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Jul. 7th, 2008 11:23 amI really wanted to like Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring, but I found myself having a lot of difficulty getting into it until around two-thirds of the way into the book - I think mostly because up until that point a lot of the plot turns on the main character Ti-Jeanne's lingering feelings for her drug-addict ex-boyfriend Tony, and because I could not see anything that made Tony attractive or appealing at all, I just got frustrated with both of them!
Um, to backtrack a little, the book takes place in a future version of Toronto in which the core of the city has become essentially a sealed-off slum with very little chance of escape for the inhabitants. Ti-Jeanne lives with her grandmother (who is awesome) and her new baby, and recently she's started to see visions. Meanwhile, Tony has been commissioned by Rudy, the Big Bad of Toronto, to find a donor heart for a sick politician, with of course little concern for the ethics of the case. The magic in the book is mostly based on Caribbean culture - that and the really creepy backstory that Ti-Jeanne eventually discovers about her family were probably the most interesting parts of the book for me. I actually think I would rather have read the novel about the backstory than start with Ti-Jeanne herself, because although she eventually got smarter and more badass, that transformation took a little too long for me to fully appreciate her. I'll probably try another Hopkinson book one of these days and see if it works better for me.
However, I did love my reread of Nancy Farmer's The Ear, The Eye and the Arm. I read this for the first time many many years ago and didn't remember much, so I was pleasantly surprised by almost everything. The book is set in Zimbabwe two centuries on, and follows two parallel plot threads: three wealthy, sheltered children are kidnapped while sneaking out of the house, and a team of three toxic-waste-altered detectives are hired by their parents to find them. The best thing about this book is the complexity, especially in the sections with the children (this is, by the way, an awesome sibling story, and the clashes between the two older children are exactly the kind of thing I love). Most of the situations and people that the kids run into can't be easily categorized and dismissed, and the ending also has some of that bittersweet quality. The Ultimate Villains are pretty baddest-of-the-bad, but they don't take up enough of the book to make that too irritating; the focus is really on what happens along the way. And then in the end their mom also gets to be awesome! This earns many approval stamps.
The one thing that these books have in common that is not a particular story kink of mine is Gods To the Rescue (deus ex deus...ina?). I am not a huge fan of this; if there are going to be gods, I want them to be the sort that Help Those Who Help Themselves and give the characters more of a chance to shine in their own right. Not that the characters in both of these don't get to do so, but I would maybe have liked a little less supernatural interference - but that is just my own preference.
Um, to backtrack a little, the book takes place in a future version of Toronto in which the core of the city has become essentially a sealed-off slum with very little chance of escape for the inhabitants. Ti-Jeanne lives with her grandmother (who is awesome) and her new baby, and recently she's started to see visions. Meanwhile, Tony has been commissioned by Rudy, the Big Bad of Toronto, to find a donor heart for a sick politician, with of course little concern for the ethics of the case. The magic in the book is mostly based on Caribbean culture - that and the really creepy backstory that Ti-Jeanne eventually discovers about her family were probably the most interesting parts of the book for me. I actually think I would rather have read the novel about the backstory than start with Ti-Jeanne herself, because although she eventually got smarter and more badass, that transformation took a little too long for me to fully appreciate her. I'll probably try another Hopkinson book one of these days and see if it works better for me.
However, I did love my reread of Nancy Farmer's The Ear, The Eye and the Arm. I read this for the first time many many years ago and didn't remember much, so I was pleasantly surprised by almost everything. The book is set in Zimbabwe two centuries on, and follows two parallel plot threads: three wealthy, sheltered children are kidnapped while sneaking out of the house, and a team of three toxic-waste-altered detectives are hired by their parents to find them. The best thing about this book is the complexity, especially in the sections with the children (this is, by the way, an awesome sibling story, and the clashes between the two older children are exactly the kind of thing I love). Most of the situations and people that the kids run into can't be easily categorized and dismissed, and the ending also has some of that bittersweet quality. The Ultimate Villains are pretty baddest-of-the-bad, but they don't take up enough of the book to make that too irritating; the focus is really on what happens along the way. And then in the end their mom also gets to be awesome! This earns many approval stamps.
The one thing that these books have in common that is not a particular story kink of mine is Gods To the Rescue (deus ex deus...ina?). I am not a huge fan of this; if there are going to be gods, I want them to be the sort that Help Those Who Help Themselves and give the characters more of a chance to shine in their own right. Not that the characters in both of these don't get to do so, but I would maybe have liked a little less supernatural interference - but that is just my own preference.
