![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fairytales and F-words
Jun. 17th, 2012 11:02 amThis week, I've encountered two retellings of Snow White.
The film, Snow White and the Huntsman, was not nearly as good as the trailer suggested - yes, it was very pretty, but it didn't have much substance, and most of the acting was fairly poor. It had its moments, and it was entertaining enough to keep me in my seat, but not much more. Eye candy in the form of Charlize Theron (yum!) and Sam Claflin (yu-hum!!) provided some distraction away from the plot holes and, oddly, I quite liked the splitting of the prince role (Team Huntsman or Team William??). The Huntsman could really have done with a name, though (if he was given one at any point, I totally missed it and it was never used by any of the other characters), and a less dodgy accent, and the dwarves seemed rather superfluous, despite awesome casting (Ian McShane! Ray Winstone! Bob Hoskins! Nick Frost! Toby Jones!). Basically, another mildly enjoyable, but forgettable film.
The Serpent's Shadow is the second in the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey, where Snow White is the daughter of an English soldier and an Indian sorceress, working as a doctor in London in 1909. As ever with Lackey, magic abounds, and the seven dwarves are represented by seven magical birds and animals who masquerade as the heroine's pets, but really hide magical powers of their own and seem to be linked to various Hindu gods. Prince Charming makes a delightfully mundane appearance in the form of a former sea captain turned merchant of replica Egyptian curios, and is very appealing. In the usual Lackey way, it was stunningly predictable, but no less enjoyable for that and, as ever, a good narrator elevated the experience further. Excellent accompaniment to vast amounts of walking over the week.
The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan was my latest physical book, and an improvement on the several that preceded it. I had no trouble finishing it, and mostly quite enjoyed it, though probably not enough to continue with the series. It suffered a little to begin with from having too many place names, tribe names, faction names, god names, etc, with too little explanation of what they were, so it took me a little while to get into it. It also suffered from an over-abundance of swearing in my opinion. Throw the f-word in every other paragraph, and you get a quote from Joe Abercrombie on the front of your novel, praising it as "uncompromising". It may be realistic in terms of the speech patterns of the characters, but I'm sure there are other ways of making your prose effective - and, in fact, I'm being unfair, since Morgan employs many of those ways as well. The plot is skilfully layered, the characters are interesting (if not very likeable), there's plenty of action and intrigue, and on the whole the book is well written. I liked how the various strands came together for the denouement, and there was plenty of depth to be had in the main characters' interlinked back stories. It was rather unpleasant in places, but that doesn't tend to bother me in books. Pretty good, overall.
The film, Snow White and the Huntsman, was not nearly as good as the trailer suggested - yes, it was very pretty, but it didn't have much substance, and most of the acting was fairly poor. It had its moments, and it was entertaining enough to keep me in my seat, but not much more. Eye candy in the form of Charlize Theron (yum!) and Sam Claflin (yu-hum!!) provided some distraction away from the plot holes and, oddly, I quite liked the splitting of the prince role (Team Huntsman or Team William??). The Huntsman could really have done with a name, though (if he was given one at any point, I totally missed it and it was never used by any of the other characters), and a less dodgy accent, and the dwarves seemed rather superfluous, despite awesome casting (Ian McShane! Ray Winstone! Bob Hoskins! Nick Frost! Toby Jones!). Basically, another mildly enjoyable, but forgettable film.
The Serpent's Shadow is the second in the Elemental Masters series by Mercedes Lackey, where Snow White is the daughter of an English soldier and an Indian sorceress, working as a doctor in London in 1909. As ever with Lackey, magic abounds, and the seven dwarves are represented by seven magical birds and animals who masquerade as the heroine's pets, but really hide magical powers of their own and seem to be linked to various Hindu gods. Prince Charming makes a delightfully mundane appearance in the form of a former sea captain turned merchant of replica Egyptian curios, and is very appealing. In the usual Lackey way, it was stunningly predictable, but no less enjoyable for that and, as ever, a good narrator elevated the experience further. Excellent accompaniment to vast amounts of walking over the week.
The Steel Remains by Richard Morgan was my latest physical book, and an improvement on the several that preceded it. I had no trouble finishing it, and mostly quite enjoyed it, though probably not enough to continue with the series. It suffered a little to begin with from having too many place names, tribe names, faction names, god names, etc, with too little explanation of what they were, so it took me a little while to get into it. It also suffered from an over-abundance of swearing in my opinion. Throw the f-word in every other paragraph, and you get a quote from Joe Abercrombie on the front of your novel, praising it as "uncompromising". It may be realistic in terms of the speech patterns of the characters, but I'm sure there are other ways of making your prose effective - and, in fact, I'm being unfair, since Morgan employs many of those ways as well. The plot is skilfully layered, the characters are interesting (if not very likeable), there's plenty of action and intrigue, and on the whole the book is well written. I liked how the various strands came together for the denouement, and there was plenty of depth to be had in the main characters' interlinked back stories. It was rather unpleasant in places, but that doesn't tend to bother me in books. Pretty good, overall.
