I’ve been interested in Claire North’s work for a long time, and her books under this penname are especially interesting because they take some really fascinating ideas and explore the heck out of them. First Harry August, living the same life over and over; then the protagonist of Touch, able to switch bodies with, well, a touch; and now Hope Arden, the woman no one can remember. North has a gift for teasing out the issues of these ideas — ethical and philosophical issues, the way her characters are going to relate to people given their unique differences.
The Sudden Appearance of Hope is, like the other two, kind of a thriller, this time with plenty of tech involved. The ideas themselves aren’t so unusual, I suppose: the combination, however, is something I haven’t seen before. First you have Hope, who can’t be remembered, who carries out heists because she can; and then you have the second plot thread, the app, ‘Perfection’, which controls people’s lives. I’ve definitely seen this one before — most recently in All The Birds in the Sky — but here it’s sinister, and explores the problems of giving over your life to technology, to people looking to make a profit rather than better the world.
There are some real moments of pathos with the characters, even though it’s mainly an idea novel to my mind, and even though Hope isn’t always entirely sympathetic. Mostly, the sister of the entrepreneur who is Perfection’s figurehead: smart, imperfect, trapped. She rings more of a bell with me than Hope herself (though Hope has some interesting choices to make and things to figure out). Luca, the detective, also caught my imagination more than Hope: his determination, his goodness, his flawedness.
I feel like this is more smoothly executed that The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August; I felt less inclined to poke holes in the plot. My only issue was that it felt too long; at around 50% it felt like it was coming in for a denouement, and then it took right off again.
Spider-Woman: Spider-Verse, Dennis Hopeless, Greg Land
It might be because I don’t know any of Greg Land’s other work, but I don’t have the problem with his art in this book that other people identify. It sounds like he uses fairly formulaic compositions? But I’m not the greatest at visual-anything anyway, so it probably wouldn’t bother me. To me Jessica looks badass and capable, and uses her skillset well for fighting and spying.
The Spider-verse in general… Eh. I like the plethora of female stars that have come out of it, or had a part to play — Anya Corazon, Cindy Moon, Jessica Drew, Gwen Stacey… and the idea of all the alternate Peter Parkers was pretty cool. Silk acts pretty spoilt in some ways; haring off on her own and getting other people into trouble. Jessica shares some aspects of her background, a thing I mentioned in my review of Silk’s solo volume, but she’s much further along the road to finding her place in the world.
I love her friendship with Carol and the other Avengers, and so it’s nice that this volume finishes with her taking her leave of the Avengers, choosing to go and figure out who Jessica Drew is. It’s a fun enough volume, though perhaps not memorable.
How to review this? I have complicated thoughts. For a start: I love the ballad(s, there’s various versions), and I’ve read quite a few Tam Lin retellings now too. I expected to like Tam Lin, per Pamela Dean, quite a lot, because it came highly recommended and because of all the other things I was told were involved in this retelling — the ‘college as magic garden‘ aspect, primarily. And there’s a lot to like about that, because I did experience university as a magical garden in many ways, and I loved the utter focus on college, on learning, on cramming in everything you can. And that lovely feeling of finding something you didn’t expect to love through study and the right teacher, and all the possibilities, and…
It is a bit thick with references; though Jo Walton’s review suggests that it never leans on the references without explaining them, sometimes that led to the weird sense of being told the plots of all the plays mentioned within the novel. It’s a little bit infodumpy, even though it suits the whole atmosphere.
And I do like the portrayal of women being different and finding ways to get along anyway; young couples working out things like contraception and how to fit in seeing each other between their studies; men and women forming friendship groups together that aren’t completely rife with sex and jealousy (although there is some of that).
I liked the slow unfolding of it, too. It helped to know (again from Jo’s review) that the pacing of it is based on the pacing of the ballad (not sure which exact version), with the build-up taking most of the song and the denouement a verse: that is very much how it is in the novel, too. And I did like that I needed to watch for the references, keep my eyes open for the hints, that somehow ghosts and people who could’ve stepped out of Shakespeare’s plays came to seem normal.
It did frustrate me, though, how long it took for there to be payoff — how long it took for it to be confirmed as a fantasy novel, and not as, say, Janet being unstable (I knew it wasn’t that, but I apparently like my fantasy more overt), and how long it took for the two characters who turn out to be the main ones to actually really find each other. It took literally until 85% before I could see how the relationships could possibly work out like the ballad.
When it did come together, it was very satisfying. But it takes time, and you have to want to spend the time in the magical garden, spend time with these very young, very serious, very earnest characters who are just beginning to go about meaningful work and love and relationships. I can see why some people bounce off this one, I really can. I think without the strong recommendations I received plus my knowledge of the ballad (and my love for Fairport Convention’s version of it!), I might not have stuck it out.
How’s everyone been this week? The week has gone both really fast and really slow for me; it’s a little weird. I’m working on my next assignment already, but fortunately I’m not down to the wire on it, so there’s still plenty of time for reading as well as learning about microbes!
New books
After reading Dreamer’s Pool a week or two ago, I got the itch to read more of Marillier’s work again — and I found Raven Flight in the cheap-ish second hand shop in Leuven. Perfect! In Ashes Lie, I had to grab after loving Midnight Never Come (maybe not as much as the Lady Trent books, but a lot all the same). I haven’t got that pretty cover edition — yet — just an ebook, but I will be picking that up to join my paperbacks of the Lady Trent books and Midnight Never Come. The Orphan Queen, I’ve been curious about for a while, and I saw it was £1.99 on Kindle…
As for what I’ve been reading, it’s been a productive week! I still need to get my thoughts down about most of these, but there isn’t a dud among ’em.
My flatmate recommended this to me with much high praise. And read my copy before I got my hands on it, and cried at it a lot. I have to confess, when I started reading it, I didn’t really get into it. The story is about a man who agrees to meet an angel (or an angel who agrees to meet a man?) at the same time every year, for one night every year. The story focuses on these meetings, so what we get are glimpses into a life. It isn’t just the meetings, but it focuses mostly on them, rather than the minutiae of daily life. As a consequence, it takes time to get to know the characters. I think it was that that kept me from getting too deeply into the story.
It actually reminds me of a line from the first page: He took a swig of the friand, tasted fruit and freshness, a flavour that turned briefly and looked back over its shoulder at the summer before last, but didn’t pause even to shade its eyes. And then: Again he tasted the wine’s quick backward look, its spice — flirtation and not love.
Not only is that a lovely thought, and it tastes nice to synaesthetic little me, but it kind of describes how I felt about the book at first.
I didn’t really know what to expect from the story. There’s a little mystery in it, about some murders that happen in the area, and then there’s the love story between the man and the angel. I found both of them compelling. There are also glimpses into heaven and hell, provided by Xas, the angel, and the intervention of Lucifer — things that really point at a greater plot, I suppose, but we see it framed in the same way as Sobran, the human, does.
The love story is the part that really captured me, I have to say. It isn’t easy, Xas holding back from it, and then Sobran becoming angry and not wanting to see Xas, and then Xas’ disappearance… There’s enough of it to catch hold of your heart, though, and when you’re reaching the end of the book, it really, really begins to hurt.
I didn’t actually cry, although it was a close thing: I was desperate to read the last twenty pages, so had to read them under my grandparents’ eagle eyes, and that wasn’t conducive to a full-on sob fest…
I really do love the last lines:
You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I’d supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible.
If you’ve had your head in the sand for the last day or two, the title of this post might confuse you a little. There’s an article here which covers the basics, but this panel might just sum everything up best:
The moment Marvel stomped on the character of Steve Rogers and all previous portrayals thereof.
And we’re told that this isn’t an impostor. This really is Cap. Hell, Steve’s mother was recruited by Hydra, per some of the flashbacks in this comic.
Yep. The quintessential defender of the little guy is suddenly an agent of Hydra. You know, that Nazi organisation. The ones Steve Rogers has been fighting for seventy-five years of comics history, in various guises.
I don’t even really need to explain why it’s wrong (though this article is a good one on that). Just think of the number of people who read this who now face the fact that Steve Rogers supposedly hates everything they are. It won’t even wash, I agree: no one is going to buy Steve Rogers as an actual Hydra agent. It must be brainwashing or alternate reality or a trick or… something. Because this isn’t the Steve Rogers we know and love — the character which sticks with us throughout different versions, whether he be played by Chris Evans or drawn with more muscles than is anatomically possible. The key thing about Captain America is not the suit, the colour scheme, the beefcake eye-candy. It’s the little guy he was, who kept on fighting and pushing, making the world a better place, never giving a damn what it cost him. Even when he could’ve taken advantage, cashed in, got whatever he wanted.
We know what Captain America wants: it’s justice tempered with mercy, and safety and freedom for everyone. This is not exactly compatible with Hydra’s goals.
Nah, what really sparked this post is all the counter-arguments which start with: You don’t understand comics if you think this is going to stick. Cap will be back to normal in a couple of issues. There’s no way they’re going to mess up this legacy.
I haven’t seen anyone convincingly arguing that this is not a punch in the face for a lot of people. So let’s use that metaphor: if someone hit you, are you going to sit back and wait weeks for them to unfold some narrative that justifies it? Are you going to say, “this person wouldn’t hit me, so it can’t really hurt even though they just hit me”? Are you going to accept them saying, “hey, sorry I hit you, but wait a couple of weeks and it won’t hurt anymore”?
It’s not about how comics work. We all know that the power of retcon is strong in comics. It’s about why anyone thought this was a good idea at all. This is just so fundamentally wrong, not just for the character but as a plot device, because it is so tone deaf. Sometimes you’ll run with a bad idea and somehow not see that it’s a bad idea, so while I’m not happy that Marvel ever let this go ahead, I’m more interested in what they do now. That people talk about it. That people who don’t get it turn around and listen.
It doesn’t matter if Cap is a Nazi for good or not. It matters that Marvel ever thought it was a good idea. But the thing that really gets my goat is this idea that I must not like/understand/read comics if I’m against this plotline. Guys, take a look at my blog. I’ll wait.
Evidently I do read comics, and if you comb back far enough, you’ll find that I don’t just wait for the trade paperback. I buy the comics on the day they come out. I bugged the life out of my local comic shop owner when he couldn’t put Young Avengers or Ms Marvel in my hands fast enough (what do you mean you only stocked enough for people’s pull lists, and no copies left over?). And then I get the trade paperbacks of ones I really like, to reread and lend and enjoy in future.
So yes, I do understand comics. And so maybe it’ll come better from me: you don’t need to understand comics to have an opinion on this questionable, harmful, hurtful, anti-Semetic issue of Captain America.
“You just don’t understand how comics work” is a way of ducking the responsibility for examining something that’s going on in your fandom. I haven’t even seen anyone who thinks this storyline isn’t a problem, I should emphasise. Everyone thinks it is. But some people are trying to sweep it under the rug because… what? Is it too hard to see what’s going on in the world reflected in comics?
Sorry, mates. Look up Cap’s origins. He was never apolitical, never just wish fulfillment, never intended not to be a comment. Comics, like everything else, are part of the world and have to exist within it. Nothing is above or beyond or below criticism.
Silk: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon, Robbie Thompson, Stacey Lee
The main complaint I’ve heard about this (and Spider-Gwen, and Spider-Woman) is basically “oh noez, they’ve got WOMEN all up in my comics!” To which I say: “heck yeah, about time.” Silk’s first solo volume is reasonable, though the themes are familiar — Jessica Drew had some of the same adjustment problems from her spidery-past, Cindy has to learn to do the whole great-power-and-responsibility thing, coping with a normal life, and so on.
It’s fun enough, though not outstanding, and somewhat hobbled by the fact that it almost immediately gets swallowed up by Secret Wars at the end of the volume. That certainly didn’t have any kind of positive effect on solo storylines (not that I’ve seen anyone being fond of it elsewhere, either). Almost universally it just suddenly happens and derails all vestiges of solo plot.
Stacey Lee’s art is great, though — fluid lines, good expressions; it works for me very well, and I hope she illustrates future issues.
There were some aspects of this Beauty and the Beast reworking I found really interesting — mostly, the Greek mythology that was mixed in. It didn’t feel like a typical woodsy-castle-y faux-medieval-y setting, which was refreshing, and the references to the Kindly Ones — aka the Furies — worked pretty well for me. The complex relationship between Nyx and her sister was actually kind of interesting too; it’s not straightforward, because everything is not as it first appears, and neither of them are honest to each other.
But otherwise, there were a lot of aspects of this I just couldn’t get into. Both the relationships the main character had just felt off, despite the attempt to show a dichotomy between the two where one, to borrow Tolkien’s phrasing, ‘looks foul and feels fair’ and vice versa (except mostly acts/feels; they’re both handsome, as I recall). The romance tends to the insta-love trope, and given that Ignifex never makes himself really pleasant (unlike, say, T. Kingfisher’s Beast in Bryony and Roses).
There are some interesting aspects, as I said, but looking back at it as I write this somewhat belated review, it definitely never came together for me, and it didn’t really become memorable either.
This still wasn’t a favourite book for me in the Earthsea sequence, because it deals so much with the consequences of what happened to Ged in The Farthest Shore. Considering I’m not a great fan of that plot (though I have come to appreciate it more as an artistic choice and for the way it changes Earthsea), I guess it’s not surprising that I’m not such a fan — even though, like The Tombs of Atuan, this brings the female point of view to the fore and deals with some of the issues of sexism in the world.
The brief glimpse of Lebanen as the young king is lovely, and the understanding Tenar and Ged eventually come to is too. The stuff about the friendship between women, and the way Tenar realises that she’s totally failed to raise the kind of man she’d like for a son, also works pretty well.
But it takes away Ged’s dignity — and that, more than the loss of his power, I dislike intensely. He’s always been proud, and here… he can’t fight, can’t save himself. He needs Therru and the dragons.
So as with The Farthest Shore, I see the thematic importance. I just… don’t like it that much.
This week’s theme is an interesting one: ten books I feel differently about now time has passed. There’s a lot of books I feel that way about from when I was a kid, of course, but I’ll try to go for more recent stuff.
Cocaine Blues, Kerry Greenwood. I reaaaally changed my opinion on this one, and ended up devouring the whole series. But the first time I tried it, I hated it.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. I’ve always liked reading it, but I’ve gone through periods of being more or less critical. There was one point where I didn’t dare reread it, because I thought I’d find it too racist, sexist, simplistic… But thanks to Ursula Le Guin’s writing on Tolkien’s work, and then studying it during my MA, I’ve come to appreciate it a lot more. A lot of the things people complain about post-Tolkien fantasy really are post-Tolkien — he didn’t bring them in. Derivativeness, lack of thought about the implications of this choice or that on the world — I’ve come to see that lack of thought was never Tolkien’s problem, though it has been a problem for people after him.
The Diamond Throne, David Eddings. I’ve had a long succession of feelings about this too; loved it and thought it really romantic as a kid, grew up and thought it was crappy and derivative, but recently I reread a bit and thought it was kind of funny anyway. (Even if Sparhawk and Ehlana is actually a creepy relationship.)
Chalice, Robin McKinley. I think I originally gave this one three stars, but I keep thinking about it and I’ve read it again since and I just… I love it.
Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton. Didn’t love this the first time, fell right into it on a reread. The right book at the right time, I guess.
The Farthest Shore, Ursula Le Guin. This is less one that I’ve got to like more, and more one I appreciate more. I’m still not a big fan of it and wouldn’t idly pick it up the way I would, say, The Tombs of Atuan. But I see its purpose and beauty.
Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn. I loved this at the time, but I don’t know if it’d stand up to that now. I’m a little afraid to try, so I think that counts for the list?
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden. I know in how many ways this is exploitative and so on, but I did love this at one point. Another one I don’t think I’ll try again.
Guenevere, Queen of the Summer Country, Rosalind Miles. I might like this more now that I read more romance, I don’t know, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. My opinion got worse and worse as I read more of her books.
The Crystal Cave, Mary Stewart. The misogyny drove me mad the first time, but I actually appreciated parts of it more the second time.
That was… harder than I expected. Although I was also distracted by being a backseat driver to my partner playing Assassin’s Creed.
The Sudden Appearance of Hope, Claire North
