read read

[ritaxis]

So a lot of my reading time goes into mstuff that's hard to list for one reason or another and it looks like I don't read as much as I do. But I'm finishing up <i>A Natural History of Dragons</i> now and I'm going to read <i>The Tropic of Serpents</i> which is the sequel. They're by Marie Brennan, who has also written other things including a series of stories about an American magic college. These books purport to be the memoirs of a secondaary-world lady naturalist of a time and place sort of rather like Darwin's. She talkks about issues of gender and class and nationality among the stories of sheer wonder and adventure. hey're my daughter's books and they are perfect for her, and I only wish I had discovered them when she was a child because I would have been so excited to give them to her.

Comments

[ellarien]

Oh, thank you for reminding me about those! I'd been meaning to get them when the Kindle price dropped, and now it has.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

The first one was OK.

But the second one -- such a bollox up of a traditional African culture -- the Yoruba. As an anthropologist -- and sf/f social justice crew member -- the author really really really should have known better than to do what she did there.

I'm not reading any more of these.

Love, C.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so sorry. The first is so promising.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

White woman of white imperium, but a scientist! a feminist! explains / fixes Africa for Africans. Who live there. For years even.

Where has this been seen before?

Additionally, it was an organizational mess, as well as predictable.

In contrast, when Temeraire went to Africa, his dragon intelligence interpolated the Euro-Amer slaving operations and enslavement to the situation of dragons within the Empire(s). The series further did not live up to this exciting development, but it was promising -- a focus not upon a feisty white woman who saves the world (gads I loathe that word applied to women -- a feist is a dog for fighting rats, squirrels and other rodent-type prey -- may as well call this active, outspoken woman a bitch yeah?) but the enslaved, with certain privileges, not necessarily easily achieved, applying intellectual analysis to a revelation about his/her condition -- that cannot be solved with a sword, particularly.

Yes, in the U.S. it came to it that only a military action could end certain aspects of the inhumane system, but much of it continues, still today, because its so easy to apply emotional appeals that are so easily manipulated into perpetuating a terrorist state of mind for their own benefit.