Gwyneth Jones is Brilliant, Part II
Nov. 18th, 2003 10:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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greythistle, and the rest of the world.
Gwyneth Jones is a good writer, but she can be artsy to the point of completely obscuring her plots. I've read all her adult novels you can get in the States, I think, and some that you can't always; I haven't read the YA Ann Hallam stuff, though I've thought about it once or twice.
Divine Endurance is among my favorites. It's set in a post-apocalyptic Indonesia, and is in some sense a fable about the dangers of gaining one's heart's desire.
Flowerdust is a sequel to Divine Endurance; it takes place simultaneously with the action of Divine Endurance, and though in some ways it's easier to follow (it's about a drug scandal, and a rebellious love between two young people of different sexes), I don't think it would stand on its own.
The White Queen series has as general theme, "Aliens show up and civilization degenerates." I read these as they came out, which means early high school for the earlier books, and found them very confusing; a more sophisticated reader might enjoy them more, but I suspect they still function best as essays, rather than as novels. In particular, the last book revolves around a character who is an alien reborn in a human body, who therefore doesn't understand either humans *or* aliens, and the grand denouement comes as an utter surprise to her, and thus to the reader, which I found frustrating.
Bold as Love and its sequel are difficult to find in the US, though Bold as Love won the Arthur C. Clarke award a while back (ironic, given my feelings about Clarke); apparently the publisher is causing problems. These are about rock stars taking over Britain, and are near-enough future to be accessible. I don't know why these aren't stunningly popular: they're simultaneously beautiful and grim, and also darkly funny, in a way that puts Gibson to shame. Babbling about the second book is in a previous entry.
greythistle, and the rest of the world.Gwyneth Jones is a good writer, but she can be artsy to the point of completely obscuring her plots. I've read all her adult novels you can get in the States, I think, and some that you can't always; I haven't read the YA Ann Hallam stuff, though I've thought about it once or twice.
Divine Endurance is among my favorites. It's set in a post-apocalyptic Indonesia, and is in some sense a fable about the dangers of gaining one's heart's desire.
Flowerdust is a sequel to Divine Endurance; it takes place simultaneously with the action of Divine Endurance, and though in some ways it's easier to follow (it's about a drug scandal, and a rebellious love between two young people of different sexes), I don't think it would stand on its own.
The White Queen series has as general theme, "Aliens show up and civilization degenerates." I read these as they came out, which means early high school for the earlier books, and found them very confusing; a more sophisticated reader might enjoy them more, but I suspect they still function best as essays, rather than as novels. In particular, the last book revolves around a character who is an alien reborn in a human body, who therefore doesn't understand either humans *or* aliens, and the grand denouement comes as an utter surprise to her, and thus to the reader, which I found frustrating.
Bold as Love and its sequel are difficult to find in the US, though Bold as Love won the Arthur C. Clarke award a while back (ironic, given my feelings about Clarke); apparently the publisher is causing problems. These are about rock stars taking over Britain, and are near-enough future to be accessible. I don't know why these aren't stunningly popular: they're simultaneously beautiful and grim, and also darkly funny, in a way that puts Gibson to shame. Babbling about the second book is in a previous entry.