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elenchusTo my great joy, it turns out I haven’t forgotten how to read fiction over the last ten months. Hurrah! I’ve been celebrating by trying to read some books before school strikes again and I’m back to translating Cicero’s Orations (which are hilarious and enjoyable mind you, but Not Quite the Same).
I finished reading The Blade Itself (the first book in the First Law trilogy) today, and I really enjoyed it! The back of the book described it as “fantasy noir” – I’m not entirely sure how I’d describe the specific subgenre, though cloak and dagger comes closest. It reminded me quite a lot of Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards books (The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies), and of what little I know of the Lankhmar (Fafhrd and Gray Mouser) stories. The writing was fast-paced and fun, and I found the characters interesting. Bonus points for one of the narrators being a woman of color, even if it does take her 200 pages to show up. She makes up for being tardy by being a total badass.
There’s a definite gender skewing towards male characters, particularly male narrators, but there are two ladies I think are awesome involved in the plot, and that’s not a bad start (my standards, they are low). There’s at least one other woman who seems like she’ll be very important in the near future. And it has passed Bechdel, albeit only once that I can think of. There are two prominent non-white characters so far, and they spend quite a lot of time talking to each other about important plotty things that don’t revolve around white characters. So that makes two points where it's already doing better than far too many other fantasy series!
I didn’t really mean to read this book at all, given my backlog of books to read this summer, but I picked it up while in a library with my niece when I had nothing to read on hand and got hooked. I’m going to try and track down the next book while events are still fresh in my mind; the local library doesn’t have it, but mini-Powell’s might. But that doesn’t mean I’m abandoning my reading list! I finally got started on The White Road (I’m only a year overdue!), and that shouldn’t take very long at all. I also cheated and read a lesbian pirate romance recently, but that took, like, half a day. And it had lesbian pirates. No apologies.
I finished reading The Blade Itself (the first book in the First Law trilogy) today, and I really enjoyed it! The back of the book described it as “fantasy noir” – I’m not entirely sure how I’d describe the specific subgenre, though cloak and dagger comes closest. It reminded me quite a lot of Scott Lynch’s Gentlemen Bastards books (The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies), and of what little I know of the Lankhmar (Fafhrd and Gray Mouser) stories. The writing was fast-paced and fun, and I found the characters interesting. Bonus points for one of the narrators being a woman of color, even if it does take her 200 pages to show up. She makes up for being tardy by being a total badass.
There’s a definite gender skewing towards male characters, particularly male narrators, but there are two ladies I think are awesome involved in the plot, and that’s not a bad start (my standards, they are low). There’s at least one other woman who seems like she’ll be very important in the near future. And it has passed Bechdel, albeit only once that I can think of. There are two prominent non-white characters so far, and they spend quite a lot of time talking to each other about important plotty things that don’t revolve around white characters. So that makes two points where it's already doing better than far too many other fantasy series!
I didn’t really mean to read this book at all, given my backlog of books to read this summer, but I picked it up while in a library with my niece when I had nothing to read on hand and got hooked. I’m going to try and track down the next book while events are still fresh in my mind; the local library doesn’t have it, but mini-Powell’s might. But that doesn’t mean I’m abandoning my reading list! I finally got started on The White Road (I’m only a year overdue!), and that shouldn’t take very long at all. I also cheated and read a lesbian pirate romance recently, but that took, like, half a day. And it had lesbian pirates. No apologies.