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lokifanI strongly suspect that all of you who care about this already know. But I did not know! And I am excited!
There is going to be a miniseries of Good Omens.
So pleased! Good Omens isn’t the object of passion for me that it is for a lot of you - Idk, me and Gaiman, we only ever seem to click properly when I read his short stories, although my mad passion for Pterry is both mad and passionate. I do love it a lot though, most especially for the way it shows us this charming, classic English Kids’ Adventure thing that slowly becomes weirder and more extreme in its utter wholesomeness. (And obvs Anathema and Crowley and Azirophale = win.)
And I love miniseries, and I genuinely think they’re the most natural fit when it comes to adapting the structure and plot beats of a novel. (I have wanted a Philosopher’s Stone miniseries for yonks. Perhaps one day, if Warner Bros ever releases its chokehold.) So yes.
I also found out today that Sarah Rees Brennan is doing a Gothic novel! And Gothic novels are MY VERY FAVOURITE GENRE. (Tied with children’s adventure and fantasy, which is why The Secret Garden is what I wrote my dissertation on.) I like her Demon’s Lexicon books an awful lot but I don’t quite love them - I’m not sure why, because there’s a lot in those books that very much appeals to my interests. (Sibling love and betrayal = sign me up!) And I think perhaps Unspoken will be the one for me.
On the subject of books and passion - I commemorated a year without Diana Wynne Jones by finally reading her last book, Earwig and the Witch. I enjoyed it a lot; it had a talking black cat who was as fun as DWJ’s cats always are, and a witchy heroine who made everyone do what she wanted. (She also had a pseudo-little-brother who was shy and obedient and was an orphan who got taken to live with powerful magical people. She was sort of like Gwendolen if Gwendolen was on the road to redemption.) However, it made me really sad.
Not just because of the continuining sadness about my uncle or the awareness that this was the last. But because this was a very short book, and I strongly suspect it was meant to be a novel, and then DWJ couldn’t finish it. Which makes me terribly sad.
It is obviously meant for young children, but... there are several things set up that go nowhere. Most obviously there’s the fact that Earwig is abandoned outside an orphanage as a baby with a note that says “I will come back for her” and nobody does. There’s also this best friend who we basically don’t see after the start of the book - as it ends Earwig is sure she’ll convince him to visit her with her terrifying guardians but it doesn’t actually happen. There’s a climax at the end, but it feels somehow a bit more like a drama-in-the-middle than a final climax - it’s Gwendolen’s ruining the dinner party, not Cat and Chrestomanci captured in the garden.
Also, Earwig begins as a girl who can make everyone at her orphanage do what she wants, including the adults. She has a moment of self-awareness about this but it fades and she gets her new guardians to do what she wants instead. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s satisfying, but it’s not how Diana Wynne Jones tended to work. Nick in Deep Secret, Charles in Witch Week, Cat in Stealer of Souls, Christopher in Charmed Life, everyone in The Ogre Downstairs - and there are plenty of other examples - these characters were selfish or self-centred, unable to understand other people’s perspectives on the world or them. And they learnt better. Earwig strikes me as one of those characters - different from them, because Diana Wynne Jones was an incredibly original writer, but part of the same theme - and it feels like her story got cut off at a content midway point.
It is a very beautiful book aesthetically, and the prose and the cat and the little moments of characterisation make me happy, but it’s like The Salmon of Doubt. You finish it feeling wistful, wishing the author had lived and stayed healthy enough to finish it.
There is going to be a miniseries of Good Omens.
So pleased! Good Omens isn’t the object of passion for me that it is for a lot of you - Idk, me and Gaiman, we only ever seem to click properly when I read his short stories, although my mad passion for Pterry is both mad and passionate. I do love it a lot though, most especially for the way it shows us this charming, classic English Kids’ Adventure thing that slowly becomes weirder and more extreme in its utter wholesomeness. (And obvs Anathema and Crowley and Azirophale = win.)
And I love miniseries, and I genuinely think they’re the most natural fit when it comes to adapting the structure and plot beats of a novel. (I have wanted a Philosopher’s Stone miniseries for yonks. Perhaps one day, if Warner Bros ever releases its chokehold.) So yes.
I also found out today that Sarah Rees Brennan is doing a Gothic novel! And Gothic novels are MY VERY FAVOURITE GENRE. (Tied with children’s adventure and fantasy, which is why The Secret Garden is what I wrote my dissertation on.) I like her Demon’s Lexicon books an awful lot but I don’t quite love them - I’m not sure why, because there’s a lot in those books that very much appeals to my interests. (Sibling love and betrayal = sign me up!) And I think perhaps Unspoken will be the one for me.
On the subject of books and passion - I commemorated a year without Diana Wynne Jones by finally reading her last book, Earwig and the Witch. I enjoyed it a lot; it had a talking black cat who was as fun as DWJ’s cats always are, and a witchy heroine who made everyone do what she wanted. (She also had a pseudo-little-brother who was shy and obedient and was an orphan who got taken to live with powerful magical people. She was sort of like Gwendolen if Gwendolen was on the road to redemption.) However, it made me really sad.
Not just because of the continuining sadness about my uncle or the awareness that this was the last. But because this was a very short book, and I strongly suspect it was meant to be a novel, and then DWJ couldn’t finish it. Which makes me terribly sad.
It is obviously meant for young children, but... there are several things set up that go nowhere. Most obviously there’s the fact that Earwig is abandoned outside an orphanage as a baby with a note that says “I will come back for her” and nobody does. There’s also this best friend who we basically don’t see after the start of the book - as it ends Earwig is sure she’ll convince him to visit her with her terrifying guardians but it doesn’t actually happen. There’s a climax at the end, but it feels somehow a bit more like a drama-in-the-middle than a final climax - it’s Gwendolen’s ruining the dinner party, not Cat and Chrestomanci captured in the garden.
Also, Earwig begins as a girl who can make everyone at her orphanage do what she wants, including the adults. She has a moment of self-awareness about this but it fades and she gets her new guardians to do what she wants instead. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s satisfying, but it’s not how Diana Wynne Jones tended to work. Nick in Deep Secret, Charles in Witch Week, Cat in Stealer of Souls, Christopher in Charmed Life, everyone in The Ogre Downstairs - and there are plenty of other examples - these characters were selfish or self-centred, unable to understand other people’s perspectives on the world or them. And they learnt better. Earwig strikes me as one of those characters - different from them, because Diana Wynne Jones was an incredibly original writer, but part of the same theme - and it feels like her story got cut off at a content midway point.
It is a very beautiful book aesthetically, and the prose and the cat and the little moments of characterisation make me happy, but it’s like The Salmon of Doubt. You finish it feeling wistful, wishing the author had lived and stayed healthy enough to finish it.
no subject
Date: 2012-05-20 09:31 pm (UTC)I shall reserve judgement on SRB & a gothic series. Sarah Waters owns my heart when it comes to gothic, and I don't trust SRB's plotting skills, cliche-avoidance skills, or not-reproducing-sexist-tropes skills enough to be wholly optimistic :-/
no subject
Date: 2012-05-21 09:43 am (UTC)Argh, I hadn't thought about this, but I think you're right :/ Mostly my thoughts about the ending were that we didn't really see Earwig's getting-people-to-do-what-she-wants in very convincing action, but everything did wrap up far too quickly in general.
But also, yes, desperately excited about both Unspoken and Good Omens!
no subject
Date: 2012-05-22 08:01 pm (UTC):D EXCITE!
no subject
Date: 2012-05-21 04:24 pm (UTC)You've piqued my curiosity about all the books you mentioned, I'll have to look those up. It is sad when you've got a story left unfinished like that.