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psocopteraSo Sarah Rees Brennan has a story, "Wings In The Morning", in this new anthology "Monstrous Affections", which I am not otherwise reviewing at this time. (Although I will mention that my former Swat classmate and D&D party member Josh Lewis also turns out to have a story in there!) Because Brennan turned out to have more to say about her characters than she could in the confines of the story, for the past year+ she's been writing a prequel novel, The Turn Of The Story and posting it in parts on her lj. The last part just posted a few days ago.
The first part is here..
I cannot recommend this novel and story highly enough if you are a) interested in a somewhat critical investigation of portal fantasy, b) love teen drama and pining and angst and unrequited love and feeeeeeeeelings c) a fan of Brennan's work back when she was a fanfiction writer writing Drop Dead Gorgeous.
a) It was interesting finishing reading TTOTS shortly after reading Magician's Land. Whatever else you might think about Grossman's series I think it's undeniable that he's going to be Part Of The Discourse about fantasy literature henceforth. (Although if someone wants to deny that, I welcome that argument!) And I wonder if I am always going to want to bring up points relating to TTOTS in response and of course *no one will have ever read it* because it's not a bestselling published thingy it's something that a few hundred or thousand people read on lj. (Elliot learning to work within/around the confines of the existing Border society is a more realistic/more mature contrast to Quentin's solipsistic rejection of magical society, discuss.)
b&c) I guess Brennan really hates it now when people compare her profic to her fanfiction but this is my lj and all the respect I have for her is not enough to stop me from talking about books I love. And the thing is, Drop Dead Gorgeous is still possibly my all-time favorite work of fanfiction, reading it is such a cherished reading experience to me, and I've always been a little let down by her profic because it's really hard to compete with that. But the pair of TTOTS and WITM is by far the closest she's ever come to writing something *similar* to DDG (right down to DDG having that side story "The Way We Get By" from a different main character point of view), and I am so so so excited she's bringing some of that to her profic. I think some of it is... how do I put this. Her characters in her two main serieses, the Demon's Lexicon books and the Un- books, are all very... well-rounded? Like, they're good, three-dimensional characters with a variety of motivations and interests and relationships with other characters and all that stuff? And in contrast Harry and Draco in DDG are very... simple. I mean, there is this great web of secondary relationships and awesome interactions with their other friends but there is this one overpowering emotional drive powering the story and it is YEARNING and PINING and it just BUILDS AND BUILDS AND BUILDS. And I think maybe because WITM is "just a short story" and TTOTS wasn't anything she was trying to sell professionally, she felt more free to go purely for the id instead of Writing Good Characters. I mean, I don't know if this is making sense. Certainly one of the whole points of the characters in TTOTS/WITM is that they're more complicated than their surface stereotypes. But they're... a little bit cartoonier than her profic characters, their story is a little bit heightened/exaggerated like good animation so that they're super-easy to emotionally identify with and care about.
Also, thinking about it, I think it made a big difference for me to read TTOTS as a serial over that long period of time. I think it made it feel a little bit more like fanfic, in that by the time I was reading the later parts of the novel I was old friends with the characters and very invested in them, moreso than I was with the casts of the Demon or Un- books 2/3 of the way through the firsts of those. I also love the tension of the serial format, especially for stories with One Big Question - every new part of DDG was always SO THRILLING, and it just got more and more and more intense wondering *when it would finally all have to break*, and TTOTS has some of that. (I want to shout out to a hockey fic here, I Got A Love (That Keeps Me Waiting), which was originally posted as a serial on lj and has a very similar BUILDS AND BUILDS tension and it was so awesome to have that reading experience again. PINING. BULLETPROOF. Anyways.) Of course my recommending it now, when it's done, means that you will not get to partake in the seriallness, except that I think the chapters still have some of that rhythm, of each part having to start and stop at satisfying points - I think the serial format requires the delivery of a lot of *satisfaction*, really, compared with the standard novel which does not ask for every chapter to carry so much weight.
The first part is here..
I cannot recommend this novel and story highly enough if you are a) interested in a somewhat critical investigation of portal fantasy, b) love teen drama and pining and angst and unrequited love and feeeeeeeeelings c) a fan of Brennan's work back when she was a fanfiction writer writing Drop Dead Gorgeous.
a) It was interesting finishing reading TTOTS shortly after reading Magician's Land. Whatever else you might think about Grossman's series I think it's undeniable that he's going to be Part Of The Discourse about fantasy literature henceforth. (Although if someone wants to deny that, I welcome that argument!) And I wonder if I am always going to want to bring up points relating to TTOTS in response and of course *no one will have ever read it* because it's not a bestselling published thingy it's something that a few hundred or thousand people read on lj. (Elliot learning to work within/around the confines of the existing Border society is a more realistic/more mature contrast to Quentin's solipsistic rejection of magical society, discuss.)
b&c) I guess Brennan really hates it now when people compare her profic to her fanfiction but this is my lj and all the respect I have for her is not enough to stop me from talking about books I love. And the thing is, Drop Dead Gorgeous is still possibly my all-time favorite work of fanfiction, reading it is such a cherished reading experience to me, and I've always been a little let down by her profic because it's really hard to compete with that. But the pair of TTOTS and WITM is by far the closest she's ever come to writing something *similar* to DDG (right down to DDG having that side story "The Way We Get By" from a different main character point of view), and I am so so so excited she's bringing some of that to her profic. I think some of it is... how do I put this. Her characters in her two main serieses, the Demon's Lexicon books and the Un- books, are all very... well-rounded? Like, they're good, three-dimensional characters with a variety of motivations and interests and relationships with other characters and all that stuff? And in contrast Harry and Draco in DDG are very... simple. I mean, there is this great web of secondary relationships and awesome interactions with their other friends but there is this one overpowering emotional drive powering the story and it is YEARNING and PINING and it just BUILDS AND BUILDS AND BUILDS. And I think maybe because WITM is "just a short story" and TTOTS wasn't anything she was trying to sell professionally, she felt more free to go purely for the id instead of Writing Good Characters. I mean, I don't know if this is making sense. Certainly one of the whole points of the characters in TTOTS/WITM is that they're more complicated than their surface stereotypes. But they're... a little bit cartoonier than her profic characters, their story is a little bit heightened/exaggerated like good animation so that they're super-easy to emotionally identify with and care about.
Also, thinking about it, I think it made a big difference for me to read TTOTS as a serial over that long period of time. I think it made it feel a little bit more like fanfic, in that by the time I was reading the later parts of the novel I was old friends with the characters and very invested in them, moreso than I was with the casts of the Demon or Un- books 2/3 of the way through the firsts of those. I also love the tension of the serial format, especially for stories with One Big Question - every new part of DDG was always SO THRILLING, and it just got more and more and more intense wondering *when it would finally all have to break*, and TTOTS has some of that. (I want to shout out to a hockey fic here, I Got A Love (That Keeps Me Waiting), which was originally posted as a serial on lj and has a very similar BUILDS AND BUILDS tension and it was so awesome to have that reading experience again. PINING. BULLETPROOF. Anyways.) Of course my recommending it now, when it's done, means that you will not get to partake in the seriallness, except that I think the chapters still have some of that rhythm, of each part having to start and stop at satisfying points - I think the serial format requires the delivery of a lot of *satisfaction*, really, compared with the standard novel which does not ask for every chapter to carry so much weight.
