From Eroica with Love, v3
May. 16th, 2011 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cyphomandraThis is the volume that hooked me on this series. It's partly that the conflict between Klaus and Eroica has become the main driver of the narrative, and partly that the second story in this has some great action scenes (Klaus has one chance to shoot out a bomb on a bridge ahead of the out-of-control train he's currently balanced on the roof of, for example), and mostly because this particular story suddenly reminded me very strongly and fondly of my childhood.
I've mentioned the period setting before for this series, and there are lots of specific time references in this one - there's the lead-up to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, so Mischa the KGB agent is worried that any actions he takes may reflect badly on the USSR, there's the trip to Iran in the first story, where the Shah has recently been overthrown by the revolutionary government; clothes, technology, references, etc, all put this in 1979/1980. Which is exactly when my family spent a year living in the UK, and at one point travelled from Paris to Rome by train; the exact trip that Dorian and Klaus do in the second story in this volume, and although the Trans-European Express that they take looks to have a few fancy additions that we didn't have access to, there's a frame with Klaus sprawled out across the seats of a more basic compartment, smoking, and everything from the seat set-up to the luggage racks to the heating vent and the odd controls by the window was just how I remembered it, despite being two-dimensional and black and white. Which was actually a rather unnerving experience.
There's also a little Olympic bear icon like the one some guy gave my sister in London, and the phones look familiar, and I am a sucker for train stories anyway; but the end result is that while the first story in this volume is enjoyable I do see problems with it (Eroica's trip to a criminal contact of his with a very young-looking male harem is a bit disconcerting, although Eroica states quite clearly that even a nineteen year old is too young for him, and the mirroring of circumstances is funny but repeats the last volume, and again dodges any consequences), but the second story I just flat-out enjoyed. It's fast, funny, and exciting, it develops both characters, it's not obvious, and it yanked me right back to a particular time and place that I'd forgotten I'd remembered so much from.
I've mentioned the period setting before for this series, and there are lots of specific time references in this one - there's the lead-up to the 1980 Moscow Olympics, so Mischa the KGB agent is worried that any actions he takes may reflect badly on the USSR, there's the trip to Iran in the first story, where the Shah has recently been overthrown by the revolutionary government; clothes, technology, references, etc, all put this in 1979/1980. Which is exactly when my family spent a year living in the UK, and at one point travelled from Paris to Rome by train; the exact trip that Dorian and Klaus do in the second story in this volume, and although the Trans-European Express that they take looks to have a few fancy additions that we didn't have access to, there's a frame with Klaus sprawled out across the seats of a more basic compartment, smoking, and everything from the seat set-up to the luggage racks to the heating vent and the odd controls by the window was just how I remembered it, despite being two-dimensional and black and white. Which was actually a rather unnerving experience.
There's also a little Olympic bear icon like the one some guy gave my sister in London, and the phones look familiar, and I am a sucker for train stories anyway; but the end result is that while the first story in this volume is enjoyable I do see problems with it (Eroica's trip to a criminal contact of his with a very young-looking male harem is a bit disconcerting, although Eroica states quite clearly that even a nineteen year old is too young for him, and the mirroring of circumstances is funny but repeats the last volume, and again dodges any consequences), but the second story I just flat-out enjoyed. It's fast, funny, and exciting, it develops both characters, it's not obvious, and it yanked me right back to a particular time and place that I'd forgotten I'd remembered so much from.
