Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

A minister’s daughter, Lauren Olamina lives in an enclosed community in a dystopian future. The police are thieves, the government may as well not exist, and outside the cities, most people wouldn’t as soon shoot you as look at you, they’d rather look at you, shoot you, and steal everything you own.

Lauren rejects her father’s version of God, who she doesn’t believe could exist in her world, and develops her own theories of God based around the concept of change. When her community is attacked, Lauren is forced into the outside world, and takes her theories, which she calls “Earthseed” with her.

Butler’s world is bleak and some of her themes create a bit of a disconnect with me, but they fit her world. It’s unclear as to whether the world is post-apocalyptic or simply suffered a slow decay, but I think its post-apocalyptic (or not) status is ultimately irrelevant. Lauren is set up to create a new religion, and possibly even to eventually be viewed as a god herself, instead of simply as a religious leader, but here, I think she functions more as an Eve figure, in that, by rejecting the rules of her father’s God (though I think they actually have different interpretations of the same God) she creates a new path and destiny for humanity.

Fire by Kristin Cashore

When I first heard of this book, it was described as having the origin of the villain from Graceling, and so I had no interest. Then I learned he only played a minor role, and it was ok.

Set in the briefly seen mountain kingdom from Graceling, Fire predates Graceling by about 30 years. Fire is the last human Monster in the mountains, and the daughter of the man who created its current lawless state. Monsters are creatures with vivid coloring and irresistible beauty. Human Monsters also have the ability to influence the minds of those around them, especially the weak willed, but they also create extreme levels of desire. Fire’s father used this to influence the king and lead a life of hedonism and self-indulgence, but Fire offers her gift to the (now dead) king’s sons to help restore order and prevent a civil war.

Unfortunately, Fire’s nature means that almost every man who meets her wants to seduce her or rape her, and thanks to her father, most of them want to kill her, too. This makes it very difficult to like almost any man in the book for quite some time, including her potential love interests. Cashore sometimes gets dangerously close to having Fire be responsible for their behavior, but makes it clear that only weak willed people can’t control the effect she has on them unless she’s actively trying to manipulate them. Fire also deals with her nature extremely well, and is very pro-active. I also like that, unlike most heroine noted for extreme beauty and desirability, she knows how to fight and use weapons, and defends herself.

Unfortunately, Cashore still has the same problems she had in Graceling-clunky prose, flat voice, dull villains and a near-incomprehensible naming system-but I like her characters, stories and approach enough to get past that.

Marple: Series 2-3

This is one of the most strangely mixed series ever. The visuals are great and the actors are awesome, but it has some of the oddest and sometimes clunkiest rewrites ever. Some episodes actually feel like televised fanfic, especially when they start rewriting the romances (I get the impression Christie wasn’t big on romances, having them mostly in her standalones and sometimes as a subplot in the Miss Marples) or adapting non-Miss Marple stories to be Miss Marple stories. Those often feel like Miss Marple’s role is largely to voice what the original detective was likely thinking in the original version.

But Geraldine McEwan’s Miss Marple is awesome, though I suspect she isn’t quite like Agatha Christie wrote her. (I haven’t read the books and only have Joan Hickson to compare her to. And Hickson was awesome and, I’m told, exactly as imagined by Christie. Just a different awesome.) The writers also clearly think she’s the best thing ever (even having the majority of the men seeming to flirt with her, at some point) which goes a long way to helping with the writing. The writing also improves a lot in Series 3, so I could mostly giggle at the awkwardness there, instead of the earlier combination of giggling and growling.

The series also seems determined to have the entirety of BBC’s actors play a role in here at one point or another. I’ve watched a ton of BBC stuff the last year or so, and so there was a lot of “Oh! s/he was in X as Y!” I’m pretty sure half the cast of Bleak House has shown up at some point.

Series 4, I think, recasts Miss Marple, so I should wait a bit in between.