![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
The Aeronaut's Windlass
I finished reading The Aeronaut's Windlass (the new Jim Butcher) last night. As some of you know, I was having trouble getting into it, but I ended up enjoying it once the plot started to happen. It's a fun, light, escapist read that clears the Bechdel test with flying colors; there are a variety of different characters for every taste, including a female pirate captain who is EXCELLENT (/unbiased), and the antagonists -- aside from the one who is clearly EVIL with a capital "E" -- are mostly sympathetic and likable people. It is very much the first book in a series, setting up a lot of dominos which will clearly be important in future installments; very little is explained, but a lot of intriguing hints are dropped re: the worldbuilding and the characters' respective backstories. My only real problem with the book is that there's a character I found so annoying I had to skim his POV sections, but mileage probably varies on that.
... The character in question is Rowl. Someone drop Rowl off the side of the Spire, please. It's partly the over-cutesiness of the cat POV but mostly the fact that I don't find extreme arrogance/"I'm better than you" an appealing character trait in the slightest -- unless it's a setup for bringing the character back down to earth and making them realize they actually aren't better than the hoi polloi (i.e. Tony Stark) but that's clearly not happening in Rowl's case. Strangely enough I don't find the female cat (Miri?) quite so irritating, although maybe that's just because we don't spend as much time in her head. It wouldn't bother me so much if the cats were less ... uh ... cat Sues, basically (e.g. if the humans reacted with agoraphobia to their first sight of the bright wide-open world outside the Spire, the cats -- used to small, enclosed dark places -- should have been even more that way ... but NOPE, perfectly calm and condescending to the nervous humans).
But otherwise I had a lot of fun. I speculated throughout that there's a science-fictional explanation for everything (colony on another planet? post-apocalyptic far future? "ether" is really ambient electricity from a powerful planetary magnetic field?), especially with some of the cryptic hints about the Builders, "iron-rot", etc, or Grimm's plug-in electric kettle. I still think there's something like that in the works (I'm tentatively guessing sci-fi colony world, with an extremely strong ambient magnetic field), although the ending makes it look like there may be real magic afoot as well. (But it could all still be nanites and computers! The red glowing light associated with the Enemy is especially machine-like.)
Also ... continuing my general habit of falling for minor characters who are probably going to die ... BAYARD. :D And CALLIOPE, who also had me at hello. I enjoyed the younger set of characters (it was especially nice to see Folly come into her own as a character) but I would totally be on board if the entire series was just Bayard, Grimm, and Calliope snarking at each other and occasionally saving each other's lives. I want to meet the elusive Abigail, and find out what happened all those years ago with Grimm and Bayard and Rook, or Grimm and Calliope's epic skyboat race! If I'm buying the next book upon its release, it will be mostly for these three, and to find out more clues about the nature of their world.
(Very minor historical/worldbuilding nitpick: if wood is expensive and rare, why do they make paper out of wood pulp? Historically, paper was usually made out of rags. The only reason why wood was devised as a substitute was because it was cheaper; the paper was inferior, and the production process was more complicated. There is absolutely no reason why people on a world that doesn't have abundant wood should do wood-pulp paper at all, and every time they mentioned how books are expensive and rare because WOOD, it made me twitch.)
... The character in question is Rowl. Someone drop Rowl off the side of the Spire, please. It's partly the over-cutesiness of the cat POV but mostly the fact that I don't find extreme arrogance/"I'm better than you" an appealing character trait in the slightest -- unless it's a setup for bringing the character back down to earth and making them realize they actually aren't better than the hoi polloi (i.e. Tony Stark) but that's clearly not happening in Rowl's case. Strangely enough I don't find the female cat (Miri?) quite so irritating, although maybe that's just because we don't spend as much time in her head. It wouldn't bother me so much if the cats were less ... uh ... cat Sues, basically (e.g. if the humans reacted with agoraphobia to their first sight of the bright wide-open world outside the Spire, the cats -- used to small, enclosed dark places -- should have been even more that way ... but NOPE, perfectly calm and condescending to the nervous humans).
But otherwise I had a lot of fun. I speculated throughout that there's a science-fictional explanation for everything (colony on another planet? post-apocalyptic far future? "ether" is really ambient electricity from a powerful planetary magnetic field?), especially with some of the cryptic hints about the Builders, "iron-rot", etc, or Grimm's plug-in electric kettle. I still think there's something like that in the works (I'm tentatively guessing sci-fi colony world, with an extremely strong ambient magnetic field), although the ending makes it look like there may be real magic afoot as well. (But it could all still be nanites and computers! The red glowing light associated with the Enemy is especially machine-like.)
Also ... continuing my general habit of falling for minor characters who are probably going to die ... BAYARD. :D And CALLIOPE, who also had me at hello. I enjoyed the younger set of characters (it was especially nice to see Folly come into her own as a character) but I would totally be on board if the entire series was just Bayard, Grimm, and Calliope snarking at each other and occasionally saving each other's lives. I want to meet the elusive Abigail, and find out what happened all those years ago with Grimm and Bayard and Rook, or Grimm and Calliope's epic skyboat race! If I'm buying the next book upon its release, it will be mostly for these three, and to find out more clues about the nature of their world.
(Very minor historical/worldbuilding nitpick: if wood is expensive and rare, why do they make paper out of wood pulp? Historically, paper was usually made out of rags. The only reason why wood was devised as a substitute was because it was cheaper; the paper was inferior, and the production process was more complicated. There is absolutely no reason why people on a world that doesn't have abundant wood should do wood-pulp paper at all, and every time they mentioned how books are expensive and rare because WOOD, it made me twitch.)
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
HA.
no subject
I am a really hard sell on animal POVs. I love them when they're done well, but I can count the good examples I've run into on the fingers of one hand. (Watership Down and Diane Duane's cat wizard books are the ones I always go back to.)
no subject
I think the biggest problem with animal POVs most of the time is making them believably alien (not just humans in fur, or stereotypical versions of how we think about animals, as in this case), and yet relatable and rounded characters. And it's more acute with animals than with actual aliens or other made-up creatures because we have experience with animals, and if we've spent time around them, we know how they're supposed to behave.
(Heh, your icon makes me think of the way our cat likes to lay on things like the upstairs railing or the arm of a chair with his legs dangling down, and our corresponding "inner monologue" for him: "The bold and noble cheetah lies on a branch, waiting for a gazelle to pass underneath ... a sleek and powerful cheetah in a tree ... What do you mean, I'm only 9 lbs? LIES!")