This wasn't Tolkien -- these weren't orcs and trolls and giant spiders and whatever else, evil creatures that you were free to commit genocide on without any complicated moral ramifications.Oh, fuck you, Grossman. No shit you're not Tolkien (that is not a compliment) -- and great job trivializing genocide (OED: "the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group") by including fucking spiders. And Tolkien saw the Great War up close; it killed all his friends, and he knew more about death and murder than you ever will.
- The Magician's Land
(12% in -- GOD, I miss page numbers! -- and I'm pissed and I'm not even a Tolkien fan. I don't like Aragorn!* I hate the movies! Bah.)
ETA 40% in or so -- much better. I LOVE Plum. Loved Janet's narration of her desert adventure, especially the end. Can't wait to see Alice and Julia again (I peeked). Still not that hot on Quentin being the reader's magic portal to the novel, but he's better than most Gaiman hero-schnooks. I did think we were going to maybe see a kind of revolt against the foreign humans who just showed up and ruled everything! but uh, guess not, unless that was more in the first book and I forgot it. Liked the Antarctica bit best, I think. Had completely forgotten what the fuck happened to Emily Greenstreet, whoops. Eliot's journey into True Manly Grown-Up Manliness interests me even less than Quentin's. And he's gay and just....single? There are no willing fantasy minions? Nice one, Lev.
I don't see how this is supposed to deconstruct Harry Potter, tho, since Harry Potter basically....deconstructed itself in the last 2-3 books. And wait....
Rowling shows us Harry in later life. I love Rowling’s work, but I don’t think that epilogue is a success. Where is the ennui, the depression, the search for meaning, the sense of belatedness due a man who saved the world when he was 18 and had to live the rest of his life in his own shadow? Harry Potter could learn a lot from Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom.
Now I'm pissed off at him again. Hah.
(And I don't even really like Rowling! I mean, I am not a fan. I don't think I'm a fan of Tolkien either, I read the books early and grew up with them and all that, but....fannish, no. What am I a fan of? By some definition, you are fannish about a thing you would emblazon on a cup or a keychain. I think we know where this is going.) (I would have a Bronte mug, I just can't afford it. And this one's gone.)
(Why do I have a keychain with Karolina Pavlova on it? Because I was doing character research and saw it on Amazon and absolutely could not fucking resist it. There was a Bronte-sisters-three keychain, but it was too expensive even for me, and ugly. And it was a good thing I got Karolina, because now you can't -- it's not the zazzle one, I like mine better, plus it was much less expensive.)
(at 47%)
-- OHHH MY GOD
ASMODEUS -- !
GOING FOX HUNTING! !!
....OKAY LEV ALL IS FORGIVEN
BITCH ABOUT JO ROWLING NOT HAVING UPDIKE'S SAGGY NUTS ALL YOU WANT
....one hour later the downside of that fucking awesome reveal (which I had NOT guessed at all) is that now I am going to sulk because the rest of the book isn't about her fox hunt. WRITE A SEQUEL, LEV, AND I WILL BE HAPPY.
*Anyone who rejects Eowyn I hate automatically.