(no subject)

[flemmings]

Mh, so Barbara Mertz is dead. A respectable age and a respectable oeuvre, so rest in peace, Ms Mertz/ Michaels/ Peters.

The Egyptology books I read and reread obsessively in my teens; Amelia Peabody only for a season in the leisured fall of '09, after which I put them out on the lawn. But now I'm reading Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate and it feels like another of Mertz's series. Victorian detective fic and Victorian steampunk are not that far removed; I wouldn't really be surprised to find werewolves in Peabody's Egypt, and I'm already encountering ancient Egyptians in Alexia's Scotland. (They're alike too, alas, in the heterosex thorough bass running through the works, which I find ham-handed and unnecessary. Yes yes, you find your husband hot and you screw a lot, and you really don't need to tell us that again.)

Could also wish that steampunk would A/U the English empire; it's a bug, not a feature. Just make 19th century warfare the same as the 17th. If you must do it, keep it on the continent; but hopefully we've got beyond that into the realms of scientific competition which leads us to send trade missions to the Manchu emperor or scientific delegations to the Arabian caliphates.

Comments

[yumiyoshi.livejournal.com]

I too wish such writers would go beyond England! (She said, as she sees the blurb on the latest Temeraire book ... no, I haven't read any of them. I tried and couldn't even finish the first one.)

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The first isn't the best. The China-set one was respectable, but there really wasn't enough coherence in the world-building to sustain the events of the series. (This is why it's dangerous to start a series just for fun-- Napoleonic war with dragons!-- throw in some wrinkles-- dragons are protective of their humans!-- and not work out how having indigenous protective dragons everywhere would have changed-- well, just about everything about 19C world history.)

I mean, I'm intrigued at the idea of Temeraire in Japan, but the possibilities for ouch are too great.

[yumiyoshi.livejournal.com]

Good points all. *nodnod*