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Bookery
Please note that I read a book in a day. In something like two hours, in fact. It was vol 3 of the Ai no Kusabi translation and seriously weirded me out.
Of course I'd have started at vol 1 if The Beguiling had had it, but they didn't. 'S'ok, I read the first part in Japanese,' I told the guy cheerfully, and went off to read. I think I got about two-thirds through the Japanese before giving up, so I figured even vol 3 of the English must be before that-- 165 smallish pages a volume when English always expands the Japanese. And there, yes, are passages I remember-- the pet laws, the game of gigolo-- but in the middle of this is stuff I have no memory of at all. Robby? Thor? Jeeks? My Japanese was that bad? My katakana was that bad? We're farther along than I thought? No, because vol 3 ends with Guy's kidnapping and I got much farther than that; but I know I never met any red-haired Thors with funny eyes. And here's an afterword from the author written in... 2004? What?
Then I read the small print on the back of the cover: 'revised and expanded since its original publication.' Oh. Dear. Because red-haired Thors apart, what's been added is umpty-many reiterations of the same sex scene, and a total screw around with the continuity, according to the infamous 'note each event on a stack of cards, throw them up in the air, write the book in the sequence they fall down' technique. Novelists need to be told they're not mangaka: there are no black borders to tip the readers off that we're into flashback.
There's no editor or rewriter listed for this one, and it shows. The combination of street English and stilt, sometimes in the same sentence, is dizzying. "The desire stuck like a hot shiv in his gut." "Getting in their faces and taking them down a few notches didn't do the job, so he preferred to mix things up with the security guards and vent that way. He'd seriously thrown down with them once, no holds barred, and caught sheer hell for it."
(Just glanced at the Japanese version. The passage of nine years has rendered it a lot easier to read than I'd thought. Maybe I'll have another stab at it after all.)
On another front, when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
incandescens mentioned the Abhorsen trilogy disappearing from her mother's shelves, a prickle of worry made me go check that my copies of Sabriel and Liriel were where they ought to be, which is next to the hardcover copy of Abhorsen in the bedroom. They aren't. Oh right, they were down in the front room book cubes. They weren't. Then I must have put them in the kitchen with the Brusts and Hobbs. I didn't. Not in the study, not in the side bedroom, not in the mudroom. They are, as far as I can tell, quite gone. Maybe all the Abhorsen trilogies have suddenly vanished from the world simultaneously? ('The Rapture,' nekonexus murmured when I mentioned this at lunch.)
Only they haven't, because I was at Eliot's Books last night in the snow, remembering to check for Elizabeth Bear and forgetting to check for Holdstock or Crowley or indeed Pu Songli in Penguin. What I did find was a complete set of the English Discworld, annoyingly there now and not last spring, which allowed me to round out my collection with the otherwise unobtainable Sourcery. (Should have got Making Money in that edition too, to replace my American one, but didn't. No one sells their Pratchetts cheap and Eliot's is no exception. Des economies, des economies, faut toujours faire des economies.) (Mind, Eliot's sometimes gives discounts for cash payments, which BMV does not.)
And when I brought Sourcery and Johnny and the Dead to the cash, there was a woman receiving a credit slip for a small mountain range of fantasy books, the foothills of which were- ta da- the Abhorsen Trilogy. Which I was on the point of laying claim to when she said, 'And then subtract these,' and the owner said 'I already did.'
So maybe I lent them to some one? Or maybe they did a midnight flit. Must remember now to check under Nix when I'm trawling for books in future.
Of course I'd have started at vol 1 if The Beguiling had had it, but they didn't. 'S'ok, I read the first part in Japanese,' I told the guy cheerfully, and went off to read. I think I got about two-thirds through the Japanese before giving up, so I figured even vol 3 of the English must be before that-- 165 smallish pages a volume when English always expands the Japanese. And there, yes, are passages I remember-- the pet laws, the game of gigolo-- but in the middle of this is stuff I have no memory of at all. Robby? Thor? Jeeks? My Japanese was that bad? My katakana was that bad? We're farther along than I thought? No, because vol 3 ends with Guy's kidnapping and I got much farther than that; but I know I never met any red-haired Thors with funny eyes. And here's an afterword from the author written in... 2004? What?
Then I read the small print on the back of the cover: 'revised and expanded since its original publication.' Oh. Dear. Because red-haired Thors apart, what's been added is umpty-many reiterations of the same sex scene, and a total screw around with the continuity, according to the infamous 'note each event on a stack of cards, throw them up in the air, write the book in the sequence they fall down' technique. Novelists need to be told they're not mangaka: there are no black borders to tip the readers off that we're into flashback.
There's no editor or rewriter listed for this one, and it shows. The combination of street English and stilt, sometimes in the same sentence, is dizzying. "The desire stuck like a hot shiv in his gut." "Getting in their faces and taking them down a few notches didn't do the job, so he preferred to mix things up with the security guards and vent that way. He'd seriously thrown down with them once, no holds barred, and caught sheer hell for it."
(Just glanced at the Japanese version. The passage of nine years has rendered it a lot easier to read than I'd thought. Maybe I'll have another stab at it after all.)
On another front, when
incandescens mentioned the Abhorsen trilogy disappearing from her mother's shelves, a prickle of worry made me go check that my copies of Sabriel and Liriel were where they ought to be, which is next to the hardcover copy of Abhorsen in the bedroom. They aren't. Oh right, they were down in the front room book cubes. They weren't. Then I must have put them in the kitchen with the Brusts and Hobbs. I didn't. Not in the study, not in the side bedroom, not in the mudroom. They are, as far as I can tell, quite gone. Maybe all the Abhorsen trilogies have suddenly vanished from the world simultaneously? ('The Rapture,' nekonexus murmured when I mentioned this at lunch.)Only they haven't, because I was at Eliot's Books last night in the snow, remembering to check for Elizabeth Bear and forgetting to check for Holdstock or Crowley or indeed Pu Songli in Penguin. What I did find was a complete set of the English Discworld, annoyingly there now and not last spring, which allowed me to round out my collection with the otherwise unobtainable Sourcery. (Should have got Making Money in that edition too, to replace my American one, but didn't. No one sells their Pratchetts cheap and Eliot's is no exception. Des economies, des economies, faut toujours faire des economies.) (Mind, Eliot's sometimes gives discounts for cash payments, which BMV does not.)
And when I brought Sourcery and Johnny and the Dead to the cash, there was a woman receiving a credit slip for a small mountain range of fantasy books, the foothills of which were- ta da- the Abhorsen Trilogy. Which I was on the point of laying claim to when she said, 'And then subtract these,' and the owner said 'I already did.'
So maybe I lent them to some one? Or maybe they did a midnight flit. Must remember now to check under Nix when I'm trawling for books in future.
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First, I was very young and had little understanding of bondage as well as its attraction (still can't find it). Second the intricacies of this love/hate and rape/violence/captive relationship was so beyond me then. Finaly after reading the first part, I left for college in the states! After that I never reread it. Then years later when I am in late 20s I found that it is one of the most popular/known yaoi overseas. That was a really big surprise for me.
Personaly, for this author I like Osananajimi, one of the first school boy June ever published professionally, better.
Now that I have sufficiantly aged and sort of have this fond memory of that time when finding "yaoi" stuff were extrememly difficult, I think I might give it another try.
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The other thing that never comes across, certainly not in the anime but not in the novel either, is any real sense of how spesshul Riki is supposed to be. She keeps saying he's a charismatic natural leader and all the other guys are entranced by him and blah blah, but all you ever see is him being yer average dead-end punk, all bravado and snarls and no brains. If there'd been anything for Iason to be working against, aside form knee-jerk defiance, or for Iason to be entranced by, I'd find the story more affecting.
As it is, Katse steals all my sympathy and Raoul grabs all my speculation and the principals make me go Enh.
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Iason's motivation is a bit clearer to me in the English than in either the anime or the Japanese, as far as I got with it. At least it's made clear that Iason does in fact have a human brain, even if the rest of him is droidish. Suggestion is that the human brain revives latent human emotions, and primary attraction begins to turn into emotional attachment with its concommittant sexual jealousy and possessiveness and you name it. Alas, that's a boring cocktail of human emotions. The low-key, unnamed, and unstated feelings of Raoul and Katse are much more sympathetic and much more moving.
Riki-- I suppose the sex was good. If that's enough to get him to die with Iason, then Riki's not worth bothering about.
But what the translation (of 3 at least) is making clear to me is that Guy was very badly served by the anime, something I didn't get even from the Japanese. He's actually a fairly sympathetic character, while the anime made him a nutjob. Of course, either I haven't yet come to the scene where he finds out Riki was Iason's pet, or it was in an earlier volume. In the Japanese his reaction was violent but IIRC Riki understood completely why it would be.
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Abhorsen trilogy still there. Phew.
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--Johnson family motto
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and I think your comment "and the principals make me go Enh" hit the nail on what I thought about the series, too.
I have too many other books to read, so I now that I know it wasn't just me, I think I'll pass trying to read Aino Kusabi for now.
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In the books it's actually quite uncomfortable reading the bits from Riki's point of view because, seen another way, it's basically the story of an average guy who becomes an all-powerful stalker's obsession. You get a sort of trapped feeling reading it. Very icky.
Guy is definitely better served by the novels.
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Mhh- but she keeps telling us how Riki isn't average, and everyone either wants him or wants to be him (Kirie) and so inevitably Mr. Macho Charisma attracts the attention of an even more alpha male than he. She makes it clear in 4, at least, that the real problem isn't Iason being all-powerful; Riki will happily butt his head against Iason's all-power, and does. The problem is that he likes sex with Iason, however degrading or painful he finds it. It gives him the pinnacle of pleasure, and that's something he can't fight. Sex with Guy or sex alone just doesn't measure up. Which I of course find hard to believe, but that's neither here nor there.
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Helps to read vol 4 as well, if you can get it.
(Lovely icon. What's it from?)
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Thanks! It's from the cover of a Robin Hobb novel - the second in the Mad Ship series, I think.
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Speaking of covers, I just finished reading a Donna Leon murder mystery with the most gorgeous cover - 'The Anonymous Venetian.' It's my mother's copy, but I'm strongly tempted to steal it.