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May. 21st, 2013 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsYou know how sometimes you all of a sudden remember the existence of an author from your childhood, and you go, "really? Was the heroine's love interest actually a pig that that turned into a dragon? Did the fairies seriously turn out to be aliens that made them do it? Did the villainness have sex with an evil broom? Did that really happen?"
So when I went home this weekend I did my best to see if I could locate my old copies of Mary Brown's novels. The only one I have so far found is Strange Deliverance, which I remembered as "the fairies are aliens who make them do it," but I FULLY BELIEVE THE OTHERS EXISTED AND I WILL LOCATE THEM. (Though if anyone else has read any of Mary Brown's books, corroborative evidence is also welcomed.)
Anyway, my memory is not quite accurate about Strange Deliverance; the climax turns out to involve fairies vs. aliens who make the local kids do it, or at least turn up with some experimented-upon fetuses in HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES after entrancing the local prom queen and her hapless boyfriend into going up to the fairy circle (where the aliens are currently hanging out) and playing "Sleeping Beauty" every couple of months.
Oh, also, everything takes place in a post-apocalyptic town with a eugenicidal dictator. Aforementioned dictator helpfully reveals his fascist eugenicidal ambitions in the prologue.
Then we have a timeskip; midway through the book, our protagonists are SHOCKED when someone points out that in a town where no disabled infants survive a day past their birth, the only gay couple disappeared in mysterious circumstances a few days after making their sexuality public, and the only people of color who were in the town's original population never married or had children despite marriage and children being compulsory for everyone else, this MIGHT be part of the all-powerful town dictator's sinister design!
(There is black character in the book. She is the Magical Herb-Woman who lives just outside the town and provides helpful, sage, unselfish mystical wisdom to all of the white kids who are our protagonists.
There are also disabled characters in the book. They are mentally disabled twins, innocent and completely indistinguishable souls who are so naively devoted to Prom Queen that they follow her around, carry her stuff, and trot nobly and self-sacrificingly with her into ill-advised fairy circle alien experimentation shenanigans. The narrative is very eager tell you about all the times they comically mess up their words.)
Anyway our actual protagonist doesn't really do much except go to mandatory sexy summer camp with her boyfriend and think half-worried and half-judgmental thoughts about Prom Queen. Eventually she gets a magical unicorn ring, but that's not really . . . important . . .? GIVEN THAT THE MAIN PLOT INVOLVES ALIENS AND POST-APOCALYPTIC DICTATORSHIP. I mean it also lets her raise the fairies at the end to crush the aliens, but given that this also involves triggering the CERTAIN DEATH of Prom Queen and her devoted twin followers I am not sure this is actually a plus.
MARY BROWN, you guys.
So when I went home this weekend I did my best to see if I could locate my old copies of Mary Brown's novels. The only one I have so far found is Strange Deliverance, which I remembered as "the fairies are aliens who make them do it," but I FULLY BELIEVE THE OTHERS EXISTED AND I WILL LOCATE THEM. (Though if anyone else has read any of Mary Brown's books, corroborative evidence is also welcomed.)
Anyway, my memory is not quite accurate about Strange Deliverance; the climax turns out to involve fairies vs. aliens who make the local kids do it, or at least turn up with some experimented-upon fetuses in HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES after entrancing the local prom queen and her hapless boyfriend into going up to the fairy circle (where the aliens are currently hanging out) and playing "Sleeping Beauty" every couple of months.
Oh, also, everything takes place in a post-apocalyptic town with a eugenicidal dictator. Aforementioned dictator helpfully reveals his fascist eugenicidal ambitions in the prologue.
Then we have a timeskip; midway through the book, our protagonists are SHOCKED when someone points out that in a town where no disabled infants survive a day past their birth, the only gay couple disappeared in mysterious circumstances a few days after making their sexuality public, and the only people of color who were in the town's original population never married or had children despite marriage and children being compulsory for everyone else, this MIGHT be part of the all-powerful town dictator's sinister design!
(There is black character in the book. She is the Magical Herb-Woman who lives just outside the town and provides helpful, sage, unselfish mystical wisdom to all of the white kids who are our protagonists.
There are also disabled characters in the book. They are mentally disabled twins, innocent and completely indistinguishable souls who are so naively devoted to Prom Queen that they follow her around, carry her stuff, and trot nobly and self-sacrificingly with her into ill-advised fairy circle alien experimentation shenanigans. The narrative is very eager tell you about all the times they comically mess up their words.)
Anyway our actual protagonist doesn't really do much except go to mandatory sexy summer camp with her boyfriend and think half-worried and half-judgmental thoughts about Prom Queen. Eventually she gets a magical unicorn ring, but that's not really . . . important . . .? GIVEN THAT THE MAIN PLOT INVOLVES ALIENS AND POST-APOCALYPTIC DICTATORSHIP. I mean it also lets her raise the fairies at the end to crush the aliens, but given that this also involves triggering the CERTAIN DEATH of Prom Queen and her devoted twin followers I am not sure this is actually a plus.
MARY BROWN, you guys.
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Date: 2013-05-21 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-21 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-21 08:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-21 09:58 pm (UTC)I am pretty sure that one of the main characters is a gay unicorn.
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Date: 2013-05-21 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-05-21 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 12:31 am (UTC)Hilarity ensues.
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Date: 2013-05-22 12:55 am (UTC)Um. Okay then. o.o
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Date: 2013-05-22 01:36 am (UTC)I also want to see if I can find the one about the cross-dressing girl who is tragically barred from being with her love interest because he probably has the syphilis.
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Date: 2013-05-22 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2013-05-22 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 01:58 am (UTC)I keep meaning to! I bought one for a plane ride four years ago. Then I didn't get to it on that plane ride. Some plane ride in my future, Cherryh's day will come!
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Date: 2013-05-22 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 02:23 am (UTC)there are . . . fetuses in it . . .
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Date: 2013-05-22 03:16 am (UTC)also I bought The Oracle Glass, it is your fault.
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Date: 2013-05-22 03:32 am (UTC)I loved that series! I don't think I ever read the one with the aliens that make them do it, though, which is clearly something that should be rectified.
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Date: 2013-05-22 04:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-05-22 05:02 am (UTC)I remember liking the first part (where she's disguised as a boy) but being creeped out by her much-older love interest, and then it got increasingly weirder and I think there was a brothel and then it turned out he didn't actually have syphilis. Also, there's a fingering scene that stuck in my memory.
Oh, here we go!
www.amazon.com/Playing-Jack-Mary-Brown/dp/0671542524/
...I had not recalled that "his" boy name was Zoroaster Mortimer. That reminds me of Digory Tycho.
Also, from this review:
www.amazon.com/review/R39N6SRVST7BHJ/
Jack was an 18th century Charlie Manson in regards to how to handle women.
Either she meant "Casanova," or she found Jack even creepier than I did.
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Date: 2013-05-22 05:04 am (UTC)What really makes it is the total lack of logical connection to the catastrophe. The train doesn't crash because it got hit by a bomb, or the conductor had been shot while making his escape, or anything like that. No. Totally random heart attack!
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Date: 2013-05-22 08:29 am (UTC)Mary Gentle's books, on the other hand, I either love or abhor. Choose wisely!
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Date: 2013-05-22 01:52 pm (UTC)Pigs Don't Fly actually has three sequels: Master of Many Treasures (which was less cracky than the others, IIRC), Dragonne's Eg (which is the one with the eggpreg, and also I think the one where she's crossdressing for most of the book), and Here There Be Dragonnes (which I don't think I ever read either...)
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Date: 2013-05-22 08:18 pm (UTC)That is not as helpful as it might be! WHICH IS WHICH :O :O :O
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Date: 2013-05-23 09:28 pm (UTC)Mary Gentle - opinions differ! Personally, I love Ash (gritty female mercenary in alternate 15th century Europe unfolds conspiracy theory that begins to affect the future, where historians are translating - and arguing over - her story) and Ilario - hermaphrodite artist in romp around the Mediterranean in 15th century alternate history, with bonus preservation of the library at Alexandria - and I hate Grunts! - Lord of the Rings from orc pov, bonus gang-rape jokes - and the White Crow sequence (alchemy, vaguely steampunk, unappealing protagonists). And every time I try to read 1610 I seem to enjoy it, but I get slightly less further than I did before, and abandon it entirely.