Emma Bull, Falcon

I feel like I've been on a whirlwind ride through space and time, like the gestalt pilots in the book.

And I'm taking a small break, because I just finished it five minutes ago and it's still pouring through my head and wreaking havoc on my emotions.

Back, still with nothing much to say.

First impression I had of the book, once I got a fair amount into the plot, was that this is the Emma Bull remix of Dune. The gestalt pilots, the disjunct between the royal life and life post-revolution, Niki and Morwenna, and Niki's conversion... Except this book gets right all the places where Dune can go wrong (and I really like Dune) and had me sitting at the edge of my seat the entire time.

It's so strange, because it takes a while to get into -- not too long, but enough so that I noticed a little mental disjunct. I think I have been noticing less these days because I've been reading so much romance. Romances aren't very hard to slip into for me -- get the names of the hero and the heroine off the back cover, get the basic plot off the back cover, and mostly what's inside is a clever play on the standard plot (hopefully), interesting twists of genre expectations, and occasionally watching with joy as the author stretches the boundaries of the genre to the breaking point.

Scifi/fantasy is different -- you're thrown in and generally expected to know your way around. You have to remember the various character names and relationships (in romance, if you forget the hero's best friend or the heroine's sister, it really doesn't matter that much), you have to sometimes figure out the political situation, the personal situation, and various emotional connections. And on top of all this, your brain is working fulltime in the background, trying to make sense of this new world you've just entered, trying to figure out the ground rules. Is there magic? Are there spaceships? What's the government? Nothing is certain, unlike a historical novel, in which you know what planet you're on at least.

I really miss that about sff, which I haven't been reading as much of late.

I love the way Emma Bull writes, how small gestures matter -- I was particularly struck by a small sequence in which Niki gets the inhaler from Kitty and only a few seconds later does the reader realize.

And I adore Niki (quintessential Fool, imho) and his foolish bravery and his morals and his heroic melodramatics.

That made the second half of the book so much more painful and wrenching to get through, reading about the conversion and his existence as a gestalt pilots (like the Space Guild people in Dune, kind of).

I love that his life is a circle, until he breaks free.

I very much like Jhari as well.

I may have some smarter things to say later, but right now I am a big mess of emotion.

Thanks very much to Aliera for sending it (though it took me forever to get around to reading!).

Nancy Farmer, The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm

A kids book I've been wanting to pick up for a while, set in future Zimbabwe, written in that deceptively clear style that I very much enjoy.

I especially appreciated the setting in Africa and the use of some African mythology (or Farmer's version thereof) within, which pleased me immensely.

My one disappointment was that Tendai was the main POV character, and it's maybe a bit silly of me, but whenever there is a girl in the set of siblings (or friends, or group of people), I want it to be her story. So I wanted Rita, his little sister, to be the star instead of him, heh.

I liked how Farmer wasn't afraid to show everyone's flaws, especially of characters that would only be too easy to set up as special (The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, a group of mutant detectives), and how all the characters could be particularly childish. And I liked how the author did show that Rita wasn't just a whiny kid sister, and the problems that underlaid Resthaven, a city devoted to living life traditionally. Tendai loves it, loves the tradition and the rightness of it, and yet, Rita is a girl, so she has to clean and wait to eat, etc. And I also loved how Farmer didn't simply swing the other way and showed that for Resthaven to exist, to have the tradition and the rightness, there would have to be the uglier elements as well.

(no subject)

*rubs eyes*

Just caught up with LJ again -- the boy got Final Fantasy XI from his job and installed it. And I went and made a character and have spent all of yesterday playing. I even dreamt about it, embarrassingly. I don't even play video games. I can't run in a straight line or keep anything straight in my head, and when things attack me, I panic and chuck the controller.

But it's also kind of addictive trying to get my character to level and get more spells and make money, etc.

It's quite strange, too! Complete new culture, a bit like anime culture in that everyone seems to want to learn Japanese and they use the Japanese/anime style smilies (^_^ or ^_~ or -_-;; etc. that I habitually use). It's a strange break from LJ and... western fandom (?!). Of course, this is probably because the only people I've found there are my sister's friends, and I'm guessing that the Japanese video game thing is a pretty straight link to anime for some of them.

Hee, one of my sister's friends really wants to learn Japanese now. Reminds me of me back when I first discovered anime.

And apparently there's this entire ettiquette that I don't know, like not examining people, and I'm not sure how to talk! Half the people "talk" in netspeak, I think because it's faster to type. And despite generally deploring netspeak, I get it in this context. Chat is faster, and it's probably more important to talk faster when one is killing monsters in teams/parties. Plus, it's nice to have to type less stuff when one is also trying to run to different areas at the same time.

There's all this different vocab as well -- levelling and aggro (when a npc attacks spontaneously), npcs (not sure... but the non-people characters. Maybe that's it?), etc. And some I'm a little familiar with because the boy plays so much, but most of the time it's like having to learn a new language, plus a new way to move. I can't keep straight how to attack and how many times I need to press the enter key, or getting out of a menu to target a character, and stuff like that. It's all pretty instinctive to the boy -- he doesn't have to learn the concept of targeting, he just figures out the control. I have to remember that I have to do that target thing.

Really weird.

Ultraviolet

Thanks to elke_tanzer for the rec!

Finally caught it on Sci Fi in a three day marathon (two eps per day).

The first day, I was not attracted to the show much at all. In fact, I had figured on not making the effort to go all the way to the boy's room (I don't have cable) to watch the next two installments. I think it was a combination of the writers throwing me right into the world (not bad in and of itself), which was not so great when coupled with the fact that I had to kind of get used to British TV and the whole 11 at night thing.

British TV, from what I've seen, feels a little different. It's hard to pinpoint how -- different camera angles or composition maybe, definitely less background music. And people speaking with British accents. This is not a bad thing, it just takes a while for my ear to get used to. It's odd. Sometimes if an Australian or Irishperson or Scot or British person talks, the words wash over and it takes me a little while to realize it's the English language. I get that way about accented Chinese too -- it takes me a bit to get used to the proper Beijing accent, as opposed to the sort of Taiwan accent (people don't differentiate as much between sh and s, the curling tongue sounds).

Anyway. I think the big thing was that they had it playing from 11-1, and I am perpetually short on sleep, and it was really hard to stay awake during a smart show in which not that many Big Exciting Things happen.

I'm very glad the boy had a meeting the next day, so we headed over anyway.

( Impressions, no spoilers )