flemmings | (no subject)

Finished Eight Skilled Gentlemen. Not as cutesie coy as I remember Bridge of Birds, which is a plus. The plot umm rather calls to mind words like 'farrago' and 'gallimaufry' and possibly 'rodomontade' though the latter is surely wrong, in that it has everything plus the kitchen sink and didn't quite make sense in the end. But possibly Hughart's plots are like Hughart's descriptions of place: he can see what he's describing but it doesn't work for me.

However I could seriously have done without the whole comic sequence of 'cook the boyfriend's body in extreme detail and feed him to his lover at a banquet' because hur-hur-hur that's what evil fags deserve. Um yes. Would Hughart have sliced and diced the evil mandarin's female lover and fed her to him in a ragout? I very much doubt it. Who thinks this kind of thing acceptable? Lots of people, evidently, because I've never heard it as a criticism of Eight Skilled Gentlemen.

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I think he might have done it to a female character, yes. After all, in the first book he did drop one female character (Fainting Maid, was it?) down a well and hack eight or nine others to pieces with an axe, including the Ancestress. I got the impression it was more the whole cooking sequence he wanted to use, and the actual victim was fairly inconsequential to that.

It's unfortunate to say that the scene left a bad taste in my mouth, but, well, it left a bad taste in my mouth. ^^;;

Reasonable enough.