Thank you very much!

[rachelmanija]

Thank you very much to everyone who sent me birthday wishes!

If you are so inclined, a lovely gift would be a review, long or just a few lines, of a book or some other thing (a manga! a burger!), whether wonderful or interesting or hilariously bad, on your own LJ/DW or in comments. One of my best birthday gifts ever was the year two people independently decided that the perfect gift would be a review of Crazy Beautiful. And, folks: late is okay!

Comments

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

Since you already read the book I reviewed, have some brief reviews of some of Marta Randall's oeuvre:

• Islands was first published in 1976 (and was her first novel), but I read the revised edition from 1980. This takes place on a future Earth some time after an immortality treatment is discovered. The protagonist is the only person on whom the treatment doesn't work; she has excellent medical care but is doomed to die, and in the meantime she's the only person who ages.
  
  This reminded me strongly of a lot of Robert Silverberg's work of roughly the same period: the immortals and their social life could have come from any of a number of his stories. So reading this is something like reading a 1970s Silverberg novel with a female protagonist, which is interesting. (The protagonist is also a nicer person than many Silverberg protagonists of the period.)
  
  This is more of a character study than a plotty book, and what plot there is, at the end, felt rather forced. I still found it of interest as a period piece if nothing else. The main reason I can think of for avoiding it is if one is likely to be triggered by the descriptions of how the immortals deal with people with disabilities, which in a nutshell is very badly.
  


• A City in the North (Randall's second novel) takes place on a planet with a native sentient species and a small human corporate settlement. The protagonists are a somewhat-estranged wealthy couple visiting the planet; the male half is obsessed with the titular city, which seems far beyond the technological level (or interest) of the native species, and which normally can't be visited.
  
  Much of the book goes in the familiar patterns of anthropological SF of the period, but it ends up going in a direction which I thought was unusual and avoided many of the typical pitfalls of said period works. Overall, better than Islands, and less Silverbergian, although I think it makes an interesting companion piece to his Downward to the Earth.
  


• Journey and Dangerous Games are a two-book sequence modeled on the mainstream "family sagas" which were popular at the time. (One volume has a blurb from John Jakes, who wrote a number of them.) These are science fiction, focusing on a human family (the Kennerins) which buys a planet from the loosely-regulated Federation only to find it has a native sentient species. Since the adults in the family are decent people and the native species is fairly easygoing, they accommodate to each other without much difficulty, although complications ensue when the Kennerins rescue a bunch of people from a refugee camp in a nearby system which is about to go nova.
  
  The rescue happens quite early on, and the rest of the books is about how the societies grow, interact, and avoid getting taken over (militarily or economically) by outside forces, with a heavy (but not exclusive) focus on the Kennerins. These are fairly lengthy books (unlike Randall's first two), so there is plenty of room for subplots involving other characters. There's also a lot of room for domesticity - many scenes take place while preparing or eating dinner, which gives the books a different feel than a lot of SF.
  
  The main issue with the first volume (aside from general issues discussed below) is that one may frequently think to oneself "Gee, these characters are getting out of these bad situations awfully easily," and at one point one will think to oneself (particularly if one is Rachel) "That is an entirely inappropriate way to handle the situation! At the very least X needs extensive therapy!" However, Randall does know what she's doing, and these issues are addressed in the second volume. The first one is addressed in large part through the introduction of a new character, a woman from a planet of genetically-modified humans who is extremely competent and has little patience with the Kennerin approach to things.
  
  These volumes are technically a prequel to A City in the North but take place long before it, so there's very little connection between them.
  

Continued on next rock...

[tool-of-satan.livejournal.com]

I exceeded the maximum comment length. Here's the tail of that comment:

Overall I enjoyed reading these, and I will read her fantasy novel The Sword of Winter Real Soon Now. (She has also published a novel set in a dystopian Southern California, a mystery novel, and some short fiction.) However, they have dated to some extent. Randall has many good female characters, which is not in itself a dated aspect, but is less unusual now than it was 30-35 years ago. It's still not usual enough, of course, but these books probably seemed a lot more interesting in that area back when they were published.

Randall also has quite a few non-white characters - for example, hardly any of the Kennerins are white. However, since all the characters exist in entirely constructed contexts, the only way you can tell is by their physical descriptions. (Said descriptions sometimes don't read very well. This is also true of the Jewish character.) Again, 30-35 years ago just having major characters described as non-white was unusual. These days, there still aren't nearly enough such characters, but readers rightly expect more from writers than is provided here. That being said, if you can ignore the occasional bad word choice Randall is certainly not offensive in this area, just dated.

She is also somewhat dated in her handling of LBGTQ issues, which is really limited to LBG in these books (and mostly B). There are some scenes where it's described positively (or at least non-negatively), but there are others where there are negative connotations (and one which is definitely exploitative and therefore negative). I would again put this down to the period, and note that the negative bits are very short.