April SF/F Book Study

I just wanted to say this book is not for me but I do hope you'll post another book next month and I can try again.

It's just... not for me. Couldn't get past the first five pages.

I was gonna try to get in on this but reading the comments I'm not so sure its for me. Particularly since I'm so impatient with my fiction lately.

This has been on my TBR pile for . . . a very long time and I'm glad I'm finally reading it! I'm a few chapters in right now. Thoughts so far:

* I love, love, love Valentine's prose. I haven't really noticed the lack of a plot yet because I just like reading her writing.

* Coincidentally, I'm also reading The Night Circus this month, and Mechanique reminded me of it very strongly -- all the POV switching surrounding a surreal circus. This isn't a bad thing, as I'm loving The Night Circus.

* I really like all the post-apocalyptic hints being dropped in so far. It makes for a fascinating backdrop.

* I also love most of her character descriptions -- she makes all the performers very different, with descriptions that often worm their way into my brain. The exception so far is Elena; I don't feel like we've SEEN her do anything awful thus far, so I feel bad whenever I see the narrative dumping on her (possibly she's suffering from a case of tell-instead-of-show -- I'd rather make my own judgments about her meanness than be told she's a bitch (and I also hate the word "bitch" unless it's being used by a villain because I've sensitized myself to gendered slurs, but that's neither here nor there)).

* The steampunk aspects feel very personal and gritty and real, which I dig.

* One thing that bugs me so far is . . . a little weird, and I don't think it's Valentine's fault. I train in circus, recreationally but obsessively (and most of my teachers are ex-pros), and every so often there's a tiny little line that hitches in my brain and doesn't feel quite right. It's possible part of the reason is that I have very very specific pictures of the apparatuses and rigging and the way acts generally go in my head already, so if she's talking about something slightly different that I've never encountered I have that moment of, "But I've never seen a trapeze rigged like that!" Heh. Some of the comments made by the characters and the narration feel off as well, things that don't feel quite right or that I've never heard circus people say or do with regard to their skills/acts. I wish I'd been a beta reader for her because conversely, there are also a lot of little things the characters could comment on that would sound very very circus (and if she had some of those little details in here I would love this book so much I would want it to have my children).

* I love the diversity among her characters, but one thing that made me blink is that circus men, in my experience (present-day America, but still), are skewed very very very gay as a demographic. To the point where the atmosphere is somewhat homonormative (which I rather like but that's another discussion); the default assumption about men you meet in circus tends to be that they're gay, which is kind of a nice reversal. (More of the ground guys are straight, but the aerialists? Nope. I think . . . at my school, I can't think of a single male aerial instructor who's straight, and I can only think of 3 straight men who train seriously in aerial. The pros have said that on tour they used to call straight circus men "unicorns.") Valentine has some great diversity, and I love Ayar and Jonah, but it's a little funny to me that it's her two guys kind of off the street who are gay instead of the skilled performers or that their relationship would feel so hush-hush, because that's a much straighter circus than I'm used to!

Sai said:

I agree with you for the most part, though she does do something pretty awful to Bird that they talk about early on in the book (SPOILER: she drops Bird while they are practicing on the trapeze). But I also thought Elena was one of the strongest characters in the book, not just in how well she was defined but that she is probably the toughest person in the circus after boss, and this is a circus populated by ex-soldiers.

Click to expand...

Well, I'm about halfway through now and I'm still loving Elena. In fact, I think she might be my favorite character.

I'm . . . honestly starting to doubt whether the narrative actually wants us to dislike her. Little George is always putting her down and calling her a bitch and saying how mean she is, but from everything we see of her -- yes, she's a little prickly, but we see her try to catch Alec (which almost causes her to fall herself!) and give Ying her coat and protect her trapeze girls like a tigress, and I don't know, I just really like her.

Even when she drops Bird -- Little George says it wasn't an accident, but so far that hasn't been confirmed by the narrative, by Elena, or by Bird, so I'm not sure if I believe him. And even if she did drop her on purpose, I feel like there's been some implication that she might've had Reasons (maybe not good ones, but from what I've seen of her character, it doesn't seem like she would've done it out of spite).

Who knows, maybe something will happen to make me dislike her, but if so I'll be very disappointed!

That's really cool that you have circus experience (maybe you should write a surreal, magical circus novel with shifting points of view and then it could be part of a trilogy with Mechanique and The Night Circus ).

Click to expand...

I actually really, really want to write a spec fic short story involving circus someday. I just need to figure out what . . .

There's a circus school in my city, and I've always wanted to go to one of their drop-in classes and learn to juggle.

Click to expand...

You should! Juggling is also a pretty easy thing to start learning on your own -- you can get one of the Klutz books or something. Once you start learning tricks though it's great to have other people so you can trade tricks and do steals and stuff. (I'm not a very good juggler, btw -- it's one of those things I always mean to practice more & am lazy about. )

Back on topic: Still loving Mechanique. I'm a little worried (from spoilers I've heard) that there's not going to be a satisfactory explanation of why the wings are THE WINGS, though, if that makes sense. I feel like the text is building them up like crazy, and I'm going to be a little disappointed if I don't get an emotional payout as to why . . .