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Feb. 26th, 2013 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsStarCrossed was a double rec from shati and dharmavati.
dharmavati said: "it has great female friendships and an unreliable spy/narrator who feels like a genderswapped Eugenides!"
shati said: "the heroine totally doesn't turn out to be secret royalty, and the two dudes who are set up as potential love interests in the first chapter hilariously then go on to disappear for the rest of the book! Also, the title is inexplicable."
For the record, all of these things turned out to be accurate. I mean, the title is not completely inexplicable, in that the characters believe religion/fate has to do with stars, but . . . I mean . . . the word 'star-crossed' conveys a very specific trope that is not happening here!
NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING.
So Our Heroine is Digger, a plucky teenaged thief/forger/spy/chaotic neutral jack-of-all-trades, but in the first three pages of the story everything goes wrong and her boyfriend is probably-killed and she has to go on the run from the Oppressive Religious Regime of the city where she lives!
At this point she manages to lie her way into a boating party of young nobles on an escape-from-the-parents pleasure cruise, and then follows this up by lying her way into being taken on as lady's maid to Lady Merista, the youngest and shyest of the party, and also coincidentally the one who is chock-full of innate secret illegal magic power.
Digger is sort of planning to hang out with Lady Merista for only as long as it takes her to steal some pretty things from Merista's family and the guests who are staying with them over the winter in their isolated castle, and then to skedaddle on out of there. Things get complicated when one of the guests catches her in the act, and starts blackmailing her to spy on the rest of the family for him, but she still figures she can make a quick exit . .
. . . until there is a HUGE SNOWSTORM and everyone gets TRAPPED THERE ALL WINTER!
For the record, this is one of my favorite tropes. I call it "Trapped In An Inn," after the way Georgette Heyer uses it some of her books -- you know, it's the one where a bunch of people who don't know or like each other much get trapped in an inn together for some deus ex plot machina, and then they're so bored that they all have to get to know each other really well and come out with weird fond feelings for everyone involved that they never wanted or asked for.
So this is a WHOLE BOOK of trapped in an inn, with the addition of complicated political intrigue and a twisty, amoral heroine who REALLY does not want to choose a side or admit to any kind of fond fuzzy feelings for anyone whatsoever, what is this "friendship" thing, shut up!
I only have one actual complaint, which is that I was really, really hoping that Phaedre would end up getting a moment of awesome at the end, and instead she got a moment of 'oh, she's even more terrible than we thought.' If I had the opportunity to demand one thing from the sequels, it would be Redemption of Phaedre!
shati and dharmavati. dharmavati said: "it has great female friendships and an unreliable spy/narrator who feels like a genderswapped Eugenides!"shati said: "the heroine totally doesn't turn out to be secret royalty, and the two dudes who are set up as potential love interests in the first chapter hilariously then go on to disappear for the rest of the book! Also, the title is inexplicable."For the record, all of these things turned out to be accurate. I mean, the title is not completely inexplicable, in that the characters believe religion/fate has to do with stars, but . . . I mean . . . the word 'star-crossed' conveys a very specific trope that is not happening here!
NOT THAT I'M COMPLAINING.
So Our Heroine is Digger, a plucky teenaged thief/forger/spy/chaotic neutral jack-of-all-trades, but in the first three pages of the story everything goes wrong and her boyfriend is probably-killed and she has to go on the run from the Oppressive Religious Regime of the city where she lives!
At this point she manages to lie her way into a boating party of young nobles on an escape-from-the-parents pleasure cruise, and then follows this up by lying her way into being taken on as lady's maid to Lady Merista, the youngest and shyest of the party, and also coincidentally the one who is chock-full of innate secret illegal magic power.
Digger is sort of planning to hang out with Lady Merista for only as long as it takes her to steal some pretty things from Merista's family and the guests who are staying with them over the winter in their isolated castle, and then to skedaddle on out of there. Things get complicated when one of the guests catches her in the act, and starts blackmailing her to spy on the rest of the family for him, but she still figures she can make a quick exit . .
. . . until there is a HUGE SNOWSTORM and everyone gets TRAPPED THERE ALL WINTER!
For the record, this is one of my favorite tropes. I call it "Trapped In An Inn," after the way Georgette Heyer uses it some of her books -- you know, it's the one where a bunch of people who don't know or like each other much get trapped in an inn together for some deus ex plot machina, and then they're so bored that they all have to get to know each other really well and come out with weird fond feelings for everyone involved that they never wanted or asked for.
So this is a WHOLE BOOK of trapped in an inn, with the addition of complicated political intrigue and a twisty, amoral heroine who REALLY does not want to choose a side or admit to any kind of fond fuzzy feelings for anyone whatsoever, what is this "friendship" thing, shut up!
I only have one actual complaint, which is that I was really, really hoping that Phaedre would end up getting a moment of awesome at the end, and instead she got a moment of 'oh, she's even more terrible than we thought.' If I had the opportunity to demand one thing from the sequels, it would be Redemption of Phaedre!
no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 03:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 03:55 am (UTC)Yeah, Shati said she didn't enjoy the second book as much either . . . Oh man, I hadn't heard about the third book being cancelled though! D: Does the second at least wrap up the story pretty well, or is it cliffhangery?
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Date: 2013-02-27 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-02-27 07:06 pm (UTC)It's out of print in the US but not terribly hard to find, and in print in the UK. Here are useful reviews: http://rydra-wong.dreamwidth.org/277419.html , http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/07/subtle-history-john-m-fords-the-dragon-waiting
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Date: 2013-02-27 08:44 pm (UTC)