Of Swords and Parasols

What are you currently reading

I'm reading the manhwa The Moment When the Fox Became thea Wolf, in which Eun Song, a poor, meek "wallflower" girl swaps bodies with Yoo Ha, a rich, violent delinquent, when both hide in a wardrobe for different reasons. It's very entertaining but sometimes a bit much. A lot of it so far has been people's reactions to the two suddenly behaving conventionally for their opposite gender, and the two learning about each others problems and trying to fix them in ways the person who actually belongs in the body wouldn't. Yoo Ha's family issues would put a lot of soap operas to shame and thanks to the gender confusion and bodyswapping, you almost need a pie chart to keep track of who likes who in what body (Not to mention "wait, under the circumstances, does this count as slash and/or incest or not?") if you stop to think about it, but is easy to follow when you're actually reading. The end of the 5th volume has a twist that could go a lot of ways, and I have no idea which way it'll go.

And I'm reading Dime Store Magic, the first Paige Winterbourne-centric book in the Kelley Armstrong series. I'm fairly spoiled for the big parts, as both Industrial Magic and Haunted are direct sequels, but itisn't affecting my enjoyment. Though, I have to say, I liked Savannah's father in Haunted, but if he's approving of the things being done to Paige in his name here, I'll have to change that, and Lucas is certainly different here than in the other books, once paige and Savannah have unbent him a fair bit.

What did you recently finish reading?

I finished reading Kelley Armstrong's Haunted, which I enjoyed a lot, even though it went a bit close to slasher territory for my taste at one point. (Err...by "slasher," I am referring to the gory horror subgenre that I don't find tense or scary, just icky, not shipping. In case there was any confusion.) I also read her Broken, which I enjoyed more than the oprevious Elena/werewolf material that I read, but still less than the others. The central romance there is less creepy, but I still think he's borderline abusive (definitely obsessive and controlling) and while I'm neutral about how graphic consentual sex scenes come in my fiction, I'm a bit bitter in that, of the canon pairings in this series, the only one that I don't like it the one that gets the least "fade to black." It's also still very "one special girl in all the world...and there are no other girls in her world," but at least Elena acquired a few female friends who can at least pop inn from time to time.

And then I also read Catherynne M. Valente's Six-Gun Snow White, whivh reimagines "Snow White" as a western in which Snow is the daughter of a Crow woman and a white land baron. The book is very interesting and Valente does a very good job with the oral western narrator approach to the prose, and weaves in other fairy tales very interestingly. That said, while I liked it a lot, something about it felt a bit off to me ,and I can't quite pin down what. I think it's partly that I think Valente may have been a bit more concerned with "not your average Snow White" than with "her" Snow White (if that makes sense), and the stepmother wasn't given as much focus as I expected. I think Valente conveyed her motives and the "abuse begets abuse" element of her background, but the last few versions of "Snow White" that I've encountered have spent more time developing and delving into the stepmother than this did, so I guess I'm expecting a lot more of that now.

What do you think you'll read next?

The rest of the Hwang Mi Ri manhwa, and whatever is due back at the library next.

For the curious, in March I read 6 prose books and 35 graphic novels.

The complete list of books I read it 2008 is in poll form here.

( top books of the year )

"It feels strange, to speak to you, when I am used to listening.  This is how it is in the stories I knew before you-a beautiful girl sits at the feet of a boy and treasures his every word.  But it does not seem right."

"This is still my story.  My last story.  It is not yours simply because it sits in your mouth awhile."

The second and concluding volume of The Orphan's Tales takes up where the second left off, with The Boy in the garden, listening to the stories written in The Girl's eyelids.  The prose is rich and lyrical, and the stories within stories  within stories are almost perfectly intertwined.  Though the setting of the framing story is distinctly arabic, there are also elements there that aren't, and the stories The Girl tells take elements from what seems to be every mythology ever.  Even moreso than in the first volume, the common tropes of fairy tales are turned on their heads.  The bright and cheery is made dark and ominous, the morality tale is reversed, the villains made sympathetic, and the most epic tale of the lot is not a tale of revenge or romantic love, but pure, unquestioning, unlimited friendship.  

Instead of delving into the worldbuilding and plot, I will simply say to read my hurried review of the first book here, or to read 

oyceter's much better review(which links to several others) here.

The duology is an amazing sendup to the art of oral storytelling, and of worldbuilding, and it is also a book that places allthe power firmly in the female's hand.  Not by rebuilding the world to have a female-centric government, or by making the male weak, but by giving The Girl the power of words and the control of the imagination.

I'm trying to completely avoid spoilers, as these books should be read without the slightest idea of spoilers, and I know how tempting cuts tags can be, no matter how strong you are, but there is one thing I want to cover, in as unspoilery a way aas possible.

 

 Once there was a child whose face was like the new moon shining on cypress trees and the feathers of waterbirds.  She was a strange child, full of secrets...Now this child had a strange an worldful birthmark, in that her eyelids and the flesh around her eyes were stained a deep indigo-black, like ink pooled in china pots.

Because  of the mark, the girl was feared and believed to be cursed by a demon.  Not willing to risk angering the demon, the people of the sultan's palace banished her to the garden, and even the girl's own parents do not speak to or of her, and the girl grows up with no human contact, with the birds of the garden caring for her, and the fruit of the sultan's trees nourishing her, and the castoffs of the people of the palace clothing her.  And in her solitude, she closes her eyes, and reads the endless stories tattooed, in the tiniest of print, inside her eyelids.

Ad once thirteen years had passed in this way, a boy, a son of the sultan, approached her, curiosity winning out overthe fear and caution he has been taught.  And the girl tells him a story, and within that story is another, and within it, another, and within the stories the girl tells, a great epic unfolds, and night after night the boy returns to the girl to hear more of the story, even after being forbidden to go to her by his sister, and when his sister imprisons him, the girl goes to him.  And like Scheharezade before her, the girl, and Valente herself, never finishes the story she starts the same night.

The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden is not so much as story(though of course it is) as much as it is about stories, and about how every story is comprised of dozens, even hundreds, of other stories, and how there are stories within those stories.  The book is almost flawless, and is mythic in ways most things can only dream of being.  The stories the girl tells are intricate and detailed, and every detail is utterly necessary for the larger tales she tells, and, it seems, the stories the girl tells are also crucial to the story of the boy addicted to her tales, and the girl who will let nothing stop her from telling them.