Reviewy things
Sep. 5th, 2004 07:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI'm completely not envious of certain people presently at DragonCon. No, not me.
Meanwhile, I've been reading Fool's Fate, enjoyed it very much but have come to the conclusion that Robin Hobb's happy endings are somehow less convincing than her angsty ones. I thought this for the first time when finishing the final volume of the Liveship Traders trilogy, and now again.
I also somehow regret that the ambiguity of the Fool's gender, maintained through the Farseer Trilogy, the Liveship Trilogy, and the first two volumes of the Tawny Man trilogy, was now making place in favour of him being definitely male. (Mind you, I'd have similar regrets if it had turned out that the Fool was definitely female.) Him and Fitz not ending up with each other, despite one passionate kiss, fitted the mythical pattern of these shapeshifter types moving in and out of stories but never staying at the end, and besides, it fits with Fitz' psychology. Still, the Fitz/Molly pairing at the end, which was obvious to me as soon as Hobb killed off Burrich (which she did in great heart-rendering style), struck me as unrealistic. Childhoof friendship (during which he already had to conceal from her who he was) aside, Fitz and Molly never gave me the impression that they really knew each other, and 16 years of completely different lives certainly only made that more definite. And I never could quite see why they loved each other at all.
Enough with the nagging, though. On to the good stuff: loved the reunion scene of Fitz and Burrich, and Fitz just laying his head on Burrich's shoulder. Awwwwww. And the return of Patience! I missed Patience since the last volume of the Farseer trilogy. Not that I've got something against Kettricken or the Narcheska, but Patience is my clear favourite of the female characters.
The freeing of the Dragon Icefyre and his union with Tintaglia conveyed these feelings of awe and majesty by the fantastic which Hobb does so very very well. (I wonder, though, whether readers who only read the Farseer books but not the Liveship ones have the same kind of emotional attachment to Tintaglia and the idea of returning Dragons?) The Pale Woman was an appropriately dastardly villain and her ending satisfactorily (sidenote, though: if you like more-dimensional villains, go to the Liveship books - for some reason, Hobb keeps the ones in the Farseer territory in the strictly hissworthy dimension), and that one and only live-and-emotions-returning kiss between Fitz & Fool appropriately mythic. And very, very fanfiction like. I was irresistably reminded of many a Highlander or Blake's 7 slash tale in which one of Our Heroes is tortured by the (often female) villain and brought back from literal and/or emotional death by the other one. Though Hobb, as opposed to many a fanfic writer, seems to agree with what Andraste once told me: if a severe headache is enough to make your avarage person less than inclined to have sex, torture is definitely not going to work as an aphrodisiakum, either.
Have been rewatching the first TOS episodes on my newly aquired DVDs. The blatant sexism is something which escaped me as a child. I don't mean the miniskirts and the go-go boots - these evoke a nostalgic "ah, the Sixties!" feeling (which I also head when Jadzia wore them in the DS9 episode Trials and Tribble-ations. It's more poor Uhura spouting lines like "Well, I'm a illogical woman" (though otoh, Uhura teasing Spock in the very next episode with an imprompty song was fun), Janice Rand being oggled at by visitors and crew alike, and while we're speaking of Janice, her job - "the Captain's Yeoman" - is about as superfluos as the one Sigourney Weaver's character had in that splendid, loving take on the genre, Galaxy Quest.
Also, I'm reminded again why Kirk is my least favourite Starship Captain. Couldn't be more square-jawed hero if he tried. On the bright side, Charlie X introduces us to the joys of Kirk/Spock/McCoy banter as they try to dump the responsibility of adult talks with Charlie on each other, and that never gets old.
Meanwhile, I've been reading Fool's Fate, enjoyed it very much but have come to the conclusion that Robin Hobb's happy endings are somehow less convincing than her angsty ones. I thought this for the first time when finishing the final volume of the Liveship Traders trilogy, and now again.
I also somehow regret that the ambiguity of the Fool's gender, maintained through the Farseer Trilogy, the Liveship Trilogy, and the first two volumes of the Tawny Man trilogy, was now making place in favour of him being definitely male. (Mind you, I'd have similar regrets if it had turned out that the Fool was definitely female.) Him and Fitz not ending up with each other, despite one passionate kiss, fitted the mythical pattern of these shapeshifter types moving in and out of stories but never staying at the end, and besides, it fits with Fitz' psychology. Still, the Fitz/Molly pairing at the end, which was obvious to me as soon as Hobb killed off Burrich (which she did in great heart-rendering style), struck me as unrealistic. Childhoof friendship (during which he already had to conceal from her who he was) aside, Fitz and Molly never gave me the impression that they really knew each other, and 16 years of completely different lives certainly only made that more definite. And I never could quite see why they loved each other at all.
Enough with the nagging, though. On to the good stuff: loved the reunion scene of Fitz and Burrich, and Fitz just laying his head on Burrich's shoulder. Awwwwww. And the return of Patience! I missed Patience since the last volume of the Farseer trilogy. Not that I've got something against Kettricken or the Narcheska, but Patience is my clear favourite of the female characters.
The freeing of the Dragon Icefyre and his union with Tintaglia conveyed these feelings of awe and majesty by the fantastic which Hobb does so very very well. (I wonder, though, whether readers who only read the Farseer books but not the Liveship ones have the same kind of emotional attachment to Tintaglia and the idea of returning Dragons?) The Pale Woman was an appropriately dastardly villain and her ending satisfactorily (sidenote, though: if you like more-dimensional villains, go to the Liveship books - for some reason, Hobb keeps the ones in the Farseer territory in the strictly hissworthy dimension), and that one and only live-and-emotions-returning kiss between Fitz & Fool appropriately mythic. And very, very fanfiction like. I was irresistably reminded of many a Highlander or Blake's 7 slash tale in which one of Our Heroes is tortured by the (often female) villain and brought back from literal and/or emotional death by the other one. Though Hobb, as opposed to many a fanfic writer, seems to agree with what Andraste once told me: if a severe headache is enough to make your avarage person less than inclined to have sex, torture is definitely not going to work as an aphrodisiakum, either.
Have been rewatching the first TOS episodes on my newly aquired DVDs. The blatant sexism is something which escaped me as a child. I don't mean the miniskirts and the go-go boots - these evoke a nostalgic "ah, the Sixties!" feeling (which I also head when Jadzia wore them in the DS9 episode Trials and Tribble-ations. It's more poor Uhura spouting lines like "Well, I'm a illogical woman" (though otoh, Uhura teasing Spock in the very next episode with an imprompty song was fun), Janice Rand being oggled at by visitors and crew alike, and while we're speaking of Janice, her job - "the Captain's Yeoman" - is about as superfluos as the one Sigourney Weaver's character had in that splendid, loving take on the genre, Galaxy Quest.
Also, I'm reminded again why Kirk is my least favourite Starship Captain. Couldn't be more square-jawed hero if he tried. On the bright side, Charlie X introduces us to the joys of Kirk/Spock/McCoy banter as they try to dump the responsibility of adult talks with Charlie on each other, and that never gets old.
