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Mar. 23rd, 2009 08:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsOkay, for the first three books of Philip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles I was interested and entertained but not 100% sold . . . but the finale, A Darkling Plain, is so amazingly cracked out that I cannot feel anything but love and joy for the series as a whole! It is basically exactly what you would expect if Philip Reeve, author of Jolly British Space Opera, sat down and decided to write a postapocalyptic steampunk manga. Except as a novel.
So okay, before I get into spoiler territory, a question: which is a more fabulously Kaori Yuki-an dynamic?
1. The little orphan mechanic boy whose love for the multiple-personality-disorder zombie robot that he re-constructed after her destruction entails him a.) cuddling up to her cold zombie robot chest and whispering "Mama!" when she's asleep and b.) pretending that he can't find the parts to fix her zombie-robot eyes so that she will ALWAYS BE DEPENDENT ON HIM;
OR
2. The zombie robot surrogate father WITH A CONSCIENCE whose love for his adoptive scarred assassin daughter/love interest means that, while he fully intends to take her corpse and turn her into a companion zombie-robot with him throughout the centuries, he has decided that he wants her to be happy first and die of natural causes before the operation instead of killing her right away!
Hey, Anna Fang/Sathya is kind of canon, at least one-sidedly! And Sathya actually triggered important memories for Anna! That makes me happy. And Lady Oenone Zero Naga is also pretty awesome.
I did not expect to find myself 'shipping Wren/Theo really, but by the end I totally was! They were surprisingly cute. I also did not expect to find myself 'shipping Tom/Hester again at all, but I started cackling maniacally when he got jealous of Grike, and when at the end he was like "Hester, I'm sorry for blaming you for everything you did, because actually your murdering conscienceless stone-cold glory really turns me on. JUST LIKE IT DID WITH YOUR DAD, WHEN I WAS KIND OF IN LOVE WITH HIM!" I was shrieking aloud. Maybe with laughter. But still - points for Tom, because at last, this is a totally appropriate response to the badass assassin amazingness that is Hester. (Except for the part about being in love with her dad.)
AND THEN THEY DIE TRAGICALLY TOGETHER. AND AN OAK TREE GROWS OUT OF THEIR REMAINS. OH PHILIP REEVE.
And Mew London! I mean, on the one hand, why do British writers always center London as the most importantly amazing place there is, but on the other, I cannot help but approve of the HIGHLY SUBTLE symbolism of death and rebirth, etc. And I even stopped being annoyed by Pennyroyal! I don't know, somehow by the fifth or sixth time he popped up on their ship and was like "uh . . . hi again, Hester! :D?" it had become hilarious.
So okay, before I get into spoiler territory, a question: which is a more fabulously Kaori Yuki-an dynamic?
1. The little orphan mechanic boy whose love for the multiple-personality-disorder zombie robot that he re-constructed after her destruction entails him a.) cuddling up to her cold zombie robot chest and whispering "Mama!" when she's asleep and b.) pretending that he can't find the parts to fix her zombie-robot eyes so that she will ALWAYS BE DEPENDENT ON HIM;
OR
2. The zombie robot surrogate father WITH A CONSCIENCE whose love for his adoptive scarred assassin daughter/love interest means that, while he fully intends to take her corpse and turn her into a companion zombie-robot with him throughout the centuries, he has decided that he wants her to be happy first and die of natural causes before the operation instead of killing her right away!
Hey, Anna Fang/Sathya is kind of canon, at least one-sidedly! And Sathya actually triggered important memories for Anna! That makes me happy. And Lady Oenone Zero Naga is also pretty awesome.
I did not expect to find myself 'shipping Wren/Theo really, but by the end I totally was! They were surprisingly cute. I also did not expect to find myself 'shipping Tom/Hester again at all, but I started cackling maniacally when he got jealous of Grike, and when at the end he was like "Hester, I'm sorry for blaming you for everything you did, because actually your murdering conscienceless stone-cold glory really turns me on. JUST LIKE IT DID WITH YOUR DAD, WHEN I WAS KIND OF IN LOVE WITH HIM!" I was shrieking aloud. Maybe with laughter. But still - points for Tom, because at last, this is a totally appropriate response to the badass assassin amazingness that is Hester. (Except for the part about being in love with her dad.)
AND THEN THEY DIE TRAGICALLY TOGETHER. AND AN OAK TREE GROWS OUT OF THEIR REMAINS. OH PHILIP REEVE.
And Mew London! I mean, on the one hand, why do British writers always center London as the most importantly amazing place there is, but on the other, I cannot help but approve of the HIGHLY SUBTLE symbolism of death and rebirth, etc. And I even stopped being annoyed by Pennyroyal! I don't know, somehow by the fifth or sixth time he popped up on their ship and was like "uh . . . hi again, Hester! :D?" it had become hilarious.
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Date: 2009-03-23 07:51 pm (UTC)Oh my goodness, I CAN'T DECIDE. *intrigued!*
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Date: 2009-03-23 08:44 pm (UTC)