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Mar. 30th, 2008 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSooner or later I will catch up on my booklogging and stop spamming you guys.
This one, though, I do really want to talk about and recommend, so: Jo Walton's Farthing, which I had seen highly recommended in a number of places, and therefore picked up to read on my trip.
The plot starts out as basically a British country-house mystery with a political turn - a politician is found dead in his room after a house-party, with a Jewish star pinned to his chest - that is soon revealed to be set in an alternate-history universe where Great Britain and Germany came to a wary truce instead of continuing to fight. However, it reads more subtly than many alternate histories, I think, because it focuses mostly on its main characters and uses them to demonstrate the changes in the world, rather than getting carried away by the Difference of the World Itself.
I don't know enough about British political history to know how plausible the specific changes are, but the world worked for me; I like it especially because it's not the big dramatic ZOMG THEY KILLED HITLER or ZOMG HITLER WON OH NOES, but something in-between that's much more unnerving and believable. I also really liked the voices of the characters, especially Lucy, who narrates half the book in first-person (the other half is close third person following the inspector who is investigating the case). She's the daughter of an extremely influential family who has incurred their disapproval by marrying a Jewish man; she's babbly and cheerful and apparently oblivious, but with strong depths of reasonable practicality, and, yeah, I really like her. Not that this is predictable of me or anything.
The one criticism I would make: we see a lot of the effect of the alternate history as regards religious, political, and sexual discrimination, but aside from a brief mention of African colonies, other discriminated-against groups and countries outside of Europe and North America that would have been affected aren't mentioned. It makes sense in terms of the focus of the story, but I would have liked to see more, all the same. I will most definitely be picking up the sequel, though, and if anyone else has read the book, I would love to hear your thoughts.
This one, though, I do really want to talk about and recommend, so: Jo Walton's Farthing, which I had seen highly recommended in a number of places, and therefore picked up to read on my trip.
The plot starts out as basically a British country-house mystery with a political turn - a politician is found dead in his room after a house-party, with a Jewish star pinned to his chest - that is soon revealed to be set in an alternate-history universe where Great Britain and Germany came to a wary truce instead of continuing to fight. However, it reads more subtly than many alternate histories, I think, because it focuses mostly on its main characters and uses them to demonstrate the changes in the world, rather than getting carried away by the Difference of the World Itself.
I don't know enough about British political history to know how plausible the specific changes are, but the world worked for me; I like it especially because it's not the big dramatic ZOMG THEY KILLED HITLER or ZOMG HITLER WON OH NOES, but something in-between that's much more unnerving and believable. I also really liked the voices of the characters, especially Lucy, who narrates half the book in first-person (the other half is close third person following the inspector who is investigating the case). She's the daughter of an extremely influential family who has incurred their disapproval by marrying a Jewish man; she's babbly and cheerful and apparently oblivious, but with strong depths of reasonable practicality, and, yeah, I really like her. Not that this is predictable of me or anything.
The one criticism I would make: we see a lot of the effect of the alternate history as regards religious, political, and sexual discrimination, but aside from a brief mention of African colonies, other discriminated-against groups and countries outside of Europe and North America that would have been affected aren't mentioned. It makes sense in terms of the focus of the story, but I would have liked to see more, all the same. I will most definitely be picking up the sequel, though, and if anyone else has read the book, I would love to hear your thoughts.
