In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 36/52

Five books last week - 14th to 20th of April.  All but one were books I'd read before.

The Hunter is a book I first read as a teenager.  Last year, I picked up all three books in the series on Audible.  They're pretty short; 5-7 hours each.  The story focuses on Jenny, who is beloved by Julian, a Shadow Man.  Something of a Norse god/demon whose people inspired myths like those of alien abductions and dark elves.  I like the fact that - spoiler - although Jenny is tempted by Julian she acknowledges that his way of pursuing her isn't healthy, and rejects the idea of a relationship with him.  Considering it's a supernatural romance - that, fyi, predates Twilight by over a decade - it's a pretty healthy take on it.  I also like that it's about a group of friends rather than just one girl.

I've described The Rosie Project as 'Sheldon Cooper woos Zooey Deschanel', which is doing the book a bit of a disservice.  Don Tillman, the hero, is implied to be autistic and is definitely non-neurotypical, though he makes it work for him and has not actually been diagnosed.  He doesn't seem to have felt the need.  Don decides he needs companionship and begins his 'wife project', meting Rosie who he quickly decides is a totally unsuitable companion.  She's not a manic-pixie dreamgirl, beyond the fact that she does shake up Don's life and what he believed he wanted.  She's a normal girl who's somewhat accepting of Don, though not magically accepting.  It's a very sweet relationship and a fun book.  I enjoyed the audiobook, which is narrated in an Australian accent.  The book's written by an Australian and set in Australia, so that makes sense.

Going Postal was another one I listened to as an audiobook.  It's part of the Discworld series and is the first to star one of the new main characters, Moist Von Lipwig.  I quite like Moist, although I will always love Granny Weatherwax and Vimes more.

Light as a Feather is another book I first read as a teenager.  It's so nineties; about a woman who sets up a weight-loss support chat room which quickly blossoms into a small company.  There are boyfriend shenanigans and mean bosses, and investors who say she's too fat to promote her own company and hire a bitchy, thin woman to pretend to be Orla for TV appearances.  The good people get their dramatic victory and the bad people get their well-deserved comeuppance, and it's all very silly and fun.

The Language of Power is the first new book I finished this week.  It's the fourth of the Steerswoman series, which has been published very, very slowly since 1992.  The Language of Power was released in 2004, so I expect to be able to read the sequel any year now.  It's such a good series; I hope she does wrap it up soon.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 10/52

Four books this week, between 14th and 21st October.

Two I've discussed already - Drawing of the Three and Misery, both by Stephen King.  Misery I'd read before, Drawing of the Three was new to me.  Both on Kindle.

Angels and Visitations was part of the Neil Gaiman humble-bundle.  Some of the stories I'd read before; Troll Bridge, for instance, is in another collection.  The final story, about angels, I'm also sure I'd read before, though I'd forgotten the details.

The first of Gaiman's work that I ever read was his share of Good Omens, when I was teenager.  It disturbed me.  I remember recognizing the maggots from the phone scene as not-Pratchett's work, and I assumed the initial portrayals of War and Death were all his too.  While sex and death do happen to the characters in Pratchett's work, they happen in a more comedic style, a style with softer edges.  Gaiman's work was visceral, more than I was used to.

I'm not sure what I read next of his.  Possibly some short stories, or one of his American Gods books; I know I read before of those before I was twenty-one, though I really can't recall in which order.

I enjoy much of Gaiman's work.  There's a pretty good venn-diagram overlap between what he likes to write and what I like to read, though it isn't quite as good a match as Pratchett or Tepper.  Some of it just doesn't work for me at all; one which stands out at the moment is Day of the Dead, his Babylon-5 script which came with the humble bundle.  Technically, I need to read it in order to take it off my unread pile.  On the other hand, it's for a show I don't watch.

When I write the dilemma out like that, the solution seems simple.  I deleted the file and removed the cover image from my 'unread pile' picture and my goodreads shelf.  If I ever get into Babylon-5 - a possibility - I'll just find the humble bundle link and re-download it.

Speaking of books I first read as a teenager, The Forbidden Game: The Hunter was one.  This week, I listened to the audiobook for the first time, which was quite a nice performance.

According to Goodreads I last read this book in 2011.  At the time, I noticed several similarities to Twilight in the series.  It's about a supernatural man in love with a mortal woman.  That's really where the resemblance ends though; while Jenny feels sympathy for Julian, and a part of her does love him, she never forgets about her relationship with Tom or changes her mind about her choice.  She knows the way Julian treats her isn't love, or the basis for a healthy relationship.

I've been thinking about this sort of thing a lot recently; the implications of characters ending up together or not in fiction.  That's because I've been writing Lavoisier (working title).  If you've been reading my updates on facebook, I suggest you stop reading this post now.

It's about a demon, Lavoisier, who's sent to make a deal with a mortal man, Hamilton Hart.  He falls in love with the man's daughter Cecily, and the negotiations go on so long that they begin a relationship.

Lavoisier is called back to hell so they can get an update on the situation.  While he's away, another demon steps in and closes the deal with Hamilton.  That deal needs to be sealed with a human sacrifice.  Lavoisier returns in time to overhear a conversation between the demon and Hamilton, which reveals that Cecily is in the process of drowning in the lake of Hart Hall.  Lavoisier tries to save her, but is unable to free her from her bindings.  She drowns.  Lavoiser kills Hamilton and burns Hart Hall to the ground.

Lavoisier then goes to the soul office of Hell, to find out where Cecily is now.  She's not in hell, because that was part of the deal that Hamilton made, that she wouldn't be sent there.  She's not in haven because she was sacrificed in a Satanic ritual.  They determine that she's been reincarnated and, some twenty years later, they find her.

Here, I need to mention a little something about how the bureau of souls works.  They don't identify souls by names but by another factor which IDs them.  They locate Cecily when Lavoiser describes the time of death.

They also do not experience linear chronology in time with the rest of creation.  They experience linear chronology internally - time moves forward - but not in the same way as everyone else.  This is because souls don't experience linear chronology; they're not moved to another body after one has died.  They're moved to another body at a random point in time.

This explains why the lives are typically around the same timeframe and location; Lavoisier isn't finding Cecily in all of her reincarnations, he's finding her in the life and body closest to him.

This is also why it takes so long to locate her; they need to search through every soul in existence to find Cecily's unique ID tag.

Anyway, they find her and Lavoisier goes to meet her, and explain what's happened, and who he is, and that they're in love.

At least once, she goes for it.  She's a teenager who finds the idea romantic.  Lots of times, she doesn't.  In one life he's a gay man, which disturbs Lavoisier who has always thought of himself as masculine and heterosexuality as normal, despite demons not being strictly bound to this.  This is because demons are influenced by how humanity thinks of them, and that means demons are predominantly formed by what the Catholic church thinks of them.

Which, I've just realised, is a bit of a contradiction, because I'm pretty sure the Catholic church does think of sodomy as demonic and therefore Lavoisier would also consider it totally normal.  So I can't explore the idea of a man who always thought he was straight being in love with a man unless I think of better justification.

Anyway, whether Cecily goes for it or not, every time he finds her, she dies shortly afterwards.

This is the section where the tracks get a little muddy; I know the ending, but I'm not so sure how we get there from here.

The reason Cecily dies is because Hamilton's deal specified not she wouldn't go to hell but that she would never be possessed by a demon.  The deal interprets death as the best way to get her away from Lavoisier, which is fair since it works for at least nineteen years (the quickest time he ever finds her).

That deal applies to both sacrifices, which is the other issue.  While Lavoiser knew that Hamilton was a womaniser, neither he nor Cecily realised that he had another daughter, around the same age and bearing a startling resemblance to Cecily.  Her name was Alice, and when Hamilton needed two sacrifices, he went and found her (he always knew she existed, they just weren't in regular contact).  Sacrifices are stronger when they're blood relations.

Alice drowned.  Cecily burned.  She was in another part of the mansion - which was intended to burn down anyway - and died faster when Lavoiser drew on the power of the flames to wreak destruction.

The bureau of souls didn't recognise the name 'Cecily'; they found the woman who had died at the time and in the manner Lavoisier described, the person he believed to be Cecily who was actually Alice.

Lavoisier finds a way to go back in time.  He may know some or all of this beforehand; he may not.  He might only realise when he hears Hamilton and the other demon discussing the matter.  Either way, he is able to save both of them this time.

Then we come to the choice.  Part of what I wanted to illustrate with the reincarnation sections is that he doesn't get the girl because he fulfilled a specific checklist.  He doesn't get the girl just because he wants her.  He gets the girl if she chooses him, and while he can influence that choice with his actions it isn't something guaranteed.  Maybe it would have worked better if it had actually been Cecily, or maybe who you love is purely a product of experience and personality.  I'm not sure.

Either way, Lavoisier is now in a position where he's spent centuries pursuing the wrong girl.  He had a relationship with Cecily, but he's had many quasi-relationships with Alice.  Yet the question isn't which one does he choose.  It isn't his choice.  His reward for saving them both isn't to take his pick.

At the moment, I think he'll leave the two sisters to get to know each other.  It's a little bit complicated by the fact that Cecily isn't confused; she was in a relationship with Lavoisier yesterday, as far as she's concerned, and she knows no reason for that to change today.  Then there's the fact that, in saving them both, Lavoiser isn't sure whether or not he's undone the future lives Alice might have lead; he may not have - timey-wimey ball and all.  And I may be writing about a world where there is only one soul, that eventually lives every life, though Lavoisier might not think of that, especially with the implication that that means it both really was Cecily and really wasn't any more Cecily than it was anyone else in each life that he was pursuing, if that makes sense.

Every time one of the "Cecilys" (Alices) died, Lavoiser brought their body to their lake in which "Cecily" (Alice) died, to let them sink and join the one he thought he knew.  It was like a promise to himself, a ritual that proved to him that one day she would come back to herself.

Maybe I'll end it with him gazing at that lake.