Lud in the Mist (6 pts): The Fairy Fruit is Turning the Children Gay!!

     I'm going to be completely honest here. Despite all the glowing reviews from people like Neil Gaiman and Mary Gentle, Lud in the Mist did not have me hooked at all... at first. I did not care for Ranulph freaking out and screaming over everything, or Nathaniel Chanticleer's mayoral duties and upper class mannerisms, or the Crabapple Blossoms getting trolled by a dude named Willy Wisp. Everyone's got way too many syllables in their names, the fact that Fairy Fruit could be considered an analogy for homosexuality made it hard for me to take everyone's fear of it seriously (especially in this day and age) and for the love of all things holy, if "toasted cheese" was meant to be a serious exclamation of surprise, then I was not having it at all. It was too whimsical and silly for me. I think part of it has to do with the way we see fairies nowadays, with images of Tinkerbell and sparkly children's characters coming to mind. Sure, they can be mischievous, but not malicious.

    But then my view of the novel changed when Dame Marigold discovered the hollow panel in the Guild Hall. It suddenly turned Lud in the Mist into a sort of "whodunnit", drug-smuggling story in a fantasy setting. Every story point converges from here on out. Nathaniel Chanticleer does some detective-level digging into the case of the widow Gibberty's murder trial, he and Ambrose Honeysuckle figure out that Endymion Leer and the widow are in cahoots and are partaking in the smuggling of Fairy Fruit into Lud- Nat is even framed for having the fruit in his clock by the clock-winder's apprentice. It honestly felt like I was reading a mystery novel from that point onwards, and it intrigued me. I love a good mystery, and enjoy putting together the pieces of evidence in order to solve it. It reminded me of family game nights of Clue, where we're all scrambling to figure out the culprit, weapon and room. While there was no specific room or weapon, there were multiple culprits involved!

    The ending is actually what surprised me the most. It was extremely satisfying to see the good doctor and the widow get their comeuppance, and to see Hazel and Miss Ivy Peppercorn use their girl power to stop a strike. But to read about Nat's encounter with the Duke, to see a glimpse of Fairyland, and to watch Master Nathaniel Chanticleer jump into the abyss, only to return with the Fairy army and his missing son... man. It made for a wonderful conclusion to a weird novel. And though I still stand by my thoughts that the beginning of Lud in the Mist was a drag, I'm glad I stuck with it to the end.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Comet (5 pts): Dismantling Racial Discrimination Through Tragedy

With the current state of the world right now, I feel that this is a better time than ever to show appreciation for the African American authors of the past and the present. As I looked through the reading list, I came across W.E.B. DuBois' name, along with his work The Comet . Though I had heard of DuBois from my high school history classes, I did not know any of his works. When I saw that The Comet  was written in 1920, I wasn't expecting much out of the "sci-fi department". Normally when I think of what defined sci-fi back then, my mind tends to lean towards the film Metropolis . Robots, utopias, weird machines, anything futuristic. How could a single comet compare to that without feeling inferior? It all made sense after I finished reading. The sci-fi element was just the backdrop to the main theme of the story; the comet was the catalyst for the realization that racial discrimination is not only an absurd concept, but it unfortunately takes a serious tragedy for
Read more

Babel-17 (5 pts): Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones...

     ...but words can manipulate you and turn you into a traitor against your own starship crew. In all seriousness though, Babel-17 was a very strange read for me. Reading this novel right after The Martian was a huge change of pace. While in The Martian  I felt that I had a clear picture of Mark Watney's surrounding environment and predicament, I felt like I was walking through a haze while reading Babel-17 . All the stuff about body modifications, and futuristic starships, and the whole concept of a "triple" not registering to me as a form of three-way relationship until I looked it up, it was very confusing. And yet throughout all the haze of world-building exposition, the one thing that stood out to me the most was the concept of using language and words as a weapon.     At first I was surprised at Samuel R. Delany's choice to use a language as the main conflict of the novel. Normally when you think of space adventures, you would picture the main source of confli
Read more

Gyo (3pts): Taking Marine-Themed Horror to the Next Level

Image
     I love the ocean. I love it so much that before I wanted to become an artist, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted to explore the deep sea and discover all the weird and disgusting creatures that lived down there. I even got my scuba diving license at 11 years old- that's how committed I was. Of course, that plan didn't pan out the way I had anticipated when I was younger, but reading Gyo brought me back to that time where I was a wide-eyed girl with a serious passion for the sea.     For many people, this work would absolutely deter them from ever taking another trip to the beach, in fear of some fish scuttling up to them on spindly limbs. But we know that won't happen, since the legs that the fish were using were machines that were made during WWII. Obviously, the Japanese made no such invention during the war in our world. But I think what makes this manga extra scary is how it plays into our innate fear of the unknown.     According to the NOAA, we have expl
Read more