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Nov. 23rd, 2009 11:53 amSo 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.
( Cut for length and ranting; the short version, EVIL COMMUNISTS, SLAVE WOMBS, HUMAN SACRIFICE, BRITAIN IS OBVIOUSLY THE BEST EVER, THE END )
So . . . there's all that. And then you add in( spoilers, ) 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.
( Cut for length and ranting; the short version, EVIL COMMUNISTS, SLAVE WOMBS, HUMAN SACRIFICE, BRITAIN IS OBVIOUSLY THE BEST EVER, THE END )So . . . there's all that. And then you add in
( spoilers, ) 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.
