Wednesday reading — dragons and djinni
Aug. 21st, 2013 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mayhapWhat I've been reading
I read Blood of Tyrants, the penultimate Temeraire book. The last couple books in the series have felt a bit like they were just marking time and filling pages, whereas I felt like a book's worth of things actually happened in this book, even with the not-strictly-necessary amnesia subplot. Amnesiac!Laurence got a bit tiresome, to be honest, but I did enjoy Temeraire's angst. He can be so oblivious as to the nature and extent of his demands on Laurence that it probably didn't hurt for him to be reminded how much Laurence has changed because of love for Temeraire. Still, I was ready enough for that subplot to be over that I only rolled my eyes a little when seeing Tharkay was what brought Laurence's memories back. And I mean, I like Tharkay and all, but since when has he been so important to Laurence that he cures amnesia when even Temeraire couldn't do it? But whatever, I'm sure the Laurence/Tharkay shippers are very happy.
Even though we only got a glimpse of it through amnesiac!Laurence's eyes, I loved Japan and its dragons. Similarly, Temeraire's conversations with the American dragon were tantalizing. China was familiar territory, but this book we get the Chinese military for the first time, which is nice. And then there's Napoleon in Russia, which I thought was actually really good, in that everything is terrible and there are no easy answers. It also makes me really want the next book, even though it will be the last one and I will be sad.
Also, isn't anyone going to write the Les Misérables crossover where, I dunno, Jean Valjean is a dragon or something?
I read The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy, which probably includes the author of at least one of your favorite books as a kid. You could read it if you still are a kid, but you don't have to be.
I read The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories and I loved it, even if it was unnecessarily typeset with wide margins and overgenerous linespacing to make it look longer than it is and the two stories reprinted from Possession are better where they were originally, in context.
What I'm reading next
Dunno.
I read Blood of Tyrants, the penultimate Temeraire book. The last couple books in the series have felt a bit like they were just marking time and filling pages, whereas I felt like a book's worth of things actually happened in this book, even with the not-strictly-necessary amnesia subplot. Amnesiac!Laurence got a bit tiresome, to be honest, but I did enjoy Temeraire's angst. He can be so oblivious as to the nature and extent of his demands on Laurence that it probably didn't hurt for him to be reminded how much Laurence has changed because of love for Temeraire. Still, I was ready enough for that subplot to be over that I only rolled my eyes a little when seeing Tharkay was what brought Laurence's memories back. And I mean, I like Tharkay and all, but since when has he been so important to Laurence that he cures amnesia when even Temeraire couldn't do it? But whatever, I'm sure the Laurence/Tharkay shippers are very happy.
Even though we only got a glimpse of it through amnesiac!Laurence's eyes, I loved Japan and its dragons. Similarly, Temeraire's conversations with the American dragon were tantalizing. China was familiar territory, but this book we get the Chinese military for the first time, which is nice. And then there's Napoleon in Russia, which I thought was actually really good, in that everything is terrible and there are no easy answers. It also makes me really want the next book, even though it will be the last one and I will be sad.
Also, isn't anyone going to write the Les Misérables crossover where, I dunno, Jean Valjean is a dragon or something?
I read The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy, which probably includes the author of at least one of your favorite books as a kid. You could read it if you still are a kid, but you don't have to be.
I read The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories and I loved it, even if it was unnecessarily typeset with wide margins and overgenerous linespacing to make it look longer than it is and the two stories reprinted from Possession are better where they were originally, in context.
What I'm reading next
Dunno.
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no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 02:39 am (UTC)This is me giving you internet kudos. :) I mean, I like Tharkay fine, but... I was kind of hoping it would be Temeraire.
no subject
Date: 2013-08-22 03:23 pm (UTC)…hmm, it occurs to me that the existence of dragons probably shouldn't affect the way amnesia works in this universe, it being a medical condition and all. The wiki article could be more helpful, considering how prominent amnesia is in popular culture, but it seems to be thought that amnesiacs recover their memories spontaneously and nothing you do or say to them beforehand either helps or hurts, so.
(It still should have been Temeraire, though. Because Temeraire.)
Les Mis/Temeraire crossovers
Date: 2013-08-22 12:11 pm (UTC)Also, isn't anyone going to write the Les Misérables crossover where, I dunno, Jean Valjean is a dragon or something?
There's a tiny crossover I read which has Javert flying a French Fleur-de-nuit called Justice: Claws of Justice (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8892084/1/Claws-of-Justice) (Echoing the scene in the Gorbeau Tenement)
And another, slightly longer snippet with both Javert and Valjean as dragons, and a tiny human Cosette: And Choose the Sweetest Yoke (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9472504/1/and-choose-the-sweetest-yoke) (Echoing the escape from Montreuil sur Mer)
Re: Les Mis/Temeraire crossovers
Date: 2013-08-22 06:39 pm (UTC)