Recent fiction and films
Jun. 18th, 2015 01:40 pmVelveteen
Seanan McGuire's superheroine short stories, feely available online although the format is a little inconvenient. These are really fun, if you like that sort of thing at all they're well worth reading. Thanks to ghoti-on-lj for reminding me they exist and I should read them!
They're short and a bit tongue in cheek which suits SM's style well. Being a superhero has been branded, standardised, commodified and marketed by some firms, one of which now has an near-universal monopoly. The heroine, with her "animating stuffed animal powers" flees from her old employers, and doesn't find a quiet life.
There's a little bit of what I especially like, of exploring powers.
As with most of McGuire's stories, something about the consistency or worldbuilding just aggravated me, but much less so in these funny, human, and short stories.
Pendragon Protocol
These urban fantasy books reminds me a little of rivers of london, London-based procedurals about an organisation affiliated with the british state but not technically police or intelligence services, who are modelled after reincarnations (sort of) of the knights of the round table.
The main character is an established knight who gets in over his head when internal politics starts happening.
There's lots of "exploring the basic concept and how it turns out to be more complicated than people think", which is done well. It's a bit more complicated than "reincarnation of", it's a bond that can change, but that's enough to sell the idea.
Again, it's quite British based. Mentions of oxbridge colleges, non-white britons, class warfare, uneasy tensions between idealism and the establisment status-quo which are not handled perfectly, but better than many books.
Uprooted, Naomi Novik
Squeee! This is really good, I'm glad she tried writing something after Temeraire. Definitely read it.
Agneieszka, a young village girl, is unexpectedly chosen to serve the wizard called The Dragon who is lord of the valley, the greatest wizard in the country but retreated to this rural seat to take responsibility for holding back the ominous encroachings of the wood.
Lots of different sorts of magic, well world-built. Focus on Agneieszka rather than soldiers and experienced wizards, without idolising her. Realistic tensions between people with generally well-meaning goals but selfish or short-sighted or otherwise naturally imperfect. Peels back the world to slowly to reveal where the wood came from, etc, etc, in a way that most books save for the tenth sequel.
I like the way there's a distinction between an informal, intuitive sort of magic and a rigid formalised academic sort of magic, but unlike many books, it's not massively gender-essentialised.
Infidel
A film about a british muslim man who finds out he was adopted and born to a jewish family. It could have been excruciating, but Liv recommended that it was surprisingly touching. And captures a feel of british jewish society and british muslim society imperfectly but better than most films. It is embarrassing, but more towards the Evelyn Waugh/Monty Python end of the spectrum than the Adam Sandler/Reality TV end of the spectrum -- I found that a bit difficult, but it was clearly sympathetic to all the characters even when they were acting out badly. And it was really funny in places.
It fits my heretofore unmentioned heuristic "watch every film which features Leo Rosen's Joys of Yiddish" :)
(As usual I own most of the books but rented the film.)
Seanan McGuire's superheroine short stories, feely available online although the format is a little inconvenient. These are really fun, if you like that sort of thing at all they're well worth reading. Thanks to ghoti-on-lj for reminding me they exist and I should read them!
They're short and a bit tongue in cheek which suits SM's style well. Being a superhero has been branded, standardised, commodified and marketed by some firms, one of which now has an near-universal monopoly. The heroine, with her "animating stuffed animal powers" flees from her old employers, and doesn't find a quiet life.
There's a little bit of what I especially like, of exploring powers.
As with most of McGuire's stories, something about the consistency or worldbuilding just aggravated me, but much less so in these funny, human, and short stories.
Pendragon Protocol
These urban fantasy books reminds me a little of rivers of london, London-based procedurals about an organisation affiliated with the british state but not technically police or intelligence services, who are modelled after reincarnations (sort of) of the knights of the round table.
The main character is an established knight who gets in over his head when internal politics starts happening.
There's lots of "exploring the basic concept and how it turns out to be more complicated than people think", which is done well. It's a bit more complicated than "reincarnation of", it's a bond that can change, but that's enough to sell the idea.
Again, it's quite British based. Mentions of oxbridge colleges, non-white britons, class warfare, uneasy tensions between idealism and the establisment status-quo which are not handled perfectly, but better than many books.
Uprooted, Naomi Novik
Squeee! This is really good, I'm glad she tried writing something after Temeraire. Definitely read it.
Agneieszka, a young village girl, is unexpectedly chosen to serve the wizard called The Dragon who is lord of the valley, the greatest wizard in the country but retreated to this rural seat to take responsibility for holding back the ominous encroachings of the wood.
Lots of different sorts of magic, well world-built. Focus on Agneieszka rather than soldiers and experienced wizards, without idolising her. Realistic tensions between people with generally well-meaning goals but selfish or short-sighted or otherwise naturally imperfect. Peels back the world to slowly to reveal where the wood came from, etc, etc, in a way that most books save for the tenth sequel.
I like the way there's a distinction between an informal, intuitive sort of magic and a rigid formalised academic sort of magic, but unlike many books, it's not massively gender-essentialised.
Infidel
A film about a british muslim man who finds out he was adopted and born to a jewish family. It could have been excruciating, but Liv recommended that it was surprisingly touching. And captures a feel of british jewish society and british muslim society imperfectly but better than most films. It is embarrassing, but more towards the Evelyn Waugh/Monty Python end of the spectrum than the Adam Sandler/Reality TV end of the spectrum -- I found that a bit difficult, but it was clearly sympathetic to all the characters even when they were acting out badly. And it was really funny in places.
It fits my heretofore unmentioned heuristic "watch every film which features Leo Rosen's Joys of Yiddish" :)
(As usual I own most of the books but rented the film.)