silver

I'm having trouble finishing the third book of the Vineart War (I reviewed the first book Flesh and Fire a few weeks ago) because everything. Uh, there's stuff like pacing--she kind of had an issue with that in Flesh and Fire too, it felt like everything was pretty compacted to the end, though not unreasonably so, but this one had a lot of Jerzy muddling round in the middle and then suddenly bam sixty pages to the end and now people start rushing around like mad chickens. Also, Mahault and Kainam's fathers drop dead. And I don't think I will like how/what Jerzy does. Oh Jerzy, don't do it!

There are three ways things usually end: yay, bittersweet, or DEATH. Things to pick from are stuff like:

• sail away forever
• die
• restore things to status quo and then go away
• restore to status quo of before and take up more responsibilities (HEA)
• die from overextending self
• die/pass on because the world has changed too much and no longer fit/cope
• many other sad things

You get the idea. I'm afraid Jerzy is going to die. SHE KILLED MALECH, all right? Giordan! She maimed Ao. It's not quite totally unpredictable who'll be killed, but this close to the end, I have a feeling he might be for the block. Mostly, I'm bugged by the pacing, though I haven't even finished it yet. What if it's all crumpled together?!

Note to self:

Don't research plague before bedtime.

Especially when you know their impact. Mortality rates of bubonic plague is estimated at 30-75%, pneumatic at 80% or higher, and septicaemic nearly 100% and no, you can't make me go back to Wikipedia and check my figures.

And it's not like smallpox. There's an animal carrier that we can't exactly eradicate :(

( warning: mealworms & rice. I had to spread the pain. )

I'm sorry to anyone on my flist who I recently friended. I swear my entries are usually much more palatable but I have to tell someone. The whole world.

Agatha H and the Airship City, by Phil and Kaja Foglio--DNF.

This book is terrible.

It is unbelievably clunkily written. Paragraphs that don't have any connection follow each other. There are entire paragraphs are made up of sentences which are very short and simple, which make the whole thing sound choppy. There are multiple italics and CAPSLOCKED WORDS AND PHRASES on nearly every page. No one acts like a human, all the Jäger machines have their accents written out phonetically (possibly German caricature?), and the whole thing tries to be clever and arch and falls so badly short. And honestly, it's the last that really gets my goat.

( So I had some issues with this book. )

Having now written all of that out, I think the authors were trying to go for humour. But there's nothing for the humour to go on top of. Nothing to build on top of, so instead I'm left wondering what's going on and why I should care, and finding the humour illogical instead.

In conclusion, I hope that their webcomic is leagues better than their writing, because this book is just plain awful. Girl Genius won a Hugo? Why do so many steampunk novels insist on being arch? It reminds me of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate, which was uneven and whose main female character practically screamed I'm not one of those girls! Thank you, I'll pass.

Keeping in mind that I read the book while in mild pain, in a overwarm room, and sleepily:

( let the spoilers commence! )

*

Someone said something about Harry Potter the series being Calvinist, so I looked it up (usually there's an essay backing the argument somewhere) and I had an intense People are Wrong on the Internet moment while reading. Not with the theology, which I'm never gonna be qualified to argue. But on literary interpretations, well, I had objections. Here is the post for reference. While I agree that Snape isn't a nice guy, he's written as a godawful teacher, a jerk, spiteful, but also bullied, misguided, and held up as someone who did good in impossible situations--even if he personally was awful to be around. Harry names his child after him, for heavens' sake! Even if you want to argue that it's just Harry's inhuman ability to forgive (wrongly), Snape himself shows you don't have to be sorted into Gryffindor to be, as the essayist says, 'the Elect', the good guys. Lily...does not treat Snape as dirt. She's shown to stick up for Snape in that infamous scene by the lake, she tells Snape while they're in private--after years of being friends--her reasons why she feels uncomfortable with his associates. She doesn't just drop Snape for no reason; I think being uncomfortable with friends getting violent/holding ugly prejudices against you is certainly not unreasonable, and nor is it "treating Snape like dirt". I will not argue that James Potter was not "a bullying toerag", but one of the recurring themes in HP is that it's possible to be bad and still love people. I wish she had de-evilized Slytherin and carried the theme more consistently throughout, but that's an argument for another day. Nevertheless, look at the Malfoys--they really love their son (to the point where Narcissa quite clearly defies Voldemort, risking everything at the cusp of their supposed victory). James clearly loved both Lily and Harry a great deal. Dumbledore loved Ariana but not enough, as a teenager, to realize what he was doing or enough to stop being resentful. Love didn't make characters perfect, but imperfection elsewhere didn't (doesn't) mean that jerks couldn't love.

Nuance, please.

Some of the statements were perfectly wrong. "That deep down a person can't change. Deep down...Percy is officious"--but it's a major point that Percy comes back and says, giving up his pride, that he was wrong and he did wrong and he was a prat and he's sorry. This essay also ignores other characters sorted into different houses: what happened to Luna? The DA is populated with Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Harry has a rather low opinion of some of them--he thinks Ernie McMillan is pompous, for example--but never does he, nor the text, argue that they have less of an impact fighting against Voldemort because they were sorted into the wrong house. I could go on refuting random sentences, and it's tempting, but I think I've made my main point.

I feel this argument was predicated on one assumption, namely "Harry Potter is Calvinist", and the facts got twisted to suit it. That's one way to construct an argument, but I don't see it as very valid. I'd rather you start with a reading of the text first, or at least play around with the idea.

*

In real life news, I went to dance class on Thursday! We started salsa, and it was a blast. I don't like dance as a performance very much--I did it as a child, and synchronized choreography, performance, and all that is not my cup of tea--but I do very much enjoy dance with a partner. Or with sequential partners, like square dance. I know some of my classmates thought it was hopelessly old and outdated, but I thought it was just so fun, and music was ridiculously catchy. OK, it's fun when the person you're partnered with wants to be there and wants to exert effort (not always a given in mandatory gym class!) but here, my partner, a random boy standing across from me, was good, or at least equally matched with me.

We went through the basic steps, and some turns and variations. It was really warm, even though the sun had gone down hours ago, but massively fun. My partner was good (and could hear the rhythm! Oh man, best) so we ended up practicing everything a million times while the teacher went among other dancers. I've done jive before, which I thought was kind of similar--at least some of the turns. The stop and go (leader does basic step, follower turns 180, twisting arms around, then unfolding) I'm pretty sure I did before. The music was fast--a lot of energy is involved! Definitely looking forward to learning more this week.

I read Sabriel at the collective urging of kmo_lj and thorarosebird (Thora, you still there?) and I'm still kind of reeling.

OK #1, I totally called Touchstone's royal blood when he said he was a guard. I mean, c'mon, he was basted onto the ship where royalty are laid to rest. Also, I read too much fantasy.

You know what, it's too hard to do this with half spoilers out everywhere, let me cut the whole thing.


SOOOOOO I came out of it shipping Touchstone/Sabriel (what is his real name, anyway?) Kind of telegraphed by his introduction, but I'm not into romance for the subtlety, so we're all good. And I love that they're both mages--together they fight evil! Or things risen back from the dead, as it were...

I'm utterly charmed by the Paperwings, and I don't even know why. I think of them as a little like white paper planes, and those are charming in a way that our real airplanes aren't.

I almost cried when Sabriel's father died. Noooooooooo how could you do this? ;_; On the other hand, the Abhorsens of the past come to push Sabriel back to the living (JESUS H CHRIST was that a gory death, did she just get impaled on a sword?!?) and they are all experienced in dipping between death and life, so maybe...he's not totally lost? Oh god, I don't deal well with these twists, I hate characters dying.

I'm not sure how to think about Mogget. It's like there's two of him, the cat-being (which is an albino child/dwarf thing to Sabriel's father) and the other being which is indescribable, and I think of them as two separate characters. I was so pleased he came back. I feel that cat characters always improve a book, even if I'm not much of a cat person myself. They have interesting personalities!

The part about Mogget telling Sabriel to re-bind him is weird. It's not precisely Stockholm Syndrome, but maybe like Mogget prefers being not-vengeful (a better person?) which is easier in his cat form. And I am so very glad that he reappeared.

The Charter, Great Stones, the whole magic system is still kind of a mystery to me. Partly a result of the gag that's on Mogget and Touchstone I think, who would otherwise be guides in the Old Kingdom, since Sabriel doesn't know. I did like the idea of bells--or rather, the sound of bells, since Sabriel's trained to sing/whistle the sounds in case the bells aren't there--controlling death. Well, not controlling death, but exerting control on living/unliving with regards to the realm of death. There, that's more accurate, but weird.

I also really liked the Clayr twins. They're probably terrible stereotypes of twins (dreamy, not-really-there twins) but I loved them anyway--I hope we get to see more of them.

Oh and Ancelstierre! In my mind it's like northern England or Scotland in the early 19th century. Thus the tanks, but cars which go 30mph are impressive. And the whole boarding school thing, but Nix is Australian, isn't he? On the other hand, I don't think it's an actual England/Scotland/other analogue; for one, Wyverly College (a girls' school built originally for "Young Ladies of Quality") teaches swordsmanship, amongst other things like etiquette.

Trying to get my hands on the sequel right now.

This has really not been a good day.( I'm sorry that all my posts are whining, I have pictures of fireworks I will develop later which are happier )

1. We have a Conservative majority. OK, even though I'm liberalmaybe this means the government will be more efficient since they actually have adequate support.

The thing that blows me away:
2. Official Opposition Party: NDP.


WHAT.

http://community.livejournal.com/suggestions/1062690.html

NO NO NO NO NO. NO NO NO. We do not need more of the "Those Russians" attitude. We do not need any sort of coding that would make you have different script, go away. It's an incredibly slippery slope. NO NO NO NO NO. I hate the spam as much as you do, but this is the wrong way to go about it.

Keeping this on DW so that hopefully any confrontation will be kept at suggestions.

So something happened to Hotmail today, and all my emails are gone.

All of them. I don't know if I'll get them back or not. At this point I don't know if incoming messages are being received or not; there's a lot of panic (and blaming) going on in the help forums (and I feel bad for the mods there, yuck).

This is particularly relevant to DW people: since comment notifications on other entries do not show up in the DW inbox and only email, I probably won't see any replies to comments. Or emails you send me. If there's no reply from me it's because I have no idea you sent me anything. eta: the notifs are coming through.

I'm reluctant to change emails here, because of all the mess about previously verified emails and stuff like that wrt security (also I like Hotmail and I'm used to it and whiiiine).

End result: D: