Alanna by Tamora Pierce

Alanna of Trebond wants to be a knight. Her twin brother, Thom, wants to be a sorcerer. Their father doesn’t care what they want, or even realize that they want anything, and declares that Alanna shall be sent to a convent to train with priests, and Thom will train to be a knight. So Alanna comes up with a plan to dress like a boy, and change her father’s letter so that he has two sons, allowing the twins to follow their dreams.

The only Tamora Pierce books I’ve read before are the Circle of Magic quartet, which are set on a different world from this one. Alanna is Pierce’s first book (I believe this quartet was originally one long book that Pierce was told to break up, because no one in the target audience wanted to read a book that long) and it shows. Alanna follows all the normal for the “crossdressing girl who wants to be a knight” genre-actually, it probably helped solidify the tropes-right down to setting up what appears to be a future love triangle for Alana that includes Jon, the prince of Tortall (the world the book is set in) and George, a young thief who befriends Alanna.

If I’d first read this in my teens, I suspect I would have responded very strongly to it. As it is, I quite like Alanna as a character and enjoyed her supporting cast, but am less than amazed by the book itself.

Foyle's War: War Games, The Funk Hole

I watched War Games at my parents’ house before heading out of town Easter weekend, and then completely forgot to post on it when I got home. This has nothing to do with the quality of the episode, and probably a good bit to do with the fact that I read several good books in the car and after everyone went to bed in between watching it and getting home.

That said, though good, I wasn’t as interested in the main mystery plot of the episode as I usually am. It dealt with a company entering into a contract with Germany so that they’d still be the major manufacturer of their product no matter who won the war. I think I’m just more interested in the impact on people’s day-to-day lives in this series, and not as much on the big picture stuff. This is probably best evidenced by the fact that, even though it was fairly standard, I was utterly charmed by the subplot involving a group of children who were salvagers who Foyle had Sam take control of since they were breaking into places in their eagerness. I think the reasoning there went along these lines: “I do not know what to do with children, even though I raised one. However, Sam is a woman, and they automatically know what to do.” “I have no idea what to do with children, but I do know soldiers, so I will turn them into half-sized soldiers. And feeding them will give me an excuse to have snacks, too.”

( spoiler )

On the other hand, I loved all levels of the plot in The Funk Hole which involved a shop owner stealing rations so that he’d have food to sell to his village, plots and secrets at a local “guest house” where people who had lost their homes were staying for the duration of the war, and Foyle being accused of sedition.

The last results in his being forced to employ Andrew’s old method of sneaking through a window and using a tree to escape through the neighbor’s yard. Sadly, we are deprived of actually seeing that. Andrew assures us that it was an amazing sight, though.

In addition to Foyle being under house arrest and having to solve both a murder and a plot against him while Milner also tries to do the same alone, my favorite nits were the mystery surrounding the owner of the guest house and her gardener (not what you’d expect) and an authoress who was rather bitter that she couldn’t write about all the events at the house, since she was there secretly and supposed to be somewhere else.

( spoiler )

Up until The Funk Hole, the individual episodes could be watched independent of each other as long as you understood the basics. Said basics being that the lead is a police superintendent in Hastings in 1940, his son is a pilot in the war, his assistant lost a leg in the war and uses a prosthetic (actually not made a big deal of after the beginning, but important for Milner’s personal life) and his driver is a chatterbox who sometimes helps them. At this point, however, elements are introduced that look to be continuing plot elements that will influence the series in future installments.

Devil in A Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

Most noir starts with a beautiful, mysterious woman walking into a jaded detective’s office. This starts with a white man in 1948 walking into a black bar and hiring Easy Rawlins, a war veteran who recently lost his job and is chafing under the social mores of the time, to find a white woman who recently disappeared on him. The case seems simple enough-find the woman, tell the man where to find her, get his money, and go home-but Easy finds himself getting involved in a series of double crosses and murders, until he has to get to the bottom of things or end up in jail himself.

Easy is an easy character to like, and his world weariness comes with the awareness that many of the problems he faces are caused by the color of his skin. He can take any level of hatred or mistreatment people throw at him, but he can’t take the disrespect he gets by default. In complete honesty, I couldn’t keep track of who killed and/or betrayed who and why, and I’m not even sure they were all revealed. I don’t really care that I couldn’t either. Mosley takes all the conventions of noir and filters them through the lens of someone getting every short stick society has, with amazingly effective results.

Speed Grapher and books

Realizing that it left someone out in its determination to make everyone but lower-middle-class guys and outcasts evil perverts, Speed Grapher now has an evil priest obsessed with purity.  Or something.

It seems to have also decided that the physically, sexually and psychologically abused teenaged girl should be romantically paired with the guy twice her age who has the benefit of being almost the only character who hasn't abused her in at least one of those ways.  Because there's no creepifyingly huge power imbalance there, much as you may approve of his, you know, trying to protect her from the 500000 or people who have abused or want to abuse her.

At yet, the least creepy and/or skeevy thing in the series so far.

I do admire Saiga's ability to threaten people with cameras, though.

P.S.:  Dear anime, female sexuality is neither Teh Evil nor pathetic.

In other news, I went to the UBSes to see what Walter Mosley and Nancy Springer* books they had, and got carried away.  The problem here is that, while my reading time has decreased the last couple months, my used bookstore hauls haven't

( cuts are kind )

The backlog has been updated.

*Based on comments in my post earlier this week, this means that I'm either a masochist, or I want to be depressed.  Maybe both.

manhua: Magic Lover's Tower Vol 1-2 (complete)

Roxanne is the nerdy, shy class cleanliness rep who has a crush on the apparently personality-free class bad boy, Logan. When she’s looking at wedding dresses and daydreaming, some bullies from her class harass her, they cause the jar of nail polish remover she just bought to break. The liquid splashes a scroll that’s sealing a minor deity, Baphalon, inside, and breaks the seal. In return for freeing him, Baphalon offers to help her win Logan’s love. He’ll set up a series of magical tests-during which she’s transformed into a beautiful magical girl- and for each test she wins, Logan will like her more, but if she loses, he’ll hate her. If she does well enough on the tests, he’ll love her absolutely and rush into her arms.

The first volume is boring and stereotypical, with only the creepy free will robbing aspect of Roxanne’s curse to make it stand out. The second volume moves most of the action to the heavens, which has potential for more interesting stuff, but it’s never followed up on. What is followed up on, sadly, is the manipulation of feelings and lack of free will in the first volume. By the end, none of the three leads seem to have any say in their fate or feelings or the outcome.

I seem to be in the same position with manhua that I was with manhwa a few years ago, which is that I want to like it, especially given how much of it-both shounen and shoujo (I don’t know the proper term)-is wuxia. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of it coming out in English, that I can find at least, and most of what I have found isn’t that impressive.

Speed Grapher ep...17?

So, how did Tsuitengu end up a crime boss who smokes money and runs a club dedicated to sexual deviations, whose inner circle gets to molest a teenaged girl who can give some of them superpowers when they molest her?

( Does anyone care about spoilers for this? I feel they should count as warnings. )

Incidentally, this series has now had m/f, f/m, f/f and m/m rape.  At least three varieties include pedophilia.