Community posts
Jul. 1st, 2009 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraCross-posted to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
50books_poc
The blood stone, Jamila Gavin, 9/50. Filippo Veroneo is the youngest son of a family of jewellers in seventeenth century Venice; his father left for Hindustan before he was born and is believed dead, but the family have never entirely given up on him. His father’s masterpiece, the Ocean of the Moon, is a pendant containing a 55 carat diamond that Filippo’s mother keeps hidden; Filippo’s older sister’s husband has lost money in business, and wants the pendant, but at the same time news finally comes that Filippo’s father is alive, imprisoned, and can be freed in exchange for the diamond…
I really enjoyed the first hundred pages of this, with lots of charging around Venice, jewels, and family politics – the Veroneos are an interesting bunch. And then it all fell apart on me, and I ended up with something I really didn’t enjoy reading, which was disappointing. I’ve read Coram Boy (also by Gavin) and it was a while back, but I think I had a similar but milder problem with one of the plot elements there. This actually makes me more likely to track down another one of her books (although I will stick to library versions) to see if it’s a consistent problem, because obviously all my book reviews are conducted according to rigid scientific principles…
Where it goes wrong for me is when Filippo gets the jewel embedded in his skull by a friendly Jewish surgeon from the ghetto. Partly, this is because the text is vague, vague, vague, about whether it is the diamond or the pendant that gets embedded, and while I was sure it had to be the diamond it gets the name of the pendant right up until they yank it out, and I had grave concerns for Filippo’s skull integrity (also, they smuggle the accompanying jewels as well, but the setting? Is this a standard thing that you can pick up from any jeweller?).
Partly it is that once the diamond is in Filippo’s skull he has these stream-of-consciousness-third-eye rambling chunks of writing in which he gets to see other characters in a way that never felt vital to the story, and in some respects – seeing Andreas right up until he disappears? – even gratuitous. Partly, though, although I do not love Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo books the way I love the Lymond ones, it is hard to get past the fact that they also do a great version of Venice once they leave Venice everything outside of that, including a much more heart-breaking version of concealed diamonds, is also great, which is not how this felt once Filippo heads off on a boat. It just felt like Filippo’s journey – which I was prepared to really enjoy! Sailing to Crete! Storms in the Mediterranean! Crossing the desert! India! Elephants! – would have made more sense as a story if it was instead him raving in brain fever after the failed surgery in Venice. Which would be a shame in some respects, because there are some great characters in this second half – especially Noor, whose English father wants her to be called Marianne and dress sedately and go back to England for boarding school, while she wants to stay in India and dance.
Anyway. Possibly I am just the wrong reader, or reading at the wrong time. Basically, I wanted to either hang around Venice when the book left or else do remarkably different things with the same set of characters, but this reaction is idiosyncratic enough that I wouldn’t necessarily stop anyone else reading it.
Josefa and the Vu, Tulia Thompson, 10/50. This I liked unreservedly. NZ children’s book, about Josefa, who is the youngest son of a Fijian family living in Onehunga (Auckland suburb currently in the process of being gentrified) who meets a giant warrior claiming to be a protective ancestral spirit, just before dark clouds and pollution start attacking, and the over-entitled Pakeha son of Josefa’s dad’s boss comes over to their place and steals a whale’s tooth pendant that’s sacred to Josefa’s family. Plot, and multicultural fantasy, ensues.
Fast and funny, with a diverse range of characters (Josefa teams up with Ming Chang, who is NZ Chinese, their teacher is NZ Indian, and there’s at least one Māori character), an interesting mix of myths (including an appalling pun about the name the Scottish trickster spirits adopt (after a referendum) when they decide they’ve been in NZ long enough to belong there rather than Scotland) and history (Fijian encounters with Europeans), and a quick tour around bits of the country I am currently homesick for, which probably helps.
While I did think the ending could have been tightened up I liked this a lot, and I am only irked by two things: the fact that this is the author’s first book, so I have nothing else to go on to, and that apart from a Vogel (NZ sf/f awards) nomination it appears to have sunk without trace. Which is somewhat annoying given some of the books that have been up for more major children’s lit awards in the last three years. Published by Huia, who specialise in Māori and Pacific authors, and whose website has given me a number of other relevant titles to track down
50books_pocThe blood stone, Jamila Gavin, 9/50. Filippo Veroneo is the youngest son of a family of jewellers in seventeenth century Venice; his father left for Hindustan before he was born and is believed dead, but the family have never entirely given up on him. His father’s masterpiece, the Ocean of the Moon, is a pendant containing a 55 carat diamond that Filippo’s mother keeps hidden; Filippo’s older sister’s husband has lost money in business, and wants the pendant, but at the same time news finally comes that Filippo’s father is alive, imprisoned, and can be freed in exchange for the diamond…
I really enjoyed the first hundred pages of this, with lots of charging around Venice, jewels, and family politics – the Veroneos are an interesting bunch. And then it all fell apart on me, and I ended up with something I really didn’t enjoy reading, which was disappointing. I’ve read Coram Boy (also by Gavin) and it was a while back, but I think I had a similar but milder problem with one of the plot elements there. This actually makes me more likely to track down another one of her books (although I will stick to library versions) to see if it’s a consistent problem, because obviously all my book reviews are conducted according to rigid scientific principles…
Where it goes wrong for me is when Filippo gets the jewel embedded in his skull by a friendly Jewish surgeon from the ghetto. Partly, this is because the text is vague, vague, vague, about whether it is the diamond or the pendant that gets embedded, and while I was sure it had to be the diamond it gets the name of the pendant right up until they yank it out, and I had grave concerns for Filippo’s skull integrity (also, they smuggle the accompanying jewels as well, but the setting? Is this a standard thing that you can pick up from any jeweller?).
Partly it is that once the diamond is in Filippo’s skull he has these stream-of-consciousness-third-eye rambling chunks of writing in which he gets to see other characters in a way that never felt vital to the story, and in some respects – seeing Andreas right up until he disappears? – even gratuitous. Partly, though, although I do not love Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo books the way I love the Lymond ones, it is hard to get past the fact that they also do a great version of Venice once they leave Venice everything outside of that, including a much more heart-breaking version of concealed diamonds, is also great, which is not how this felt once Filippo heads off on a boat. It just felt like Filippo’s journey – which I was prepared to really enjoy! Sailing to Crete! Storms in the Mediterranean! Crossing the desert! India! Elephants! – would have made more sense as a story if it was instead him raving in brain fever after the failed surgery in Venice. Which would be a shame in some respects, because there are some great characters in this second half – especially Noor, whose English father wants her to be called Marianne and dress sedately and go back to England for boarding school, while she wants to stay in India and dance.
Anyway. Possibly I am just the wrong reader, or reading at the wrong time. Basically, I wanted to either hang around Venice when the book left or else do remarkably different things with the same set of characters, but this reaction is idiosyncratic enough that I wouldn’t necessarily stop anyone else reading it.
Josefa and the Vu, Tulia Thompson, 10/50. This I liked unreservedly. NZ children’s book, about Josefa, who is the youngest son of a Fijian family living in Onehunga (Auckland suburb currently in the process of being gentrified) who meets a giant warrior claiming to be a protective ancestral spirit, just before dark clouds and pollution start attacking, and the over-entitled Pakeha son of Josefa’s dad’s boss comes over to their place and steals a whale’s tooth pendant that’s sacred to Josefa’s family. Plot, and multicultural fantasy, ensues.
Fast and funny, with a diverse range of characters (Josefa teams up with Ming Chang, who is NZ Chinese, their teacher is NZ Indian, and there’s at least one Māori character), an interesting mix of myths (including an appalling pun about the name the Scottish trickster spirits adopt (after a referendum) when they decide they’ve been in NZ long enough to belong there rather than Scotland) and history (Fijian encounters with Europeans), and a quick tour around bits of the country I am currently homesick for, which probably helps.
While I did think the ending could have been tightened up I liked this a lot, and I am only irked by two things: the fact that this is the author’s first book, so I have nothing else to go on to, and that apart from a Vogel (NZ sf/f awards) nomination it appears to have sunk without trace. Which is somewhat annoying given some of the books that have been up for more major children’s lit awards in the last three years. Published by Huia, who specialise in Māori and Pacific authors, and whose website has given me a number of other relevant titles to track down
no subject
Date: 2009-07-01 08:27 pm (UTC)