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Sep. 26th, 2008 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI finished reading L.A. Meyers' Mississippi Jack: Being an Account of the Further Waterborne Adventures of Jacky Faber, Midshipman, Fine Lady, and Lily of the West yesterday, fifth in the Bloody Jack series, and these books continue to be my happy place.
I love a lot of things about the Bloody Jack series. And now I am going to list a few.
- I love that the protagonist - while skilled and exceptional in a lot of occasionally over-the-top ways - also has genuine flaws; she's an undeniable show-off and a total flirt and not afraid to bawl and cry her head off when she's in trouble, and I love that her numerous traumatic near-death experiences are actually depicted as traumatic even though the books never wallow in angst.
- I also love that though she's totally badass, she's also totally girly and loves dressing up and gossipping and bonds with other girls. A few of you who were at Dragon*Con will remember that I asked a question at the panel on fantasy heroines about strong female friendships in fantasy novels, and the panelists kind of stammered and said that they couldn't really think of any. A lot of times, 'strong female character' means putting down other girls for being too girly, too shallow, too tied up in court drama or whatever, but these books never do that. Jacky is continually befriending other girls; the relationship between Jacky and her Boarding School BFF Amy is not only one of the strongest in the series, but, because Amy is the 'writer' of the books, literally the driving narrative force. And even the girls that seem antagonistic at first often turn out to become allies, which is something you know I love - I honestly can't think of one female character who's portrayed as wholly villainous in the series. Even when there's a love triangle with Another Girl! And in fact the resolution to that fills me with joy, because Girl Two ACTUALLY dumps The Boy and runs off to have wacky riverboat adventures with Jacky! This is something I always want to happen in love triangles! GIANT HEARTS, L.A. Meyer.
- Speaking of love triangles, one of my favorite things about the earlier books is that it completely reversed the normal adventure tropes, where the boy goes off and has flings with various women even while his Heart Remains With His True Love while the girl sits at home and is totally faithful. In these books, Jacky makes out with like half the male cast while she's running around the world trying to meet up with Jaimy, and she can do that because she's our heroine; the text never casts her as a slut for having active sexual desires. Which is why I'm okay with the long, long game of constant Wacky Misunderstandings and Just Missing Each Other between Jacky and Jaimy, which ordinarily would frustrate me no end. (Okay, it frustrated me a little bit in this book, but because of the way it ended I'm totally fine!)
- I love the play with genre, and how the author is totally unafraid to completely jump genres mid-series. I mean, the first book was 100% Age of Sail in the vein of Patrick O'Brian, the second book was GIRL'S BOARDING SCHOOL STORY, the fourth book was Robert Louis Stephenson Kidnapped-style except with a band of (awesome) girls, and now all of a sudden in the fifth book we're in American Tall Tales Mark Twain-land. And it's brilliant. (I also love how Jacky utterly thrives in Mark Twain-land and Jaimy the love interest spends the whole book stomping around muttering how he hates America and Americans and grumblemutterstupidcountrygrumble. HILARITY.)
- And, in the vein of Jacky's ease in adaptation between genres, I love how the books totally continue to support my thesis. I swear, I think L.A. Meyer must have read Vested Interests; that is a book of criticism all about how cross-dressing is a way to talk about subverting ten million different kinds of other identity definitions, and by the end of this book Jacky has gone on to subvert basically every single one of them - gender, nationality, race, class, and more I am sure I am forgetting. I don't mean that it provides lots of Deep Commentary, because at heart the books are all about the wacky adventure hijinks, but that very lightness of treatment says something about the identity boxes that we all take so Seriously in and of itself. And I love them for that.
(The one complaint I had about this one in specific was the way in which basically everyone on the boat got paired off by the end, which was probably slight overkill. Also, I miss Amy. However, there is promise of Amy in the next one, so I am Mollified!)
I love a lot of things about the Bloody Jack series. And now I am going to list a few.
- I love that the protagonist - while skilled and exceptional in a lot of occasionally over-the-top ways - also has genuine flaws; she's an undeniable show-off and a total flirt and not afraid to bawl and cry her head off when she's in trouble, and I love that her numerous traumatic near-death experiences are actually depicted as traumatic even though the books never wallow in angst.
- I also love that though she's totally badass, she's also totally girly and loves dressing up and gossipping and bonds with other girls. A few of you who were at Dragon*Con will remember that I asked a question at the panel on fantasy heroines about strong female friendships in fantasy novels, and the panelists kind of stammered and said that they couldn't really think of any. A lot of times, 'strong female character' means putting down other girls for being too girly, too shallow, too tied up in court drama or whatever, but these books never do that. Jacky is continually befriending other girls; the relationship between Jacky and her Boarding School BFF Amy is not only one of the strongest in the series, but, because Amy is the 'writer' of the books, literally the driving narrative force. And even the girls that seem antagonistic at first often turn out to become allies, which is something you know I love - I honestly can't think of one female character who's portrayed as wholly villainous in the series. Even when there's a love triangle with Another Girl! And in fact the resolution to that fills me with joy, because Girl Two ACTUALLY dumps The Boy and runs off to have wacky riverboat adventures with Jacky! This is something I always want to happen in love triangles! GIANT HEARTS, L.A. Meyer.
- Speaking of love triangles, one of my favorite things about the earlier books is that it completely reversed the normal adventure tropes, where the boy goes off and has flings with various women even while his Heart Remains With His True Love while the girl sits at home and is totally faithful. In these books, Jacky makes out with like half the male cast while she's running around the world trying to meet up with Jaimy, and she can do that because she's our heroine; the text never casts her as a slut for having active sexual desires. Which is why I'm okay with the long, long game of constant Wacky Misunderstandings and Just Missing Each Other between Jacky and Jaimy, which ordinarily would frustrate me no end. (Okay, it frustrated me a little bit in this book, but because of the way it ended I'm totally fine!)
- I love the play with genre, and how the author is totally unafraid to completely jump genres mid-series. I mean, the first book was 100% Age of Sail in the vein of Patrick O'Brian, the second book was GIRL'S BOARDING SCHOOL STORY, the fourth book was Robert Louis Stephenson Kidnapped-style except with a band of (awesome) girls, and now all of a sudden in the fifth book we're in American Tall Tales Mark Twain-land. And it's brilliant. (I also love how Jacky utterly thrives in Mark Twain-land and Jaimy the love interest spends the whole book stomping around muttering how he hates America and Americans and grumblemutterstupidcountrygrumble. HILARITY.)
- And, in the vein of Jacky's ease in adaptation between genres, I love how the books totally continue to support my thesis. I swear, I think L.A. Meyer must have read Vested Interests; that is a book of criticism all about how cross-dressing is a way to talk about subverting ten million different kinds of other identity definitions, and by the end of this book Jacky has gone on to subvert basically every single one of them - gender, nationality, race, class, and more I am sure I am forgetting. I don't mean that it provides lots of Deep Commentary, because at heart the books are all about the wacky adventure hijinks, but that very lightness of treatment says something about the identity boxes that we all take so Seriously in and of itself. And I love them for that.
(The one complaint I had about this one in specific was the way in which basically everyone on the boat got paired off by the end, which was probably slight overkill. Also, I miss Amy. However, there is promise of Amy in the next one, so I am Mollified!)
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