Reading Wednesday

[chomiji]

Driveby: I'm having a tiring week, and need to go to bed ASAP.

I finished The Calculating Stars, and it ends well enough for me to look forward to reading the sequel, The Fated Sky. It was also pubished in 2018, so I'm not sure what the rules are re Hugo Award.

I'm now reading Circe, by Madeline Miller. People seem to be excited by this book, including recommending it for Hugo nominations. I am about 70% of the way through, and it is grim, sad, grim. Man, the Titans are disgusting, and the gods are nasty. A seemingly "you are there" inside Circe's head re-telling does not help these facts. I'm also not sure I want to call it fantasy. It's well written, though?

Comments

[sovay]

I am about 70% of the way through, and it is grim, sad, grim. Man, the Titans are disgusting, and the gods are nasty.

I think I will give this a pass, then.

I'm also not sure I want to call it fantasy.

Even with Titans and Olympians?

[chomiji]

So, somehow mythology things seem to me to be a different sort of item than fantasy. I have no solid basis for this, I realize. It has something to do with the tone. Some fantasy works have a mythological feel to them: A Wizard of Earthsea is close, for example.

I find myself wondering whether Miller will pull out some kind of a different, more interesting ending. So far, she's hewing pretty close to the actual myths, although she's made more ordinary reasons for some of the things that happen.

I can't really call the following a spoiler, because you can find it on any good mythology site or in any good mythology encyclopedia. But it does talk about aspects of the story that not everyone knows (I didn't know the end of the story myself, until I checked online).

I've noticed that in some books, most of the first part is a set-up for the smaller tale that the author actually wanted to tell. I'm sympathetic to this, because I've had it happen with fanfiction: I'll envision some scene first, and then I have to make a story to contain it. In this case, I thought the real story was Circe's time with Odysseus, but now I'm wondering if this melancholy part I'm in now, near the end, was the real story: what happens after Telegonus goes to meet his father Odysseus and inadvertently kills him.

[sovay]

In this case, I thought the real story was Circe's time with Odysseus, but now I'm wondering if this melancholy part I'm in now, near the end, was the real story: what happens after Telegonus goes to meet his father Odysseus and inadvertently kills him.

It's true I can't think of a lot of contemporary treatments of the Telegony and that's neat. It does sound a little like the author got the ratio wrong, though, if you had to slog through an entire novel first.