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Ring of Swords
Mar. 4th, 2004 12:36 amThe office served pizza today, as a celebration for the completion of a particular project. I skimmed the cheese and toppings (meat and olives, yum!) off of two slices. Dominos, so the cheese was on the thin side, not very satisfying. I would up getting lunch anyway.
I’ve just finished Eleanor Arnason’s Ring of Swords. A good, thoughtful novel, though not as good as the review had left me hoping for. The culture clash is interesting, but Arnason tends to tell rather than show a bit too often for my taste. And the solution to the dilemma that drives the back half of the story happens offstage, through the actions of a bunch of non-protagonist characters.
The biggest treat of the book was the scenes with the alien characters reading human fiction and trying to interpret it according to the rules of their own culture — a culture that mandates homosexuality, in which heterosexuality is considered a perversion. (They reproduce through artificial insemination.) There’s a brief bit on Huckleberry Finn considered as (essentially) alien slash fiction.
In comics news, it turns out that there had been earlier editions of Paul Grist’s Kane collections, published by Dancing Elephant Press. (The new editions are from Image.) Cosmic had a copy of the earlier version of the second volume, Rabbit Hunt. Now that I know about them, I’ll have to hunt around for the others.
I also picked up Strip Search, a collection of work by new cartoonists, from Dark Horse. Pretty good so far.
I’ve just finished Eleanor Arnason’s Ring of Swords. A good, thoughtful novel, though not as good as the review had left me hoping for. The culture clash is interesting, but Arnason tends to tell rather than show a bit too often for my taste. And the solution to the dilemma that drives the back half of the story happens offstage, through the actions of a bunch of non-protagonist characters.
The biggest treat of the book was the scenes with the alien characters reading human fiction and trying to interpret it according to the rules of their own culture — a culture that mandates homosexuality, in which heterosexuality is considered a perversion. (They reproduce through artificial insemination.) There’s a brief bit on Huckleberry Finn considered as (essentially) alien slash fiction.
In comics news, it turns out that there had been earlier editions of Paul Grist’s Kane collections, published by Dancing Elephant Press. (The new editions are from Image.) Cosmic had a copy of the earlier version of the second volume, Rabbit Hunt. Now that I know about them, I’ll have to hunt around for the others.
I also picked up Strip Search, a collection of work by new cartoonists, from Dark Horse. Pretty good so far.