Spontaneous Musings

1. Watched this week's The Good Wife - which apparently shocked some folks on lj - when one of the lead characters admitted to being an atheist. (Actually she admitted to this about three seasons ago, but apparently I'm the only one who noticed? Here she merely does it in front of reporters.) They think this is a rarity on American TV. Folks, you watch too many procedurals, fantasy and sci-fi shows. Most "mainstream network" tv shows either don't address religion at all, or if they do - there's always a great and nice character who is atheist. It's really not that rare. The religious shows of the 1980s-1990s are a thing of the past. I wonder sometimes how we see each other, and other countries - we are so tribal a species, that our perception of people who live outside our neighborhood, country, vicinity seems to be somewhat warped. What I've noticed interacting with people around the world online, through letters in the 1980s, and my own nomadic travels is people really aren't that different around the world. We share more in common than we wish to admit. The US really isn't as religious and into God as you think - yeah, the National News Media leads you to believe it is - but they sort of embellish the truth to get ratings and sell papers. Journalistic integrity, my foot. Church attendance has been down for quite some time in traditional churches and religions. And it's always varied. The number of out-spoken atheists I know in the US is about equal to the number of religious theists. Actually, I struggle, because I'm an odd theist - I believe in a God, but not in the God the atheists don't believe in and the theist's believe in. I've given up trying to explain it. You ever get it or you don't. Personally, I agree with Alicia Florick, it really doesn't matter. (Well unless of course you are using your religion as an excuse to hurt others, that is. Then yes, we have a problem. But that's really not the religion's fault so much as the interpreters or practioner's)

At any rate, it was amongst the better episodes.

( The Good Wife - spoilers )

2. Brain is still playing with Kim Harrison's latest Hollows novel Ever After, wish there were more Harrison fans on flist, or any for that matter. I have Dresden and Martin fans, but no Harrison fans dang it. This is one of those stories I want to read fanfic for. She's teasing me.

* Harrison does a fascinating and innovative bit on what it means to be a slave or enslaved, and how we demonize or belittle those that we disempower or enslave and abuse. She shows the complexity of the relationship, how it comes about, and more importantly what it does to both sides and the tragic ending. In some respects Harrison's Rachel Morgan tale feels allegorical or like a complex metaphor of various ways humans have enslaved each other over time.

I wish her writing technique was a bit better - because this would be an excellent book if it was.

The only other writers that I've seen tackle the topic of slavery and its long-term after-effect half as well are Toni Morrison in Beloved and Octavia Butler in Kindred.

It doesn't go away. This is an evil that will taint every generation after you for hundreds of years.

* She also tackles racism in an interesting manner - discussing how we demonize the other by their traits or what we believe their traits to be, and place value judgements upon those traits. And even the effects of ingrained or internalized racism - and what that does to an individual, how it tears at them.

As a biologist she knows that there are different traits between people, but is also wise enough to know that they do not mean one person or individual is better or superior to another. We are different and equal. And this theme is expressed deftly and subtly through her books, as well as gradually.

* In addition she paints a universe that is not black and white or morally clear-cut. People do horrible things, and wonderful things for various reasons, you can't neatly define them.

Would write a lengthy meta, but seriously what is the point? I'd only be talking to myself. ;-)

Finished the most recent novel by Kim Harrison in her Rachel Morgan series. Each of Harrison's titles is a riff of a Clint Eastwood film. This one I'm guessing is from "A Perfect World". And Rachel is a pseudo female version of Clint's Dirty Harry Calaghan. The book's have a decidedly noir western feel to them, even though they take place in the Supernatural World of Urban Fantasy. Harrison, a bio-engineer and geneticist, utilizes her knowledge in her novels - which gives them a decidedly science-fiction tone. Harrison's books are different from all the other urban fantasy novels and stand out a bit - for being a combination of multiple genres. She combines noir mystery, gothic horror, with science fiction thriller. It feels at times like Michael Crichton meets LK Hamilton and Jim Butcher by way of Raymond Chandler and Tony Hillerman.

That said, she sucks at pacing. I scanned the first half of the book. Bored stiff. Then it took off like a rocket, then it slowed down to a halt, then took off, then crawled to halt, then took off. Part of this may be due to certain characters that the author has either lost interest in or can't quite figure out what to do with. She's bleed dry so to speak. Other characters, who are either featured less prominently in previous books or sparingly - suddenly come into their own in this one and the book crackles whenever they appear. New characters, however, fall flat and feel somewhat one-dimensional.

This is admittedly a problem with long-running serials, whether they be novels, films or television series. One of the few serial writers who did not run into this problem was JK Rowling and The Harry Potter series - 7 books long, and every character stays vibrant and alive, while new ones take off. You don't realize Rowling's talent until you read other writers who attempt the same thing and can't quite pull it off. Not literally the same thing - just a long running serial. This may also be due to the fact that the Harry Potter novels are not told in first person close, while Harrison's books are. First person close is a tough pov to do for a long running serial. Sooner or later, the reader will get annoyed and want to know about the characters other than the protagonist, and feel like the protagonist is either whiny or too good to be true or get's away with murder, while no one else does, or is unduly tortured.

Harrison however is good at the science and the theme bits, her over-arcing themes about racial, sexual and gender diversity, tolerance and acceptance resonate. She is adept at exposing through her character Rachel's interactions with various people - the misogynist and chauvinist reactions of men and women towards a woman working in a male occupation. She also shows the alternative. And does it well via metaphor and analogy. In the process, she plays with the ethical dilemmas regarding pharmaceuticals, bio-engineering, and gene splicing. While on the one hand fatal diseases may be cured, they can also equally be created. While lives are saved by science, they are also destroyed. It's not a black and white scenario.

Like most books in the noire genre...Harrison's world and characters are decidedly gray.

What I like most about this book and the arc is that the villains in the first group of novels, the boys we the reader's loved to hate, turn out in the last two novels to be misunderstood allies to the heroine and in some respects powerful friends, one may even turn out to be a long-term romantic interest. The heroine slowly comes to the realization that they had her best interests at heart, and while they did some horrible things, the motivation behind those things wasn't clear cut...both were trying to either save their race or their world. She starts to see a pov other than her own and adjusts her perceptive...in the process becoming more self-aware of her own actions and how they may be perceived.

( major plot spoilers )

Overall, the book was a mixed read. Not as satisfying as the other books I've read in some respects, yet more satisfying in others. Serials can be frustrating, because they never end neatly.

The writer wraps up some story threads, but leaves several hanging. Also you're never sure if the characters will end up together. Happily ever after isn't really a possibility in most serials or noirs. It also, like I said before, had pacing problems. Too much time wasted telling the reader what the reader already knew. And took far too long to get to the point. Bad editing. Some bits could have been compressed,( vague spoilers )

So my grade? B. Worth reading on the Kindle or borrowing from a library. Although you might want Kindle. Another point? Harrison's books much like Jim Butchers have become so serialized now that you sort of have to start with the first one. You can't read them out of order. You'll get confused.

Next up? I've decided to try per green_mai's recommendation - The Fault In Our Stars by John Green who is a YA novelist and apparently a rock star to many teens. There's an interview with the 34 year old male writer in Entertainment Weekly. Which sort of breaks my vow to focus on female writers for the next six months. But Green Mai's post on the book sparked my curiousity. Usually I'll try books rec'd by people on lj before I'll try one's rec'd by reviewers in magazines and papers. I'm the same way about tv shows and movies.

The book is about two nerdy teens with Cancer, who meet and fall in love. It's not a fantasy. And it is apparently wildly popular.

Then after that, I may go back to Erin Morgenstern's novel "The Night Circus" about dueling teen magicians who fall in love while fighting a battle to the death in a Night Carnival created as their battle ground. Basically Buffy meets Harry Potter by way of The Prestige and Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.

[As an aside - what I hate about posting on the internet is the frigging formatting.
No matter what I do - I end up with sentences getting detached from paragraphs.
Also if you accidentally drop a cut-tag - your entire post gets screwed up. Ugh.]

As an aside, I actually saw a good Doctor Who tonight. It was from two weeks ago - via the DVR. Fun devices DVR's. And much cheaper than Tivo's. At any rate - the episode was entitled Gridlock.
( Doctor Who )

I finished Kim Harrison's Rachel Morgan Witch Bounty Hunter Series finally. Well not finally, I tore through five books in less than three months which for me is pretty fast reading. Averaging a book every two or one and a half weeks. Since I normally do all my reading on the thirty min subway ride to and from work - that's not bad. I read these at home as well. They pulled me in and did not let go.
( Lengthy somewhat opinionated review of the Kim Harrison Rachel Morgan Bounty Hunter series, with comments on the urban fantasy genre. Vague spoilers. )
Series? A+
The first four are better than last, which I'd give a B-, but that could just be because I was getting burnt out.

Oh - speaking of urban fantasy - The Dresden Files was cancelled by Sci-Fi. Apparently they think re-doing Flash Gordon is better bet. Figures. Not overly surprised, could tell by the lukewarm response on flist that it wasn't going to last. Don't get why. Why did they watch Bones and not Dresden? Bones bores the heck out of me most of time. But if I understood why people like what they did I would have become a marketing or sales person, and made lots of money.