annathepiper | Books read lately (Reply)

It took me a second try to actually make it all the way through Karen Harper's The Poyson Garden. This was not, I think, because the book was inherently bad--but rather, it struck me the first time I tried it as too much 'nobody in this cast of characters is interesting besides Elizabeth'. And let's face it, if you're telling a story about Queen Elizabeth I, whether or not she's actually queen yet, it's hard to come up with a cast of characters that can hold a candle to her. I was particularly rolling my eyes at a secondary character who looks so amazingly like Elizabeth that they can be mistaken for sisters, and of course this chick's got amnesia, too, so she doesn't know her own past. So of COURSE there's a side mystery involved with her.

However, the second time I tried to tackle the book, it went better. The bits and pieces of the actual mystery fell together more solidly, and that carried me through the middle part of the book to the latter better parts where Elizabeth and her royal Scooby Gang are actually going about figuring out who's trying to kill her.

So overall, not a bad book, though it didn't really engage me enough to make me go buy the second one. Ah well. It's a shame, I do like Elizabeth as a character. But I'll probably have more fun renting the movie where Cate Blanchett plays her, and re-watching that.

Since I've gotten all captivated by the shiny new Battlestar Galactica remake on the Skiffy Channel, I got the urge to re-read

solarbird's old copy of the first novelization that got released with the original series, ages and ages ago. I did it for nostalgia, and also out of a sense of curiosity about the various differences between the culture depicted in the old series vs. the one depicted in the new.

Mostly, the interesting part about re-reading this book was being reminded that it was clearly based on an earlier version of the script than the one that actually got aired on TV--because in this book, the Cylons were actually organic creatures wearing armor, rather than Big Shiny Evil Robots. There are several scenes from the point of view of the Cylons' Imperious Leader, which are vaguely cool as they provide a bit of insight into the way the Cylon culture is supposed to be working in this version of the story, and why they have it in for humanity so much. The book's also got the beheading of Baltar by said Imperious Leader, which in the context of that version of the story makes loads more sense--since as I look back on it, letting Baltar go and have his own base star to chase after the Galactica really doesn't make much sense from the Cylon perspective. ;) And why the heck did Baltar have it for his own people so much, anyway?

This underscores the whole point of making the new series--to redo the story in a more complex, realistic fashion. The story in this novel is certainly simplistic, and mostly all about 'humans good, Cylons bad' (though the scenes from the Imperious Leader's POV offset that just a tad).

What else... it was amusing to me, as someone who watched the original series, to see Athena and Cassiopeia described with each other's hair colors. That this is mostly what you notice about these two characters in the story is an indicator of exactly how little actual plot function they serve. Here, as on the actual TV show, they're mostly there to just be love interests for Starbuck. Yawn.

What I liked... little bits between the chapters that were supposed to be coming out of Adama's private journals, which helped develop him as a character better. The small hints of a more diverse culture in the Colonies than we've seen in the new series, which is one of the few things I miss from the old: we see references to differing religious beliefs and differing languages, for instance.

All in all, though, the writing was very bland--you could very much tell it was just a 'make a novel out of the script' kind of job. Aside from the scenes with the Imperious Leader and Adama's journal bits, not much to get out of the book that you wouldn't get out of watching the actual episodes.

But it was a fun thing to read while in the bath. ^_^

As mentioned in a previous journal entry, I'd also been working on reading Hannah March's The Devil's Highway. I did finish it off, and I'm feeling kind of ambivalent about it.

I like the era she's writing about. I liked her setting. I really liked her main character, Robert Fairfax--but this is based only on very fleeting impressions of him, as he is practically overwhelmed by the plot going on around him. Only in a couple of scenes where he meets a young woman to whom he is quite attracted does he start to stand out as a person, and between those scenes and tantalizing hints about a troubled background, I see enough there to get the idea that I like this guy. But unfortunately there's only those scattered, fleeting impressions. I did also like the plot, and I liked Ms. March's characterization in general across the cast.

But the misprints drove me batty. I caught at least a dozen--maybe more. And there were enough of them that it yanked me out of the story every time I found one.

I doubt I will be buying the next in the series. Oh well!