The Usual > Recent Status Updates

Oh goody, a barely-disguised Cicero reference.
My patience is fraying with this one.

Has to be said, most of the ostentatiously clever writing has evaporated here... then again, so have most of the footnotes.
Swings and roundabouts...

I like the main body of the text but have my doubts about the footnotes, and there are points where the footnotes threaten to swallow the story.

I knew there was a smell of Arthur Machen about this. Cotgrave and Ambrose are characters in The White People.
I think that's a Machen I haven't read yet, actually... might have to correct that.

He's basically built space-Nazis. I'm not sure how I feel about space-Nazis.

Yes, it's book three. No, I haven't read book two. No, this doesn't appear to be causing problems.

"... could make someone evapourate into smoke with a gesture." on the other hand, leaves me muttering about spelling, about the non-liquid nature of humans, and about the way that smoke isn't a vapour.
I think I'm overthinking it.

There’s something slightly rabid about Hilary Mantel – a kind of vicious relish to her writing. Not sure what it says about me that I like that.

I can see why this was written as it was, I just didn’t find it worth the effort of fighting past the surface.

Struggling a bit with the not quite English here. I can see why all the weird spellings are there, it's just taking time for my ear to adjust.

Hmm... well, what I'm reading looks exactly like this, has this title, but is 475 pages long. That's my stats up the creek, then.

Jekyll and Hyde:

Saintly garden designer Gertrude Jekyll discovers a herb that transforms her at will into the wicked first Earl of Clarendon. To her horror, the gout-ridden statesman begins to subsume her personality…

I'm enjoying this series, but I do find I'm distracted by nerdy things nobody (quite rightly) cares about. Things like Joffrey's sword accidentally changing name, or Martin using "flautists" in one book and "flutists" in another.

in other news, the backstabbing continues...

"... a wind-carved pinnace..."

surely that's a typo for pinnacle?

p. 411

",,, smashed against a frozen pinnace."

Uh... twice. How does that happen?

I'm enjoying this, I really am, but I keep tripping over little irritations - I keep trying to map Lynch's world onto reality, and it won't go. Grafs, for example. It sounded wrong, so I was forced to look it up: the plural of Graf is apparently Grafen. Damn my schoolboy German!

Lazy-option low three here, I think.

I'm really quite cross with the cover artist at this point. It's taken this long for me to stop thinking of Camorr as Venetian. I'm clearly also out of practice when it comes to this kind of fantasy - the first few pages are a soup of Proper Nouns and swearing.

The honest response to this is to give The Trojan Women a five (possibly 6) star score and the other plays threes. Call it three overall, therefore.

"For howbeit he arrived at Pemberley with all due haste, his russet beard, pleated kilt, and melodious burr were a profound reminder from whence he came."

Who invited Groundskeeper Willie?

Getting flashes of Western here now. Oh, and she's started using "drug" as the past tense of drag.

Comedy accents. Ugh.

I have so many questions at this point. How have we jumped from Georgian England to Revolutionary France? Why does Revolutionary France have a Lord High Executioner (that’s the Mikado, isn’t it?)? Why did no-one explain to Berdoll that “thence” means “from there” (from thence = from from there)? What happened to the comic period pastiche we started with? How did this get published?
Still reading, though.

Pastiche. No, Austen never wrote like this; yes, I should be horrified. I'm actually giggling, which I'm sure is what Berdoll intended.
The joke might wear off after 465 pages.

Feeling slightly less decoyed at this point.

"... Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur... in what could pass for Tolkien's Middle Earth..."

In a poor light, if you squint, and provided you've read neither book. I do not think this man and I would get on.

"Is it too fanciful to combine the image of the black-clad druids' assistants with the tall black hats of the Indo-Europeans or Celts buried in China and to imagine that they were part of a common female costume?"

Yes, I'm afraid it is.

“Of course, this does not at all tie in with our modern religious ideas, in which the deity is, by definition, perfect. One can hardly imagine an image of God the Father in a Christian church sporting an eye-patch!”

Maybe not, but… [looks at crucifix, looks at author, raises eyebrow].

Hits the happy ending, saunters past the happy ending, just sort of stops. Shame - it's a good book otherwise, and the best use anyone can put to a miserable childhood.

I'm not sure if I'm tracking the development of gothic or the development of short fiction.

Good grief!
I have just read an entire gothic novel compressed into nine pages. Technically very impressive, but my god that was a sprint.

George Orwell called this a good bad book; he was half right.

That'll be a source for Terry Pratchett's Thief of Time, then.