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Various book reviews
Basically, I got a library card earlier this year, which has really helped remind me of the existence of books I mean to read and help me secure a copy of them, and also motivate me to finish them in a somewhat timely manner (I am very deadline-motivated). So here's a dump of thoughts I wrote up on various books I've finished this year.
Reviews contained in this post:
1) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Prophecy and Change (2003) ed. Marco Palmieri
2) Terciel and Elinor (2021),
3) To Hold the Bridge: Tales from the Old Kingdom and Beyond (2015),
4) and Newt's Emerald (2015) by Garth Nix
5) The Once and Future King (1958) by T. H. White
Books I started reading this year but haven't finished yet:
- I resumed reading Scott Pilgrim, which was a comic I was reading back in Pittsburgh. But I am delaying picking this up again until I finish with Fire and Blood.
- I also have paused reading The Body Keeps the Score until I am done with my fiction books.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Prophecy and Change (2003) ed. Marco Palmieri
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/724641835961778176/star-trek-deep-space-nine-prophecy-and-change
I bought this book because of![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
JessKo's recommendation of its Quodo short story, which is indeed great. This is a collection of short stories published shortly after DS9 ended, all set within canon (missing scenes/episodes) except for the one by Andrew J. Robinson at the end which seems to be a post-canon follow-up to A Stitch in Time. Here are my thoughts on the stories (mild spoilers for the general content of the book/premises of the individual stories):
• "Ha'mara" by Kevin G. Summers: This is a Sisko & Kira story set shortly after the events of "Emissary." I liked this one! It's a good opener to the book not just because it occurs so early in the timeline but because it touches on so many of the themes that DS9 will eventually be about: religion and faith, Sisko's odd role as the Emissary, post-colonial Bajor, Bajor's (non-)entrance into the Federation, etc. I thought it was both a good and odd fit into the timeline: Good because it fleshes out when exactly did people generally know Sisko was the Emissary -- this is a bit vague in DS9 season 1. We know Opaka and Sisko know but outside of that, we never really get how that was communicated to the wider Bajoran public and what the reaction was, so it was nice seeing that here (throughout season 1 I don't think anyone calls Sisko by the title of Emissary but over the course of the show it's obvious he's generally seen as filling that role). Anyway, that's a bit of canon I thought was missing and could be filled in. The story is also a bit of an odd fit because it does some serious relationship development between Sisko and Kira very early in season 1. I'm a bit torn whether I think that fits their dynamic in canon or jumps the gun a bit on their relationship development. In any case, though, I enjoyed this story and its themes. I liked getting to see more of Opaka, too, before she disappears.
• "The Orb of Opportunity" by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels: Oh man, the main thing I remember from this story is that it seemed like it was written by a Kai Winn fanboy. Now, I love Kai Winn and Nog (who are the main characters of this story) and I love that someone wrote a story focusing on them, but in this story I felt they played up Winn's bravery, revolutionary spirit, and moral compass a bit too much in a way that she no longer felt like Winn. No doubt she is capable of having all of those characteristics and I appreciate getting to see the nobler side of Winn, but she is ultimately meant to be a total snake and I want to see Kai Winn being a total snake. Making Kai Winn instrumental to Nog's decision to join Starfleet is so funny to me but also just NO. Anyway, I liked the story here and appreciated the Nog and Winn focus and the bizarrely positive take on Winn was an experience in and of itself. I like it, but I don't think it's canon.
• "Broken Oaths" by Keith R.A. DeCandido: This is a Bashir & O'Brien story that says it's set after "Our Man Bashir" but I think it's more accurately a coda for "Hippocratic Oath." Basically, the plot is "Bashir and O'Brien talk their anger/feelings out about O'Brien disobeying direct orders in order to destroy Bashir's ketracel white research to save his life." Which I suppose is a kind of thing that would put a damper on one's friendship, and generally I like fanfic of the form "Characters actually talk about all the fucked up stuff that happened in canon" but I guess I didn't particularly feel I needed these two to talk out this issue and it felt a bit "stating the obvious out loud" at points (like, "Maybe the reason I was so mad was because [self-analysis]!", you know?). I did appreciate the humor of the stereotypical plot of two characters' whole friend group scheming in order to get them to kiss and make up (with Dax, Worf, Garak, and Quark being the scheming friends here).
• "...Loved I Not Honor More" by Christopher L. Bennett: This is the Quodo story featuring Grilka set sometime after her second appearance ("Looking for par'Mach..."), and it's great. I feel like the author had a really good handle on Quark and Odo's dynamic which is ostensibly antagonistic but actually very tender and intimate underneath, and not explicitly romantic but still with those ~vibes~. So like, if you want another story involving these two that's very close to/in line with canon, this does that really well. Also, we get another story involving Grilka and Klingon noble house drama, which is always great. Even though Quark and Odo's canonical love interests come up in this story, somehow it's about Odo telling Quark that he's a Ferengi and that's enough and he never has to be something he's not, and UGH THESE TWO. How do they manage to be so rom-com sappy when they're not even a couple? I'm dying.
• "Three Sides to Every Story" by Terri Osborne: Oh man, I have a lot of thoughts on this one. This is a Jake/Ziyal (pre-ship) story, where Jake and Ziyal get to know each other during the Dominion occupation arc and then Jake has to deal with her death. I've heard of Jake/Ziyal as a relatively popular "Ziyal survives AU" pairing so I wasn't surprised to see it here, but I haven't actually read any fic for that pairing so I guess I'm not intrinsically interested in it. Reading this story made me wonder if Jake/Ziyal is actually a soft NOTP for me, or if I just really didn't like the way it was done in this story. I didn't find Jake and Ziyal's attraction to each other convincing (more tell than show), their characterization felt flat to me, and I felt the setup of the story made Ziyal's death more about the tragedy of Jake's connection to her, which is a tough sell as Jake's connection to her is only really established in this story, so the emotional resonance of the story is heavily reliant on having set that up well, which I already felt this story didn't.
Anyway, I like the idea of looking at Ziyal's death through a different lens than in the show, and Jake as an artist who doesn't know Ziyal well could have been an excellent choice but I felt making that lens romantic (especially given all the weird forced-romantic stuff with Garak in the show which is thankfully not present here) kind of wasted the potential of Ziyal's character to have some meaning other than potential love interest and daughter, which is already there in the show. Even fleshing out an antagonistic relationship with Damar would have been more interesting IMO (Damar does interact with Ziyal but I also felt those interactions felt flat/didn't have a good grasp on Damar's character either). Anyway, sorry this is so negative -- it's one of those cases where I have a lot to say because I can actually see the reasoning/potential/good ideas here but just got a bit let down by the execution.
• "The Devil You Know" by Heather Jarman: This is a Jadzia-centric story set in season 6 after the Romulans join the war against the Dominion and intersecting with the events of "Time’s Orphan." This one is an old-fashioned moral dilemma of a wartime Federation where the character goes too far and has to deal with the fallout of that. It felt like a DS9 plot, but at the same time, I felt this took Jadzia's character in too dark a direction (it felt like it relied on emotional outbursts to show/justify why a character makes decisions that don't really line up with that character's values/normal way of functioning); also, it is just depressing but I kind of appreciated the depiction of helpless grief here. Also, Jadzia should totally get her own Romulan woman to have ridiculous chemistry with (Subcommander T'Rul in this case) following the Romulan entrance to the war, just like Kira does (with Kimara Cretak), so I approve. Overall a kind of depressing/bleak story especially for Jadzia (kinda seems out of line with her character) but I enjoyed the plot and thought it did interesting things with her character, even though I don't particularly think Jadzia would react to stress in quite this way.
• "Foundlings" by Jeffrey Lang: This is an Odo & Thrax mystery set between season 6 and 7 when Cardassia is increasingly not flourishing under the Dominion. Thrax comes to Odo with a case of a shuttle accident that left all its passengers dead. I'm not sure I really dig the Thrax characterization here but hey, he's a very minor character so... free real estate! I appreciate the author bringing a one-episode character (he doesn't quite appear in one episode, even...) back. Fun mystery with nice Odo character work (and interesting stuff involving Odo vs. Thrax and Odo's relationship to the Dominion vs. Thrax's relationship to Cardassia). But I really could have done without all the Kirodo parts, ngl. 😂
• "Chiaroscuro" by Geoffrey Thorne: An Ezri-centric story. This one was weird. Once it started getting into the Jadzia-designed, Dante's Inferno-themed labyrinth, I started wondering if the author already had a non-Star Trek sci-fi story that they had already written, which they quickly adapted here, because the aesthetic and themes seemed so off from Jadzia/Ezri/Trills/Star Trek in general, with a kind of weak rationale for why Jadzia, a Trill, would theme a maze around a human notion of hell and punishment... But at the same time, the story outside the maze itself does so much to tie in Ezri's previous lives and how Ezri differs from Jadzia that it had to be the case that at least a lot of this story was specifically written with Ezri/Star Trek in mind. But yeah, this one was pretty wild (even the premise of Jadzia wiping memory of the event seemed kind of designed to be like a concession that this story fits awkwardly in canon). I liked seeing Ezri and Jadzia's past work and past hosts get some fleshing out but not sure what I think about this story as a whole.
• "Face Value" by Una McCormack: This is a story that fleshes out Kira & Damar & Garak's relationship when they are fomenting rebellion (and are stranded) on Cardassia. Not much happens plotwise in this story but there's a lot of character work, and I like the interactions between these characters and wish we’d gotten more than was in the show (so I appreciate getting more here), and I liked the writing.
• "The Calling" by Andrew J. Robinson: This is set after A Stitch in Time and the stage play "The Dream Box" and features Garak struggling to unify a broken, fragmented Cardassia post-canon. As I still haven't read ASIT (it's very hard to get a copy of), I didn't get much out of this one. Like, there was an attempt to fill the reader on all the important terms, concepts, and characters but the whole story just didn't make sense without having that previous background and investment in what happens after the events of the previous stuff. I'll revisit this later once I've read the earlier works.
Overall, a really fun collection of stories. I liked the variety, getting to see the whole cast here, and getting to read stories pretty in line with canon. And yes, the Quodo one was my favorite, although there were a couple of other stories here where the writing was just as good and it told an interesting story.
Terciel & Elinor (2021) by Garth Nix
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/723722930122539008/terciel-elinor-by-garth-nix
I finally finished reading this (got a library card just to check it out from my library).
(Mild spoilers:)
This book was kind of an interesting departure from the other books, having two main characters who meet briefly, then spend part of the book apart before joining again, with the sections where they're separate being a bit low on action-adventure (and characters on the run) compared to a typical book in this series. I enjoyed it, though! I liked the dynamic of an old Abhorsen in her sunset years passing on the mantle to a very young, green Abhorsen.
With two new characters sharing the spotlight, I felt there wasn't a lot of time to get to know both but I felt the book did a good job of fleshing them out, especially Elinor with her odd, sheltered upbringing.
I thought the opening section was quite fun -- the claustrophobic gothic horror of it all was a fun aspect!
It's definitely not my favorite book in the series (Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen are still by far my faves) but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed getting the chance to return to this world. (I do prefer the kind of lonely dynamic of lone girl + her weird talking pet in those earlier books.) I liked that Nix left it open that there might be more stories to tell in this part of the timeline.
It seems now the only thing in the Old Kingdom series I haven't read yet is the short story "To Hold the Bridge." It’s on my to-read list next!
To Hold the Bridge: Tales from the Old Kingdom and Beyond (2015) by Garth Nix
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/734276417861402624/to-hold-the-bridge-tales-from-the-old-kingdom-and
I'm mainly here for the Old Kingdom short story in the title, but I enjoyed reading this selection of short stories since I haven't read anything by Garth Nix outside the Old Kingdom series. It was interesting seeing what kind of themes he generally likes/returns to repeatedly. Reading this, I would summarize them with:
Thoughts on individual stories (some minor spoilers for the premise of the stories):
To Hold the Bridge: A fun short story (I guess maybe more like a novella at ~60 pages long) set in the northern border of the Old Kingdom that get threatened by various Free Magic sorcerers every so often? Kind of what was featured in Clariel, except all the characters here are normies. I talked about this above, but this story is pretty heavy on the fantasy military-like command structure.
Vampire Weather: A world where vampires exist, but a vaccine was developed to immunize against vampirism, but there are Amish-like communities that exist that provide hunting grounds for vampires. Kind of mixes themes of vampirism, antivaxx communities, and sexual repression. A nice horror story with a bit of a twist.
Strange Fishing in the Western Highlands: I did not look at the list of where these stories were originally published so was surprised that this is a Hellboy story. It didn't start that way. I was wondering what kind of anthology published Hellboy short stories -- apparently Hellboy: Oddest Jobs (2008) ed. Christopher Golden.
Old Friends: I didn't have much to say about this one other than it's got that ex-military, "old war buddies" vibe, which is present in several of the stories here. I didn't really understand much what was going on in this one other than that is mixes the mundane modern world with a mix of mythology/fantasy and sci-fi.
The Quiet Knight: I was going to say that all the stories in this book have some kind of supernatural element to them, but then I remembered that this one doesn't? Although when I read it, not knowing how much two tons of firewood is, I thought maybe the kid in this story was supernatural. But no! It's just about a shy kid who likes to LARP as a chivalrous knight.
You Won't Feel a Thing: This one I really liked -- it was probably within my top three favorite stories of the collection. It's a very mysterious post-apocalyptic world where only children/teens are left and they're being turned into animals for some purpose(?). The story doesn't really explain what's going on, but it felt like an intriguing world.
A Handful of Ashes: This is apparently a prequel story(?) to one of Garth Nix's novels, Shade's Children, which I haven't read. But it's a very standalone story, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's probably the best story in the collection with an interesting, tense, race-against-the-clock sort of plot and some interesting magic worldbuilding layered on top of school bylaws, and evil witches layered on top of high school bullying and class dynamics. The whole vibe (witches/magical girls at an English boarding school) is kind of similar to that of Terciel & Elinor.
The Big Question: This one is kind of fairy tale-like, with the passage of time and the strange adventures. I didn't really get it, though. I kept on thinking there might be a time loop or something where the boy becomes the old woman/sage (/was always the woman/sage). But I don't think it's a time loop -- seems more just a coming-of-age story set in some kind of prehistoric time.
Stop!: This one I got so confused on. I spent like half the story thinking that this was some alternative universe of our own where hyper-radioactive walkers that are immune to bullets was just part of the background worldbuilding of the setting, but then it turns out that this particular walker is just one of a kind, a scientific curiosity that... isn't actually explained...? I don't know, maybe I missed something, like that the characters here are historical figures or preexisting characters from some other piece of fiction. The nice thing about this story is that it mentioned a song in the middle of the story, Puccini's "E lucevan le stelle." I forgot to look this up until I was toward the end of the story, and had it playing on the phone as I finished reading the story and the song indeed does match the Mood of the story's ending. I kind of wonder if reading books in the modern age is a fundamentally different experience, when you have phones and Wikipedia and its creative commons that allows you to just experience a referenced song on demand. I think about how I used to keep a big dictionary by the side of my bed so that I could look up unfamiliar words when reading books in bed at night, and now I just have my phone with me everywhere that allows me to not only look up unfamiliar words but also unfamiliar cultural references, like the multiple times this author has mentioned a particular brand of clothing or model of car to establish something about the characters. I can just pull it up on my phone and see what he's conveying. I don't know, it's kind of wild.
Infestation: This is another vampire story except the vampires are sci-fi (alien AI weapons in some intergalactic war or whatever). Reading this kinda made me realize I don't actually like vampires. This is just like the time when the zombie craze tricked me into thinking I think zombies are intrinsically cool. But I don't actually think that! I apparently don't think vampires are intrinsically cool either! I loved the original Dracula by Bram Stoker and thought vampires worked really well embedded in the larger story there, but yeah, I think maybe people like the aesthetic of vampires and enjoy them whenever they show up, like seeing an old friend again, and I only just realized of myself I am not actually attached to them and so didn't really care about them here (as opposed to the first vampire story which I did enjoy because vampires were being used as a metaphor for something else). Basically, I don't think I like common monsters intrinsically, but I like when the whole story revolves around the themes represented by a monster. I did like the minor side character here who was, like, Insecure Masculinity Personified.
The Heart of the City: This is a story that's like... an alternate timeline France under Henri IV (16th/17th century)? IDK, I don't know or get European history despite trying to study it multiple times. I wasn't super invested in the plot or the political stuff going on in the background here, but I liked the angelic magic system. Magic systems seem to be one of Garth Nix's strengths.
Ambrose and the Ancient Spirits of East and West: This is like if the secret service had a magic spy division. I liked the Bond-pastiche super posh public-school-educated British public servants featured here (contrasted with the main character). The story kind of gives off this "this is just one story/adventure among many" kind of vibe, so didn't feel particularly satisfying, but I liked the magical therapy aspect. Another story featuring a character who is ex-military.
Holly and Iron: This one was fun. It's kind of pseudo-Arthurian, pseudo-Robin Hood, set in a fantasy version of the British isles where various ruling groups in Britain have different types of incompatible magic -- the Saxons(?) have plant-based magic vs. the Normans who have iron-based magic. I liked the main character here, who is very inexperienced and impulsive and fucks up massively, partly because she is kind of over-compensating in her loyalty toward the Inglish rebels because she knows she has Norman blood. Like with the Old Kingdom series, magic in this story is super hereditary and tied to monarch dynasties, which might be kind of an irritating element. Overall, though, I quite liked this story and its magic and interesting heroine who comes into her own after being a bit useless.
The Curious Case of the Moondawn Daffodils Murder As Experienced by Sir Magnus Holmes and Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike: This is set in the Sherlock Holmes world but with a relative of Holmes who specializes in the occult. Kind of predictable given the recurring theme of supernatural elements overlaid on mundane settings. I'm not sure this concept particularly interests me, to be honest -- I kind of just enjoy the normal (mostly) mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. This collection splits up its stories into different sections, and this story is in the "Light-hearted tales" section. And while there are some humorous elements to it, I am not sure I would call a character unwittingly turned into a murdery eldritch horror while being deceived/manipulated by his handler a particularly light-hearted tale! Again, horror elements are a feature.
An Unwelcome Guest: I'm not really sure how to describe this one. It's got some kind of fractured fairy tale / fairy tale parody vibes, with this being a Rapunzel retelling with a weird mix of fairy tale elements (like shepherds and gnomes) and modern world elements (like ice cream and soccer). Except also there's some more ancient eldritch horrors going on here too, which seems a bit incongruous. I don’t know, this one was weird and I'm not sure what it was going for!
The Highest Justice: The little girl in me who loved reading unicorn stories very much enjoyed this one. I love the little self-contained adventure here. Like with all of the stories in the "Light-hearted tales" section, this has... some humorous elements (I liked that you never hear the unicorn speak but only hear what the main character is saying to her -- it's kind of humorous to only get one side of a conversation like that, while also keeping the unicorn somewhat mysterious) but is also quite macabre/features horror elements prominently. I see from the list of where these stories were originally published that this was published in an anthology called Zombies vs. Unicorns, which is appropriate.
Master Haddad's Holiday: While I ended up enjoying this story toward the end, it kind of reminds me why I never liked sci-fi stories as a kid. The aesthetic of sci-fi technology can be quite cold, and unlike fantasy where you can generally understand the power level of various elements like monarchies and swords and horses, when a sci-fi story says a character chose to equip handguns that fire low-velocity Bitek projectiles or that the last Psitek scan showed that it would take hours for a spytracker to destroy the spy-speck bugs in a room, I'm just kind of like, "Cool, I guess." Anyway, the first part of this story is entirely this sci-fi assassin competently setting a trap for his mark using his various sci-fi gadgets and I was just like "Okay :|" but it got more interesting once the confrontation actually happened. (I did like the whole Space Silk Road aesthetic to the characters/setting of the story.)
A Sidekick of Mars: A John Carter of Mars fanfic, basically, where the narrator is a guy who also got sucked up to Mars and was temporarily a Sancho-like sidekick to John Carter. I haven't actually read any of the John Carter books but my osmosis tells me that it's a self-indulgent power fantasy isekai kinda story, and so I enjoyed reading this outsider POV of John Carter where the sidekick guy is like, "Man, this John Carter guy sure liked waging his wars and always got mad at me for needing to be rescued, but didn't seem to mind when his princess needed to be rescued, which was a lot, let me tell you." I enjoyed it.
Peace in Our Time: An interesting steampunk story that gradually takes some weird, dark turns as its narrator remembers some events from the past he's tried to forget about.
Overall, an interesting mix of stories. This took me forever to read because there are so many stories packed in here. I enjoyed them, but main draws here are probably the Old Kingdom tale, the Shade's Children tale, and a couple of others -- I liked "Holly and Iron" and "The Highest Justice," both of which feature a somewhat inexperienced young heroine on a quest for justice, and the weird "You Won’t Feel a Thing" story.
Newt's Emerald (2015) by Garth Nix
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/736239405559382016/newts-emerald-2015-by-garth-nix
I thought I was done reading Garth Nix for this year, but then a podcast I was listening to (Be the Serpent, ep. 15) told me about the existence of Newt's Emerald, which was described as a Georgette Heyer book with magic added on top, plus crossdressing. I actually haven't read any Georgette Heyer but I was like, hmm well this sounds super relevant to my interests. Garth Nix writing a Regency romance? Heck yeah. And then my library had it -- as in, it was in stock at my town library, I don't even need to do an interlibrary loan request, so I was like, welp, I guess I'm reading this then.
Overall I enjoyed it. Like I mentioned earlier (above), it fits in a lot with other themes in Garth Nix's fantasy: magic overlaid on top of a modern or historical setting (often set in England?), lots of characters in military structures, etc. I actually didn't really enjoy the romance at all, though, lol. It was an example of what I ranted about, of Slap-Slap-Kiss/Belligerent Sexual Tension where I'm just like "But uh do these characters actually *like* each other at all?" But I enjoyed the mystery and trying to guess what was going on, and the crossdressing / disguises / mistaken identity aspects were fun.
Apparently, this book started off as a story within a story (a Regency romance manuscript as a clue in a larger mystery story) but "Over time, the thriller portion of this combined book became more and more outdated (it was before mobile phones, and a significant plot point involved 3.5-inch floppy disks)" (lol) so the romance novel part was excised and made into its own thing as a kind of Georgette Heyer send-up.
Anyway, short, overall fairly enjoyable, although the romance plot was a deep disappointment for me. 😂
The Once and Future King (1958) by T. H. White
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/736330022187646976/the-once-and-future-king-1958-by-t-h-white
Okay at last -- after maybe 4 or 5 years of reading this, I finally finished?! I suppose it's not that odd that this book took me so long to read given that it's kind of 4 novels in one, and this book was my bathroom reading book (meaning it had to be read in little pieces at a time). Only through dedication and perseverence did I manage to get through this one. And then I took like two months writing up this summary/review... /o\
The Once and Future King is a retelling of Arthurian legend. Somehow this book ended up in my possession (my guess is that it was bought at a book/garage sale or given to my family by someone or something like that, and then I've just been carrying it with me from house to house ever since). I think my interest in this book was probably sparked by a combination of watching Disney's The Sword in the Stone, which was based on the first book of Once and Future King with the same name, and also generally hearing people reference Merlin's whole "experiencing time backwards" mechanic (probably this book contains the most prominent instance of that mechanic in fiction, and some while back, I encountered some characters in fiction who experience time differently, who were probably inspired by this Merlin), and then also I had seen either all or part of the musical Camelot, which is also apparently partly based on this book, so all of those things made me think I should probably read this book...
Also, my background for Arthurian legends is very weak. While I've osmosed some very basic things about it from general culture, I've barely read anything considered semi-canonical and don't really know any of the major stories.
The first book is apparently the most famous one, "The Sword in the Stone," which features a young Arthur ("Wart") being tutored by Merlin who turns him into various animals, and ends with Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone and being declared king of Britain. The second and third books were apparently written while T. H. White was living in Ireland as a conscientious objector for World War II, something that is kind of relevant to maybe both the general ethos of The Once and Future King and maybe also relevant to the subject matter of the second book, "The Queen of Air and Darkness," which takes place in the remote Orkney isles of Scotland and has various Celtic culture things going on. The third book, "The Ill-made Knight" focuses on Lancelot and is kind of a character study of him, although features various quests, stories, duels, etc. including the quest for the Holy Grail. Finally, the last book is "The Candle in the Wind" and covers Mordred and the fall of Arthur's Camelot.
It was funny reading "The Sword in the Stone" and just kind of seeing why it appealed to Disney's animators. There's a whole episode in "The Sword in the Stone" that isn't in the movie at all, but it features these two middle-aged knights, Sir Grummore and King Pellinore, having the most slapstick/physical comedy fight imaginable. Even though this scene (in fact, neither of these characters) appears in the movie, you can absolutely imagine this fight playing out with characters probably similar in look and personality to King Stefan and King Hubert from Sleeping Beauty, or the king and grand duke from Cinderella. I'm so surprised it wasn't included.
By contrast, the squirrel episode was an invention of the movie, but there is an episode in the book somewhat similar in vibe, where Arthur is turned into a migrating goose and goes on a dreamlike very long migration with a flock, which includes a young female goose who is obviously kind of interested in him, in a way that goes over his head.
Despite being medieval, a lot of the episodes in "The Sword in the Stone" seem to reference some contemporary or near-contemporary British archetypes. For examples, the falcons and other birds of prey that Wart hangs out with one night I think are meant to represent the British military officer class, and they have a distinctive way of speaking. The omniscient narrator also puts in a lot of anachronistic commentary, such as saying "Several hundred years later, this place would like X, but in this time, it still looked like Y."
There's an episode where Wart gets turned into an ant and basically it's T. H. White's cynical criticism of pre-war and wartime propaganda (in this case, by the British government based on the language/tone used, but probably applies to all countries) and how certain governments and a constant background drone (ant signals standing in here for radio) preclude the capacity for free thought or disobedience. In particular, there’s this bit about a lecture that gets broadcast to all ants:
Reading this, I immediately got a mental image of that "Our blessed homeland / Their barbarous wastes" meme:
Anyway, being a pacifist in the UK during WWII was probably not the right choice, but as someone who has lived through multiple bullshit imperialist wars that were justified just like this, with propagandistic journalists painting anyone who didn't full-tilt support said wars as being unpatriotic and motivated by hatred of the U.S., and whose arguments featured this level of hypocrisy... I feel for T. H. White. IDK, being a pacifist in any time is hard.
"The Sword in the Stone" also features an episode where Wart and Kay adventure with Robin Hood and his merry men, who in this book are depicted as remnants of an older Saxon regime rebelling against Norman invaders. In addition to knowing almost zero about Arthurian legend, I also know almost zero about Robin Hood mythos and British history, so I have no idea how normal or just a niche theory this depiction of Robin Hood is, or how normal it is to mix Robin Hood and Arthurian legends.
The second book, "The Queen of Air and Darkness," is the shortest and also the weakest, probably. It introduces some characters who eventually become key players, but here they are bored children, and is kind of a study of Morgause as a witch and terrible mom, with some further Pellinore-related slapstick. Not a particularly interesting book.
The third book focuses on Lancelot and his characterization here is interesting. It may sound odd, but Lancelot's characterization reminded me quite a bit of my partner: perfectionistic, depressed in a "convinced I am ugly, horrible, deeply flawed, etc." sort of way, and deeply religious in a vague way while also somewhat lapsed/detached from religion. I was a bit surprised at how Lancelot as a boy is very much depicted as having a strong crush on an older Arthur here (not explicitly so, but the feelings are depicted as very intense), even though Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot is a very classic OT3 so that's not exactly surprising. In general, I quite liked the way the relationship between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot was portrayed, especially the way all three characters age and grey over time, and their relationship kind of matures with them. The book never quite goes full OT3 with the three, though, because Arthur and Guinevere, while they love each other, seem to largely lack the passion aspect of love in their relationship.
Between the second book with Arthur and this third book featuring Lancelot, this book contains a lot of knights being tricked or spelled into sleeping with a woman out of wedlock and there being a child born out of that union who is Important later on. I checked and all of these stories of female-on-male rape are pre-existing stories, so it's not a T. H. White invention but just there in the lore. I find it a bit weird how recurring an element it is. I wonder if it's because people wanted to insert into these myths an original child character who is special -- therefore has to be related to one of the major knights -- but they have to preserve the knight's own chastity/moral purity, so the only way to insert a child is to have the knight be faultless this way.
Quite a bit of Once and Future King reminded me of the writing in A Song of Ice and Fire; I’m guessing this book was a major source of inspiration for GRRM. First, there's the book's tendency to go into Random Very Detailed Digression About an Aspect of Medieval Living. The random digressions are more varied in O&FK (featuring topics like very specific lessons on hawking, armor, battlements, and so on), but the digressions on the heraldry spotted at a particular tournament or all the dishes served at this particular holiday feast will feel very familiar... Second, this book features several "trials by combat" -- I don’t think they're called that exactly in this book but they have the same form which is that if someone makes an accusation against someone else where evidence is unable to decide the issue, each party can choose a champion, and the verity of the accusation is determined by the outcome of the battle. This is a very bizarre legal practice, but it's featured in both O&FK and ASOIAF.
Another part of the Random Very Detailed Digressions of O&FK is that there are a LOT of types of birds mentioned at various points in this book, especially marine birds. Sometimes I felt like I was just always looking up unfamiliar bird names and being kind of surprised that the English language has this many bird types named in it. It was to the point that I wondered if the author was a birdwatcher (especially a marine-bird-watcher) as a hobby.
This is from another long digression in the book talking about how Arthur's regime dramatically changed the ability of people to safely travel. But reading this, I immediately got a strong "Lex Luthor stole forty cakes" mental image. XD
Reading this book was quite difficult because almost every page, I needed to look up some word or term or translate some text. There's a lot of archaic words used, Latin or French terminology, medieval concepts, medieval texts, Biblical stories, etc. that I needed to look up in order to understand what was going on. I only really noticed how densely these unknown words were encountered when I started reading my next bathroom book and got like 30 or 40 pages without needing to look up anything and was just like "???" after the experience of reading O&FK. 8|
The depiction of Mordred here is a particular resentful, hot-headed youth who attaches themself to any populist or nationalist movement that provides some kind of voice for unhappiness, whether egalitarian (or at least using that language of elite/non-elite, haves/have nots, etc.) or right-wing ethnonationalist. He is in other words a proto-fascist. He is also depicted as representing a certain kind of modernity, where his group of friends at court are all about wearing ridiculous fashion but with a tinge of irony to them. This notion of fascists who always distance themselves from their words and actions with a layer of sardonic irony was apparently as familiar to T. H. White as it is to me (see: 4chan and alt-right outlets/provocateurs).
The last book features Arthur wondering at length where does war come from, which reads like maybe T. H. White's own musings and attempts to puzzle that out. Arthur/White wonders first whether it's warmongering leaders who manipulate their populations into war, or warmongering populations who propel warmongering leaders into power; nationalist ideologies as a somewhat self-propelling mechanism (a complicated "impulse") that seems to be driving war; histories/past wrongs that rationalize vengeance and an inability to forgive and forget leading to neverending cycles of retributive wars, each last one becoming the justification for the next; whether private property/possession/wealth or social disparity lead to coveting what other people have and people who use that class resentment as an opportunity to power grab or make money and improve their standing*; whether war is born out of fear of the inability to control other people from harming you. Again, all thoughts that are unfortunately way too real right now and evergreen, speaking as a citizen of the world’s preeminent empire, waging war on a dozen fronts or more, and given current events...
It's hard to summarize this book. It's Arthurian legend, but only focusing I think on certain characters and certain parts of the story (maybe; I don’t know). It's a historical book, containing a lot of general information about what life and the culture of the late middle ages were. It's a political book featuring T. H. White writing about his feelings on legal systems and war. Each of the four books here has a very different vibe with some focusing on adventures, comedy/slapstick, complicated/doomed love relationships, family or character studies, villains, politics and legal systems, or what it means to be a good person and a virtuous Christian. Overall, the book was quite difficult and slow-going reading for me, but I enjoyed it and I'm glad to have read it.
* Kind of reminds me that the class that tends to drive fascism is the downwardly-mobile petty bourgeois.
Reviews contained in this post:
1) Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Prophecy and Change (2003) ed. Marco Palmieri
2) Terciel and Elinor (2021),
3) To Hold the Bridge: Tales from the Old Kingdom and Beyond (2015),
4) and Newt's Emerald (2015) by Garth Nix
5) The Once and Future King (1958) by T. H. White
Books I started reading this year but haven't finished yet:
- I resumed reading Scott Pilgrim, which was a comic I was reading back in Pittsburgh. But I am delaying picking this up again until I finish with Fire and Blood.
- I also have paused reading The Body Keeps the Score until I am done with my fiction books.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Prophecy and Change (2003) ed. Marco Palmieri
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/724641835961778176/star-trek-deep-space-nine-prophecy-and-change
I bought this book because of
• "Ha'mara" by Kevin G. Summers: This is a Sisko & Kira story set shortly after the events of "Emissary." I liked this one! It's a good opener to the book not just because it occurs so early in the timeline but because it touches on so many of the themes that DS9 will eventually be about: religion and faith, Sisko's odd role as the Emissary, post-colonial Bajor, Bajor's (non-)entrance into the Federation, etc. I thought it was both a good and odd fit into the timeline: Good because it fleshes out when exactly did people generally know Sisko was the Emissary -- this is a bit vague in DS9 season 1. We know Opaka and Sisko know but outside of that, we never really get how that was communicated to the wider Bajoran public and what the reaction was, so it was nice seeing that here (throughout season 1 I don't think anyone calls Sisko by the title of Emissary but over the course of the show it's obvious he's generally seen as filling that role). Anyway, that's a bit of canon I thought was missing and could be filled in. The story is also a bit of an odd fit because it does some serious relationship development between Sisko and Kira very early in season 1. I'm a bit torn whether I think that fits their dynamic in canon or jumps the gun a bit on their relationship development. In any case, though, I enjoyed this story and its themes. I liked getting to see more of Opaka, too, before she disappears.
• "The Orb of Opportunity" by Michael A. Martin and Andy Mangels: Oh man, the main thing I remember from this story is that it seemed like it was written by a Kai Winn fanboy. Now, I love Kai Winn and Nog (who are the main characters of this story) and I love that someone wrote a story focusing on them, but in this story I felt they played up Winn's bravery, revolutionary spirit, and moral compass a bit too much in a way that she no longer felt like Winn. No doubt she is capable of having all of those characteristics and I appreciate getting to see the nobler side of Winn, but she is ultimately meant to be a total snake and I want to see Kai Winn being a total snake. Making Kai Winn instrumental to Nog's decision to join Starfleet is so funny to me but also just NO. Anyway, I liked the story here and appreciated the Nog and Winn focus and the bizarrely positive take on Winn was an experience in and of itself. I like it, but I don't think it's canon.
• "Broken Oaths" by Keith R.A. DeCandido: This is a Bashir & O'Brien story that says it's set after "Our Man Bashir" but I think it's more accurately a coda for "Hippocratic Oath." Basically, the plot is "Bashir and O'Brien talk their anger/feelings out about O'Brien disobeying direct orders in order to destroy Bashir's ketracel white research to save his life." Which I suppose is a kind of thing that would put a damper on one's friendship, and generally I like fanfic of the form "Characters actually talk about all the fucked up stuff that happened in canon" but I guess I didn't particularly feel I needed these two to talk out this issue and it felt a bit "stating the obvious out loud" at points (like, "Maybe the reason I was so mad was because [self-analysis]!", you know?). I did appreciate the humor of the stereotypical plot of two characters' whole friend group scheming in order to get them to kiss and make up (with Dax, Worf, Garak, and Quark being the scheming friends here).
• "...Loved I Not Honor More" by Christopher L. Bennett: This is the Quodo story featuring Grilka set sometime after her second appearance ("Looking for par'Mach..."), and it's great. I feel like the author had a really good handle on Quark and Odo's dynamic which is ostensibly antagonistic but actually very tender and intimate underneath, and not explicitly romantic but still with those ~vibes~. So like, if you want another story involving these two that's very close to/in line with canon, this does that really well. Also, we get another story involving Grilka and Klingon noble house drama, which is always great. Even though Quark and Odo's canonical love interests come up in this story, somehow it's about Odo telling Quark that he's a Ferengi and that's enough and he never has to be something he's not, and UGH THESE TWO. How do they manage to be so rom-com sappy when they're not even a couple? I'm dying.
• "Three Sides to Every Story" by Terri Osborne: Oh man, I have a lot of thoughts on this one. This is a Jake/Ziyal (pre-ship) story, where Jake and Ziyal get to know each other during the Dominion occupation arc and then Jake has to deal with her death. I've heard of Jake/Ziyal as a relatively popular "Ziyal survives AU" pairing so I wasn't surprised to see it here, but I haven't actually read any fic for that pairing so I guess I'm not intrinsically interested in it. Reading this story made me wonder if Jake/Ziyal is actually a soft NOTP for me, or if I just really didn't like the way it was done in this story. I didn't find Jake and Ziyal's attraction to each other convincing (more tell than show), their characterization felt flat to me, and I felt the setup of the story made Ziyal's death more about the tragedy of Jake's connection to her, which is a tough sell as Jake's connection to her is only really established in this story, so the emotional resonance of the story is heavily reliant on having set that up well, which I already felt this story didn't.
Anyway, I like the idea of looking at Ziyal's death through a different lens than in the show, and Jake as an artist who doesn't know Ziyal well could have been an excellent choice but I felt making that lens romantic (especially given all the weird forced-romantic stuff with Garak in the show which is thankfully not present here) kind of wasted the potential of Ziyal's character to have some meaning other than potential love interest and daughter, which is already there in the show. Even fleshing out an antagonistic relationship with Damar would have been more interesting IMO (Damar does interact with Ziyal but I also felt those interactions felt flat/didn't have a good grasp on Damar's character either). Anyway, sorry this is so negative -- it's one of those cases where I have a lot to say because I can actually see the reasoning/potential/good ideas here but just got a bit let down by the execution.
• "The Devil You Know" by Heather Jarman: This is a Jadzia-centric story set in season 6 after the Romulans join the war against the Dominion and intersecting with the events of "Time’s Orphan." This one is an old-fashioned moral dilemma of a wartime Federation where the character goes too far and has to deal with the fallout of that. It felt like a DS9 plot, but at the same time, I felt this took Jadzia's character in too dark a direction (it felt like it relied on emotional outbursts to show/justify why a character makes decisions that don't really line up with that character's values/normal way of functioning); also, it is just depressing but I kind of appreciated the depiction of helpless grief here. Also, Jadzia should totally get her own Romulan woman to have ridiculous chemistry with (Subcommander T'Rul in this case) following the Romulan entrance to the war, just like Kira does (with Kimara Cretak), so I approve. Overall a kind of depressing/bleak story especially for Jadzia (kinda seems out of line with her character) but I enjoyed the plot and thought it did interesting things with her character, even though I don't particularly think Jadzia would react to stress in quite this way.
• "Foundlings" by Jeffrey Lang: This is an Odo & Thrax mystery set between season 6 and 7 when Cardassia is increasingly not flourishing under the Dominion. Thrax comes to Odo with a case of a shuttle accident that left all its passengers dead. I'm not sure I really dig the Thrax characterization here but hey, he's a very minor character so... free real estate! I appreciate the author bringing a one-episode character (he doesn't quite appear in one episode, even...) back. Fun mystery with nice Odo character work (and interesting stuff involving Odo vs. Thrax and Odo's relationship to the Dominion vs. Thrax's relationship to Cardassia). But I really could have done without all the Kirodo parts, ngl. 😂
• "Chiaroscuro" by Geoffrey Thorne: An Ezri-centric story. This one was weird. Once it started getting into the Jadzia-designed, Dante's Inferno-themed labyrinth, I started wondering if the author already had a non-Star Trek sci-fi story that they had already written, which they quickly adapted here, because the aesthetic and themes seemed so off from Jadzia/Ezri/Trills/Star Trek in general, with a kind of weak rationale for why Jadzia, a Trill, would theme a maze around a human notion of hell and punishment... But at the same time, the story outside the maze itself does so much to tie in Ezri's previous lives and how Ezri differs from Jadzia that it had to be the case that at least a lot of this story was specifically written with Ezri/Star Trek in mind. But yeah, this one was pretty wild (even the premise of Jadzia wiping memory of the event seemed kind of designed to be like a concession that this story fits awkwardly in canon). I liked seeing Ezri and Jadzia's past work and past hosts get some fleshing out but not sure what I think about this story as a whole.
• "Face Value" by Una McCormack: This is a story that fleshes out Kira & Damar & Garak's relationship when they are fomenting rebellion (and are stranded) on Cardassia. Not much happens plotwise in this story but there's a lot of character work, and I like the interactions between these characters and wish we’d gotten more than was in the show (so I appreciate getting more here), and I liked the writing.
• "The Calling" by Andrew J. Robinson: This is set after A Stitch in Time and the stage play "The Dream Box" and features Garak struggling to unify a broken, fragmented Cardassia post-canon. As I still haven't read ASIT (it's very hard to get a copy of), I didn't get much out of this one. Like, there was an attempt to fill the reader on all the important terms, concepts, and characters but the whole story just didn't make sense without having that previous background and investment in what happens after the events of the previous stuff. I'll revisit this later once I've read the earlier works.
Overall, a really fun collection of stories. I liked the variety, getting to see the whole cast here, and getting to read stories pretty in line with canon. And yes, the Quodo one was my favorite, although there were a couple of other stories here where the writing was just as good and it told an interesting story.
Terciel & Elinor (2021) by Garth Nix
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/723722930122539008/terciel-elinor-by-garth-nix
I finally finished reading this (got a library card just to check it out from my library).
(Mild spoilers:)
This book was kind of an interesting departure from the other books, having two main characters who meet briefly, then spend part of the book apart before joining again, with the sections where they're separate being a bit low on action-adventure (and characters on the run) compared to a typical book in this series. I enjoyed it, though! I liked the dynamic of an old Abhorsen in her sunset years passing on the mantle to a very young, green Abhorsen.
With two new characters sharing the spotlight, I felt there wasn't a lot of time to get to know both but I felt the book did a good job of fleshing them out, especially Elinor with her odd, sheltered upbringing.
I thought the opening section was quite fun -- the claustrophobic gothic horror of it all was a fun aspect!
It's definitely not my favorite book in the series (Sabriel/Lirael/Abhorsen are still by far my faves) but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed getting the chance to return to this world. (I do prefer the kind of lonely dynamic of lone girl + her weird talking pet in those earlier books.) I liked that Nix left it open that there might be more stories to tell in this part of the timeline.
It seems now the only thing in the Old Kingdom series I haven't read yet is the short story "To Hold the Bridge." It’s on my to-read list next!
To Hold the Bridge: Tales from the Old Kingdom and Beyond (2015) by Garth Nix
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/734276417861402624/to-hold-the-bridge-tales-from-the-old-kingdom-and
I'm mainly here for the Old Kingdom short story in the title, but I enjoyed reading this selection of short stories since I haven't read anything by Garth Nix outside the Old Kingdom series. It was interesting seeing what kind of themes he generally likes/returns to repeatedly. Reading this, I would summarize them with:
- Characters in the military (or military-esque structures). Apparently Garth Nix served in the Australian Army Reserve, so I'm guessing that’s why this is a feature. In countries where military service isn't mandatory, it seems somewhat uncommon for people to be both writers and to have served in the military, which is kind of interesting.
- Horror themes (undead creatures, violence, etc.). Not surprising for those familiar with Old Kingdom because that whole series is fantasy-horror.
- Fantasy/sci-fi elements, often embedded within the modern/real world. I think all but one of the stories here features at least some kind of supernatural element.
- Custom magic systems -- not everywhere, but appear frequently enough that I get the feeling that Garth Nix enjoys designing them/thinking about how to embed magic in various settings.
- Plucky heroines -- actually less present in this short story collection than his other fiction, but several still appear.
Thoughts on individual stories (some minor spoilers for the premise of the stories):
To Hold the Bridge: A fun short story (I guess maybe more like a novella at ~60 pages long) set in the northern border of the Old Kingdom that get threatened by various Free Magic sorcerers every so often? Kind of what was featured in Clariel, except all the characters here are normies. I talked about this above, but this story is pretty heavy on the fantasy military-like command structure.
Vampire Weather: A world where vampires exist, but a vaccine was developed to immunize against vampirism, but there are Amish-like communities that exist that provide hunting grounds for vampires. Kind of mixes themes of vampirism, antivaxx communities, and sexual repression. A nice horror story with a bit of a twist.
Strange Fishing in the Western Highlands: I did not look at the list of where these stories were originally published so was surprised that this is a Hellboy story. It didn't start that way. I was wondering what kind of anthology published Hellboy short stories -- apparently Hellboy: Oddest Jobs (2008) ed. Christopher Golden.
Old Friends: I didn't have much to say about this one other than it's got that ex-military, "old war buddies" vibe, which is present in several of the stories here. I didn't really understand much what was going on in this one other than that is mixes the mundane modern world with a mix of mythology/fantasy and sci-fi.
The Quiet Knight: I was going to say that all the stories in this book have some kind of supernatural element to them, but then I remembered that this one doesn't? Although when I read it, not knowing how much two tons of firewood is, I thought maybe the kid in this story was supernatural. But no! It's just about a shy kid who likes to LARP as a chivalrous knight.
You Won't Feel a Thing: This one I really liked -- it was probably within my top three favorite stories of the collection. It's a very mysterious post-apocalyptic world where only children/teens are left and they're being turned into animals for some purpose(?). The story doesn't really explain what's going on, but it felt like an intriguing world.
A Handful of Ashes: This is apparently a prequel story(?) to one of Garth Nix's novels, Shade's Children, which I haven't read. But it's a very standalone story, and I enjoyed it a lot. It's probably the best story in the collection with an interesting, tense, race-against-the-clock sort of plot and some interesting magic worldbuilding layered on top of school bylaws, and evil witches layered on top of high school bullying and class dynamics. The whole vibe (witches/magical girls at an English boarding school) is kind of similar to that of Terciel & Elinor.
The Big Question: This one is kind of fairy tale-like, with the passage of time and the strange adventures. I didn't really get it, though. I kept on thinking there might be a time loop or something where the boy becomes the old woman/sage (/was always the woman/sage). But I don't think it's a time loop -- seems more just a coming-of-age story set in some kind of prehistoric time.
Stop!: This one I got so confused on. I spent like half the story thinking that this was some alternative universe of our own where hyper-radioactive walkers that are immune to bullets was just part of the background worldbuilding of the setting, but then it turns out that this particular walker is just one of a kind, a scientific curiosity that... isn't actually explained...? I don't know, maybe I missed something, like that the characters here are historical figures or preexisting characters from some other piece of fiction. The nice thing about this story is that it mentioned a song in the middle of the story, Puccini's "E lucevan le stelle." I forgot to look this up until I was toward the end of the story, and had it playing on the phone as I finished reading the story and the song indeed does match the Mood of the story's ending. I kind of wonder if reading books in the modern age is a fundamentally different experience, when you have phones and Wikipedia and its creative commons that allows you to just experience a referenced song on demand. I think about how I used to keep a big dictionary by the side of my bed so that I could look up unfamiliar words when reading books in bed at night, and now I just have my phone with me everywhere that allows me to not only look up unfamiliar words but also unfamiliar cultural references, like the multiple times this author has mentioned a particular brand of clothing or model of car to establish something about the characters. I can just pull it up on my phone and see what he's conveying. I don't know, it's kind of wild.
Infestation: This is another vampire story except the vampires are sci-fi (alien AI weapons in some intergalactic war or whatever). Reading this kinda made me realize I don't actually like vampires. This is just like the time when the zombie craze tricked me into thinking I think zombies are intrinsically cool. But I don't actually think that! I apparently don't think vampires are intrinsically cool either! I loved the original Dracula by Bram Stoker and thought vampires worked really well embedded in the larger story there, but yeah, I think maybe people like the aesthetic of vampires and enjoy them whenever they show up, like seeing an old friend again, and I only just realized of myself I am not actually attached to them and so didn't really care about them here (as opposed to the first vampire story which I did enjoy because vampires were being used as a metaphor for something else). Basically, I don't think I like common monsters intrinsically, but I like when the whole story revolves around the themes represented by a monster. I did like the minor side character here who was, like, Insecure Masculinity Personified.
The Heart of the City: This is a story that's like... an alternate timeline France under Henri IV (16th/17th century)? IDK, I don't know or get European history despite trying to study it multiple times. I wasn't super invested in the plot or the political stuff going on in the background here, but I liked the angelic magic system. Magic systems seem to be one of Garth Nix's strengths.
Ambrose and the Ancient Spirits of East and West: This is like if the secret service had a magic spy division. I liked the Bond-pastiche super posh public-school-educated British public servants featured here (contrasted with the main character). The story kind of gives off this "this is just one story/adventure among many" kind of vibe, so didn't feel particularly satisfying, but I liked the magical therapy aspect. Another story featuring a character who is ex-military.
Holly and Iron: This one was fun. It's kind of pseudo-Arthurian, pseudo-Robin Hood, set in a fantasy version of the British isles where various ruling groups in Britain have different types of incompatible magic -- the Saxons(?) have plant-based magic vs. the Normans who have iron-based magic. I liked the main character here, who is very inexperienced and impulsive and fucks up massively, partly because she is kind of over-compensating in her loyalty toward the Inglish rebels because she knows she has Norman blood. Like with the Old Kingdom series, magic in this story is super hereditary and tied to monarch dynasties, which might be kind of an irritating element. Overall, though, I quite liked this story and its magic and interesting heroine who comes into her own after being a bit useless.
The Curious Case of the Moondawn Daffodils Murder As Experienced by Sir Magnus Holmes and Almost-Doctor Susan Shrike: This is set in the Sherlock Holmes world but with a relative of Holmes who specializes in the occult. Kind of predictable given the recurring theme of supernatural elements overlaid on mundane settings. I'm not sure this concept particularly interests me, to be honest -- I kind of just enjoy the normal (mostly) mysteries of Sherlock Holmes. This collection splits up its stories into different sections, and this story is in the "Light-hearted tales" section. And while there are some humorous elements to it, I am not sure I would call a character unwittingly turned into a murdery eldritch horror while being deceived/manipulated by his handler a particularly light-hearted tale! Again, horror elements are a feature.
An Unwelcome Guest: I'm not really sure how to describe this one. It's got some kind of fractured fairy tale / fairy tale parody vibes, with this being a Rapunzel retelling with a weird mix of fairy tale elements (like shepherds and gnomes) and modern world elements (like ice cream and soccer). Except also there's some more ancient eldritch horrors going on here too, which seems a bit incongruous. I don’t know, this one was weird and I'm not sure what it was going for!
The Highest Justice: The little girl in me who loved reading unicorn stories very much enjoyed this one. I love the little self-contained adventure here. Like with all of the stories in the "Light-hearted tales" section, this has... some humorous elements (I liked that you never hear the unicorn speak but only hear what the main character is saying to her -- it's kind of humorous to only get one side of a conversation like that, while also keeping the unicorn somewhat mysterious) but is also quite macabre/features horror elements prominently. I see from the list of where these stories were originally published that this was published in an anthology called Zombies vs. Unicorns, which is appropriate.
Master Haddad's Holiday: While I ended up enjoying this story toward the end, it kind of reminds me why I never liked sci-fi stories as a kid. The aesthetic of sci-fi technology can be quite cold, and unlike fantasy where you can generally understand the power level of various elements like monarchies and swords and horses, when a sci-fi story says a character chose to equip handguns that fire low-velocity Bitek projectiles or that the last Psitek scan showed that it would take hours for a spytracker to destroy the spy-speck bugs in a room, I'm just kind of like, "Cool, I guess." Anyway, the first part of this story is entirely this sci-fi assassin competently setting a trap for his mark using his various sci-fi gadgets and I was just like "Okay :|" but it got more interesting once the confrontation actually happened. (I did like the whole Space Silk Road aesthetic to the characters/setting of the story.)
A Sidekick of Mars: A John Carter of Mars fanfic, basically, where the narrator is a guy who also got sucked up to Mars and was temporarily a Sancho-like sidekick to John Carter. I haven't actually read any of the John Carter books but my osmosis tells me that it's a self-indulgent power fantasy isekai kinda story, and so I enjoyed reading this outsider POV of John Carter where the sidekick guy is like, "Man, this John Carter guy sure liked waging his wars and always got mad at me for needing to be rescued, but didn't seem to mind when his princess needed to be rescued, which was a lot, let me tell you." I enjoyed it.
Peace in Our Time: An interesting steampunk story that gradually takes some weird, dark turns as its narrator remembers some events from the past he's tried to forget about.
Overall, an interesting mix of stories. This took me forever to read because there are so many stories packed in here. I enjoyed them, but main draws here are probably the Old Kingdom tale, the Shade's Children tale, and a couple of others -- I liked "Holly and Iron" and "The Highest Justice," both of which feature a somewhat inexperienced young heroine on a quest for justice, and the weird "You Won’t Feel a Thing" story.
Newt's Emerald (2015) by Garth Nix
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/736239405559382016/newts-emerald-2015-by-garth-nix
I thought I was done reading Garth Nix for this year, but then a podcast I was listening to (Be the Serpent, ep. 15) told me about the existence of Newt's Emerald, which was described as a Georgette Heyer book with magic added on top, plus crossdressing. I actually haven't read any Georgette Heyer but I was like, hmm well this sounds super relevant to my interests. Garth Nix writing a Regency romance? Heck yeah. And then my library had it -- as in, it was in stock at my town library, I don't even need to do an interlibrary loan request, so I was like, welp, I guess I'm reading this then.
Overall I enjoyed it. Like I mentioned earlier (above), it fits in a lot with other themes in Garth Nix's fantasy: magic overlaid on top of a modern or historical setting (often set in England?), lots of characters in military structures, etc. I actually didn't really enjoy the romance at all, though, lol. It was an example of what I ranted about, of Slap-Slap-Kiss/Belligerent Sexual Tension where I'm just like "But uh do these characters actually *like* each other at all?" But I enjoyed the mystery and trying to guess what was going on, and the crossdressing / disguises / mistaken identity aspects were fun.
Apparently, this book started off as a story within a story (a Regency romance manuscript as a clue in a larger mystery story) but "Over time, the thriller portion of this combined book became more and more outdated (it was before mobile phones, and a significant plot point involved 3.5-inch floppy disks)" (lol) so the romance novel part was excised and made into its own thing as a kind of Georgette Heyer send-up.
Anyway, short, overall fairly enjoyable, although the romance plot was a deep disappointment for me. 😂
The Once and Future King (1958) by T. H. White
Archived from here: https://chacusha.tumblr.com/post/736330022187646976/the-once-and-future-king-1958-by-t-h-white
Okay at last -- after maybe 4 or 5 years of reading this, I finally finished?! I suppose it's not that odd that this book took me so long to read given that it's kind of 4 novels in one, and this book was my bathroom reading book (meaning it had to be read in little pieces at a time). Only through dedication and perseverence did I manage to get through this one. And then I took like two months writing up this summary/review... /o\
The Once and Future King is a retelling of Arthurian legend. Somehow this book ended up in my possession (my guess is that it was bought at a book/garage sale or given to my family by someone or something like that, and then I've just been carrying it with me from house to house ever since). I think my interest in this book was probably sparked by a combination of watching Disney's The Sword in the Stone, which was based on the first book of Once and Future King with the same name, and also generally hearing people reference Merlin's whole "experiencing time backwards" mechanic (probably this book contains the most prominent instance of that mechanic in fiction, and some while back, I encountered some characters in fiction who experience time differently, who were probably inspired by this Merlin), and then also I had seen either all or part of the musical Camelot, which is also apparently partly based on this book, so all of those things made me think I should probably read this book...
Also, my background for Arthurian legends is very weak. While I've osmosed some very basic things about it from general culture, I've barely read anything considered semi-canonical and don't really know any of the major stories.
The first book is apparently the most famous one, "The Sword in the Stone," which features a young Arthur ("Wart") being tutored by Merlin who turns him into various animals, and ends with Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone and being declared king of Britain. The second and third books were apparently written while T. H. White was living in Ireland as a conscientious objector for World War II, something that is kind of relevant to maybe both the general ethos of The Once and Future King and maybe also relevant to the subject matter of the second book, "The Queen of Air and Darkness," which takes place in the remote Orkney isles of Scotland and has various Celtic culture things going on. The third book, "The Ill-made Knight" focuses on Lancelot and is kind of a character study of him, although features various quests, stories, duels, etc. including the quest for the Holy Grail. Finally, the last book is "The Candle in the Wind" and covers Mordred and the fall of Arthur's Camelot.
It was funny reading "The Sword in the Stone" and just kind of seeing why it appealed to Disney's animators. There's a whole episode in "The Sword in the Stone" that isn't in the movie at all, but it features these two middle-aged knights, Sir Grummore and King Pellinore, having the most slapstick/physical comedy fight imaginable. Even though this scene (in fact, neither of these characters) appears in the movie, you can absolutely imagine this fight playing out with characters probably similar in look and personality to King Stefan and King Hubert from Sleeping Beauty, or the king and grand duke from Cinderella. I'm so surprised it wasn't included.
By contrast, the squirrel episode was an invention of the movie, but there is an episode in the book somewhat similar in vibe, where Arthur is turned into a migrating goose and goes on a dreamlike very long migration with a flock, which includes a young female goose who is obviously kind of interested in him, in a way that goes over his head.
Despite being medieval, a lot of the episodes in "The Sword in the Stone" seem to reference some contemporary or near-contemporary British archetypes. For examples, the falcons and other birds of prey that Wart hangs out with one night I think are meant to represent the British military officer class, and they have a distinctive way of speaking. The omniscient narrator also puts in a lot of anachronistic commentary, such as saying "Several hundred years later, this place would like X, but in this time, it still looked like Y."
There's an episode where Wart gets turned into an ant and basically it's T. H. White's cynical criticism of pre-war and wartime propaganda (in this case, by the British government based on the language/tone used, but probably applies to all countries) and how certain governments and a constant background drone (ant signals standing in here for radio) preclude the capacity for free thought or disobedience. In particular, there’s this bit about a lecture that gets broadcast to all ants:
A. We are more numerous than they are, therefore we have a right to their mash.
B. They are more numerous than we are, therefore they are wickedly trying to steal our mash.
C. We are a mighty race and have the natural right to subjugate their puny one.
D. They are a mighty race and are unnaturally trying to subjugate our inoffensive one.
E. We must attack them in self-defense.
F. They are attacking us by defending themselves.
G. If we do not attack them today, they will attack us tomorrow.
H. In any case we are not attacking them at all. We are offering them incalculable benefits (p. 129).
Reading this, I immediately got a mental image of that "Our blessed homeland / Their barbarous wastes" meme:
Anyway, being a pacifist in the UK during WWII was probably not the right choice, but as someone who has lived through multiple bullshit imperialist wars that were justified just like this, with propagandistic journalists painting anyone who didn't full-tilt support said wars as being unpatriotic and motivated by hatred of the U.S., and whose arguments featured this level of hypocrisy... I feel for T. H. White. IDK, being a pacifist in any time is hard.
"The Sword in the Stone" also features an episode where Wart and Kay adventure with Robin Hood and his merry men, who in this book are depicted as remnants of an older Saxon regime rebelling against Norman invaders. In addition to knowing almost zero about Arthurian legend, I also know almost zero about Robin Hood mythos and British history, so I have no idea how normal or just a niche theory this depiction of Robin Hood is, or how normal it is to mix Robin Hood and Arthurian legends.
The second book, "The Queen of Air and Darkness," is the shortest and also the weakest, probably. It introduces some characters who eventually become key players, but here they are bored children, and is kind of a study of Morgause as a witch and terrible mom, with some further Pellinore-related slapstick. Not a particularly interesting book.
The third book focuses on Lancelot and his characterization here is interesting. It may sound odd, but Lancelot's characterization reminded me quite a bit of my partner: perfectionistic, depressed in a "convinced I am ugly, horrible, deeply flawed, etc." sort of way, and deeply religious in a vague way while also somewhat lapsed/detached from religion. I was a bit surprised at how Lancelot as a boy is very much depicted as having a strong crush on an older Arthur here (not explicitly so, but the feelings are depicted as very intense), even though Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot is a very classic OT3 so that's not exactly surprising. In general, I quite liked the way the relationship between Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot was portrayed, especially the way all three characters age and grey over time, and their relationship kind of matures with them. The book never quite goes full OT3 with the three, though, because Arthur and Guinevere, while they love each other, seem to largely lack the passion aspect of love in their relationship.
Between the second book with Arthur and this third book featuring Lancelot, this book contains a lot of knights being tricked or spelled into sleeping with a woman out of wedlock and there being a child born out of that union who is Important later on. I checked and all of these stories of female-on-male rape are pre-existing stories, so it's not a T. H. White invention but just there in the lore. I find it a bit weird how recurring an element it is. I wonder if it's because people wanted to insert into these myths an original child character who is special -- therefore has to be related to one of the major knights -- but they have to preserve the knight's own chastity/moral purity, so the only way to insert a child is to have the knight be faultless this way.
Quite a bit of Once and Future King reminded me of the writing in A Song of Ice and Fire; I’m guessing this book was a major source of inspiration for GRRM. First, there's the book's tendency to go into Random Very Detailed Digression About an Aspect of Medieval Living. The random digressions are more varied in O&FK (featuring topics like very specific lessons on hawking, armor, battlements, and so on), but the digressions on the heraldry spotted at a particular tournament or all the dishes served at this particular holiday feast will feel very familiar... Second, this book features several "trials by combat" -- I don’t think they're called that exactly in this book but they have the same form which is that if someone makes an accusation against someone else where evidence is unable to decide the issue, each party can choose a champion, and the verity of the accusation is determined by the outcome of the battle. This is a very bizarre legal practice, but it's featured in both O&FK and ASOIAF.
Another part of the Random Very Detailed Digressions of O&FK is that there are a LOT of types of birds mentioned at various points in this book, especially marine birds. Sometimes I felt like I was just always looking up unfamiliar bird names and being kind of surprised that the English language has this many bird types named in it. It was to the point that I wondered if the author was a birdwatcher (especially a marine-bird-watcher) as a hobby.
Thieves -- it is true -- could be hanged for stealing goods to the value of one shilling -- for the codification of Justice was still weak and muddled -- but that was not so bad as it sounds, when you remember that for a shilling you could buy two geese, or four gallons of wine, or forty-eight loaves of bread -- a troublesome load for a thief in any case (p. 510).
This is from another long digression in the book talking about how Arthur's regime dramatically changed the ability of people to safely travel. But reading this, I immediately got a strong "Lex Luthor stole forty cakes" mental image. XD
Reading this book was quite difficult because almost every page, I needed to look up some word or term or translate some text. There's a lot of archaic words used, Latin or French terminology, medieval concepts, medieval texts, Biblical stories, etc. that I needed to look up in order to understand what was going on. I only really noticed how densely these unknown words were encountered when I started reading my next bathroom book and got like 30 or 40 pages without needing to look up anything and was just like "???" after the experience of reading O&FK. 8|
The depiction of Mordred here is a particular resentful, hot-headed youth who attaches themself to any populist or nationalist movement that provides some kind of voice for unhappiness, whether egalitarian (or at least using that language of elite/non-elite, haves/have nots, etc.) or right-wing ethnonationalist. He is in other words a proto-fascist. He is also depicted as representing a certain kind of modernity, where his group of friends at court are all about wearing ridiculous fashion but with a tinge of irony to them. This notion of fascists who always distance themselves from their words and actions with a layer of sardonic irony was apparently as familiar to T. H. White as it is to me (see: 4chan and alt-right outlets/provocateurs).
The last book features Arthur wondering at length where does war come from, which reads like maybe T. H. White's own musings and attempts to puzzle that out. Arthur/White wonders first whether it's warmongering leaders who manipulate their populations into war, or warmongering populations who propel warmongering leaders into power; nationalist ideologies as a somewhat self-propelling mechanism (a complicated "impulse") that seems to be driving war; histories/past wrongs that rationalize vengeance and an inability to forgive and forget leading to neverending cycles of retributive wars, each last one becoming the justification for the next; whether private property/possession/wealth or social disparity lead to coveting what other people have and people who use that class resentment as an opportunity to power grab or make money and improve their standing*; whether war is born out of fear of the inability to control other people from harming you. Again, all thoughts that are unfortunately way too real right now and evergreen, speaking as a citizen of the world’s preeminent empire, waging war on a dozen fronts or more, and given current events...
It's hard to summarize this book. It's Arthurian legend, but only focusing I think on certain characters and certain parts of the story (maybe; I don’t know). It's a historical book, containing a lot of general information about what life and the culture of the late middle ages were. It's a political book featuring T. H. White writing about his feelings on legal systems and war. Each of the four books here has a very different vibe with some focusing on adventures, comedy/slapstick, complicated/doomed love relationships, family or character studies, villains, politics and legal systems, or what it means to be a good person and a virtuous Christian. Overall, the book was quite difficult and slow-going reading for me, but I enjoyed it and I'm glad to have read it.
* Kind of reminds me that the class that tends to drive fascism is the downwardly-mobile petty bourgeois.
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That's very cool that you've read The Once and Future King -- not gonna lie, I was kind of dying a bit trying to read it, just because it was so long. XD And yeah, the to-read backlog... I've kind of just started taking the approach of reading whatever is catching my interest at the moment and not worry too much about the full contents of my bookshelves or all the books people have recommended to me, etc. I'm kind of jumping on book-reading opportunities as they present themselves, but otherwise not worrying too much about all the books I want to read, if that makes sense.
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Arthurian legend is honestly a hard sell in that it does not have an easy starting point for the layman. (Similar issue for Robin Hood; there isn't a precise source text to work from and there are multiple interpretations over time so usually you latch on to the most culturally relevant example available.) It is however invaluable to the historian because of how it was sociopolitical propaganda through the centuries - the Welsh created it as a cultural rallying point against the Anglo-Saxons and in turn the Normans began to claim it to validate their rule with several kings post-William the Conqueror claiming descent from Arthur or paying homage to a supposed tomb. The Tudor dynasty began trying to pretend it was a rebirth of Camelot, that's why Henry VIII's older brother was named Arthur and during the early rule of that dynasty there was a significant push to celebrate chivalry. The Normans and Tudors understood the power of the myth and it's likely T.H. White did too, hence he used it to push his views, the same way Mark Twain did in A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Arthurian legend is targeted because it is the defining mythology of Britain with the core detail being who the rightful ruler is. By controlling that, the narrator controls who they decide should rightfully rule Britain or what Britain itself (and its descendent cultures) should be. Robin Hood is sometimes targeted for a similar reason in that it has a disenfranchised people of England being exploited by an oppressive government ruled by an illegitimate king (even though the real John suceeded Richard and every English monarch is subsequently descended from him, he was nonetheless a terrible leader and ferociously unpopular in his time to the point of nearly being deposed) but it has less power than the Athurian legend because it is post-Norman, post-Anglo-Saxon and is not the genesis of the British cultural identity.
"Anyway, being a pacifist in the UK during WWII was probably not the right choice, but as someone who has lived through multiple bullshit imperialist wars that were justified just like this, with propagandistic journalists painting anyone who didn't full-tilt support said wars as being unpatriotic and motivated by hatred of the U.S., and whose arguments featured this level of hypocrisy... I feel for T. H. White. IDK, being a pacifist in any time is hard."
I checked when the book came out and if White was writing in the mid 30s then he'd no doubt have seen the impact WW1 had on Europe in terms of the utter waste it was. I'd argue there's still cultural trauma remaining over a century later as a good chunk of young men were thrown into a muddy meat grinder for nothing, Germany financially and socially collapsed with German people permanently demonised, Russia ended up so demoralised the revolution happened (and then rumours of massacres, cannibalism and the horrors of the Holodomor came out), machine guns and aerial bombing were now officially tools of war with the latter having hit places like Yorkshire (which traumatised J.R.R. Tolkein as he was recovering in a hospital from his war injuries at the time)... it is very easy to see why there was an anti-war sentiment prior to Hitler invading Poland. (I think one of the few good things to come out of WW1 was the end of the Ottoman empire in that it led to Kemal Attaturk reforming Turkey but even then you still had the Greek genocide carrying on.)
Between the second book with Arthur and this third book featuring Lancelot, this book contains a lot of knights being tricked or spelled into sleeping with a woman out of wedlock and there being a child born out of that union who is Important later on. I checked and all of these stories of female-on-male rape are pre-existing stories, so it's not a T. H. White invention but just there in the lore. I find it a bit weird how recurring an element it is.
I wonder if that's anything to do with the disaster that usually came with the existence of bastard children when the father held status. Edward III's fourth son John of Gaunt famously legitimised his bastards with Katherine Swynford, resulting in the Beaufort line which is where Henry Tudor got his very flimsy claim to the English throne (and mother's army bankrolling finances) allowing him to take part in the Wars of the Roses but I don't know if that influenced Le Morte d'Arthur at all, though from my understanding the author was English and lived through the Wars of the Roses. (Another War of Roses bastardry issue was Edward IV being seduced by Elizabeth Woodville in a wood and there being the claim he was legally engaged to another woman at the time which Edward's younger brother Richard III used to usurp the throne from Edward and Elizabeth's son Edward V.) Granted that's late 1400s so the cases predating that are probably more a general advisory message concerning monogamy that one would expect in medieval christendom. I had a discussion a while back over why Morgan LeFay has the water related name and I suggested it's to do with northern european culture having issues with water-based women. The scottish had the selkies, the flemish and frenchies had Melusine the humanoid-serpant-fish demon who was believed to be an ancestor of the Plantagenet dynasty (who married into the Norman line in the early 12th century and gave George R.R. Martin millions of dollars worth of copy).
Btw have you seen Excalibur? It does its own dark 80s take on Arthurian legend with anachronistic armour and everyone being Irish but I can't help admiring its style. Visually it is a treat and there are some great AMVs mixing the footage to O Fortuna.
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And yeah for sure, WWI was devastating, and there's a portion of the population that saw what was happening leading up to WWII and could tell it was going to be nothing good and so were extremely cautious about going to war again. But then it kind of quickly turned out that WWII (while still very much a meat grinder) was also a very different sort of situation.
Regarding the recurring female-on-male rape stories, I also wonder if these stories come out of an oral tradition that is later written down, it's possible that people conflate certain characters and elements together and so a story that initially involves characters A & B gets transplanted onto similar characters C & D, or people see an interesting plot element in one story and transfer it to another. I'm not sure if that's what happened here, but it makes me wonder. I'm not sure if concerns over bastardry were part of it. They could be, but at least in the stories in Once and Future King, Lancelot doesn't seem a very important/major lord where inheritance is important, and his bastard is Galahad who is one of the purest knights. Meanwhile, Arthur IS very important and his bastard Mordred is the big bad -- it fits the pattern very well. But also, in this book, Arthur and Guinevere never had any trueborn children. Maybe there was a different, competing line of inheritance in other stories, but in this book at least, it wasn't an element/raised as a possibility that anyone other than Mordred could have inherited, but maybe that was the original intent of the myth? It's a bit puzzling.
I have not seen Excalibur. It sounds interesting! I'll see if I can find it anywhere to watch.