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Feb. 16th, 2011 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsWell, I spent so long accidentally ranting about Kage Baker in the comments of yesterday's post that I may as well continue that trend today!
So the thing is, my feelings about Kage Baker are very strong. I pretty much grew up with the Company series; I think I read In the Garden of Iden the year it came out, and jumped on each new book as it was published. The things I love about the series I love, in the way you love the books that are part of you, and many of the characters will always be among my favorite characters of all time. The WTF of the end (and it is an epic WTF) is not quite enough to change that - which is unfortunate, in a way, because it means that I can't just walk away from the books of hers I know won't make me happy. (I will inevitably reread them all, too. Even The Machine's Child, which is pretty much all just buildup to the half of Sons of Heaven that is awful.)
And then Kage Baker died, and I thought that was it, and then I found out that a.) three posthumous novels of hers had been published, which in a way was like she had come back to life and given me some presents, and b.) one of them was a prequel all about Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, BIGGEST ASSHOLE IN THE SERIES, which in a way was like she had come back to life and given me some presents and one of them was a front-row ticket to a punch in the face.
But if someone goes to all the effort to come back to life and give you a present, it's hard to say 'no thank you, I've heard that venue delivers punches to the face.'
So: Not Less Than Gods. Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax is a Tragic Orphan who is being shaped by the mysterious Company for mysterious Purposes, that is, to be the Victorian-era James Bond. The entire book is basically Edward, his two upper-class twit secret agent friends, and their mentor jaunting around the world pretending to be idiot tourists, marveling at the Company's secret steampunk technology, and occasionally assassinating people in the name of Great Britain and the Future. No, seriously, that's it. The narrative, unlike the characters, is decidedly cynical about the assassinations of lots of people in the name of Great Britain and the Future, but since the whole point of the book is that Edward is becoming MORE AND MORE the shortsighted utterly-amoral-except-for-ridiculous-Victorian-priggishness asshole he will demonstrate himself to be later in the series, that doesn't help much. It didn't have much point for me; I suspect it would have even less point to someone who wasn't familiar with the other Company books.
(There is one awesome scene! It involves a rabbi who is building cars in nineteenth-century Prague and is VERY SMUG about it.)
Then I read The Women of Nell Gwynne's, which is a vaguely related novella in that the aforementioned women feature briefly in Not Less Than Gods. They are the ladies' auxiliary to the secret spy society that Edward works for, so of course they are prostitutes. That said, once you get past the first chapter (which gives Lady Beatrice, the protagonist prostitute-spy, a Tragic Backstory via Britain's occupation of India - difficult to pull off non-problematically and Kage Baker does not manage it here) it's a fairly fun and lighthearted story about a secret spy assignment with Kage Baker's trademark sense of humor, and definitely much more enjoyable than Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax's manpain.
I now have one Kage Baker book left - The Bird of the River, which appears to be about an awesome girl on a river barge, and which I suspect I will like much better than either of these. This is, of course, on purpose; I would like the last new book I read by Kage Baker to be something I can love rather than a punch in the face.
So the thing is, my feelings about Kage Baker are very strong. I pretty much grew up with the Company series; I think I read In the Garden of Iden the year it came out, and jumped on each new book as it was published. The things I love about the series I love, in the way you love the books that are part of you, and many of the characters will always be among my favorite characters of all time. The WTF of the end (and it is an epic WTF) is not quite enough to change that - which is unfortunate, in a way, because it means that I can't just walk away from the books of hers I know won't make me happy. (I will inevitably reread them all, too. Even The Machine's Child, which is pretty much all just buildup to the half of Sons of Heaven that is awful.)
And then Kage Baker died, and I thought that was it, and then I found out that a.) three posthumous novels of hers had been published, which in a way was like she had come back to life and given me some presents, and b.) one of them was a prequel all about Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax, BIGGEST ASSHOLE IN THE SERIES, which in a way was like she had come back to life and given me some presents and one of them was a front-row ticket to a punch in the face.
But if someone goes to all the effort to come back to life and give you a present, it's hard to say 'no thank you, I've heard that venue delivers punches to the face.'
So: Not Less Than Gods. Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax is a Tragic Orphan who is being shaped by the mysterious Company for mysterious Purposes, that is, to be the Victorian-era James Bond. The entire book is basically Edward, his two upper-class twit secret agent friends, and their mentor jaunting around the world pretending to be idiot tourists, marveling at the Company's secret steampunk technology, and occasionally assassinating people in the name of Great Britain and the Future. No, seriously, that's it. The narrative, unlike the characters, is decidedly cynical about the assassinations of lots of people in the name of Great Britain and the Future, but since the whole point of the book is that Edward is becoming MORE AND MORE the shortsighted utterly-amoral-except-for-ridiculous-Victorian-priggishness asshole he will demonstrate himself to be later in the series, that doesn't help much. It didn't have much point for me; I suspect it would have even less point to someone who wasn't familiar with the other Company books.
(There is one awesome scene! It involves a rabbi who is building cars in nineteenth-century Prague and is VERY SMUG about it.)
Then I read The Women of Nell Gwynne's, which is a vaguely related novella in that the aforementioned women feature briefly in Not Less Than Gods. They are the ladies' auxiliary to the secret spy society that Edward works for, so of course they are prostitutes. That said, once you get past the first chapter (which gives Lady Beatrice, the protagonist prostitute-spy, a Tragic Backstory via Britain's occupation of India - difficult to pull off non-problematically and Kage Baker does not manage it here) it's a fairly fun and lighthearted story about a secret spy assignment with Kage Baker's trademark sense of humor, and definitely much more enjoyable than Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax's manpain.
I now have one Kage Baker book left - The Bird of the River, which appears to be about an awesome girl on a river barge, and which I suspect I will like much better than either of these. This is, of course, on purpose; I would like the last new book I read by Kage Baker to be something I can love rather than a punch in the face.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 05:03 pm (UTC)(You know what would have been awesome, on the other hand, is if she'd just written and published Lewis' fanfic. Like, it would have been terrible, but in the most hilarious way. WHAT IS A CHEROOT EVEN.)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 10:17 pm (UTC)HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, that sounds awesome.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 11:12 pm (UTC)I am also a big fan of the fact that the cyborgs get embarrassingly high on chocolate and go to Ghirardelli's to drown their sorrows.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-16 11:18 pm (UTC)