Sixth Post!
Nov. 5th, 2022 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hoisinsauce posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
secretfanspace"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)
*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)
Re: Books - The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud)
Date: 2023-01-21 12:00 am (UTC)Re: Books - The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud)
Date: 2023-01-23 09:06 pm (UTC)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.