Reading practice

Basics

(from "Cruel Sisters")

The story's been told from one end of what used to be our kingdom to the other. The death of the younger princess, supposedly from illness -- but one day a minstrel arrived at court, bearing the gruesome harp. Its strings, spun from golden hair and tuned by delicate finger-bones, sang out all the crimes and sins of her royal kin, from her murderous elder sister to her treasonous younger brother to her cruel, capricious, contemptible father the king.

*

Dialogue

(from "Vīs Dēlendī")

“You will understand when you see my working. And I am sure that when you do, you will judge that I too had sufficient cause for beginning before I entered this room.”

*

Two speakers

(from "Cruel Sisters")

"Sister."

Dread grips my soul. I suspected, yes--but it is another thing to know.

"You lied," I whisper back, my voice as thin and dry as dust. "Why?"

"You mean, why did I condemn them, instead of you."

The jolt thudding up my arms as I shoved her into the water. It was a stupid argument, and my oath to God, I thought she was exaggerating her distress. She loved to swim in the summer months. But it was early spring, and the water snow-cold, and she never went swimming in her dress. Afterward, I told myself it was the dress that killed her, not me, not me.

I can't find the words to reply. She answers her own question anyway. "Because there are things that matter more than you, my dear, treacherous sister. Like the fate of this country. If I could bring down the monarchy by pretending to be the dead princess . . . it was hardly a choice."

How many of their crimes were real, and how many invented to rile the mob? I can't ask. I don't want to know. We always disagreed on this anyway, and it's too late to convince either of us of anything. The country I loved is gone.

My cold hands seek out the warmth of my pockets, and the reassuring weight within. "But now. Are you going to tell?"

"That you killed me? No. Not yet."

*

Action

(from The Mask of Mirrors)

Within two heartbeats Ren knew she hadn’t gambled foolishly: The Rook dropped immediately from his straight-armed stance into a lower one and met Mezzan’s charge without flinching, parrying the nobleman’s thrusts with a few quick angles of his wrist. And he respected the rules of the game, passing up an opportunity to stomp on the arch of Mezzan’s foot, the way Ren would have done in his place.

But she was a former river rat, and he was the Rook. He could be brutal when necessary, but it was his flair that won him the hearts of the common folk. He danced out of the path of Mezzan’s thrusts with a little lace step, and when Mezzan made the mistake of rushing him, the Rook stepped in to meet it, locking them body-to-body in a brief, circling waltz. Only a swift tilt of his head prevented Mezzan’s spit from flying into his hood, and he let go just in time to avoid an elbow to the jaw.

The hood turned toward Ren. “Remind me, alta—are elbows permitted?”

“They are not,” she said, suppressing a laugh.

“I thought not.” The tip of his blade rapped Mezzan’s arm hard, right where the nerve ran between skin and bone. “Mind your manners, boy.”

The blow and the words were both calculated to enrage. But the increasing wildness of Mezzan’s attacks only left him vulnerable. Almost too fast for Ren to follow, the tip of the Rook’s sword snaked through the looping guard of Mezzan’s rapier and wrenched it from his hand. Metal grated as the hilt slid down the Rook’s blade; he twirled the trapped weapon in a full circle like a child with a toy, then tilted his hand so Mezzan’s sword flew clear.

It flashed through the open air and sank without a trace in the waters of the canal.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/hD9aat)

Books read, December 2020

I am behind again! But at least I'm posting about December before January is over.

Kingdom of Copper, S.A. Chakraborty. Second of the Daevabad trilogy. I'm enjoying these well enough, but there was a moment in here that made me realize what's generally lacking: a sense of humor. It's got a scene where some characters wind up shoved together with all the awful conflicts between them coming out with teeth bared, and then in the middle of that one of them says they need to get out of there before somebody realizes they're plotting conspiracy in a janitorial closet, and I thought, yes. I want more of that. It doesn't negate the pain they're all feeling and inflicting; in fact, that kind of thing usually makes the dramatic stuff hit harder for me. When it's nothing but tension and bleakness and bad things happening without anybody managing to find a note of levity, I just don't engage as deeply.

RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant, E.C. Myers, illus. Violet Tobacco. I know nothing about RWBY, but I saw this mentioned and the folklorist in me was intrigued. It's a pretty little book, and the material in it ranges across a couple of folkloric genres, some more successfully than others; it can actually be very hard to write realistic folklore, because that stuff just doesn't operate like modern fiction. (It's entirely possible that "realistic folklore" is neither the target Myers was trying to hit, nor a desirable target to aim for in the first place.) It didn't quite scratch that itch for me, though, and since I know nothing about RWBY, I'm not inclined to hold onto this.

These Violent Delights, Chloe Gong. This reminds me of Angel of the Crows in one specific respect: I think I would have liked it even better if it had let go of its source material and just focused on the original stuff it was doing. In this case the source material is Romeo and Juliet, but only very distantly; Roma Montagov and Juliette Cai met years ago, had a relationship and fell out and now consider themselves bitter enemies, and so their names and Benedikt and Marshall Seo and Rosalind Lang and Juliette having a nurse who died years ago were mostly just distractions in a story about a weird monster and a war between Chinese and Russian gangs in 1920s Shanghai. The one place where it felt like the Shakespeare plot really played a role, I got pulled out of the story by thinking "ah, here we have a piece of actual Shakespeare plot!" Without that . . . I liked the historical setting, the complex politics of a city being carved up by various European interests and the rise of Chinese Communism and the ambiguous role of gangs, and I cared a lot more about that than I did about the minor Shakespearean elements. I could have done with more meaningful progress on the plot, which involves a strange magical effect causing people to tear their own throats out, as that felt like it was treading water for long stretches of the book. And Juliette was a little too persistently angry at everybody around her and determined to prove she was hard and heartless; more dynamics there would have been welcome. So overall, a mixed bag.

As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, by Cary Elwes (with Joe Layden). This was a Christmas present that's been on my list for years, and having finally received it, I found myself apprehensive to open it. This movie was so formative for me and I love it so much, any "behind the scenes" account risked poking my heart in some very vulnerable spots. But the book is an utter delight, y'all. For starters, the people involved genuinely loved what they were doing and got along amazingly well: although the bulk of this is written from Elwes' perspective (who knows how much of it is his words, vs. being ghostwritten by Layden), there are sidebars from a bunch of other people, and they consistently praise each other and talk about what a great experience filming this movie was. Not that nothing ever went wrong -- Wallace Shawn was so convinced that Rob Reiner regretted casting him and was about to fire him that he apparently fretted himself into hives, and Elwes is 100% frank about how he was a twenty-three-year-old idiot who broke his toe goofing around on set and nearly screwed over the entire production -- but the love truly shines through. And my household can attest that various bits had me cracking up throughout.

The Light of the Midnight Stars, Rena Rossner. Sent to me for blurbing purposes. Gorgeous and melancholy historical fantasy about three Jewish sisters in fourteenth-century Eastern Europe, blending some historical personages with folktales. This is not a cheerful story in any respect, but it's beautifully written and notably queer, both of which I know are aspects that would be of interest to several people who read my blog.

(originally posted at Swan Tower: https://is.gd/RWjloY)