Under-Caffeinated and Cranky
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005 08:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rolanniI'm currently reading Hammered by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elizabethbear, and in general, I'm liking it a lot: illicit drugs and street gangs on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut; a cyborg with more than one secret, or I miss my woman; a charming alien spacecraft that behaves something like a Clutch ship on Serious Speed -- what's not to like?
One thing -- not enough to ruin the book, unless things go desperately downhill in the last 90 pages -- but certainly enough to make me rap it sternly on the table more than once.
More crankiness
The main characters, see, are French-Canadian, and in times of emotion they revert to speaking Quebecois. I understand perfectly why they do this, and it is good characterization that they do so. However, and unfortunately, I do not read French. Not even for Peter Wimsey did I learn to read French, to establish a range on Just How Lazy I am. And, since the characters in Hammered revert to their comfort tongue in times of stress, and since the author does not paraphrase or otherwise slip the reader a clue about what they're saying, I feel like I'm missing Big, Honking Chunks of character development, and it's making me nuts.
To put this in perspective -- what would happen if I wrote an entire, emotionally rich conversation between Val Con and Pat Rin in Low Liaden (which I could do, though it might take me a week), and just left it there, trusting that the reader would be able to scope out what had been said without the benefit of any other clues? I'd have my head handed to me, that's what would happen -- and rightly so.
I do wish someone would have asked the author to do a little more for the monolinguists of the world before Hammered was released into the world. As it is, it is a recurring minor annoyance which mars an otherwise excellent story.
elizabethbear, and in general, I'm liking it a lot: illicit drugs and street gangs on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut; a cyborg with more than one secret, or I miss my woman; a charming alien spacecraft that behaves something like a Clutch ship on Serious Speed -- what's not to like?One thing -- not enough to ruin the book, unless things go desperately downhill in the last 90 pages -- but certainly enough to make me rap it sternly on the table more than once.
More crankiness
The main characters, see, are French-Canadian, and in times of emotion they revert to speaking Quebecois. I understand perfectly why they do this, and it is good characterization that they do so. However, and unfortunately, I do not read French. Not even for Peter Wimsey did I learn to read French, to establish a range on Just How Lazy I am. And, since the characters in Hammered revert to their comfort tongue in times of stress, and since the author does not paraphrase or otherwise slip the reader a clue about what they're saying, I feel like I'm missing Big, Honking Chunks of character development, and it's making me nuts.
To put this in perspective -- what would happen if I wrote an entire, emotionally rich conversation between Val Con and Pat Rin in Low Liaden (which I could do, though it might take me a week), and just left it there, trusting that the reader would be able to scope out what had been said without the benefit of any other clues? I'd have my head handed to me, that's what would happen -- and rightly so.
I do wish someone would have asked the author to do a little more for the monolinguists of the world before Hammered was released into the world. As it is, it is a recurring minor annoyance which mars an otherwise excellent story.
