Monday, July 7, 2008
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Robin Hobb
Am now almost halfway through Renegade's Magic by Robin Hobb. Oh the bliss and agony because this means I've read everything by her so far and there's nothing new coming out any time soon.
I like reading (especially fantasy) in English, it just seems the proper language for it. Usually I swallow books: a day or three and I'm done. But with Hobb... Reading Hobb is like reading Dostoyevski: it's heavy and dispiriting but you just CAN'T put it away and keep it away. The characters get so much crap heaped on them that you think: surely, this kind of injustice cannot keep up? And it then it gets worse.
There's nothing better for the soul than wallowing (in other people's) misery. I suppose this is also why I like Battlestar Galactica so much. The ideas that reflect reality so precisely that were it not SF, there would be a serious chance for it to be banned from air. Suicide bombers among the Good Guys, moral and ethical bogmires around Monotheism and religious zeal, seriously flawed characters that you ju can't help but cheer on (Starbuck!) and characters that start out as good but keep sliding and spiralling down the sippery slope of Good Intentions (Roslin) versus characters that start out thoroughly evil but little by little become... almost good (the Sixes). And somewhere along the way you realize that it's the suffering that defines humanity. Without feeling you are not really human. Even if you are. Which is why I'm always puzzled at people with little empathy: don't they realize how much they hurt other people by not feeling? But that is another story and I was writing about Hobb.
In this latest trilogy by Hobb, her focus is different - it is a whole new world, after all. The obsession with body image and what it can do to a person's mind is a very intresting point for me. As well as the confrontation of "progress" and "tradition"... Although, maybe it should be Civilization very similar to the Western world about a hundred years ago and a culture much older and closer to nature. Not primitive, although that is how it is shown from the "Civilized" point of view, much the same as native cultures were a hundred years ago here. We only realized our error when it was all inescapably ruined or corrupted. So this is a study on what it might have been like if one of the native cultures had had real magic. Strong, throbbing and alive.
I don't know yet how the story ends. Is "progress" really inevitable? Change is, undoubtedly. But change is not always for the better. And change in one area always triggers change in another area. This is something that Hobb understands so well.
I like reading (especially fantasy) in English, it just seems the proper language for it. Usually I swallow books: a day or three and I'm done. But with Hobb... Reading Hobb is like reading Dostoyevski: it's heavy and dispiriting but you just CAN'T put it away and keep it away. The characters get so much crap heaped on them that you think: surely, this kind of injustice cannot keep up? And it then it gets worse.
There's nothing better for the soul than wallowing (in other people's) misery. I suppose this is also why I like Battlestar Galactica so much. The ideas that reflect reality so precisely that were it not SF, there would be a serious chance for it to be banned from air. Suicide bombers among the Good Guys, moral and ethical bogmires around Monotheism and religious zeal, seriously flawed characters that you ju can't help but cheer on (Starbuck!) and characters that start out as good but keep sliding and spiralling down the sippery slope of Good Intentions (Roslin) versus characters that start out thoroughly evil but little by little become... almost good (the Sixes). And somewhere along the way you realize that it's the suffering that defines humanity. Without feeling you are not really human. Even if you are. Which is why I'm always puzzled at people with little empathy: don't they realize how much they hurt other people by not feeling? But that is another story and I was writing about Hobb.
In this latest trilogy by Hobb, her focus is different - it is a whole new world, after all. The obsession with body image and what it can do to a person's mind is a very intresting point for me. As well as the confrontation of "progress" and "tradition"... Although, maybe it should be Civilization very similar to the Western world about a hundred years ago and a culture much older and closer to nature. Not primitive, although that is how it is shown from the "Civilized" point of view, much the same as native cultures were a hundred years ago here. We only realized our error when it was all inescapably ruined or corrupted. So this is a study on what it might have been like if one of the native cultures had had real magic. Strong, throbbing and alive.
I don't know yet how the story ends. Is "progress" really inevitable? Change is, undoubtedly. But change is not always for the better. And change in one area always triggers change in another area. This is something that Hobb understands so well.
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