Why Gwyneth Jones is Brilliant

[ursula]

glasseye brought me Castles Made of Sand by Gwyneth Jones as a particularly belated birthday present last week. It was delayed because it's not out in the US yet, and the passage through Customs was long and arduous. It's a surprisingly dark science fiction - fantasy novel, second in a trilogy, about rock stars ruling Britain in the very near future. This alone should make you want to read it. If you need more persuasion . . .


Gwyneth Jones is one of the strangest science fiction writers I have read, which says a great deal by itself. This series is one of her best, because it's close enough to the real world to have some chance of making sense (as opposed to post-apocalyptic Indonesia, or an alien-contact series with an incest/ reincarnation theme).

Castles starts with a love triangle, or rather the solution of a love triangle-- the three main characters are all in love with each other, platonically or otherwise, and decide at the start of the book that the only sane and reasonable reaction is to attempt a three-person relationship. It doesn't work, and then it does, and then it doesn't again, and Fiorinda (who changed her name from Frances as a bratty twelve-year-old in book 1) is having bad dreams, and though everyone is worried that the Ancient Celts, who are the dangerous, subtly racist branch of the uneducated hippie counterculture mass that makes up much of the British populace, will gain power and cause trouble, everything seems to be struggling along . . . The first almost two-thirds of the book are mostly insane threesome rockstar romance plot, with occasional bits of politics. Then one of the characters goes stupidly noble, and the relationship falls apart, and almost immediately the real plot hits you over the head with a brick, including the real magic, which has been relatively invisible all this time. It's surprisingly effective, or rather, surprisingly emotionally believable, the way the impossible situation sneaks up; and she manages that strange emotional shift where terrible situations seem almost normal, and escape simply out of the question. And then everything shifts again.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What was the book you pulled out at Borders and told me I should read? I should have written it down, but I remember you saying Eileen might have it...

JP

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Hopefully the final book in the series will come out sometime soon... and getting it for you wont be such an ordeal as this book was. =P

[ursula]

Curse of Chalion, Lois Bujold.

[reasie.livejournal.com]

Sounds cool. Does it have any reference to the Jimi Hendrix song "Castles made of sand"? Deeply depressing song, that!

Marking it up on the endless 'gotta get around to reading' list. ;)

[ursula]

There's almost certainly a reference. Did I mention that it's a book about rock stars? ;)