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frasersimons
DNF, just couldn’t get into it. Lots and lots and lots of exposition and wasn’t into the setting.
Interesting world. Almost nothing is wasted in the fiction; set pieces, seemingly innocuous details, all play a part, which is always very satisfying for me. Everyone has character arcs. The fight sequences are fan-tastic.
My only gripes are personal and stylistic. The prose are economic and come off a little bit sterile sometimes and it is extremely hard for me to situate the place and time this takes in because it does much to avoid defaultism (to its credit). There is nothing really I know of to compare to and get an image of my head and the prose rarely concentrate on how cultural details look. I also just like text about food and clothing a lot, and this has some of that, mostly food, but it tends to never come back to what people look like and what articles of clothing look like.
Considering this is a fantasy world it’s hard to know what the ‘rules’ are. Is this present day but slightly bent? It doesn’t seem like anybody has smart phones but people are flying in planes and what not. So is this, like, 30-40 years ago? Again, what are people wearing then, right?the avoidance of defaultism has sort of created a bland palette where the world building that is done begs for more punctuation in this area.
Everything else felt pretty good. I dug the sort of godfather feel while clearly diverging from Godfather. Being subtle with subversion in a toxic male patriarchal environment. I really liked the villain, thought she was complex and interesting. Here for more of it.
My only gripes are personal and stylistic. The prose are economic and come off a little bit sterile sometimes and it is extremely hard for me to situate the place and time this takes in because it does much to avoid defaultism (to its credit). There is nothing really I know of to compare to and get an image of my head and the prose rarely concentrate on how cultural details look. I also just like text about food and clothing a lot, and this has some of that, mostly food, but it tends to never come back to what people look like and what articles of clothing look like.
Considering this is a fantasy world it’s hard to know what the ‘rules’ are. Is this present day but slightly bent? It doesn’t seem like anybody has smart phones but people are flying in planes and what not. So is this, like, 30-40 years ago? Again, what are people wearing then, right?the avoidance of defaultism has sort of created a bland palette where the world building that is done begs for more punctuation in this area.
Everything else felt pretty good. I dug the sort of godfather feel while clearly diverging from Godfather. Being subtle with subversion in a toxic male patriarchal environment. I really liked the villain, thought she was complex and interesting. Here for more of it.
I watched the movie and got curious about the book. Honestly, I prefer the movie. It’s far tighter, much better dialogue, and the various arcs feels less contrived and interesting to me.
In this one, the brothers dialogue is fairly cringe worthy to me; not in an intentional way. They feel like weird caricatures because the craft behind the dialogue felt like it was playing into tropes yet not quite pulling them off. The agency for some characters that are empowered in the film is not so here, they’re used as a prop for a gotcha moment that I could take-or-leave.
The boy-fire fighter relationship is much more developed in the film, and so the payoff works. In the book the dialogue is incongruous with what actually happens and so the ending actually feels quite unearned.
However, the shade of the mountain scene, I think, is particularly good and at a higher level then the other craft of the book, which feels very commercial thriller. I wouldn’t be surprised if that scene was the impetus for the book; or a really clear visual touchstone for it, if not.
I like all of the characters and the reworked events better in the movie, but because of the format you don’t get the working knowledge of the people who live in the area as much, which I think people complained about in their reviews. Can’t do toooo much about that in a tightly paced 1:45 long movie though, imo. The thing you need to nail is character, and the movie feels like the best served version of that. Which is wild! How often does that happen?
In this one, the brothers dialogue is fairly cringe worthy to me; not in an intentional way. They feel like weird caricatures because the craft behind the dialogue felt like it was playing into tropes yet not quite pulling them off. The agency for some characters that are empowered in the film is not so here, they’re used as a prop for a gotcha moment that I could take-or-leave.
The boy-fire fighter relationship is much more developed in the film, and so the payoff works. In the book the dialogue is incongruous with what actually happens and so the ending actually feels quite unearned.
However, the shade of the mountain scene, I think, is particularly good and at a higher level then the other craft of the book, which feels very commercial thriller. I wouldn’t be surprised if that scene was the impetus for the book; or a really clear visual touchstone for it, if not.
I like all of the characters and the reworked events better in the movie, but because of the format you don’t get the working knowledge of the people who live in the area as much, which I think people complained about in their reviews. Can’t do toooo much about that in a tightly paced 1:45 long movie though, imo. The thing you need to nail is character, and the movie feels like the best served version of that. Which is wild! How often does that happen?
3.5 rounded up
Well written and interesting concept. Overwritten in the way you’d expect for something so literary. Extremely granular and sometimes overly flowery, close to purple. And, for that matter, misogynist in the way you’d expect for the time period, for that time matter. Grating as heck sometimes. But I do like stories with a capital p Point, and this is very much that, so I managed to focus on the qualities I found interesting and evocative.
Well written and interesting concept. Overwritten in the way you’d expect for something so literary. Extremely granular and sometimes overly flowery, close to purple. And, for that matter, misogynist in the way you’d expect for the time period, for that time matter. Grating as heck sometimes. But I do like stories with a capital p Point, and this is very much that, so I managed to focus on the qualities I found interesting and evocative.
Worth reading. Rough af childhood and certainly has something to say about trauma, patriarchy, and validation. It didn’t blow me away, but it’s a good memoir.
From the get go I knew this story from other books indigenous authors published and the article that attempted to challenge the residential schools.
Weaving in the narratives from the perspectives of animals in the forest resonates a lot though. I think stories like this would cast animals in a different light, rather than their true natures being (literally) illustrated here.
Weaving in the narratives from the perspectives of animals in the forest resonates a lot though. I think stories like this would cast animals in a different light, rather than their true natures being (literally) illustrated here.
Fun, pithy, subverts expectations. Easy to hate Cliff, easy to love protagonist. Mix of humour and horror; weird way to liberation, satisfying.
Free to read here:
https://cosmonautsavenue.com/lindsey-skillen-fiction-2/
Free to read here:
https://cosmonautsavenue.com/lindsey-skillen-fiction-2/