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"The thing about illegally breeding fire-breathing possums is that you gotta keep a bucket of water handy."

*Those fools! Fire-breathing possums are greasy; water will only feed the flames! Oh, if only I could tell them of my empire...*

(Context: https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/1839.html?thread=2678831#cmt2678831)

Talk fandom! Making things! Reading, writing, drawing, whatever! Miscellaneous life chatter! Meme's happy to see you again!

(start a comment thread by replying to this post)

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From: (Anonymous)

Need to get the disappointing taste of the scholomance out of my mouth, so whatever, I'm rereading this. Let's see how it goes! Haven't read it in years so maybe I'll hate it now. But I remember it being very funny and sad, and I enjoyed the politics at the time.

From: (Anonymous)

I remember loving this book series as a kid. Hope it holds up well on a re-read.

From: (Anonymous)

Ayrt

I'm also curious about the 4th one. I can't remember if I read and didn't like, or if I never read it because it was already perfect as a trilogy. Suspect it was bad like the 4th Artemis Fowl was bad and I erased it from my memory.

From: (Anonymous)

I vaguely remember reading it. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good enough to really stick in my memory. Felt kind of fanfiction-like, in that it was nice to see more of the characters but it didn't really have a strong connection to the main trilogy.

This suddenly reminded me that I never read the fourth and fifth books of Garth Nix's Old Kingdom trilogy. Not sure if worth since the trilogy ended very well.

From: (Anonymous)

Right after I wrote this I realized there is also a sixth book. That's a lot of books to be disappointed in.

From: (Anonymous)

Haha, wow, I didn't know either! I did read Clariel, and I liked a lot about it, even though I felt it didn't work overall, there were some cool ideas. (Misc: it's inextricably linked in my mind with So Much For That (Lionel Shriver) because I was reading both around the same time, and both main characters worked metal.)

Didn't know there were another two! I enjoyed the trilogy overall but I didn't like Sabriel, so for me it's a two-book trilogy plus The Creature In The Case (I loved that!). xD I'm not super attached to the Old Kingdom series so I guess I might seek out books 5 and 6 sometime.

From: (Anonymous)

SA

Anyway Clariel is a prequel so it doesn't really fuck with the main trilogy. Idk about the others.

From: (Anonymous)

(Also yessss I mention this series at intervals to people and nobody has ever bloody read it! Am pleased!)

From: (Anonymous)

Reread ch1. It's interesting how Barty and El have a similar narration style, yet it works so much better for Barty. I think it's because, although he's trying to be funny, I remember every other character constantly telling him he isn't. So he gets away with more bad jokes. El has no counterbalancing force.

Anyway. Something that I totally missed on my original read: Barty's quite kind, even in chapter 1. There may be a whooole bunch of reasons why he's reluctant to get the amulet, but the first thing he considers out loud is Nate's safety. He's talking a big game about wanting to eat him, but I dunno. He seems more ethical than I remember. When I first read it, I remember feeling that Barty started out as completely amoral and got softer as time went on. But reading now, he seems quite gentle toward Nate until Nate threatens him, at which point he leaves in a huff.

I don't know if I should put all this in spoiler tags. It's an old series... Probably still will for the big stuff.

Already impressed and a bit envious of the author's pacing and direction.

From: (Anonymous)

Also this time the shittiness of the boast "I have spoken with Solomon" really leapt out at me. Iirc someone calls out that one later.

From: (Anonymous)

Sa

It's weird how phrases lodge in your head. Lovelace mentioned Makepeace, and I went "ah, yes, Quentin Makepeace". I remember nothing but the name, and I didn't know I'd remembered *that*. Apparently my brain filed it away as important! This also happens with minor characters from old videogames and I weird my friends out.

Okay will stop spamming with every stray thought; nobody else needs this nostalgia.

From: (Anonymous)

lol, or not; have a braindump

Kitty's in this way earlier than I remembered! (Ch7) and lolllll at "empty bluster" line pg (47)

Misc bit of sexism in chapter 4, something about women being more complicated. I remember Ptolemy's Gate being a bit weird about women, the whole Nefertiti and Akhenaten thing. I don't remember the details, I just remember finding it weird.

That Asmoral the Resolute thing is such a good foundation for fanfic. This series is criminally underrated. ;_; makes me want to write things. Does every fantasy series secretly start out as a crossover fanfic? I used to feel bad that I could only write fanfic but now I sometimes wonder if people really write anything else.

I'd forgotten that they attempted to have Nate's name forgotten. I'd remembered that Matha revealed it, but not that it was supposed to be hidden from her, too! Nate's more sensitive at this point than I remember. Name reveal still tense!

Nice reading with more knowledge of mythology than I had then-- Loew's Nominative Almanac-- presumably Rabbi Loew. Already had 2 golem references. And Gladstone! I know more about him now than I did as a kid, so am getting more of the subtext. And hah, with that statue they represented him like Zeus! The ego lmao. Made so much better by reading Russell's recollections of Gladstone. Yeah, there's a lot that went over my head. Really looking forward to this aspect.

I remember Lutyens being nice to him but her bitterness comes through earlier on a reread, as she's telling him to enjoy the garden. Would I have noticed if I didn't know more of the plot? I like to think so, but who knows.

This is the book that put me off professional-looking men for life lol. Lovelace still excellent villain. Still sympathise a lot with Nate (urgh, and I remember how he changes over the next couple of books...). Love how the social conditioning of magicians is described; this was the stuff missing from the depiction of the enclavers in scholomance, imo. Am pissed again at people describing scholomance as "wizards but for the first time there's social CLASS!" Did they sleepwalk through every other book they ever read? (yes. but also they don't read.)

Now I'm gonna shut up and go back to reading. I'm a little pleased that it's NOT my imagination or nostalgia; the books I loved as a kid really WERE much better. Otoh, kinda sad for Kids These Days. This is aimed at a younger audience than scholomance, but it feels much more mature, in a nice way.

From: (Anonymous)

Reading the bit about Nate hungering for revenge and presenting an outward appearance of obedience while giving no fucks, and getting the definite impression that when Stroud switched to writing fulltime he was *done* with his boss. XD

From: (Anonymous)

I like the updates! I read the books on vacation as a kid and enjoyed them but I have no real memory of them (and my copies were destroyed in a fire), so it's fun trying to piece together your reports with the barest outlines I still retain. (Nate turned into a shithead? But maybe died at the end of the trilogy? Did I remember that correctly? )

From: (Anonymous)

Yeah, as I remember it, in book 1 he's an angry ambitious kid who's treated abusively. In book 2 he's a melodramatic teen goth; I remember he has long hair and a flapping black coat that's too big for him (I felt called out at the time, but looking back Stroud must've been taking the piss out of his teen self :P). In book 3 he's full-on fascist, has a buzzcut to mimic/market the military and is quite a popular politician, devoted to quashing commoner resistance iirc and getting young men to sign up for war (with Prague, maybe?). As the book goes on he gets his conscience back and gets the best redemption arc in lit hahahaha..

From: (Anonymous)

Also I can't believe your books about djinni got destroyed in a fire! How poetic!

From: (Anonymous)

Um, lots of other things were destroyed in that fire as well. No one was hurt but it really was not a high point.

From: (Anonymous)

Well, I figured, and I am sorry it happened. Maybe we have different styles since my response to any and all my own bad experiences is to joke about them, and I read the context as casual.

From: (Anonymous)

Some things yes, this one not so much. It was so random and senseless (and a family member escaped with like 15 minutes to spare) that I don't think poetic is the word...

Anyway. I can appreciate that maybe those books enjoyed being burned (unlike everything else?)

From: (Anonymous)

Oof, glad they got out!

Barty does say he's a creature of fire and air.

From: (Anonymous)

Nate's backstory happens way later in the book than I remember. I thought Lovelace arrived at the house about 1/5 through! But am now over halfway. And yeah, Barty is fluffier than I remembered; he opts not to kill a messenger imp and he's saved a little girl. He also mentions Ptolemy being someone he loved. He also has a gentler relationship with Faquarl than I remember. Maybe that got harsher with time? But for now, they're talking politics and seem reluctant to have a wholehearted faceoff. Anyway, in general, Barty's pretty empathetic. Nate, less so; every time he panics he tries to hurt the nearest "demon", though that said I have no idea if he even knows he's inflicting pain. Not sure that would stop him, mind. But I get the impression he hasn't given much thought to *why* they obey. Martha behaves less kindly than I remember, given she goes along with Underwood's punitive nonsense, though I assume she's being controlled, too.

From: (Anonymous)

Sa

On this read I'm really struck by how fucked up their relationship is, and I worry for her. :( Though I'm not sure whether the author was consciously going for abuse or if he just wanted Underwood to read as super entitled and everyone else conditioned to go along, and I'm reading between lines that would exist irl but weren't intended in the book. But can defo read a parallel in the deferral going on, and fits with themes of the story.

From: (Anonymous)

Sa

*deference, not deferral, heh

From: (Anonymous)

Also thing that completely passed me by when I first read: the character is called Nathaniel/John and the author is called Jonathan.

From: (Anonymous)

Finished! That was fun. Various misc I like:

The construction. The foreshadowing here is really slick. Evvvvverything is shown in advance; 7 league boots are mentioned in a footnote; Chekhov's summoning horn. We see that carpets are used to cover up pentacles in Nate's study, then, hey. So also doubles as a Nate-Lovelace parallel. Anyway yeah, you can tell the author was previously an editor; it's very disciplined, well-organised, doesn't waffle around. Real breath of fresh air after reading some more recent fiction (or watching recent TV, for that matter). It's tightly plotted without feeling too flashy. There's a lot of worldbuilding woven in so neatly you don't notice. Really noticed how much more professionally that was handled than it was in scholomance. I don't mind info-dumps, but it's more impressive when it's handled more subtly, and you can layer up other things at the same time. This reminded me of how much I like well-crafted lit.

The threat to Barty (imprisonment) is both awful and compatible with having a first-person narrator. Loads of 1st person things fuck this up and destroy all tension. Whereas here it's possible for him to have lost and be telling the story. The real stakes (people actually die) help reinforce that. And I like that it's a reworking of classic genie mythology.

Magic carpets are also stain resistant. Made me lol.

Since meme's talking Representation: footnotes! I love that Barty thinks multiple things at the same time. Now that's a character I can relate to. Especially combined with the sarcasm. I also empathise with feeling like a snarky 3000 year old djinni, as it happens.

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(Anonymous) - Re: Books - The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud)

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