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Mar. 24th, 2011 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsIn a previous Laurence Yep booklogging post, I made a reference to the bit in the Dragon of the Lost Sea books where a teenaged boy sacrifices himself to make a magic cauldron, and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bookblather responded with "I remember that one! Child of the Owl, right?"
And I said, 'no, it was in one of the Dragon books!' because, though I had not yet read Child of the Owl, I knew that one was set in the 1960s, which is a time period without a lot of magic cauldrons, and also surely there could not be two Laurence Yep books in which a teenaged boy sacrifices himself in a cauldron, right?
OH HOW WRONG I WAS.bookblather, I am sorry for doubting you; Child of the Owl is indeed set in the 1950's, but, just for you dark fairy-tale lovers out there, contains a story-within-the-story that does in fact feature a young boy who sacrifices himself in a cauldron to make soup for his family. Once was chance, Laurence Yep, but twice is suspicious! If it happens in a third book I will have to consider it a THEME in your work.
Anyway, that aside - and I don't mean to suggest I didn't like the story-within-a-story, because I did, a lot; Laurence Yep is very good at complicated pieces of story-mythology - this book is also going up among my top Laurence Yep books for other reasons. Honestly, the more I read of the Golden Mountain books, the more I'm impressed with his range; I haven't seen him write this kind of confident, street-smart teenaged girl before, and he pulls her first-person voice off really well. Casey is wonderful. She's thoroughly capable of taking care of herself and her gambling-addicted deadbeat dad; she's fierce, funny and rebellious, but not Capital R Rebel Without a Cause - as soon as she starts meeting people she can actually connect with (like her grandmother! Laurence Yep's elderly ladies CONTINUE TO BE WONDERFUL) she tries really, really hard to use those smarts to help them out. And she makes unlikely friends with the wannabe-fashionista next door over their mutual love of Wonder Woman! GIRL GEEKS FTW. \o/ I could also just read about her adventures with Gilbert the James Dean Wannabe pretty much forever.
It's also - this, more even than his other books, is set in the Chinatown where Laurence Yep grew up, and you can really tell. The sense of time and place is incredibly strong. Laurence Yep! <3 Every book reaffirms my excellent life decision to read everything you have ever written.
bookblather responded with "I remember that one! Child of the Owl, right?"And I said, 'no, it was in one of the Dragon books!' because, though I had not yet read Child of the Owl, I knew that one was set in the 1960s, which is a time period without a lot of magic cauldrons, and also surely there could not be two Laurence Yep books in which a teenaged boy sacrifices himself in a cauldron, right?
OH HOW WRONG I WAS.
bookblather, I am sorry for doubting you; Child of the Owl is indeed set in the 1950's, but, just for you dark fairy-tale lovers out there, contains a story-within-the-story that does in fact feature a young boy who sacrifices himself in a cauldron to make soup for his family. Once was chance, Laurence Yep, but twice is suspicious! If it happens in a third book I will have to consider it a THEME in your work. Anyway, that aside - and I don't mean to suggest I didn't like the story-within-a-story, because I did, a lot; Laurence Yep is very good at complicated pieces of story-mythology - this book is also going up among my top Laurence Yep books for other reasons. Honestly, the more I read of the Golden Mountain books, the more I'm impressed with his range; I haven't seen him write this kind of confident, street-smart teenaged girl before, and he pulls her first-person voice off really well. Casey is wonderful. She's thoroughly capable of taking care of herself and her gambling-addicted deadbeat dad; she's fierce, funny and rebellious, but not Capital R Rebel Without a Cause - as soon as she starts meeting people she can actually connect with (like her grandmother! Laurence Yep's elderly ladies CONTINUE TO BE WONDERFUL) she tries really, really hard to use those smarts to help them out. And she makes unlikely friends with the wannabe-fashionista next door over their mutual love of Wonder Woman! GIRL GEEKS FTW. \o/ I could also just read about her adventures with Gilbert the James Dean Wannabe pretty much forever.
It's also - this, more even than his other books, is set in the Chinatown where Laurence Yep grew up, and you can really tell. The sense of time and place is incredibly strong. Laurence Yep! <3 Every book reaffirms my excellent life decision to read everything you have ever written.
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Date: 2011-03-24 03:31 pm (UTC)Though its annoying, they have the last and first Dragon Wars books but not the second with the cauldron.
Have you read Dragonwings? Its from the same series but set in the Chinatown of 1906 and has early planes.
How can he have written so much?
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Date: 2011-03-24 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-03-24 03:49 pm (UTC)???
Date: 2011-03-24 03:55 pm (UTC)...Did Casey have a cousin whom she really didn't like? Was there a thing about tooth-brushing? Because it may be that I actually read some other Laurence Yep novel entirely.
Re: ???
Date: 2011-03-24 03:59 pm (UTC)Re: ???
Date: 2011-03-24 04:10 pm (UTC)This is why no one should ever, ever ask me about the plots of books. (Or TV shows, for that matter: I was a huge fan of The X-Files, but half the time, if I catch an episode, I have no idea what's about to happen, and then my brain will come out with something totally not germane to the point of the episode, like, "Oh, this is the one where Scully makes a joke about mushrooms being good on burgers," or, "Oh, this is the one where Mulder steps in a banana creme pie!")
But thank you for the confirmation!
Re: ???
Date: 2011-03-24 04:12 pm (UTC)(Except for the booklogs where, unhelpfully-to-myself-and-others, I go on and on and on about a particular detail I found hilarious and say nothing about the actual plot, but ah well, no system is perfect.)
Re: ???
Date: 2011-03-24 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 05:57 pm (UTC)I would read Laurence Yep for the awesome old ladies if I read him for nothing else. It is an excellent bonus that there are a lot of other things to read him for!
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Date: 2011-03-24 08:29 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-03-24 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-24 08:57 pm (UTC)(Mat sounds right, yeah. And then Loren has some sort of complicated angst and depowering only not quite but kinda?)
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Date: 2011-03-24 09:07 pm (UTC)(I thiiiink so yes. He survives but their BOND IS BROKEN and Loren has no source but it's okay because then Mat can go home and the dwarves make him their King and there's some more tragedy around a sparkly dragon. Except actually his name is Matt, because this is Fionavar and not Wheel of Time.)
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Date: 2011-03-25 05:25 am (UTC)(That sounds right! And ahahaha FINE, BE RIGHT. "Matt" always throws me as a fantasy name! Even though that's undoubtedly the point! Loren only throws me because I know a guy named that.)
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Date: 2011-03-24 08:47 pm (UTC)But yeah, I think there is a Welsh myth from the Mabinogian about a CAULDRON OF DOOM that's used to revive the dead - Lloyd Alexander also draws on it in The Black Cauldron - and the only way to destroy it IS TO DIE (I don't remember exactly how).
Laurence Yep is drawing on Chinese mythology in his stories, not Welsh, and the kids in these stories are sacrificing themselves to get the cauldrons to work, not to destroy them - but that being said,being said, Laurence Yep is also often not at all averse with picking up bits of other myths and tossing them into his stories, so I definitely wouldn't rule out the idea of him having been inspired by that!
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Date: 2011-03-24 10:32 pm (UTC)Seriously, though, I should have also told you that despite said young boy boiling himself alive I adored Child of the Owl. Laurence Yep is made of magic.
OH ALSO. I am reading Georgette Heyer's The Talisman Ring and IT IS AWESOME. OH MAN. EUSTACIE AND LUDOVIC. AND SARAH ENCOURAGING HER. FOR THE LULZ. AND TRISTRAM BEING ALL WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS.
*flails wordlessly*
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Date: 2011-03-25 03:59 am (UTC)*___* THE TALISMAN RING. <3333 Sarah is one of my favorite characters of ALL TIME. She just takes so much JOY in EVERYTHING BEING RIDICULOUS. I want to grow up to be just like her! (TRISTRAM LOVES IT REALLY.)
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Date: 2011-03-25 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-03-25 04:58 am (UTC)That reminds me I want to read Leviathan.
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Date: 2011-03-25 05:03 am (UTC)