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mrissaReview copy provided by Tor.
Lately, there have been a great many things marketed as "like Jane Austen with ____." "Like Jane Austen with vampires" or "like Jane Austen with magic" or "like Jane Austen with zombies" or a dozen other variants. To my eye, very few of these are very much like Jane Austen at all. Most of them are set in the same period as Austen was writing, most in the same country, and that is about the sum of the similarities. Many of them have different authorial inspiration completely--Georgette Heyer, in several cases, or actual 19th century authors who just don't happen to be Jane Austen--and Austen is just being used as a marketing hook.
Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey is in a different class completely. The concerns of Austen--spinsterhood, money, familial foolishness--all show up here, handled deftly and lightly. The other thing that's handled deftly is the component of the fantastic. Austen's Britain would have been a very different place if it had not only had magic but a particularly flashy kind of magic among the women of the upper classes. Kowal takes that in a different direction completely: glamour is to be genteel, ladylike. If it's too heavy-handed, one is likely to be sniffed at as tasteless, not hauled away and imprisoned. I'm so tired of the "magic is punishable by death!!111!!!!" trope that I am relieved to see an example where the social force of good and bad taste is recognized instead.
The scope of story is similar to Austen here: fantasy readers who are used to a reveal of epic or at least national proportions at the end of a book may be startled to find that this is a story about the people it's about, not about their effects on Ragnarok. And yet I feel that it did well enough being about the people it's about that they need neither avert nor cause Ragnarok for it to be a fun and effective read.
Lately, there have been a great many things marketed as "like Jane Austen with ____." "Like Jane Austen with vampires" or "like Jane Austen with magic" or "like Jane Austen with zombies" or a dozen other variants. To my eye, very few of these are very much like Jane Austen at all. Most of them are set in the same period as Austen was writing, most in the same country, and that is about the sum of the similarities. Many of them have different authorial inspiration completely--Georgette Heyer, in several cases, or actual 19th century authors who just don't happen to be Jane Austen--and Austen is just being used as a marketing hook.
Mary Robinette Kowal's Shades of Milk and Honey is in a different class completely. The concerns of Austen--spinsterhood, money, familial foolishness--all show up here, handled deftly and lightly. The other thing that's handled deftly is the component of the fantastic. Austen's Britain would have been a very different place if it had not only had magic but a particularly flashy kind of magic among the women of the upper classes. Kowal takes that in a different direction completely: glamour is to be genteel, ladylike. If it's too heavy-handed, one is likely to be sniffed at as tasteless, not hauled away and imprisoned. I'm so tired of the "magic is punishable by death!!111!!!!" trope that I am relieved to see an example where the social force of good and bad taste is recognized instead.
The scope of story is similar to Austen here: fantasy readers who are used to a reveal of epic or at least national proportions at the end of a book may be startled to find that this is a story about the people it's about, not about their effects on Ragnarok. And yet I feel that it did well enough being about the people it's about that they need neither avert nor cause Ragnarok for it to be a fun and effective read.
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Date: 2010-08-09 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 11:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 01:27 am (UTC)But yes. I love a good Ragnarok; however, it's also refreshing to read a story where the stakes are personal, and still well-done.
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Date: 2010-08-10 01:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 04:39 am (UTC)But yes: Yay Ragnarok, down with cilantro. Even though, uh, only one of my novels involves Ragnarok at all. Of the ones I've drafted, anyway.
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Date: 2010-08-10 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 11:12 pm (UTC)Also, though I recognized Austen's character types, they didn't have Austenian complexity, or any of the wry humor; still, it works splendidly as a silver fork novel.
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Date: 2010-08-10 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 01:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 02:11 am (UTC)The magics in question are (this is not a spoiler) video and audio generation/recording/playback and temperature control. There are plenty of ways those could be used in warfare. It would take very little modification of the visual glamour to turn someone effectively invisible, for example. And temperature extremes have obvious application in both healing and harming people.
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Date: 2010-08-10 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 02:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-13 10:05 pm (UTC)Given some of the arguments I've seen, some intergenerational, some not, and some amount of anthropology, I'm quite prepared to believe that societal blind spots via cultural conditioning can be quite durable. The existence of a concept or technique, even if well known, is no guarantee of use or adoption in all areas it can be, particularly if it has a very defined role where altering it goes against received wisdom about how the world works. e.g.: long lasting gender imbalances over significant geographical ranges in quite a lot of professions, non-weaponized gunpowder, among other things, in China.
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Date: 2010-08-10 09:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-09 11:40 pm (UTC)I read about half of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It's an interesting idea, and had its amusing moments. Some Austenian concerns that make a modern reader say WTF suddenly make sense-- like why ladies don't care to go for a walk *after it's stopped* raining. But I know the original well enough to spot all the suture marks where new text was added in, even when that text is well-matched to its surroundings. Which often it is not-- there are so many clunkers for characterization and conventions. I just hit that moment of bored-now-kthxbai.
I have also read a completion of Austen's unfinished Sanditon that didn't work for me. The language was fine, but IMHO the author doing the completion massively missed the point. You can't just decide that a man's grave social sins don't matter any more and send him off into the sunset with the heroine; at some point someone's character has to *develop*, darnit.
Y'know, I think of Austen as an 18th Century author, but of course that's not actually true...
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Date: 2010-08-10 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 12:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 03:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 07:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-08-10 07:12 am (UTC)*grabs book from audible.com*
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Date: 2010-08-11 10:05 pm (UTC)http://www.explosm.net/comics/2136/