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lunasarielYup, still immersed in the Age of Sail. At the moment, I'm looking at the the comparisons and contrasts between Aubrey/Maturin (hereinafter the Aubreyad) and Temeraire.
First, and this is both a good and a bad thing, the Aubreyad seems much more like it was actually written during the early 19th century. It pulls no punches with regards to period-appropriate racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. For example, many of the characters seem genuinely perplexed, even alarmed, when they meet a smart, confident, self-sufficient woman (who, of course, turns out to be evil). Also, an early but serious source of conflict between the two main characters is the fact that Stephen is A) a literal bastard, B) biracial, C) Irish, D) Catalan (Spanish with an extra dose of revolution/separatism), and worst of all E) Roman Catholic. Jack often unthinkingly uses "papist" as a pejorative, which, as you can imagine, doesn't go over all that well with Stephen. The interesting bit here, though, is that Jack isn't especially anti-Catholic, he's genuinely sorry when he accidentally offends Stephen, and makes a big effort to decrease the use of anti-Catholic slurs both in his own language and in that of his crew. On the other hand, "bastard" is a srs bznz insult. The one time Jack and Stephen get into a serious fight, Jack is totally okay with calling his best friend a liar, a traitor, and a coward, and even challenges him to a duel, but mentioning his mixed parentage was just going too far.
On the other hand, Temeraire (which, granted, is mostly taken up with the decidedly liberal Aerial Corps) seems a lot more modern in its sensibilities. But I don't take this to mean that Naomi Novik is pulling her punches, or that she doesn't know what she's talking about; not at all! This is just another example of that thing I mentioned in my last entry, where she does a really good job of fully exploring how society as we knew it would have been changed by the addition of dragons. When your best friend is 15 feet tall at the shoulder and covered in scales, of course it seems a wee bit silly to be hatin' on another human being just because of their skin color or choice of religion.
Another thing I'm noticing in Temeraire's favor is the emotional depth. I know I've mentioned this before, but the relationships between the characters really do form the core of the series, at least for me. And this isn't just about captains and their dragons, either; there's a real sense of community among the dragons, captains and their officers. One thing that kinda dragged the Aubreyad down, after a while, was the rigid hierarchy. Jack could pretty much only be friends with other captains, plus Stephen, who as a physician (as opposed to a surgeon) can be seen as of a comparable class. And even then, the captain palling around with the ship's sawbones was considered a bit weird. However, in Temeraire, Keynes (the dragon-surgeon) or Granby (the first lieutenant) aren't afraid to give Laurence (the captain) a good whack over the head (metaphorically speaking, of course) if they thought he deserved it. Like I said earlier, a big part of this is probably the fact that the Aerial Corps are unusually liberal; a lot of my favorite funny bits boil down to "Laurence is shocked at a situation that would be scandalous in most of society but is normal for aviators."
I've also been re-watching Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which gets me more and more frustrated every time I see it. Not because it's a bad movie, far from it! In fact, it's because it is such a good movie that it frustrates me. It was supposed to be the first of an entire series, which would have been amazing. This is one of the very, very few book-to-movie adaptions that I'm entirely happy with: the historical realism is far and away the best I've seen for an Age of Sail movie, the casting was spot-on, and the writers had a great understanding of, and love for, the source material. There was just so much more they could have done! The casting was frankly fantastic, and I'd have loved to see Diana, Sophie, James Dillon, General Aubrey, Sir Joseph, Jagiello, Andrew Wray... there are so many great characters, and I'm sure that the M&C team would have done a great job with all (well, realistically, most) of them. I'd also love to see more of Stephen the intelligence agent (especially the Port Mahon, Boston, and Malay episodes), both Jack's and Stephen's home lives (especially some of Stephen's weirder personal habits, such as the tumor incident, and Jack's baffled-yet-affectionate interactions with his kids), Stephen's particularly brilliant brand of nautical ineptitude (including the Garment and the running gag of him falling off the ship) and, of course, all the weirdass animals that Stephen brings on board.
In other news, I pretty much inhaled Snuff (pun not intended) over the weekend. Even though it was advertised as a purely Sam Vimes book, it had some pretty significant appearances (too prominent for cameos, but not prominent enough for actual starring roles) by the rest of the Watch, which is always nice. Like I've said, I'm a sucker for a good recurring ensemble, and to me, a Watch book isn't a Watch book unless it contains Carrot, Angua, Cheery, Fred, Nobby, Igor, and assorted other watchmen in addition to Sam himself.
I kinda wish I had Thud! to re-read, since this is more or less a direct sequel. I say "more or less" because Young Sam is six years old now, as opposed to a pre-toddler (is that even a word?), but overall Thud! and Snuff are very much of a piece. They both deal with issues of fantastic racism/species inequality, class privilege (especially as it applies to the aforementioned fantastic racism), and Sam's struggle to remain true to the spirit of the law in the face of his own darker nature.
Speaking of which, a large part of Snuff was the Summoning Dark, which seemed...different than in Thud!. It definitely seems more sentient, capable of acting and thinking on its own, albeit for its own purposes. It also seems to be able to see and hear everything that happens in the dark, everywhere, and then act as a sort of informant for Vimes, as well as giving Vimes the ability to see in the dark and speak Goblin, which I don't remember it doing in Thud!. Also, Sam never goes into anything approaching the beserker rage, or even gets more angry than he usually does when confronted with injustice. All in all, it's definitely presented as more of an obviously separate entity that encourages Vimes' rage than an extension of Vimes himself. Oddly, there was no mention of Vimes' inner watchman (the Guarding Dark?) that drove it off last time.
In terms of characterization, we get a lot better acquainted with Willikins, as well as get introduced to a Jane Austen expy (whose first book, written after a few suggestions from Vimes, is called Pride and Extreme Prejudice). JaneAusten Gordon was a nice little nod, even if the entire Austen Gordon family was a bit of a throwaway gag. Willikins, on the other hand, is explored at length. Before this book, pretty much the sum total of our knowledge of him was that he can be a real bastard of a drill sergeant, obeys Sibyl but sympathizes with Sam, has a checkered-but-fascinating past, and wields a mean ice knife when called upon. Here, we get to see how he has, for all intents and purposes, become one of the family. He's almost as protective of Young Sam as Sam himself is (for a good example, see what he does to the guy who tries to kill Young Sam, and his reasons for doing so), and, although he doesn't get involved in Sibyl/Sam disputes as such, he is definitely involved in them, if usually as an instrument of Sibyl's will.
As far as I can tell, the only problem this book has is the excessive dialogue. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Pterry has switched from typing/writing to dictation software, and he is of the opinion that this has caused his books to become a little more dialogue-heavy than they were before, and this is pretty clear here. The monologues/extended musings can get annoying after a while, especially when they come from usually taciturn characters, such as Sam, who stops mid-fight in order to speechify at length (almost half a page of straight-up talking!) about temper and respect and whatnot. This dragged down the pace of the book a bit, especially around the second quarter. In addition, maybe this is just me, but all the dialogue had the added effect of occasionally making it difficult to tell what's going on. Two characters would be having a conversation, only to be joined by a third, who I'd previously thought elsewhere, or at least not in the same room. Every so often, I found myself having to stop and backtrack a few paragraphs in order to figure out who was where, when they entered, and when they left.
That aside, it entirely lived up to Pterry's very high standards. The excessive dialogue, if sometimes misplaced, was at least interesting, and the central mystery had a certain Jane-Austen-meets-Miss-Marple-like "country crime" flavor to it, which I was originally unsure about, but was carried off with nothing less than Pterry's usual dexterity. Sibyl is, as always, unflappable in the face of murderous psychopaths, skulduggery, and two Sams charging about, doing their level bests to injure themselves. The villain wasn't anything spectacular (another Carcer Lite whose depravity and sense of omnipotence tempts Vimes to abandon his principles, only without the diabolical brilliance), but his victims were interesting enough to make up for it. The goblins, expanding on the theme of Unseen Academical's orcs, are a drastically misunderstood and horribly abused minority who, while not exactly pretty (or hygienic) are definitely presented as a people, with their own personalities, religion, and culture. As is standard for the Discworld, as a group they're not perfect, but a made up of some good ones, some bad ones, and a lot of basically kinda okay ones.
First, and this is both a good and a bad thing, the Aubreyad seems much more like it was actually written during the early 19th century. It pulls no punches with regards to period-appropriate racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. For example, many of the characters seem genuinely perplexed, even alarmed, when they meet a smart, confident, self-sufficient woman (who, of course, turns out to be evil). Also, an early but serious source of conflict between the two main characters is the fact that Stephen is A) a literal bastard, B) biracial, C) Irish, D) Catalan (Spanish with an extra dose of revolution/separatism), and worst of all E) Roman Catholic. Jack often unthinkingly uses "papist" as a pejorative, which, as you can imagine, doesn't go over all that well with Stephen. The interesting bit here, though, is that Jack isn't especially anti-Catholic, he's genuinely sorry when he accidentally offends Stephen, and makes a big effort to decrease the use of anti-Catholic slurs both in his own language and in that of his crew. On the other hand, "bastard" is a srs bznz insult. The one time Jack and Stephen get into a serious fight, Jack is totally okay with calling his best friend a liar, a traitor, and a coward, and even challenges him to a duel, but mentioning his mixed parentage was just going too far.
On the other hand, Temeraire (which, granted, is mostly taken up with the decidedly liberal Aerial Corps) seems a lot more modern in its sensibilities. But I don't take this to mean that Naomi Novik is pulling her punches, or that she doesn't know what she's talking about; not at all! This is just another example of that thing I mentioned in my last entry, where she does a really good job of fully exploring how society as we knew it would have been changed by the addition of dragons. When your best friend is 15 feet tall at the shoulder and covered in scales, of course it seems a wee bit silly to be hatin' on another human being just because of their skin color or choice of religion.
Another thing I'm noticing in Temeraire's favor is the emotional depth. I know I've mentioned this before, but the relationships between the characters really do form the core of the series, at least for me. And this isn't just about captains and their dragons, either; there's a real sense of community among the dragons, captains and their officers. One thing that kinda dragged the Aubreyad down, after a while, was the rigid hierarchy. Jack could pretty much only be friends with other captains, plus Stephen, who as a physician (as opposed to a surgeon) can be seen as of a comparable class. And even then, the captain palling around with the ship's sawbones was considered a bit weird. However, in Temeraire, Keynes (the dragon-surgeon) or Granby (the first lieutenant) aren't afraid to give Laurence (the captain) a good whack over the head (metaphorically speaking, of course) if they thought he deserved it. Like I said earlier, a big part of this is probably the fact that the Aerial Corps are unusually liberal; a lot of my favorite funny bits boil down to "Laurence is shocked at a situation that would be scandalous in most of society but is normal for aviators."
I've also been re-watching Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, which gets me more and more frustrated every time I see it. Not because it's a bad movie, far from it! In fact, it's because it is such a good movie that it frustrates me. It was supposed to be the first of an entire series, which would have been amazing. This is one of the very, very few book-to-movie adaptions that I'm entirely happy with: the historical realism is far and away the best I've seen for an Age of Sail movie, the casting was spot-on, and the writers had a great understanding of, and love for, the source material. There was just so much more they could have done! The casting was frankly fantastic, and I'd have loved to see Diana, Sophie, James Dillon, General Aubrey, Sir Joseph, Jagiello, Andrew Wray... there are so many great characters, and I'm sure that the M&C team would have done a great job with all (well, realistically, most) of them. I'd also love to see more of Stephen the intelligence agent (especially the Port Mahon, Boston, and Malay episodes), both Jack's and Stephen's home lives (especially some of Stephen's weirder personal habits, such as the tumor incident, and Jack's baffled-yet-affectionate interactions with his kids), Stephen's particularly brilliant brand of nautical ineptitude (including the Garment and the running gag of him falling off the ship) and, of course, all the weirdass animals that Stephen brings on board.
In other news, I pretty much inhaled Snuff (pun not intended) over the weekend. Even though it was advertised as a purely Sam Vimes book, it had some pretty significant appearances (too prominent for cameos, but not prominent enough for actual starring roles) by the rest of the Watch, which is always nice. Like I've said, I'm a sucker for a good recurring ensemble, and to me, a Watch book isn't a Watch book unless it contains Carrot, Angua, Cheery, Fred, Nobby, Igor, and assorted other watchmen in addition to Sam himself.
I kinda wish I had Thud! to re-read, since this is more or less a direct sequel. I say "more or less" because Young Sam is six years old now, as opposed to a pre-toddler (is that even a word?), but overall Thud! and Snuff are very much of a piece. They both deal with issues of fantastic racism/species inequality, class privilege (especially as it applies to the aforementioned fantastic racism), and Sam's struggle to remain true to the spirit of the law in the face of his own darker nature.
Speaking of which, a large part of Snuff was the Summoning Dark, which seemed...different than in Thud!. It definitely seems more sentient, capable of acting and thinking on its own, albeit for its own purposes. It also seems to be able to see and hear everything that happens in the dark, everywhere, and then act as a sort of informant for Vimes, as well as giving Vimes the ability to see in the dark and speak Goblin, which I don't remember it doing in Thud!. Also, Sam never goes into anything approaching the beserker rage, or even gets more angry than he usually does when confronted with injustice. All in all, it's definitely presented as more of an obviously separate entity that encourages Vimes' rage than an extension of Vimes himself. Oddly, there was no mention of Vimes' inner watchman (the Guarding Dark?) that drove it off last time.
In terms of characterization, we get a lot better acquainted with Willikins, as well as get introduced to a Jane Austen expy (whose first book, written after a few suggestions from Vimes, is called Pride and Extreme Prejudice). Jane
As far as I can tell, the only problem this book has is the excessive dialogue. I seem to remember reading somewhere that Pterry has switched from typing/writing to dictation software, and he is of the opinion that this has caused his books to become a little more dialogue-heavy than they were before, and this is pretty clear here. The monologues/extended musings can get annoying after a while, especially when they come from usually taciturn characters, such as Sam, who stops mid-fight in order to speechify at length (almost half a page of straight-up talking!) about temper and respect and whatnot. This dragged down the pace of the book a bit, especially around the second quarter. In addition, maybe this is just me, but all the dialogue had the added effect of occasionally making it difficult to tell what's going on. Two characters would be having a conversation, only to be joined by a third, who I'd previously thought elsewhere, or at least not in the same room. Every so often, I found myself having to stop and backtrack a few paragraphs in order to figure out who was where, when they entered, and when they left.
That aside, it entirely lived up to Pterry's very high standards. The excessive dialogue, if sometimes misplaced, was at least interesting, and the central mystery had a certain Jane-Austen-meets-Miss-Marple-like "country crime" flavor to it, which I was originally unsure about, but was carried off with nothing less than Pterry's usual dexterity. Sibyl is, as always, unflappable in the face of murderous psychopaths, skulduggery, and two Sams charging about, doing their level bests to injure themselves. The villain wasn't anything spectacular (another Carcer Lite whose depravity and sense of omnipotence tempts Vimes to abandon his principles, only without the diabolical brilliance), but his victims were interesting enough to make up for it. The goblins, expanding on the theme of Unseen Academical's orcs, are a drastically misunderstood and horribly abused minority who, while not exactly pretty (or hygienic) are definitely presented as a people, with their own personalities, religion, and culture. As is standard for the Discworld, as a group they're not perfect, but a made up of some good ones, some bad ones, and a lot of basically kinda okay ones.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-14 07:08 am (UTC)Anyway, must remember to track down Snuff!
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 03:12 am (UTC)I'm even a fan of dialogue-heavy books, thought it sounds like the dialogue might be getting in the way of other stuff like pacing here...
Exactly! The dialogue in itself isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination, there's just *a lot* of it
Anyway, must remember to track down Snuff!
Doooo eeeeeet! I'd love to get your take on it!