What I am reading Wednesday
Oct. 14th, 2015 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scripsiTwilight Robbery by Frances Hardinge. This is the second book about Mosca Mye, starting a few months after the events in Fly By Night. There were things I liked less and things I loved.
Less; the plot is fast paced and somewhat repetitive. I lost count on all the times Mosca comes up with a plan only to have it fall apart. I think the book would have benefitted from a somewhat slower pace and some tightening of the plotline.
Love; Mosca is a very appealing heroine. She belongs to the clever urchin trope and is very much the spiritual sister of Lloyd Alexander’s Mickle in his Westmark trilogy. She’s a child who has been unwanted and neglected her whole life and she is graceless and quick to seize any chance for food and rest. She’s not used to kindness and she doesn’t give much for people who tells her to be more charming and sweet-natured. Why should she? She also keep a goose who probably has Mayhem as his middle name (the first one is Saracen) and only like Mosca slightly better than all the other people.
I love Hardinge’s world building. In these books the people believe in a number of small gods called Beloved, each belonging to not just a certain day, but also a certain time period, most usually an hour. Everyone born during that time period gets a name connecting it to that particular beloved. Mosca, for example, is born under Palpitable, he who keeps flies away from food. There are some prejudices in motion here- if you are born under a less favourable Beloved, you are seen as having less nice character traits.
In Twilight Robbery this is is explored further. Msca and her travelling companion, the aging con man Clent, accidentally learns that there is a plan to kidnap the daughter of the Mayor of Toll. Well there they realise that the city is completely segregated, forcing people who live under “bad” Beloved to live apart from those born under “god” ones. And the “bad” ones are truly seens as bad, whereas the “good” ones can do nothing bad. Its really a very good spotlight on prejudices and what that can do to people.
The Haunting of Gillespie House by Darcy Coates. Lightweight and short ghost story about a woman who house sits a large house in the countryside and quickly realises that something supernatural is going on. I think this one would have benefitted from being longer. We never really get to know the main character, despite the fact that she is basically the only character. there are also some oddities in the plot. Like, why keep a former sects scary skull sculpture in place in their scary worshipping place in the cellar? Especially if you have kids who would be traumatized to see it? And even if not knowing the full picture isn’t always or even desireable in a ghost story, this one tells us so little that you never get to invest any emotion in it.
Less; the plot is fast paced and somewhat repetitive. I lost count on all the times Mosca comes up with a plan only to have it fall apart. I think the book would have benefitted from a somewhat slower pace and some tightening of the plotline.
Love; Mosca is a very appealing heroine. She belongs to the clever urchin trope and is very much the spiritual sister of Lloyd Alexander’s Mickle in his Westmark trilogy. She’s a child who has been unwanted and neglected her whole life and she is graceless and quick to seize any chance for food and rest. She’s not used to kindness and she doesn’t give much for people who tells her to be more charming and sweet-natured. Why should she? She also keep a goose who probably has Mayhem as his middle name (the first one is Saracen) and only like Mosca slightly better than all the other people.
I love Hardinge’s world building. In these books the people believe in a number of small gods called Beloved, each belonging to not just a certain day, but also a certain time period, most usually an hour. Everyone born during that time period gets a name connecting it to that particular beloved. Mosca, for example, is born under Palpitable, he who keeps flies away from food. There are some prejudices in motion here- if you are born under a less favourable Beloved, you are seen as having less nice character traits.
In Twilight Robbery this is is explored further. Msca and her travelling companion, the aging con man Clent, accidentally learns that there is a plan to kidnap the daughter of the Mayor of Toll. Well there they realise that the city is completely segregated, forcing people who live under “bad” Beloved to live apart from those born under “god” ones. And the “bad” ones are truly seens as bad, whereas the “good” ones can do nothing bad. Its really a very good spotlight on prejudices and what that can do to people.
The Haunting of Gillespie House by Darcy Coates. Lightweight and short ghost story about a woman who house sits a large house in the countryside and quickly realises that something supernatural is going on. I think this one would have benefitted from being longer. We never really get to know the main character, despite the fact that she is basically the only character. there are also some oddities in the plot. Like, why keep a former sects scary skull sculpture in place in their scary worshipping place in the cellar? Especially if you have kids who would be traumatized to see it? And even if not knowing the full picture isn’t always or even desireable in a ghost story, this one tells us so little that you never get to invest any emotion in it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-10-14 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-14 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-15 02:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-15 02:38 pm (UTC)I like that too!
The segregated town story sounds kind of heavy handed to me, but I can also imagine it being done well.
I liked the concept of it, but found the plot a bit overly complicated.
Mosca and her goose sound like characters I might enjoy.
I LOVE Saracen! He's a real character (mostly a rather bad one). And I can recommend Hardinge's books, she'a very interesting. Clarly influenced by Diana Wynne Jones, which isn't bad at all in my book. My favourite so far is A Face Like Glass.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-15 03:39 pm (UTC)I kind of feel more books should have geese. Although I guess they wouldn't be as awesome as Saracen, so ...
no subject
Date: 2015-10-15 07:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-15 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-16 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-17 03:30 pm (UTC)Perhaps it's a difference between UK and US publication?
I think a goose in a book is an instant mood lifter. :) I actually have a kid's book with a goose. Totally unknown outside Sweden I guess. Though now when I checked I realised it was actually translated to English; The Spettecake Holiday by Edith Unnerstad. But that was back in 1958...
Anyway, it's about a little boy who is send to the south of Sweden to live at his grandmother's farm during the summer. She has a goose as a watch dog, which actually was very commmon in that part of Sweden. The spettecake in the title is also a pecularity of that region, a cake made of egg yolk and sugar, which looks spectacular, but taste like sweet sand.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-17 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-17 04:02 pm (UTC)I think so. :) I suspect they will seem evern better on re-read, when one can pick up the things that went past too fast the first time around.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-17 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-18 06:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-18 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-18 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-18 12:27 pm (UTC)