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King of the Cats involves Jaeger’s own people, the Ascians, with whom he has a very difficult relationship due to being both a Finder and a Sin-Eater, which in terms of respectability is the equivalent of being both an oncologist and a crack dealer, and the Nyima, who are bipedal lionesses; how they reproduce and exactly what their relationship is with what appear to be nonsentient regular lions is mysterious at the start (it's more complicated than "the lions are male and they fuck.") Both societies are involved in complicated negotiations at Munkytown, which is a satire of Disneyland.
I am not big on satires of Disneyland as it’s such an easy target and is essentially its own satire, and this book didn’t change my mind. The lion people were fascinating if you read the footnotes and almost completely incomprehensible if you didn’t. The negotiations were also pretty incomprehensible unless you read the footnotes, but only mildly interesting if you did. Great art, though. Also a hilarious bit where Jaeger deals with being chased by a mob by stripping, then fleeing when all the parents cover their children’s eyes.
Mystery Date features Jaeger only in brief cameo in which he has an unflattering moustache. The heroine is Vary Krishna, a student at both the university and of sex work, which in her case is a reasonably respectable and safe profession. She has massive crushes on two of her anthropology professors, one of whom is a sweet and lonely dinosaur-like being (a laeske), and one of whom is an extremely mysterious and cranky human man with prosthetic legs designed for a laeske who really does not appreciate his students making passes at him – yes, even if they’re as adorable and sexy as Vary. (Vary is extremely adorable and sexy.)
Vary’s story is partly about the experience of being a student crushing on an unavailable professor, partly about growing up, partly about culture clashes (she comes from an extremely rural background and the city is very foreign to her), and partly about the difficulty and rewards of relationships in general, in which there’s always culture clashes going on at an individual level even if there isn’t at a literal culture level. It’s funny and sweet. Also, her roomate is a humanoid Pomeranian in bondage gear.
Of all the Finder books I’ve read yet, King of the Cats has the most crucial plot information buried in the footnotes and not intelligible by just reading the story, while Mystery Date is almost entirely straightforward in terms of being able to get what you actually need to know just from reading the book. The only really important stuff in Mystery Date that’s hidden in footnotes are the solutions to some of the mysteries surrounding the professor, such as why his prosthetic legs weren’t designed for humans and why he wears a blindfold; the answers make perfect sense, but are much more mundane than I had imagined. That may well be the point as a lot of the story has to do with outsider/insider perspective, exotification vs. reality, etc.
In King of the Cats there’s elaborate and satisfying explanations of what’s going on in the plot in the footnotes, but for me, without the footnotes, the plot was basically “There’s a parody of Disneyland and Jaeger’s caught between two tribes. The lion people choose their new king somehow (how does that work???) (are we supposed to know who he is????) and the Ascian chief is trying to make peace with them and somehow this happens (maybe ???) (why???) (Is this good or bad for the Ascians???) (What did Jaeger have to do with it, if anything???)”
Apparently I mixed up the order a bit while reading; Dream Sequence comes in between these two books. I'll read that next. I suspect that this particular reading order flub is not crucial. The first collection has Sin-Eater, King of the Cats, and Talisman. The second has Dream Sequence, Mystery Date, The Rescuers, and Five Crazy Women. I bought the latter as at $8.95, it was a lot cheaper than buying three more individual volumes even though I already had Mystery Date.
Finder Library Volume 1
Finder : Sin-Eater, vol. 2
I am not big on satires of Disneyland as it’s such an easy target and is essentially its own satire, and this book didn’t change my mind. The lion people were fascinating if you read the footnotes and almost completely incomprehensible if you didn’t. The negotiations were also pretty incomprehensible unless you read the footnotes, but only mildly interesting if you did. Great art, though. Also a hilarious bit where Jaeger deals with being chased by a mob by stripping, then fleeing when all the parents cover their children’s eyes.
Mystery Date features Jaeger only in brief cameo in which he has an unflattering moustache. The heroine is Vary Krishna, a student at both the university and of sex work, which in her case is a reasonably respectable and safe profession. She has massive crushes on two of her anthropology professors, one of whom is a sweet and lonely dinosaur-like being (a laeske), and one of whom is an extremely mysterious and cranky human man with prosthetic legs designed for a laeske who really does not appreciate his students making passes at him – yes, even if they’re as adorable and sexy as Vary. (Vary is extremely adorable and sexy.)
Vary’s story is partly about the experience of being a student crushing on an unavailable professor, partly about growing up, partly about culture clashes (she comes from an extremely rural background and the city is very foreign to her), and partly about the difficulty and rewards of relationships in general, in which there’s always culture clashes going on at an individual level even if there isn’t at a literal culture level. It’s funny and sweet. Also, her roomate is a humanoid Pomeranian in bondage gear.
Of all the Finder books I’ve read yet, King of the Cats has the most crucial plot information buried in the footnotes and not intelligible by just reading the story, while Mystery Date is almost entirely straightforward in terms of being able to get what you actually need to know just from reading the book. The only really important stuff in Mystery Date that’s hidden in footnotes are the solutions to some of the mysteries surrounding the professor, such as why his prosthetic legs weren’t designed for humans and why he wears a blindfold; the answers make perfect sense, but are much more mundane than I had imagined. That may well be the point as a lot of the story has to do with outsider/insider perspective, exotification vs. reality, etc.
In King of the Cats there’s elaborate and satisfying explanations of what’s going on in the plot in the footnotes, but for me, without the footnotes, the plot was basically “There’s a parody of Disneyland and Jaeger’s caught between two tribes. The lion people choose their new king somehow (how does that work???) (are we supposed to know who he is????) and the Ascian chief is trying to make peace with them and somehow this happens (maybe ???) (why???) (Is this good or bad for the Ascians???) (What did Jaeger have to do with it, if anything???)”
Apparently I mixed up the order a bit while reading; Dream Sequence comes in between these two books. I'll read that next. I suspect that this particular reading order flub is not crucial. The first collection has Sin-Eater, King of the Cats, and Talisman. The second has Dream Sequence, Mystery Date, The Rescuers, and Five Crazy Women. I bought the latter as at $8.95, it was a lot cheaper than buying three more individual volumes even though I already had Mystery Date.
Finder Library Volume 1
Finder : Sin-Eater, vol. 2
