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Nov. 23rd, 2009 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo last night (as poor ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
varadia can witness) I got really angry at a book. I am less angry at it now! I suspect this is the combination of no longer having the daunting prospect of another 100 pages of it to get through, those last 100 pages not being quite as angry-making as I feared, and, uh, having slept. This is still going to be a rant, though! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
The most frustrating thing is, Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air starts out with the trappings of a decent book. I mean, many of the bits are quite clearly pilfered from other steampunk novels/real world history, but with some interesting twists, and the setup had a lot of potential for interesting political complexity, and I was interested to see where the author was going with it, and I can see why people like it . . . and then where it turns out he is going is EVIL COMMUNISTS, and, like. What? Seriously?
Okay, so why am I so angry at this book? First of all, the POLITICS. Oh, my god. Okay, so we start out with:
- Steampunk England, which is The Best Of All Possible Nations because The People Are Free And Generally Kind And Don't Colonize Their Neighbors (HA. HAHAHAHAHAHA.) and are ruled by a Parliament! Which is fine, except that the Parliament is possibly abusive and evil, and definitely petty and ineffective, and halfway through the book you start realizing that many of the sympathetic characters are royalists on the run whose families have been ABUSED by the MOB, or otherwise have ~magic noble blood~, and people start calling the triumphant Parliamentarian hero of the civil war things like "bloodthirsty king-killer," which, uh. If I were going to lay bets I would say that the series is going to end with the triumphant return of a king, which confuses me greatly because I don't know how you can go on extolling how England is better than everyone because of their freeeeeedooooom while at the same time building up to "what these people really need is an UPPER CLASS!" However, the classism does match up fairly well with the author's attitude on
- Steampunk RussiaFrance, which has been taken over by EVIL COMMUNITYISTS and their CARLIST PHILOSOPHY (seriously) who are running all the nobles through their not!guillotine in the public square and have put up a GIANT WALL (SERIOUSLY) between them and the freeeeeee people of Steampunk England so the poor oppressed FrancoRussians cannot escape. I actually thought that the author might be going somewhere interesting and ambiguous with this at first, with some stuff about the atrocities of war on both sides, but no, it turns out the communityists are just Stupid and Evil and want to Harrison Bergeronize the whole world by turning them into robot zombie slaves. BECAUSE COMMUNISM IS BAD, KIDS. And, I mean, I am not even overly invested in communism, but . . . I do not expect my 21st-century sci-fi to turn out to be (extremely thinly) veiled anti-Communist propaganda!
- aside from the PseudoEuropeans, who are of course always the most central to the plot, also have the Cassarabians (Hunt is SO GREAT at thinly disguising his sources, really) who we do not hear much about except for offhand remarks about their Sultan, their decadence and production of drugs, and their SLAVE WOMBS. (SERIOUSLY.)
- oh, and for bonus appropriation fail, the ancient civilization full of evil gods who are the REAL ENEMY behind the Evil Communists are pretty much the worst pseudoAztec stereotypes you can imagine. Slavery! Human sacrifice! Hearts ripped out of still-beating breasts! Gods named things like Toxicatl and the Wildcaotyl! Again, Hunt is GREAT at disguising his sources.
- And the benevolent robot nation - which actually in some respects is one of the more well-done and interesting things about the book - practices voodoo. I mean. They summon loas to possess them. I - I don't even know what to do with that. (Except laugh at sentences like "You softbody barbarian! May the Steamo Loas blight you for your evil!")
- There are also Gypsy witches. They are not even thinly disguised, they are just Gypsy witches. Who ride around naked on horseback - without saddles - while casting their Gypsy witch spells, which, again, a.) hi stereotypes! but also, b.) that sounds like the LEAST COMFORTABLE THING EVER.
So . . . there's all that. And then you add in the fact that by the time I was 3/4 of the way through, most of the interesting characters were dead, the female lead still had to develop much of a personality, the male lead had powered up so much that he'd lost all the things that made his personality at all endearing, neither of them had developed in any way that was not forced upon them without their knowledge, and we were in for a hundred pages of really confusing and pointless battle, and I had to walk away and go read some chapters of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga to remind myself that actually, steampunk can do interesting complex politics and organic character development.
The thing is, I don't know why this book in particular got me so angry; it isn't like any of these things are things I have not seen before, sometimes even in books I am fond of. But - I guess it is just that it is like it is doing all the things that can be so problematic with steampunk as a genre, ALL OF THEM AT ONCE, plus some extras thrown in. And that always makes me angriest when you can see the potential for something to have been done well . . . and then it goes in the completely opposite direction.
varadia can witness) I got really angry at a book. I am less angry at it now! I suspect this is the combination of no longer having the daunting prospect of another 100 pages of it to get through, those last 100 pages not being quite as angry-making as I feared, and, uh, having slept. This is still going to be a rant, though! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.The most frustrating thing is, Stephen Hunt's The Court of the Air starts out with the trappings of a decent book. I mean, many of the bits are quite clearly pilfered from other steampunk novels/real world history, but with some interesting twists, and the setup had a lot of potential for interesting political complexity, and I was interested to see where the author was going with it, and I can see why people like it . . . and then where it turns out he is going is EVIL COMMUNISTS, and, like. What? Seriously?
Okay, so why am I so angry at this book? First of all, the POLITICS. Oh, my god. Okay, so we start out with:
- Steampunk England, which is The Best Of All Possible Nations because The People Are Free And Generally Kind And Don't Colonize Their Neighbors (HA. HAHAHAHAHAHA.) and are ruled by a Parliament! Which is fine, except that the Parliament is possibly abusive and evil, and definitely petty and ineffective, and halfway through the book you start realizing that many of the sympathetic characters are royalists on the run whose families have been ABUSED by the MOB, or otherwise have ~magic noble blood~, and people start calling the triumphant Parliamentarian hero of the civil war things like "bloodthirsty king-killer," which, uh. If I were going to lay bets I would say that the series is going to end with the triumphant return of a king, which confuses me greatly because I don't know how you can go on extolling how England is better than everyone because of their freeeeeedooooom while at the same time building up to "what these people really need is an UPPER CLASS!" However, the classism does match up fairly well with the author's attitude on
- Steampunk RussiaFrance, which has been taken over by EVIL COMMUNITYISTS and their CARLIST PHILOSOPHY (seriously) who are running all the nobles through their not!guillotine in the public square and have put up a GIANT WALL (SERIOUSLY) between them and the freeeeeee people of Steampunk England so the poor oppressed FrancoRussians cannot escape. I actually thought that the author might be going somewhere interesting and ambiguous with this at first, with some stuff about the atrocities of war on both sides, but no, it turns out the communityists are just Stupid and Evil and want to Harrison Bergeronize the whole world by turning them into robot zombie slaves. BECAUSE COMMUNISM IS BAD, KIDS. And, I mean, I am not even overly invested in communism, but . . . I do not expect my 21st-century sci-fi to turn out to be (extremely thinly) veiled anti-Communist propaganda!
- aside from the PseudoEuropeans, who are of course always the most central to the plot, also have the Cassarabians (Hunt is SO GREAT at thinly disguising his sources, really) who we do not hear much about except for offhand remarks about their Sultan, their decadence and production of drugs, and their SLAVE WOMBS. (SERIOUSLY.)
- oh, and for bonus appropriation fail, the ancient civilization full of evil gods who are the REAL ENEMY behind the Evil Communists are pretty much the worst pseudoAztec stereotypes you can imagine. Slavery! Human sacrifice! Hearts ripped out of still-beating breasts! Gods named things like Toxicatl and the Wildcaotyl! Again, Hunt is GREAT at disguising his sources.
- And the benevolent robot nation - which actually in some respects is one of the more well-done and interesting things about the book - practices voodoo. I mean. They summon loas to possess them. I - I don't even know what to do with that. (Except laugh at sentences like "You softbody barbarian! May the Steamo Loas blight you for your evil!")
- There are also Gypsy witches. They are not even thinly disguised, they are just Gypsy witches. Who ride around naked on horseback - without saddles - while casting their Gypsy witch spells, which, again, a.) hi stereotypes! but also, b.) that sounds like the LEAST COMFORTABLE THING EVER.
So . . . there's all that. And then you add in the fact that by the time I was 3/4 of the way through, most of the interesting characters were dead, the female lead still had to develop much of a personality, the male lead had powered up so much that he'd lost all the things that made his personality at all endearing, neither of them had developed in any way that was not forced upon them without their knowledge, and we were in for a hundred pages of really confusing and pointless battle, and I had to walk away and go read some chapters of the Fullmetal Alchemist manga to remind myself that actually, steampunk can do interesting complex politics and organic character development.
The thing is, I don't know why this book in particular got me so angry; it isn't like any of these things are things I have not seen before, sometimes even in books I am fond of. But - I guess it is just that it is like it is doing all the things that can be so problematic with steampunk as a genre, ALL OF THEM AT ONCE, plus some extras thrown in. And that always makes me angriest when you can see the potential for something to have been done well . . . and then it goes in the completely opposite direction.
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no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:07 pm (UTC)("Toxicatl," what. I mean... is this about mad cow? Or is this a Decepticon that I missed the first time around?)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:11 pm (UTC)(OR MAYBE BOTH!
It is just so bizarre - they are, like, Cthulhuian insect gods, except they ALL have these names that are WORDS OF EVIL run through an Fake Aztec Filter. I don't even.)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:14 pm (UTC)*howling* *with laughter*
*AND DEVIANCE*
Oh my God, Becca, you could only find good reviews about this book??? (The voodoo robots actually sound kind of awesome. Why weren't they involved in zombification?) I lost it at Carlism. Politics major does not approve of these shenanigans!
However:
who we do not hear much about except for offhand remarks about their Sultan, their decadence and production of drugs, and their SLAVE WOMBS
Dude, I had my slave womb installed last week. D:
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:21 pm (UTC)(The voodoo robots actually were the coolest part of the book!
SOME OF THEM WERE ACTUALLY ZOMBIE VOODOO ROBOTS. Their bits got cannibalized and put together with other bits and then they became ROBOT ABOMINATIONS.)
Merc. Merc, the communists are so evil that they SHOOT THE HEAD OF THE FAKE FOOTBALL TEAM. Because SPORTS ARE EVIL AND UNCOMMUNIST.
Also, I don't think that was a good plan, those things take so much upkeep. D:
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:24 pm (UTC)(... Fake football team?)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:28 pm (UTC)(Well, AU football. I forget what it is called, but it is The Football Equivalent.)
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:39 pm (UTC)Or, you know, the Steamo Loas blighted me for my disrespect. :(
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:42 pm (UTC)Though I will admit, ranting about it to all of LJ was strangely satisfying.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 05:44 pm (UTC)And ahahaha I would not blame you for that, I kept being reminded of it too! Though Monster Blood Tattoo was at least not actually offensive, just had a really boring protagonist.
OR THAT. D: D: D:
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 06:20 pm (UTC)So basically, just like Asterix the Gaul, except not funny every now and then.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 06:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 11:18 pm (UTC)And I was tempted to read this book, too.
Fail. Such, such, such fail.
no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-23 11:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-11-25 05:34 pm (UTC)