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Aug. 27th, 2013 03:04 pmI SWEAR TO GOD, this is my LAST Mary Brown reread. NO MORE. But my copy of Playing the Jack finally came in at the library, aka The One With Cross-Dressing And Syphilis, and I couldn't not read it.
And for the record: I can totally see why I loved this book as a kid. Not only is it better-written than most Mary Browns and contains (wonder of wonders) more than one sympathetic female character, but it is entirely free of magic unicorn rings and sexy dragon-pigs; the only nod to sff is that the heroine --
-- sidenote: the book plays coy about the fact that "Zoroaster Mortimer" (YEP) is really Zoe Mortimer for the first hundred pages or so, but given that the front cover spoils it I don't really feel bad about it --
-- anyway, the heroine is sort of very slightly mildly psychic, but this basically has no effect on the plot. ANYWAY. What I started to say is Playing the Jack is that rare piece of work, a female picaresque narrative, in which Our Lovable Rogue of a Heroine bounces around taking a bunch of different identities and a bunch of different love interests and meandering cheerfully around the edges of conventional morality until she gets her happily ever after. Like, Tom Jones and Candide are the influences here. The only recent similar story that I can think of is the Bloody Jack series, which is even more traditionally picaresque because Jacky cares even less about conventional morality and has about twenty more love interests of both genders. (Needless to say, I love the Bloody Jack series.)
. . . ON THE OTHER HAND, there is the terrible love interest, and the whole super bizarre section set in the brothel. And, let us not forget, the syphilis.
( Plot summary under the cut! )
And for the record: I can totally see why I loved this book as a kid. Not only is it better-written than most Mary Browns and contains (wonder of wonders) more than one sympathetic female character, but it is entirely free of magic unicorn rings and sexy dragon-pigs; the only nod to sff is that the heroine --
-- sidenote: the book plays coy about the fact that "Zoroaster Mortimer" (YEP) is really Zoe Mortimer for the first hundred pages or so, but given that the front cover spoils it I don't really feel bad about it --
-- anyway, the heroine is sort of very slightly mildly psychic, but this basically has no effect on the plot. ANYWAY. What I started to say is Playing the Jack is that rare piece of work, a female picaresque narrative, in which Our Lovable Rogue of a Heroine bounces around taking a bunch of different identities and a bunch of different love interests and meandering cheerfully around the edges of conventional morality until she gets her happily ever after. Like, Tom Jones and Candide are the influences here. The only recent similar story that I can think of is the Bloody Jack series, which is even more traditionally picaresque because Jacky cares even less about conventional morality and has about twenty more love interests of both genders. (Needless to say, I love the Bloody Jack series.)
. . . ON THE OTHER HAND, there is the terrible love interest, and the whole super bizarre section set in the brothel. And, let us not forget, the syphilis.
( Plot summary under the cut! )
