Finally!

I'm sure some of you thought it might never happen, but I finally finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell.  On April 7th, 2013 at 10:10 pm.  If you haven't read it, this is something of a life moment for me.  That's all I have for you.  Start celebrating!

Mirror Dance

Stats

Mirror Dance by Lois McMaster Bujold

1995 Hugo Award Winner

Narrated by Grover Gardner

Got it from: Public Library

18h 6m

I didn’t know it but Miles Vorkosigan had previously escaped an assassination attempt by his own clone (curse the scattered nature of Bujold’s Hugo winners!).  Eerie right.  Well, it turns out Miles forgives him (Mark Pierre), because of the terrible conditions he’s been put through as a clone, and allows him to take on his own secret identity as Admiral Naismith.  Well, as Naismith, his antics (trying admirably to save the rest of the clones on the planet Jackson’s Whole) get Miles shot with needle grenade and his cryo-frozen body lost somewhere…anywhere.  And you can imagine this causes some problems.

Mark

In Mirror Dance, Lois McMaster Bujold continues with just about everything I loved about Barrayar.  Cordelia’s appearances are few, but she’s still so…well, she’s still so Cordelia.  And Mark, despite being a clone, is SO Cordelia too.  Mark was exasperating, fascinating, pitiable, disgusting, and just the world’s biggest underdog ever.  He was one of the most conflicted characters ever – and believe me – Mirror Dance WILL force you to live through his excruciating mess and you WILL feel like an emotional punching bag.  As with Cordelia in Barrayar, Bujold uses Mark as a mirror for our own ugliness and beauty.

As an example (one of many) let’s consider Mark’s pain after the attempted rape of a 10-year old, (artificially) physically-matured clone.

In short, blunt phrases, he described exactly what he had just tried to do.  It all came out sounding terribly ugly, though it had been her beauty that had overwhelmed him.

…and he knew he had alienated the one person who might have spoken for him.  It hurt, a killing hurt, to have so little and then lose it.

Chapter 10

Despite being disgusted by Mark, his real human pain and a honestly terrible past makes it hard not to feel bad for him as well as the clone girl.  It’s disturbing, it’s sad, and I didn’t like what seemed like light treatment for his actions, but I also really wanted him to have a normal connection with another person.  It made me feel horrible and complicit but also even more bound up in Mark’s pain.   Needless to say, it stimulated some soul searching.

I think this might be that thing I admire most about Bujold.  She can make some really interesting and troubling cultural observations look like any other light-hearted fun SF romp.  Despite the fact that there’s a heck of a lot to unpack from a book under 400-pages (I think all three Hugo winners have been), Mirror Dance is just as readable as anything.  She’s dynamic and it is really something to behold.

Miles

Sometimes when people die, they stay dead…other times, they don’t.  In only a few books from this series, I already know Miles is one of those people who will be in the latter category.  Being that this is only my third Vorkosigan novel though (and one of them took place before Miles was born), I still don’t really know much about Miles.  He seems to be the world’s most slowly unfolding character…or maybe it’s just me?

As such, Miles’ convalescence was only interesting insomuch as the technology is interesting.  He’s scrappy, he doesn’t give up, he has kind of a thing with women, I get all that, but I still don’t feel like I know him very well and while it was pretty shocking that he’d be so thoroughly and completely incapacitated, I struggled care as much about him as I did Mark, who in only one book was just so damn absorbing.

Well okay, who am I kidding?  At some point, I’m going to have to acknowledge that Miles is tipping the scales and becoming a character that is just fun to be around.  Maybe starting with The Vor Game was a jarring first experience, and he was absent in Barrayar, but hey, now that I’m actually taking stock of my Miles experiences, they’re actually pretty crazy/fun/ny.  He’s been frozen into the snow, blown-up, gassed in-utero then grown in a petri dish, cloned, and nearly killed how many times now? Since I’m being honest with myself and the internet, I guess I have to admit now that it’s going to be pretty exciting to see how many different ways Bujold can find to beat him up throughout the rest of the saga…and how long Miles can maintain his indestructible pluck.  She really puts him through it!

Recommendation

I enjoyed this book, though I’m not sure I was actually ready for it.  I think I needed to get a few more Vorkosigan books under my belt prior to Mirror Dance.  Luckily, Mark was interesting enough to keep me engaged.  At the same time, just the act of writing this review has seriously increased my appreciation for the book and the series as a whole.  Of the three Hugo winners, I’d put this one in the middle, just behind Barrayar, which is to say it is a thoroughly enjoyable read!

HEP SCORE

Universe 4/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 4/5

Scientific Wonders 3/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 21/25

Well folks, that’s two reviews in as many days.  Lately they’ve been a little short and maybe not my finest, but I’m nearly caught up now.  Maybe I go for a Grandslam and get another done tomorrow?!

And since I’m finally into books I read in January, this one counts for Carl’s 2013 Science Fiction Experience, for which I also hope to have some non-book reviews done in the coming weeks too.  Yay!

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Stats

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis

1999 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

434 Pages

To Say Nothing of the Dog introduces us to a new team of “historians”.  Ned Henry is badly time-lagged.  Verity Kindle has made a serious mistake.  Lady Schrapnell will stop at nothing.  Princess Arjumand is not impressed.  The Coventry Cathedral’s bird stump has gone missing.  And I’m still laughing about the Jumble Sales.

Irreverent referents

There are few things that speak more directly to my lizard brain than goofy, stupid, irreverence or absurd referential comedy and To Say Nothing of the Dog was pretty much 434 pages of lizard brain goodness.  At the core of my being there is a little dolt sitting on a couch giggling at this kind of thing all day.

In my review of Doomsday Book, I mentioned that Willis was onto something good in the Dunworthy/influenza madcap narratives.  In To Say Nothing of the Dog, she takes that theme further and masters the running joke, the bumbling slapstick, the bumbling historians, the cat humor (“Cats, as you know, are quite impervious to threats”)...the swan humor.

The tipping point for me is Willis’ balance between a kind of subtle, unfolding, quiet farce and blatant canoe-tipping, mid-night pet sneaking, multiple-imposter-séance holding absurdity.  This is to say that I love that it was all happening at the very same time.  It had almost had a Shakespearean air – as a kind of Much Ado about Nothing type of screwball comedy of errors (oh that’s another one too).

And I think this is a bit more coherent than Doomsday Book.  Though I appreciated that the lightness broke up the intense tragedy of Kivrin’s tale, it gave it a little of that two-books-smashed-together feel.  To Say Nothing of the Dog loses the tragedy and relentless death, but it doesn't lose the core of deeper human insight that allows the book to transcend the purposefully, delightfully screwy romp.

Don’t get me wrong, I still loved them both.  I’ll still re-read them both.  But of the two, To Say Nothing of the Dog felt a little more polished (even if it’s not as emotionally gripping).

Did I mention that swans have now vaulted to my list of funniest animals?

You would expect me to talk about the net or historical accuracy and I should – this isn’t just silliness, To Say Nothing of the Dog is built on the same conceptual foundation that I loved in Doomsday Book – but I’m not going to.  Well, hey…there’s a lot more I could and should say about Willis’ second Hugo winner but you know if you’re not in it for the funny, then you probably shouldn't be there.

Recommendation

I have been trying to write this review for weeks now – staring at the screen, blank Word document open.  I've taken breaks for food/sleep/work, but other than that, I've mostly just been sitting here trying to think of something to write.

It’s not actually so much that I can’t think of what to write, I could go on and on.  The problem is really that I don’t want to write it.  I feel I've had one of those intensely personal experiences with a book and I just want to keep it to myself.  If I talk about it, I have to admit it’s a book and I can’t live in it anymore.  I want it to be mine and I don’t want to share.

Don’t read this book.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 4/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 4/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 23/25

Though I’ve a few more reviews from the 90’s, I’m actually reading into the 2000’s.  I’ve already finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.  This coming week, I’ll be working on Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer and finishing The Yiddish Policeman’s Union soon on audiobook.

It's a Swan

“Princess Arjumand?”  I said and reached through the reeds to pick her up. “There you are, you naughty thing.”

The white suddenly rose up, revealing a long, curving neck.

“Squaw-w-w!” it said, and exploded into a huge white flapping.  I dropped the dish with a splash.

“It’s a swan,” I said unnecessarily.  A swan. One of the ancient beauties of the Thames, floating serenely along the banks with their snowy feathers and their long graceful necks. “I’ve always wanted to see one,” I said to Cyril.

He wasn't there.

“Squaw-w-w-k!” the swan said and unfolded its wings to an impressive width, obviously irritated at being awakened.

“Sorry,” I said, backing away. “I thought you were a cat.”

“Hiss-s-s-s!” it said, and started for me at a run.

Noting in all those “O swan” poems had ever mentioned that they hissed. Or resented be mistaken for felines. Or bit.

I finally managed to escape by crashing through a thicket of some thorny variety, climbing halfway up a tree, and kicking at its beak with my foot until it waddled back to the river, muttering threats and imprecations.

I waited fifteen minutes, in case it was a trick, and then climbed down and began examining my wounds, most of them were to the rear and difficult to see. I twisted round trying to see if there was blood, and saw Cyril, coming out from behind a tree, looking shamefaced.

“A rout,” I said. “Just like the Persians.  Harris had trouble with swans. In Three Men in a Boat,” I said, wishing I’d remembered that chapter before now. “They tried to drag him and Montmorency out of the boat.”

I picked up the lantern, which, amazingly, had fallen in an upright position when I dropped it. “If King Harold had had swans on his side, England would still be Saxon.”

We set off again, staying away from the river and keeping a wary eye out for patches of white.

Polly Vaughn’s boyfriend had killed her because he mistook her for a swan in the old poem.  She’d been wearing a white apron, and he thought she was a swan and shot her with an arrow. I could sympathize completely. In future, I’d shoot first and ask questions later, too.

The night got darker and amber, and the bushes thornier.  There were no patches of white or shining eyes and scarcely any sounds.  When I dropped the last of the Bread and called, “Here, cat!” my voice echoed in the black, empty stillness.

Pg 125

Connie Willis

To Say Nothing of the Dog

To Say Nothing of the Dog was basically just me constantly laughing at one thing and then another.  Willis speaks directly to ALL OF THE THINGS that make me hysterical.  I might have picked a better example of the humor in this one but, the running swan jokes had me wiping tears.

Barrayar

Stats

Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

1992 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Friend/Family

275 Pages

Cordelia Vorkosigan has just married Count Aral Vorkosigan, her true love (and they’re such a great pair to watch).  She’s left her home world, Beta.  She gets pregnant.  To put it mildly…she’s having a hard time adjusting.

Some serious oddities

This was my second foray into the Vorkosigan Saga and what an improved experience it was!

I thought The Vor Game was a rough introduction to the series (my fault) and questioned whether it won the 1991 Hugo on its own or on the strength of the series as a whole (unfair question).  But I also recognized that Miles was a fun character -- in the same vein as Harry Harrison’s James Bolivar DiGriz (my favorite).  So while I was a little apprehensive about Barrayar, there was some excitement on my part about the chance to dig into Miles’ roots.

Bujold has commented on the way in which the benefits of technological advancements are often realized unequally and one of this book's most endearing elements is just that dynamic.

From a male perspective -- the overriding perspective that introduces this story -- Barryar (the planet) is not all that strange a place.  There are some serious oddities and the cultural milieu is undeniably foreign, but in terms of power dynamics and day-to-day goings on, it didn’t seem terribly far removed from Earth.  It is only once we’re introduced to Cordelia that we begin to see how troubling Barrayar’s culture and governance can be.

She experiences considerable aggression over opinions and rights of females that were common place on her home planet, Beta.  Her struggles with perceptions of sexual practices and to demonstrate the importance of positions of leadership and reproductive medicine for women range from the hilarious to the deadly serious.

Bujold has a Scalzi-esque approachability and delivery that allows this book to achieve some amount of intellectual stimulation while also being enjoyable on more basic levels…it’s just damn fun!  I could have spent weeks cheering on Cordelia as she summarily dismisses the most self-assured, well-connected, and power-hungry denizens the Vor Class has to offer with style, physical prowess, intellect, or all three (actually for some reason this book did take me two weeks -- I don’t know why).

Recommendation

This book felt like a better introduction to the Vorkosigan Saga and now that I’ve read The Vor Game, Barrayar, and Mirror Dance (review forthcoming) I still think so.  Maybe there are even better examples, but I don’t think this would be a horrible place to start.  I liked it better than The Vor Game, but now I’m feeling I would have a totally different appreciation for it if I read it again.  Barrayar is great fun.  It feels simple but also tackles some unpleasant social issues with a cool, strong, sensitive female lead.  It’s not done too often among the Hugo winners but Bujold does it fantastically.

HEP SCORE

Universe 3/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 3/5

Characters 4/5

Overall 20/25

Nobody's Perfect

I don’t confuse greatness with perfection.  To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.

Mirror Dance – Lois McMaster Bujold

Chapter 16

Just remember this when I have trouble finishing the Hugos in the aforementioned timeframe ;-)

And I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays.  I sure am!

Quickness in Answering

“What symptoms are you experiencing?  Disorientation?”

“No.”

“Drowsiness?”

That was more difficult.  Everyone under Lady Schrapnell’s las was automatically sleep deprived, but I doubted that the nurse would take that into consideration and at any rate it didn’t manifest itself so much as drowsiness as a sort of “walking dead” numbness, like people bombarded night after night in the Blitz had suffered from.

“No,” I said finally.

“Slowness in Answering,” she said into the handheld.  “When’s the las time you slept?”

“1940,”  I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering.

Connie Willis

Chapter 2 – To Say Nothing of the Dog

It's cold enough for a hat!

I’ve been on vacation since Friday but still haven’t done as much reading as I’d wanted (which was to finish every book ever written!).  But, today I had the most perfect morning and breakfast.  Cuddling (and reading Willis) with my little sleep-groggy girl because it was so cold, and then the most perfect breakfast: Emmeline and I squeezed oranges we had picked yesterday morning, then coffee, eggs and sausage, oatmeal and brown sugar, To Say Nothing of the Dog.

My daughter.  Food.  Vacation.  Willis.  This is the life.  Yawp.

Picking oranges.

Doomsday Book

Stats

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

1993 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

578 Pages

Doomsday Book completes the Grand Master Review Challenge over at WWEND for me.  It has been great fun and all the other participants are great people.  Getting involved with their challenge has seriously been one of the highlights of my year.  I can't wait for the reveal of next year's challenge!

Time travel happens.  And if you’re an excitable undergad historian that means you can have the chance to visit your very favorite times throughout history.  For Kivrin Engle, that means the Oxford of medieval England – 1320 to be exact.  When the drop is botched and the entirety of Oxford-Present comes down with a deadly virus, Kivrin’s professor, James Dunworthy is racing against the clock to save her, whether she needs saving or not.  Meanwhile, Kivrin herself must cope with translation issues, debilitating sickness and some pretty intense experiences of humanity.

Kivrin or Dunworthy?

The key to whether one enjoys Doomsday Book is in the narrative shifts. 

Despite overwhelming sickness, darkness, dirtiness and you know…the possibility of being raped, burned at the stake, or contracting the plague, the tale of Kivrin’s journey to the fourteenth century was so vibrant and emotional, and the townsfolk so distinctly human, that it was probably one of the more compelling stories for me.  Mostly, Kivrin herself was just a great experience.

Before she even leaves the present and without actually hearing much from her, Kivrin establishes her personality pretty forcefully.  She’s eternally optimistic, idealistic and just a damn enthusiastic medieval historian, despite only being an undergraduate.  Her enthusiasm is constantly under attack once she successfully drops to the 1300’s and watching experiencing her transformation from simply student of history to something less naïve and much more painfully aware of the unifying humanity and faith present throughout history but especially in a small town besieged by utterly terrifying illness.

Kivrin’s gradual understanding of Father Roche was also particularly good and it was a transformation of different sort.  From incapacitating fear of Roche to pity and then fierce admiration, Willis kept me with Kivrin through the whole damn thing and sometimes it was pretty dang gut-wrenching.

Then there was one moment after Kivrin recovered from her sickness and was just beginning to take care of Agnes (“Agnus” – oh man, I really loved that kid!) that had me laughing uncontrollably for over a minute.  I might have been affected by extreme exhaustion at the time but – no joke – I could not stop myself giggling like an idiot.

Whenever Willis…I’ll say it…forced me to break away from Kivrin’s story in the beginning, it was quite difficult to care about Dunworthy’s apparent doting over Kivrin and whether the drop was accurate.  After a good 100+ pages, and still not being sure whether Kivrin was in the right place, I was starting to feel like this plot line was just to tease us, and honestly on one or two occasions, slightly annoyed.

After the threat of influenza had become ominous enough and especially as the relationship between Dunworthy and Colin started to seriously blossom, and the antics between the nurses, Americans, and academics became ever more akin to the tomfoolery of a Monty Python farce.  Notwithstanding my serious love for Kivrin and her fantastic voyage I did begin to appreciate, at long last, both sides of the story.

Recommendation

This was my first read of Willis and in the months prior to reading this one, I heard a number of complaints, mostly about being long-winded.  I thought the length was just fine but I can somewhat understand why folks gripe about Willis taking forever to say something; she drags out the contagion suspense longer than I would have thought humanly possible.  I eventually came around to it, but I'd caution anyone to be prepared for some amount of frustration probably.

Compared to the rest of the early 90’s winners, Willis’ tale of time travel was a welcome departure from incessant detail and explanations of some of the very serious and science-heavy tomes of the period.  This is fun no matter when you read it though.  The children in both time periods were amazing (Colin’s gumball!) and Kivrin was a saint.  This will very likely become one of those books I read many times in my life.

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 4/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 4/5

Characters 5/5

Overall 23/25

I took forever slogging through Blue Mars and Barrayar for some reason.  Now I’m behind by a few reviews and I’m working on To Say Nothing of the Dog, also by Willis and Hyperion by Dan Simmons.  After that I have very little time to finish the rest of the decade if I’m to stay on schedule.  Psst...don't tell anyone but it's not looking like that's going to happen :/

Lois McMaster Bujold

He sat back beside her, and took her in his arms.  “And this is only the beginning.  Every month, every week, there will be some other impossible thing.  What’s going to be left of me after fifteen years of this?  A hust, like that thing we buried three monts ago, praying with his last breath that there may be no God?  Or a power-corrupted monstrosity, like his son, so infected it could only be sterilized by plasma arc?  Or something even worse?”

…

She sighed.  “You can’t choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic.  You can only cling to some safety line of principle.  I can’t make your decision.  But whatever principles you choose now are going to be your safety lines, to carry you forward.  And for the sake of your people, they’re going to have to be consistent ones.”

Chapter 7 – Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold

My initial foray in to the Vorkosigan Saga was not so great and I was worried but suspicious that my reaction was mainly the result of a book in the middle of a series winning a Hugo.  After finally finishing Barrayar a couple days ago, any fears I may have had about the rest of the series were laid to rest.  The second part of this quote has stuck with me for a while now.  Probably not the most profound thing you’ve ever read, but I was making some hard decisions at the time I read it and it had a kind of centering effect on me.  Regardless, the entire book was a much better experience and I was really in a Vorkosigan groove by the time I finished.  Then today I heard about an interview she did for the Geeks Guide to the Galaxy podcast recently in which she had some other awesome things to say.  I have to admit I’m really turning around a lot of my initial opinions about this author…

Vinge vs. Willis - Round 1

About 5% of the time, SF fans can’t make up their minds.  That’s where I come in.  As Supreme Arbiter, I’ll settle for all time, which book was really deserving of the Hugo Award.

I will be the first to admit that in 1993, there were at least 3 stellar, deserving titles to choose from.  For myself, I’d have had a hard time not picking the Nebula winning Red Mars, but I absolutely understand the desire to pick either of these two.  They were both fantastic.  In refereeing my second deathmatch, I’ve decided to allow the candidates do battle prior to writing their individual reviews…because I fancy doing so and I can.  As with the last time, I’ve randomly picked five topics that seemed worth comparing and I’ll do one or two rounds every couple of days, I hope you’ll all weigh in and invent some great new cheers to lob at me when it seems my strike zone is a little off.  With the preamble concluded…

A Fire Upon the Deep

vs.

Doomsday Book

Round 1: Travel

A Fire Upon the Deep

Okay… wow…  why did I pick this first?!

Vinge is renowned for his Zones of Thought.  I admit that when I first cracked the cover and saw the diagram of The Unthinking Depths, The Slow Zone and The Beyond, I was a little confused.

I’m not sure it’s necessary to explain in greater detail than to say that each zone represents very different characteristics of chronology, psychology, physics, and .  Especially in the case of computers, but in other kinds of tech also, the further one gets from The Unthinking Depths, the greater the complexity that can be achieved.

This is what allows for faster-than-light travel in some zones, and not in others.  Even reaching speeds approaching Light in other zones requires different technology completely and if you take the wrong ship into the wrong zone, well, you’re probably up a creek.

While the idea of FTL travel is always fun, I don’t think it would ordinarily qualify as anything extra special.  In this case, Vinge has drawn up such a complicated and original process, it gets extra-high marks.

Doomsday Book

Doomsday Book is easy.  Time Travel in the most conventional sense, which I’m all for.  Willis hints at some pretty serious scholarship governing “The Net”, but doesn’t get into it in too much detail.  Once the net is opened, one is suddenly transported into whatever year has been targeted…but there are some quirks.  Primarily, there’s the problem of the slippage.

Oh the slippage.

You see, despite the amount of time and attention given to ensuring The Drop is correctly adjusted to the target date and location.  I like this addition.  When my favorite Will Smith character, “J”, tunes his time machine into a date, he doesn’t have to worry about not being transported to exactly where he intended, but in Doomsday Book, it’s not that simple.  In fact, the further one travels back in time, the greater the likelihood of slippage, both spatial and/or temporal.

In this case, Kivrin (another good cat name? J) is attempting a drop into Oxford, in 1320.  Let’s just say travelling this far into the past makes the chance for missing the intended date…significant.

But then, as long as you don’t turn off the net, you won’t lose the drop location and it won’t be a problem right?  Well, if you remember anything about the fourteenth century, you’ll remember there was a concerning little world-wide health incident called the black plague.

There are some more fun elements that I could go on about, but I think this sums up what makes Doomsday Book fun.

The Call

I loved Willis’ time travel.  Srsly.  But my first inclination is to give this one to Vinge because of its complexity.  I guess I could imagine someone being turned off by how conceptual Vinge’s zones of thought can be, but I was sufficiently impressed.  On the other hand, “the net” was so fun and so laboriously revealed that I had a hard time putting Doomsday Book down.

Both authors took something that has been done before and made it their own.  That is pretty awesome and makes this hard to judge.  In the end, I think this round has to go to Vinge because it is not only such an intricate imagining of something that has been done so many times, but it is also a part of the very fabric of the rest of the book’s tension.  While the same could be said about Doomsday Book, I think the best parts of the story are to be found in subsequent rounds…

The Snow Queen

Stats

The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge

1981 Hugo Award Winner

Got it from: Public Library

409 Pages

Nearing the end of the Winter Clan’s 150-years of rule over the planet Tiamat, in a desperate bid for immortality, the Snow Queen, Arienrod, secretly implants several clones in her subjects in order to produce a perfect copy of herself and take her place though tradition would have her succeed her power to the Summer Clan.  Only one of those clones survives, Moon Dawntreader, and it turns out she never got the message.  Instead, Moon becomes a Sybil and as a part of the secretive and mysterious group of soothsayers, stands poised to uncover the truth not only of the Snow Queen’s plot, but also of galactic conspiracies.

Shame and humiliation…

I have two admissions of guilt as I begin this review:

1)      I was not familiar with the Hans Christian Andersen original, nor any of its re-tellings before reading Vinge’s.  This was my introduction and I’m not sure that did me a disservice, but I certainly would have had a much different perspective.  Since I was taking so long to begin this review, I snagged a few different copies, including H.C.A.’s original (side admission: I’ve not read very many of his originals! though I’m familiar with many re-tellings).  So hopefully I’ve corrected my problem of perspective and can apply it retroactively.

2)     I have a huge crush on Moon Dawntreader.  This doesn’t happen very often, but I’m noticing it is sometimes the case with female protagonists who, quietly or not, kick-ass.  I feel justified; Moon will kick yours.

So yeah, thrice guilty.  But hey, I’m glad I admitted to them, and I’m glad I took the time for the original, because I think it improved my reading of Vinge’s telling.  So if you’ve read and loved this Hugo, do look into Hans Christian Andersen’s original.

Fairy tales, juiced

People talk about how much this book reads like fantasy.  The interview with Vinge at the back of my copy acknowledges this and Vinge makes no bones about her fascination with the mythological elements of fantasy.  We’ll, I can’t argue with that much, but I’d still like to alter that depiction somewhat.

After going back to the original Snow Queen.  I might not say it’s some kind of quasi-fantasy, but that it reads quite a lot like a fairy tale.  Maybe the distinction isn’t much of an improvement, but I think it more precisely captures what it is that makes The Snow Queen stand out among Hugo Winners.

I say fairy tale because Vinge uses a hell of a lot of imaginative symbolism, allegory, metaphor, an explicit moral narrative, and so many other tropes you would expect from your favorite children’s tales.  Sure, The Snow Queen might feel a little paranormal, some characters a little monstrous, inhuman, but I don’t think it recalls fantasy quite so much as it does fairy tales.  Yeah, I think I’d be inclined to say it (rightfully) reminds me of a fairy tale.  In fact, Vinge did a surprisingly good job of remaining faithful to quite a few details from Andersen’s original, and I think there could be an opportunity for a really thorough comparison of the two versions.

But more than that, Vinge did a fantastic job of making what was kind of creepy in the fairy tale, absolutely terrifying in her own, and the same went for anything sweet about the children or nerve-wracking or fun or whatever.  Joan D. Vinge gives us Hans Christian Andersen on steroids.

Recommendation

There were a lot of things I liked about The Snow Queen and I liked it for a lot of the same reasons that I liked The Dispossessed: carefully crafted characters, gender role reversals, fun-ness.  Silky.  I just want to say I love Silky.  So much.  But one of the things I like best about this book is the place that it occupies among the entire field of Hugo Winners.  I feel like such a powerful adaptation of a popular fairy tale (and Vinge would say it is even older than Andersen’s telling) tethers SF to a kind of storytelling that is rooted deep in human history.  So many people revered U.K. LeGuin for making SF relevant, a part of something greater; I think Joan D. Vinge does very much the same thing with The Snow Queen and I adored it for that.  Also Silky.  Did I mention that already?

HEP SCORE

Universe 5/5

Social/Political Climate 5/5

Dialogue 5/5

Scientific Wonders 5/5

Characters 4/5

Overall 24/25

Moving on…

This week’s book is Doomsday Book by Connie Willis, and I’m still working on (almost done with) Green Mars via audiobook.

After that comes Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold.