein of Tolkien that least interests me.
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It's not the same kind of book as the first one, which may throw people off, and it's not as tightly plotted. I suggest the library if you want to try it.
As for the duology, I slogged through Banewreaker and realized my usual standard applied--if I want to smack most of the characters most of the time, I'm not enjoying the book (movie, episode, etc.). But everyone's entitled to a dud now and then, particularly early on; I love the Kushiel series if not the later trilogy, and that's enough wins for me to keep looking at her stuff.
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That book sounds like it has elements in common with Dark Angel, but perhaps expounds on them in ways I wish that show had done. I shall have to note that title for when I have the spoons to read for pleasure again, probably at the end of this century.
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Andrea Nguyen has a gluten-free bao dough recipe. Both the baked and steamed versions look tasty to me.
That book sounds like it has elements in common with Dark Angel, but perhaps expounds on them in ways I wish that show had done.
I never saw Dark Angel, but I recommend Santa Olivia pretty much on principle at this point. I hope your spoons return sooner than the next century.
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I have both of the Santa Olivia books, and it's true that the sequel lacks many of the elements of the first book that you mention as being particularly awesome. It spends a lot of time talking about the band Loup works for, which I enjoyed, but it does make the second book a whole lot more All About The Men than the first one, and it doesn't do anything new or interesting to make up for it.
Speaking of not new or interesting, Carey's Agents Of Hel series (currently two books) is neither. It's like her publishing company told her she had to jump on the bandwagon of 'Quirky Small Town Girl Who Does Supernatural Stuff' and she deliberately wrote something that pinged all the requirements of the genre, while being dull as dust, just to spite them. If it weren't for the author's name on the cover, I would never, never have pegged it as a Jacqueline Carey novel; it reads like she was already planning to disown it as she was writing it.
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Talk to me about the second and third? I don't know if I'll read them, but I'm curious for enthusiastic viewpoints. In some ways I feel like my mistake with Kushiel's Dart was imprinting on Anafiel Delaunay, who turned out not to be a major character after all.
It spends a lot of time talking about the band Loup works for, which I enjoyed, but it does make the second book a whole lot more All About The Men than the first one, and it doesn't do anything new or interesting to make up for it.
Check. I'm not hearing that reading Saints Astray ruins Santa Olivia, which is very important (Children of God, I'm looking at you), but I'm also not hearing a compelling reason to search it out. I am a little sorry, because Santa Olivia was just that awesome, but at least it exists as it is.
It's like her publishing company told her she had to jump on the bandwagon of 'Quirky Small Town Girl Who Does Supernatural Stuff' and she deliberately wrote something that pinged all the requirements of the genre, while being dull as dust, just to spite them. If it weren't for the author's name on the cover, I would never, never have pegged it as a Jacqueline Carey novel; it reads like she was already planning to disown it as she was writing it.
That's really sad. That's not even a genre that needs more authors, you know?
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So. The Kushiel's Legacy trilogies. I always preface any discussion of these books with The Disclaimer: Yes, I understand that these are problematic books. No, that doesn't prevent me from enjoying them. Yes, I am probably interrogating the text from the wrong perspective, because the perspective from which I'm interrogating it is "Does this work for me as a story?"
Parts of it really do work for me, and a lot of those parts are in the second trilogy. The first trilogy left me wondering about that whole "Love as thou wilt" thing. One of the things I wondered was how that can possibly work in a society where political marriages are clearly necessary from time to time. Another thing I wondered was whether Terre d'Ange was really such a utopia that no one was ever abused in any way (other than negotiated D/s and/or kink)--and, if it's not, what happens to abuse survivors. Does their pain
magicallygods-giftedly vanish once they stumble upon the right kind of healing sex?The second trilogy answers, to some extent, both of those questions. Carey doesn't flinch away (much) from the reality of Imriel's childhood abuse and how he subsequently survives adolescence and adulthood in a highly sexualized society. And pretty much the entire plot of the second and third books of the second trilogy center around what happens when two people who are in love can't be together for political reasons; they break the "Love as thou wilt" commandment, and Extremely Bad Things happen. As storytelling, it works for me.
(The first book of Imriel's trilogy, by the way, does spend a fair amount of time at the University of Tiberium, where Imriel learns the same superspy stuff that Anafiel Delaunay learned earlier--and we find out more about how Delaunay learned it and what kind of stuff he got into at university. Plus, this book has a section where one of Imriel's agemate friends gets possessed by the ghost of his own grandfather while they're fighting an alterna-Roman clan war. It's a neat sequence.)
The third trilogy skips forward about a hundred years, conveniently removing the need to deal with any of the characters from the first two trilogies. It features a first-person-narrator protagonist I find less appealing than Phedre or Imriel, and in general this trilogy appears to be overstocked with unlikeable characters. Also, the third trilogy is, for me anyways, where the Skipping Lightly Among Whatever Alterna-Cultures Jacqueline Carey Thinks Sound Sexy And Mystical thing jumps the shark. I'm not qualified to discuss whether it's Racefaily, but IMHO it's really kind of boring in spots.
As storytelling goes, the third trilogy's main asset is that it's an outsider's perspective on Terre d'Ange; the protagonist, Moirin, is the daughter of a d'Angeline father and a Alban mother, and is raised among her mother's people until her teens.
A lot of folks with whom I've discussed the series online are huge Moirin fans, but their reasoning often boils down to "Yay Awesome Ladies! Moirin kicks ass! She's awesomer than that boring whore Phedre!" which, needless to say, doesn't encourage me to continue the conversation further.
Finally, regarding Delaunay, Wikipedia tells me that one of the George R.R.Martin-Gardner Dozois anthologies (Songs Of Love And Death) contains a story called "You And You Alone" which is basically The Story Of Anafiel Delaunay And How He Got That Way.
...yeah, I kind of have thoughts about these books.
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I liked the book.