Currently Reading - 14-May-2015
May. 14th, 2015 01:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidgillonAn Artificial Night, Toby Daye Book 3, Seanan McGuire
As the book opens, and bar fending off a barghest infestation, Toby's life seems to be relatively stable, she even has time to go to the birthday of one of her best friend's youngest kids. Then she wakes up and everything goes to hell. Never mind the (very personable) portents of her death, two of her friend's kids are missing, another won't wake, and they aren't the only faery kids missing. Nor are only faery kids vanishing, the human girlfriend of her protege Quentin has disappeared, too. Toby might be at a loss, but her powerful friends aren't, the Wild Hunt (it's never referred to as the Wild Hunt, simply Blind Michael's Hunt) is recruiting, and it needs both faery riders, and ridden. Someone needs to get the kids back, and though she protests that she's not a hero, that person looks like Toby.
In Seanan McGuire's version of Wild Hunt mythology the hunt is run by Blind Michael, child of Oberon and Maeve, one of Faery's Firstborn, which makes him the next best thing to a faery god, but he's not the only child of Oberon and Maeve living in San Francisco (or parts of Faery accessible from SF, anyway) and so Toby finds herself on the Luidaeg's* doorstep once more, asking her very spiky, very dangerous friend to set her on the road with some of her scarsely less dangerous help. And then it's off into Blind Michael's lands with little more than an enchanted candle to guide her (admittedly when it comes to enchanted candles, the Luidaeg produces the Swiss Army Knife of enchanted candles).
If you find children in distress upsetting, this probably isn't the book for you, but what's interesting about Blind Michael's lands is that much of their internal logic operates to children's rules - games don't have to be safe, but they do have to be fair, and when you're one not very powerful changeling trying to take on the next best thing to a god, then that may be the only chance you have. Of course, being as bad tempered and stubborn as Toby doesn't hurt either.
This is another good entry in the Toby Daye series, there's a solid plot well told (I was particularly impressed by a set-piece near the end which channels a well-known bit of faery-lore), we find out about some surprising inter-relationships amongst Toby's friends, and Toby, and others, are forced into character growth, they aren't static characters, which can sometimes be a problem for serial protagonists; Toby in particular has to face a couple of uncomfortable truths about the kind of person she is.
(* Given Luidaeg is pronounced Lou-sha-k, I keep earworming myself with The Loveshack every time Toby ends up on her doorstep)
Next up: State Machine, Rachel Peng Book 3, by K B Spangler
Other Media: I've been catching up the backstory (several hundred pages worth) of Magellan, which is a superhero webcomic someone recommended to me a few weeks ago.
The basic setting is a superhero academy (sort of Tracy Island meets Starfleet Academy), in a world with a lot of superheroes, with the primary protagonist being Kaycee Jones (there's a name with history attached), a non-superpowered Australian girl/woman (she's supposed to be 16 at the start, but I consistently read her and a bunch of the others as adults), who is getting through on grit and determination, with one secondary protagonist being Go!Anna, an Australian superhero who once saved Kaycee from a serial killer who had just killed Kaycee's older sister. and another being Gola Bey, a retired psychic superhero. There's a pretty incredible number of named and recognisable characters: All of Kaycee's year, most of the year who come after them, a fair number from the years in front, staff and instructors, the complete Australian and US superhero teams, retired superhero teams, and of course sufficient supervillains to keep them occupied - I think Magellan has the highest character count of any webcomic I've read, probably several times over.
Storywise there have been two major arcs and a number of shorter stories focussed on limited numbers of characters, The first arc covered introductions and then segued into a time-travelling, cross-dimensional infiltration of Magellan that was pretty good, the ongoing arc spins out of that and has a major problem breaking out while a whole bunch of characters are visiting the nearby supervillain prison island for various reasons. It's 200 and odd pages in, and may be about to start it's final act (or may not - difficult to tell for sure). Artwise it's okay, the drawing is passable to good, colouring varies, some pages with depth-shading, on others its a a little basic with no shading - I'm not quite sure if that's a 'run out of time this week' issue, or a deliberate artistic decision for when they're on the astral plane (and it's long enough I'm not about to try a systematic check), but I'll let that go given the sheer number of characters and character designs involved - in fact that may be part of the issue, the artist tends to have a lot of characters in frame, which is going to restrict the time they can devote to each one.
There have been a couple of things that left me a little uncomfortable, there seem to be a disproportionate number of non-white supervillains, and there were a couple of pages where someone taunted a villain named Gaius as 'Gay-us', but equally Go!Anna is clearly Aboriginal, Gola Bey is Jewish, and a bunch of significant secondary characters are black or Asian, but for the supervillain issue I'd have said racial diversity was pretty good, if not better than most webcomics. There are a handful of characters who are disabled, but it tends to be 'superhero disabilities' - blind but can 'see', a couple with facial disfigurements behind the mask, even the wheelchair-using retired hero has a hoverchair rather than something that needs an accessible environment. I can't think of any characters who are gay, but there's potentially room for that to develop.
It updates Sundays and Wednesdays, and I've added it to the comics I follow, if you're into webcomics it's definitely worth a look.
As the book opens, and bar fending off a barghest infestation, Toby's life seems to be relatively stable, she even has time to go to the birthday of one of her best friend's youngest kids. Then she wakes up and everything goes to hell. Never mind the (very personable) portents of her death, two of her friend's kids are missing, another won't wake, and they aren't the only faery kids missing. Nor are only faery kids vanishing, the human girlfriend of her protege Quentin has disappeared, too. Toby might be at a loss, but her powerful friends aren't, the Wild Hunt (it's never referred to as the Wild Hunt, simply Blind Michael's Hunt) is recruiting, and it needs both faery riders, and ridden. Someone needs to get the kids back, and though she protests that she's not a hero, that person looks like Toby.
In Seanan McGuire's version of Wild Hunt mythology the hunt is run by Blind Michael, child of Oberon and Maeve, one of Faery's Firstborn, which makes him the next best thing to a faery god, but he's not the only child of Oberon and Maeve living in San Francisco (or parts of Faery accessible from SF, anyway) and so Toby finds herself on the Luidaeg's* doorstep once more, asking her very spiky, very dangerous friend to set her on the road with some of her scarsely less dangerous help. And then it's off into Blind Michael's lands with little more than an enchanted candle to guide her (admittedly when it comes to enchanted candles, the Luidaeg produces the Swiss Army Knife of enchanted candles).
If you find children in distress upsetting, this probably isn't the book for you, but what's interesting about Blind Michael's lands is that much of their internal logic operates to children's rules - games don't have to be safe, but they do have to be fair, and when you're one not very powerful changeling trying to take on the next best thing to a god, then that may be the only chance you have. Of course, being as bad tempered and stubborn as Toby doesn't hurt either.
This is another good entry in the Toby Daye series, there's a solid plot well told (I was particularly impressed by a set-piece near the end which channels a well-known bit of faery-lore), we find out about some surprising inter-relationships amongst Toby's friends, and Toby, and others, are forced into character growth, they aren't static characters, which can sometimes be a problem for serial protagonists; Toby in particular has to face a couple of uncomfortable truths about the kind of person she is.
(* Given Luidaeg is pronounced Lou-sha-k, I keep earworming myself with The Loveshack every time Toby ends up on her doorstep)
Next up: State Machine, Rachel Peng Book 3, by K B Spangler
Other Media: I've been catching up the backstory (several hundred pages worth) of Magellan, which is a superhero webcomic someone recommended to me a few weeks ago.
The basic setting is a superhero academy (sort of Tracy Island meets Starfleet Academy), in a world with a lot of superheroes, with the primary protagonist being Kaycee Jones (there's a name with history attached), a non-superpowered Australian girl/woman (she's supposed to be 16 at the start, but I consistently read her and a bunch of the others as adults), who is getting through on grit and determination, with one secondary protagonist being Go!Anna, an Australian superhero who once saved Kaycee from a serial killer who had just killed Kaycee's older sister. and another being Gola Bey, a retired psychic superhero. There's a pretty incredible number of named and recognisable characters: All of Kaycee's year, most of the year who come after them, a fair number from the years in front, staff and instructors, the complete Australian and US superhero teams, retired superhero teams, and of course sufficient supervillains to keep them occupied - I think Magellan has the highest character count of any webcomic I've read, probably several times over.
Storywise there have been two major arcs and a number of shorter stories focussed on limited numbers of characters, The first arc covered introductions and then segued into a time-travelling, cross-dimensional infiltration of Magellan that was pretty good, the ongoing arc spins out of that and has a major problem breaking out while a whole bunch of characters are visiting the nearby supervillain prison island for various reasons. It's 200 and odd pages in, and may be about to start it's final act (or may not - difficult to tell for sure). Artwise it's okay, the drawing is passable to good, colouring varies, some pages with depth-shading, on others its a a little basic with no shading - I'm not quite sure if that's a 'run out of time this week' issue, or a deliberate artistic decision for when they're on the astral plane (and it's long enough I'm not about to try a systematic check), but I'll let that go given the sheer number of characters and character designs involved - in fact that may be part of the issue, the artist tends to have a lot of characters in frame, which is going to restrict the time they can devote to each one.
There have been a couple of things that left me a little uncomfortable, there seem to be a disproportionate number of non-white supervillains, and there were a couple of pages where someone taunted a villain named Gaius as 'Gay-us', but equally Go!Anna is clearly Aboriginal, Gola Bey is Jewish, and a bunch of significant secondary characters are black or Asian, but for the supervillain issue I'd have said racial diversity was pretty good, if not better than most webcomics. There are a handful of characters who are disabled, but it tends to be 'superhero disabilities' - blind but can 'see', a couple with facial disfigurements behind the mask, even the wheelchair-using retired hero has a hoverchair rather than something that needs an accessible environment. I can't think of any characters who are gay, but there's potentially room for that to develop.
It updates Sundays and Wednesdays, and I've added it to the comics I follow, if you're into webcomics it's definitely worth a look.
