Punk Houses!

I've lived in a couple of punk houses in my time, and tho' none of them were quite as punk rock as those l the punk houses described in this New York Times article, they had their charms.

There was the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness, in which we fought a never-ending battle against giant attacking cockroaches, and there were impromptu punk rock jam sessions in the basement. There was a giant Led Zeppelin collage in the bathroom which I guess isn't very punk rock, but was very cool. Also, there were monkeys. At one point we had an infamous punk rockstar living behind a curtain in the laundry room (cheap rent)...

And then there was the All Girl House where no man was allowed to set foot, and no meat was allowed in the kitchen, and we painted Viking runes on the walls of the enclosed porch, and the giant red bathroom which I have written about earlier, and the hallway full of bikes. This house was in such a bad neighbourhood that you could only leave the house at night in groups, which was a super big drag, but the rent was cheap. It also had no heat, and so we used to sit in front of the open oven when it got really cold, which, in retrospect, was probably not so very smart. I was standing in the kitchen of the All Girl House when I heard on the news that Kurt Cobain had killed himself...

Tho' the Times article sticks only to punk houses, of course, there ain't nothing more punk rock than living in a tent. There was the time I lived with various members of the Horses of Instruction, down by the China Basin pig processing plant in a punk shebang made out of flour sacks and a leather duster that I kipped from the cloakroom of the Blue Duck. It's a hard call to say who was grubbier--the pigs or the band, and that part of the basin has a tendency to flood when it rains, so it was awfully damp. The band's drummer finally set the shebang on fire trying to make chile brownies (lesson: clean the soot out of your stove-pipe!). After that, me and the leather duster (I think it might have been an old duster of impenetrability because it didn't burn) moved to a room over the Mono Real where I was working as a pot-girl at the time. This room was small, and smelled of always as coffee, but at least it was dry and it didn't also contain a ten piece band and a praterhuman drummer that spit sewage.

Book Rant...

Are these two books I see before me...Their spines towards my hand...Come, let me clutch them--

And in clutching them, I become annoyed. Viz.:

So I have two big fat mass market paperback books in front of me. One of them is the UK paperback edition of Devices & Desires by KJ Parker (Published by Orbit). The other shall remain anonymous (because what I am about to complain about is not the author's fault) but it's published by a major US publisher. Both books are approximately the same number of pages: 700 plus.

But there the similarities end.

D&D has a nice matte cover, made of nubby parchment looking paper, mostly covered with words, with a small line drawing to illustrate. In width it's probably about 4-5 inches thick. That's pretty thick, but the paper is nice and sturdy and the spine is good, and so it's easy to open and easy to read.

The US book is also 700 pages, plus, but it's only about two inches thick. This is because the interior pages are so thin they are practically newsprint, and the spine is weak. This book may be the best fantasy novel EVER, and in fact, it was nominated for A Major Award--but I can't read it. I tried, but the paper was so flimsy that it was hard to turn, and the ink smudged. All of these annoyances kept throwing me out of the story--and finally I gave up. Which I realize is dreadfully unfair to the poor writer who had no control over any of these issues...but....

Now I understand that probably there wee some cost issues involved the choices that the US publisher made. The book retailed for 6.99 which is about average for a mass market paperback, and the cover was embossed and foiled, which I guess cost more, and which I suppose is supposed to attract readers--but then what is the point of attracting readers if the book is unreadable?

Well, maybe I'm just dainty in my desire to have non-blurry type and non-flimsy paper, and a binding that won't crack. And willing to pay a dollar or so more to get these luxuries.

Devices & Desires: Book Review

Speaking of Devices & Desires, the first volume in K.J. Parker's Engineer Trilogy--well, it's really good and I highly recommend it. Paul Witcover recommended it to me months ago; I bought off Amazon UK because it wasn't then available in the US (now there's a very stylish trade paperback out), but it sat in my Pile while I finished FLORA'S DARE.

Now FLORA'S DARE is gone from my hands and I've been making good inroads into the Pile, and Devices & Desires has been devoured, dispatched and much enjoyed. It's high fantasy, but with a twist--instead of being founded on magic, the Obligatory Evil Empire has been founded on a system of technology so arcane and complicated that it might as well be magic, tho' as far as my paltry engineering knowledge tells me, said engineering is all quite real world. There is no magic at all--no wizards, no witches, etc., just artisans, craftsmen, and--hunters. The Non Obligatory Evil Empire is very medieval in tone--or at least, idealized medieval, operating within a chivalric code that probably didn't actually exist outside of literature. At first thought, one would think that pitting these two vastly different societies--one tres gallant, the other very Big Blue, wouldn't work but it does. Very well. Very originally well. Yeah, saying a fantasy book is stunningly original is a bit of a cliche--and hardly ever actually true--but I think that in this case the claim is well made. I've not read such an unfantastic fantasy book in a long time, if possibly ever. And I mean that nicely, as a good thing. High fantasy is not my thing normally but this book--high fantasy--is just my thing.

Clearly the author knows lots about systems engineering and the art of courtly love and makes good use of the details for these two sports. Should you be worried that the characters get lost in this shuffle, no fear. There's lots of shifting points of view, usually coming back to the same five characters. And although none of these characters are instantly compelling, they all quietly grow on you until you find yourself really caring what happens to them. They have a certain modernity to their speech which should be jarring in a high fantasy book--people are told to "buzz off" for example--but somehow that isn't jarring at all. In fact, the casual language is a refreshing change from the normal high-faultin' medievally language usually found in this genre.

In fact, I would say that about the series as a whole--it is deceptively quiet--at first it feels as though maybe not much is happening action-wise and that there's too much introspection and exposition on mechanical matters. You don't feel bored, but you don't feel compelled either--but you keep reading and then suddenly you realize you've been totally sucked in and can't wait to find out what happens next.

I'm in the middle of Evil for Evil, volume 2 of the series, and am trying to pace myself. Each book is 700 pages long--that seems like a LOT but you'd be amazed how quickly those pages fly by. I'm in danger of running out of book before I run out of travel.

Oh, and did I mention one of the most deviously evil bad guys to come along in a long long time...?