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Failed reading again
FFL was all about Margaret Mahy when she died, so I got The Tricksters from the library. Couldn't keep anyone straight in it, quite apart from wanting to kick certain characters very very hard. Skimmed the last twenty pages and took it back.
Turned to American Gods instead. Not what I was wanting. Norse gods in Minnesota, yes I suppose; but why Egyptian gods anywhere? Not connected to the people, not connected to the land, not even moving in with a new wave of immigrants like Aaronovitch's river gods. I see hints that Gaiman might go the same direction as Griffin, except that his genii born of the man-made culture are evidently the bad guys. And if gods stick around just because some people came to the shores two thousand years ago and left again, what happens to the gods of the people who actually stayed and why aren't there more of them? I hope I find out soon.
(Additional peeve: "This is the only country in the world... that worries about what it is." Proof that Americans, even expat Brit Americans, know nothing about Canada *at all*.)
There's also Tim Powers, whose forte, I'm told, is that he's a glorious mess, but right now The Drawing of the Dark is just messy. I blame summermind, not Powers, but still. So I plow through the last Irene Adler book in a state perfectly described by Alan Garner decades ago: "I didn't particularly want to be there but I couldn't think of anywhere else to go to."
Turned to American Gods instead. Not what I was wanting. Norse gods in Minnesota, yes I suppose; but why Egyptian gods anywhere? Not connected to the people, not connected to the land, not even moving in with a new wave of immigrants like Aaronovitch's river gods. I see hints that Gaiman might go the same direction as Griffin, except that his genii born of the man-made culture are evidently the bad guys. And if gods stick around just because some people came to the shores two thousand years ago and left again, what happens to the gods of the people who actually stayed and why aren't there more of them? I hope I find out soon.
(Additional peeve: "This is the only country in the world... that worries about what it is." Proof that Americans, even expat Brit Americans, know nothing about Canada *at all*.)
There's also Tim Powers, whose forte, I'm told, is that he's a glorious mess, but right now The Drawing of the Dark is just messy. I blame summermind, not Powers, but still. So I plow through the last Irene Adler book in a state perfectly described by Alan Garner decades ago: "I didn't particularly want to be there but I couldn't think of anywhere else to go to."
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There ... are ... appearances by Native American gods, but I was not satisfied with their role.
P.S. I haven't read beyond A Madness of Angels, have you? Would you recommend doing so? I enjoyed the worldbuilding loads, but was kind of wishing there had been more of a story hung on it. Maybe it gets better as the series goes?
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Yeah, I'm at the appearances right now. One expects more.
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IIRC, Gaiman was always fascinated by the U.S. and its culture, ever since he was a kid, and is thrilled to be living here now. I think he's very conscious of being British-born, but his devotion to the U.S. still knows no bounds. He occasionally talks about how much more freedom of the press/communications in general we have here vs. Britain (he'll bring up legal cases on both sides as examples), so I assume that's a large part of it.
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