I haz Sapphique!
Sep. 5th, 2008 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sheenaghpughThe sequel to Catherine Fisher's Incarceron, which was The Times children's book of the year, landed on my doormat this week.
And if anything, I think it's better than Incarceron. The theme of both is really unusual for a children's book: the way we interpret (and misinterpret) the world we live in. In the Realm, outside, extreme modern technology is used to create the illusion of a pre-tech age of imagined arcadian bliss (for the rich), complete with picturesque hovels whose impoverished inhabitants are forbidden to glass the windows because it isn't compatible with the era they are meant not to have moved on from. Jared, near the end, muses on age and decay, generally the last remaining taboo in this genre: ".. a staircase he had climbed every day for years had become a treacherous obstacle, a deathtrap. This was how time transformed things, how your body betrayed you. This was what the Realm had tried to forget, in its deliberate elegant amnesia". In Incarceron, the vast (or tiny, depending whether you are inside or outside) prison, Rix the magician's act depends on allowing people to persuade themselves things are true:
"So it wasn't the real Glove? [...] But it burned him?"
"Well, he was right about the acid. As for not being able to take it off, he was perfectly able to. But I made him believe he could not. That is magic, Attia. To take a man's mind and twist it to believe the impossible".
It was great to find Keiro still alive at the end, and with Finn, though it does mean I shall have to restrain my rampaging desire to slash the pair of them. Damned hard, since the imminent marriage of Finn and Claudia at the end seems to be purely dynastic and certainly not based on any feelings for each other; if you ask me, Claudia is still stuck on Jared and Finn's only real emotional ties are with Keiro.
In short, I really think there's another book in this, though Catherine may not; she tends to want to move on to new ideas. Apart from anything else, she introduced an unhappy dancing bear early on and then didn't do anything about freeing him. I have already complained about this and demanded a third volume....
EDIT: she's since written saying she probably won't do another in the series, because - and I never knew this - there is a law of diminishing returns; if you write a trilogy, the first sells better than the second and the third less well than either. Well, I never.
In short, a brilliant book which raises all sorts of fascinating questions this genre often doesn't. Now watch the Grauniad's review pages ignore it because it's fantasy. I don't think they have ever given her a review, despite the fact that she has been shortlisted for the Whitbread and Carnegie, translated into about 20 languages and both the Times and Telegraph regularly rave about her. Mole-eyed fools, the Guardianistas.
And if anything, I think it's better than Incarceron. The theme of both is really unusual for a children's book: the way we interpret (and misinterpret) the world we live in. In the Realm, outside, extreme modern technology is used to create the illusion of a pre-tech age of imagined arcadian bliss (for the rich), complete with picturesque hovels whose impoverished inhabitants are forbidden to glass the windows because it isn't compatible with the era they are meant not to have moved on from. Jared, near the end, muses on age and decay, generally the last remaining taboo in this genre: ".. a staircase he had climbed every day for years had become a treacherous obstacle, a deathtrap. This was how time transformed things, how your body betrayed you. This was what the Realm had tried to forget, in its deliberate elegant amnesia". In Incarceron, the vast (or tiny, depending whether you are inside or outside) prison, Rix the magician's act depends on allowing people to persuade themselves things are true:
"So it wasn't the real Glove? [...] But it burned him?"
"Well, he was right about the acid. As for not being able to take it off, he was perfectly able to. But I made him believe he could not. That is magic, Attia. To take a man's mind and twist it to believe the impossible".
It was great to find Keiro still alive at the end, and with Finn, though it does mean I shall have to restrain my rampaging desire to slash the pair of them. Damned hard, since the imminent marriage of Finn and Claudia at the end seems to be purely dynastic and certainly not based on any feelings for each other; if you ask me, Claudia is still stuck on Jared and Finn's only real emotional ties are with Keiro.
In short, I really think there's another book in this, though Catherine may not; she tends to want to move on to new ideas. Apart from anything else, she introduced an unhappy dancing bear early on and then didn't do anything about freeing him. I have already complained about this and demanded a third volume....
EDIT: she's since written saying she probably won't do another in the series, because - and I never knew this - there is a law of diminishing returns; if you write a trilogy, the first sells better than the second and the third less well than either. Well, I never.
In short, a brilliant book which raises all sorts of fascinating questions this genre often doesn't. Now watch the Grauniad's review pages ignore it because it's fantasy. I don't think they have ever given her a review, despite the fact that she has been shortlisted for the Whitbread and Carnegie, translated into about 20 languages and both the Times and Telegraph regularly rave about her. Mole-eyed fools, the Guardianistas.
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Date: 2008-11-14 11:09 pm (UTC)I just read SAPPHIQUE today (had to order it from the UK since there seems to be no North American distributor -- how monstrously wrong is that?), and if I were rabidly shipping Jared/Claudia in the first book, I was even more so after reading the second. I swear it actually hurts that she didn't resolve the emotional cliffhanger she left me there.
As for Finn/Keiro, I can see where that would come from (and I don't wear slash-tinted goggles by any means), though I thought she was working up to something with Keiro/Attia. Although Attia still seems to carry a torch for Finn, so maybe this would work out to one of those incredibly rare things in literature, a genuine romantic triangle (as opposed to a mere angle where two guys with no connection to each other are interested in the same woman, or two unconnected women in the same man).
Aaaaaaand I have just reduced an incredibly complex and thought-provoking fantasy work to a discussion of shipping. *facepalm*
Er... hi? And I'm glad to have met somebody else who enjoys these books as much as I do? Though I am gutted, really gutted, to think that diminishing returns would prevent Ms. Fisher from writing a third. It's as bad as the prospect of not getting the next Telemakos book from Elizabeth E. Wein, a thought which also harrows my readerly soul...