The Usual > Recent Status Updates

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.

Notes, not review here.
More coherent through-story here than in The Rebel Angels, and less obscure knowledge. Makes it easier to read.
Magical realism sans magic.
Very bland first chapter (I think deliberately) and peters out a bit at the end (probably also deliberate).
But, again, I'll probably have to track down the 3rd book rather than just wait for it - book-mountain permitting.

I'm running out of book, damn it! And I'm not sure I want to wait another half-decade or more for the possibility of a sniff at the third book. I may have to (gulp) buy a new copy.

This is rather good, you know. If I wait another six years it's possible the third book of the trilogy might drift into my grasp.
Or, I suppose, I could spend actual money.

Some really lyrical writing here. Or at least it would be if. It didn't have. Full stops in the middle of all. The sentences.
I feel he'd like to use semi-colons but. Doesn't know how. Maybe I'll get. Used to it.

No, this is not Roman. Yes, it is maliciously witty.
I'm not currently getting what Orwell saw in it.

" 'There goes C. S. Lewis,' said Fen suddenly. 'It must be Tuesday.' "

I swear that's an in-joke. As any fantasy nut will tell you, The Eagle and Child is exactly where you'd find the Inklings on a Tuesday... and Lewis didn't like detective stories.