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Oct. 27th, 2013 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe Dragon of the Lost Sea series is always going to be the Laurence Yep fantasy of my heart (and I'm so mad I forgot to nominate it for Yuletide this year!) but now I've finished his City Trilogy, which is also PRETTY CHARMING.
As I said when I wrote up the first book, this is super roller-coaster everything-and-the-kitchen-sink fantasy. An evil industrialist is trying to build a mythological super-weapon to conquer the AU 1940s! The only people who can stop him are a RAGTAG BAND OF MISFITS: a 12-year-old Kushite princess diplomat's daughter who's accidentally sworn her soul to a warrior goddess, her tiny griffin friend, a street urchin who is the reincarnation of the greatest enemy of dragonkind, his equally urchin-y money-loving tanuki bff who would just like to be home in San Francisco, and a world-weary exiled dragon assassin who wandered in from a much grittier book and is constantly wondering how she got stuck babysitting ALL THESE HUMAN CHILDREN, OH MY GOD.
Bit players and supporting characters include the goddess Pele, the god Dionysus, a Sogdian caravan train, a couple of ifrits, a secret Utopian society of foxes and polar bears hanging out in the North Pole, the semi-sentient Aurora Borealis, the North Wind, and an evil vizier. AMONG OTHERS. What I am saying is that THERE IS A LOT GOING ON IN THESE BOOKS.
My favorite, of course, is Bayang the dragon assassin. The development of the emotional arc between her and Accidentally Reincanated Baby Dragon Enemy Leech is really the heart of the story (whenever the story has time in between all the roller-coaster hijinks to have a heart).
BAYANG: Last week I was supposed to assassinate him, but now I have all these urges to tell him to put on a scarf before he goes outside . . .
BAYANG: . . . oh no . . . I think . . . I'm falling in Mom with him . . .
LEECH: Bayang look at me look at me I'm going to go take these dangerous weapons and go flying!
BAYANG: You put those weapons DOWN young man it is not SAFE
LEECH: YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM
LEECH: Also you systematically hunted down and slaughtered every single one of my past lives, so it's kind of hard to actually trust that you have my best interests at heart here :(
BAYANG: I know, our love is star-crossed and can never be :( :(
Why are there not more stories about star-crossed familial love? "Our households are at war, and there is all this terrible history that divides us, but I just want to adopt you!" Can we make this a narrative trope?
As I said when I wrote up the first book, this is super roller-coaster everything-and-the-kitchen-sink fantasy. An evil industrialist is trying to build a mythological super-weapon to conquer the AU 1940s! The only people who can stop him are a RAGTAG BAND OF MISFITS: a 12-year-old Kushite princess diplomat's daughter who's accidentally sworn her soul to a warrior goddess, her tiny griffin friend, a street urchin who is the reincarnation of the greatest enemy of dragonkind, his equally urchin-y money-loving tanuki bff who would just like to be home in San Francisco, and a world-weary exiled dragon assassin who wandered in from a much grittier book and is constantly wondering how she got stuck babysitting ALL THESE HUMAN CHILDREN, OH MY GOD.
Bit players and supporting characters include the goddess Pele, the god Dionysus, a Sogdian caravan train, a couple of ifrits, a secret Utopian society of foxes and polar bears hanging out in the North Pole, the semi-sentient Aurora Borealis, the North Wind, and an evil vizier. AMONG OTHERS. What I am saying is that THERE IS A LOT GOING ON IN THESE BOOKS.
My favorite, of course, is Bayang the dragon assassin. The development of the emotional arc between her and Accidentally Reincanated Baby Dragon Enemy Leech is really the heart of the story (whenever the story has time in between all the roller-coaster hijinks to have a heart).
BAYANG: Last week I was supposed to assassinate him, but now I have all these urges to tell him to put on a scarf before he goes outside . . .
BAYANG: . . . oh no . . . I think . . . I'm falling in Mom with him . . .
LEECH: Bayang look at me look at me I'm going to go take these dangerous weapons and go flying!
BAYANG: You put those weapons DOWN young man it is not SAFE
LEECH: YOU'RE NOT MY REAL MOM
LEECH: Also you systematically hunted down and slaughtered every single one of my past lives, so it's kind of hard to actually trust that you have my best interests at heart here :(
BAYANG: I know, our love is star-crossed and can never be :( :(
Why are there not more stories about star-crossed familial love? "Our households are at war, and there is all this terrible history that divides us, but I just want to adopt you!" Can we make this a narrative trope?
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Date: 2013-10-27 03:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-27 03:25 pm (UTC)(paternal or big brother? probably paternal, in a world where no one survives past thirty "I'm taller than you" is plenty enough of an excuse for fatherly feelings)
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Date: 2013-10-27 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-27 11:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-27 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-27 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-27 09:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-27 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-28 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-28 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-28 03:13 am (UTC)Star-crossed adoptions are hilarious and clearly this should be a thing, though I'm having some trouble thinking of good examples... Michelle West's Jewel books sort of count? I feel kdrama/wuxia should be rife with this, but I suspect there they usually end in "10 years later our hero discovers he was adopted by his father's killer and then everyone dies dramatically while crying in the rain" >_>
(Also I just feel like complaining but the Dragon series is REALLY HARD TO FIND a complete set thereof ;_; I'm still stuck on only owning like the second book or something)
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Date: 2013-10-28 03:03 pm (UTC). . . hahaha wow Michelle West's Jewel books are BASICALLY THIS, yes. I need to catch up those! Reread/catch up on. I keep wanting to do a full read of, like, the whole saga, in proper order, but that would take a million years . . .
Half of Capital Scandal is star-crossed sibling adoption but it turns out they're all secretly on the same side anyway! But nobody finds this out until like two episodes before the end so it SORT OF COUNTS ANYWAY.
(THAT IS TRAGIC AND YOU SHOULD COMPLAIN ABOUT IT UNTIL SOMEONE FIXES IT.)
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Date: 2013-10-29 06:29 am (UTC)Hahaha at the back of my mind I've been thinking, "one day I should re-read the Sun Sword sequence! So I ACTUALLY REMEMBER what's happening this time!" And then I think of all 6 books and find myself reading... something else...
That totally should qualify! Bonus points if it doesn't end in people stabbing each other to death.
(I KNOW, HOW ARE THEY OUT-OF-PRINT. THAT SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED.)
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Date: 2013-10-28 03:16 am (UTC)Speaking of everything and the kitchen sink historical fantasy, have you read The Bride of the Rat God by Barbara Hambly? It was a weird book that I loved and I feel like it would speak to you as well. There's all this research into how the world of early film worked and an English relative who finds she really fits in Hollywood and demons and a mysterious Chinese man who ends up falling in love. Also adorable yappy dogs that save the day, you should read it. :-)
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Date: 2013-10-28 03:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-10-28 07:20 pm (UTC)