girls dressing as boys
Jan. 18th, 2018 10:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraInto The Bright Unknown, Rae Carson, concludes the trilogy that started with Walk On Earth a Stranger (review here) and continued with Like a River Glorious, (review here.) Unfortunately this felt more like the second book than the first one and I wasn't very into it. What really drew me to this series was the crossdressing aspect - gender is a permanent problem so I'm always interested in another gender story - and once that phased out and the plot fell off the Oregon Trail rails, I guess I just wasn't that into what was left.
Also a good chunk of this book is a heist story (is that too big a spoiler? or is it just useful genre information?) and I think maybe that's a genre that works better for me in filmed media than in print, where you can generate tension with music, showing the closeness of the close calls, etc. The caper stories that work best for me in writing maybe tend to lean more towards con jobs than heists? "Borders of Infinity" is maybe my favorite Miles Vorkosigan story - I've read Memory/Komarr/Civil Campaign more, as novels, but Borders is the peak expression of him as a character - and it's arguably a heist, but it works so well because it doesn't come down to a clever trick of technology or timing, it all comes down to his force of personality. The Thief and later Queen's Thief books are also more about Gen than anything else - I feel like the big reveals are usually more "oh my god he *thought to do that*" rather than "oh my god he was able to do that", if that makes sense. Anyways, whatever it is I like exactly, Bright Unknown didn't have it.
Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt is enough of a classic of the girls-dressing-as-boys genre that it was honestly weird that I hadn't read it given my love of that plot, so I fixed that. Actually it's possible I had read it because I found it on my bookshelf at my parents' house, but it did not seem familiar in the slightest when I read it, so maybe I picked it up (looked like a used copy) and intended to read it and never did for some reason? Anyways, I liked it, although Younger Me might have found it a bit slow. Interesting stuff about the choice to take on a Robin Hood-like role and how it feels and changes you. I feel like contemporary authors aren't so willing to really develop and commit to the mindset of a character in a different cultural context? Like, the way Gwyn thought about a lot of things, life and death, aging and ability, choice and duty, really felt like she was coming from a different, pre-modern set of values and assumptions and limitations. I can't think of the last time I read a medievalish commoner who actually felt so much like someone from a different world.
Also a good chunk of this book is a heist story (is that too big a spoiler? or is it just useful genre information?) and I think maybe that's a genre that works better for me in filmed media than in print, where you can generate tension with music, showing the closeness of the close calls, etc. The caper stories that work best for me in writing maybe tend to lean more towards con jobs than heists? "Borders of Infinity" is maybe my favorite Miles Vorkosigan story - I've read Memory/Komarr/Civil Campaign more, as novels, but Borders is the peak expression of him as a character - and it's arguably a heist, but it works so well because it doesn't come down to a clever trick of technology or timing, it all comes down to his force of personality. The Thief and later Queen's Thief books are also more about Gen than anything else - I feel like the big reveals are usually more "oh my god he *thought to do that*" rather than "oh my god he was able to do that", if that makes sense. Anyways, whatever it is I like exactly, Bright Unknown didn't have it.
Jackaroo by Cynthia Voigt is enough of a classic of the girls-dressing-as-boys genre that it was honestly weird that I hadn't read it given my love of that plot, so I fixed that. Actually it's possible I had read it because I found it on my bookshelf at my parents' house, but it did not seem familiar in the slightest when I read it, so maybe I picked it up (looked like a used copy) and intended to read it and never did for some reason? Anyways, I liked it, although Younger Me might have found it a bit slow. Interesting stuff about the choice to take on a Robin Hood-like role and how it feels and changes you. I feel like contemporary authors aren't so willing to really develop and commit to the mindset of a character in a different cultural context? Like, the way Gwyn thought about a lot of things, life and death, aging and ability, choice and duty, really felt like she was coming from a different, pre-modern set of values and assumptions and limitations. I can't think of the last time I read a medievalish commoner who actually felt so much like someone from a different world.
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Date: 2018-01-19 12:05 am (UTC)