Book report
Jan. 16th, 2007 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherynscaleI'm reading The Historian at the moment. I am reading it because 1) everyone who read it said it was really good, and 2) it's vampire fiction, and I haven't seen vampire fiction that anybody would categorize as "good" in a really, really long time. And indeed, the author has a very clever turn of phrase, and the concept is reasonably fresh (i.e. nobody has yet fucked a vampire or expressed a desire to do so), so it's not too bad.
The initial assumptions though, seem so far to be pretty stupid: In the first place, this seems to be a story in which Dracula lures scholars into researching him, then torments them and tries to drive them away and/or kill and eat them. So I'm not sure what's going on with Dracula, and will be extremely relieved if it should come to pass that in fact, Dracula is only doing either the drawing towards or the tormenting, and some other party is doing the remaining function. I'm not completely done with the thing yet, so it could still happen that things will make some degree of sense (or that Dracula will be revealed to be alive and completely batshit insane, which would also make things square up).
Also, the story uses a literary device in which a father (who is a scholar pursued by Dracula) is telling his sordid story to his daughter. He gives every indication of being in fear for his life and/or immortal soul, except that he is perfectly willing to go about his day-to-day business, dragging his teenage daughter everywhere with her, all the while pretending that everything is fine, FOR SEVERAL YEARS, while he tells her this story a bit and a drabble at a time. I have decided that, in order to finish the book, I will assume that the author means this as commentary on the inability of intellectuals to deal with problems in the real world.
The best thing about this story so far, which supports my theory that it's really snide commentary about academics, is that the thing the girl's father seems to mostly be concerned about is that he will have done so much Dracula research that he will at some point be forced to abandon his half-written dissertation on Dutch merchants in the 17th century to start over and write a whole new dissertation on Dracula or the Ottoman Empire. He also worries about having to give lectures. Dracula chasing him is not as alarming as writing a new dissertation or giving lectures. I like that, because if I were in the same place, that might well be my priority of worry too. Monsters are fine, writing is hard.
Another very funny aspect is that there are several Mysterious Disappearances in the text, after which the characters are always able to find a stack of the Disappeared's personal paperwork, which always indicates where to go next in the chase. I'm reading that, and I'm thinking, kids, if I ever Mysteriously Disappear, good luck finding me. My obviously findable personal paperwork will most likely indicate that I've gone to a ritual teams meeting, or to have my car serviced, or something, and will probably date from last month, or three years ago. So I'm thinking I'd better not Mysteriously Disappear. (If I do, here's a hint: check flights to warm places.)
So far, though, fun and readable, if a bit silly. I'm looking at about another 100 pages, and then I can go on to the next thing in the pile (which is the silly and not so readable Guns of the South, as the library will almost certainly want it back someday.)
The initial assumptions though, seem so far to be pretty stupid: In the first place, this seems to be a story in which Dracula lures scholars into researching him, then torments them and tries to drive them away and/or kill and eat them. So I'm not sure what's going on with Dracula, and will be extremely relieved if it should come to pass that in fact, Dracula is only doing either the drawing towards or the tormenting, and some other party is doing the remaining function. I'm not completely done with the thing yet, so it could still happen that things will make some degree of sense (or that Dracula will be revealed to be alive and completely batshit insane, which would also make things square up).
Also, the story uses a literary device in which a father (who is a scholar pursued by Dracula) is telling his sordid story to his daughter. He gives every indication of being in fear for his life and/or immortal soul, except that he is perfectly willing to go about his day-to-day business, dragging his teenage daughter everywhere with her, all the while pretending that everything is fine, FOR SEVERAL YEARS, while he tells her this story a bit and a drabble at a time. I have decided that, in order to finish the book, I will assume that the author means this as commentary on the inability of intellectuals to deal with problems in the real world.
The best thing about this story so far, which supports my theory that it's really snide commentary about academics, is that the thing the girl's father seems to mostly be concerned about is that he will have done so much Dracula research that he will at some point be forced to abandon his half-written dissertation on Dutch merchants in the 17th century to start over and write a whole new dissertation on Dracula or the Ottoman Empire. He also worries about having to give lectures. Dracula chasing him is not as alarming as writing a new dissertation or giving lectures. I like that, because if I were in the same place, that might well be my priority of worry too. Monsters are fine, writing is hard.
Another very funny aspect is that there are several Mysterious Disappearances in the text, after which the characters are always able to find a stack of the Disappeared's personal paperwork, which always indicates where to go next in the chase. I'm reading that, and I'm thinking, kids, if I ever Mysteriously Disappear, good luck finding me. My obviously findable personal paperwork will most likely indicate that I've gone to a ritual teams meeting, or to have my car serviced, or something, and will probably date from last month, or three years ago. So I'm thinking I'd better not Mysteriously Disappear. (If I do, here's a hint: check flights to warm places.)
So far, though, fun and readable, if a bit silly. I'm looking at about another 100 pages, and then I can go on to the next thing in the pile (which is the silly and not so readable Guns of the South, as the library will almost certainly want it back someday.)
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Date: 2007-01-17 05:34 am (UTC)channelingblood rush of sensation as a substitute?Or maybe it's been too long since I read them. But hey, she finally tied together the Taltos/Vampire/Talamasca threads...
no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 03:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-01-17 07:22 pm (UTC)I hear Lumley's books are mostly about the undead side, not the sex side, but never tried them...
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Date: 2007-01-17 07:26 pm (UTC)