melannen | (no subject)

Entry tags:

fandom:sf lit

(no subject)

I finished reading Rivers of London this morning! (Just the five novels, I'm saving the ancillary stories so there's something to look forward to.) My summary was fairly accurate! I'm amused that at the end of Foxglove Summer, even Peter was surprised that it was Bev and not Nightingale come to play Janet of Carterhaugh, although given what they did in the river it makes sense.

(there is so Doctor Who fandom in that river's future.)

I'm mostly surprised that... there wasn't too much that I missed? Okay, I missed most of the main plot in Foxglove Summer, but I think a lot of the fic I was reading pre-dated it, so I was expecting that. It also had probably the strongest plot of the set - the first four really didn't have plot as their strongest point. Which is not, I will note, necessarily a criticism - I like books that don't narrow-focus on plot, as long as the stuff they're doing in the meantime is fun, and it is - I so, so appreciate that Rivers of London has all of the really, really strong sense of place that is completely missing from, say, the Dresden Files. They feel like - like, they've got the voice and trappings of a police procedural, and the setting and characters of an urban fantasy, but the structure and mood of a cozy, and that was apparently what I needed.

And the criticism of police culture that was coming through strongly in the fic is there in canon; not as a central point, but Peter, while being 100% a copper, is never uncritical of what the police are doing. So I could read it without the sour taste in my mouth that pretty much all other police-focused fiction has been giving me lately. (Just Peter Grant and Sam Vimes are exempt, basically.)

(I dare somebody to write Rivers of Ankh-Morpork.)

Unfortunately all the fanfic-y feelings I got involve characters that very clearly have major canon revelations coming up, and I have been reminded by Check Please! how very, very bad I am at being invested that way in characters in an open canon, so probably I will not be writing anything.

(Well, maybe bits of Rivers of Ankh-Morpork.)

...anyway beyond that I've been deep in avoidance mode lately. I am watching the third season of the Great British Bake-Off because sometime you just need Sue Perkins making terrible puns in a tent, and started hopefully a full watch-through of Leverage in order because sometimes you just need to watch asshole billionaires being made to weep bitter tears, and nearly caught up on the Rex Factor podcast because there is nothing like learning about 10th century Scotsmen murdering each other to help one stop catastrophizing about modern politics (#RememberAed). Also found, and watched, "Under the Emerald Sea", a Nature special that aired when I was five that is the first TV show I ever remember bugging my parents to let me stay up late to watch.

So if anyone wants to talk to me about any of those I'm up for it.

Also I went to the beach on what I accurately predicted to be the last day of the year that sea-bathing would be doable, played some Pokemon Go (level 22! Still haven't found any good way to hatch eggs without using a data plan!), and started what is hopefully going to be a full reshelve and clear out of my books, because it was just becoming unsustainable. Step 1: all 1600+ nonfiction books in dewey decimal order. ish.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Just the five novels, I'm saving the ancillary stories

...ancillary stories? ARE THERE ANCILLARY STORIES?

*high pitched noises of excitement*

ahem. I mean, where would one find these ancillary stories of which you speak?

..meaning "ancillary" as in "extra content" not as in "about ancillaries", mind you.

There was one linked in the comments on my last post on the topic: http://temporarilysignificant.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/the-home-crowd-advantage.html

also there are some comics, but I am super-unclear as to what actually they are? I haven't gone looking. The one that my library carries has exactly the same summary as "midnight riot" but that may be a catalog error, idk.

The comics are... okay, I guess. I checked them out mostly for vidding purposes. They're in the format of 5 US-style short issues that form a single story. One title = one plot. They don't retell book plot, and they're written by Aaronovitch, so they're consistent with the novels.

#1 Body Work - Possessed evil cars. Set between books 4 & 5. Interesting for a flashback to Nightingale's old friends and not much else.
#2 Night Witch - Set after Foxglove Summer. Shows what's up with Varvara now that she's in custody, and gives some hints about what Lesley's up to. Way better than the previous one.
#3 Black Mould - Sahra Guleed and Peter fight... something? This one doesn't come out until November.

Yeah, I was kind of suspecting a catalog error there, since usually if it's a retelling they'll mention that.

*shows up two months later, mostly emerged from New Job Swamped*

Thank you thank you thank you. These will help stave off temptation to buy a hardcover UK edition of the Hanging Tree as I wait for the someday US audiobook release (whyyyyyyy aren't they releasing the US editions at the same time? WHY CAN'T I GET KOBNA HOLDBROOK-SMITH'S GLORIOUS NARRATION OF IT THIS DECEMBER, THERE IS AN AUDIO CD BEING RELEASED THEN ON THE .CO.UK SIDE OF AMAZON, I CAN SEE IT).

I was sort of aware the comics existed, but mistakenly thought they were graphic novel adaptation things; hopefully one of my local library networks will have them already! That short story, however, is wholly new to me, and I will look forward to devouring it on my commute in tomorrow.

<3

...I mean, I would also read stories about ancillaries related to Rivers of London. Would read anything even vaguely good for Rivers of London, really. ~~Do you have any favorites?~~

Hah. I am still in the "read it all" phase and honestly I haven't found anything on AO3 yet that I would un-recommend. If you want a name to start instead of just sorting by kudo like I did, I have loved everything by sixthlight (they also wrote the AU I'm blaming this whole mess on), and they're writing a lot in the fandom right now.

...I was going to say I don't even know how you'd do Rivers of London with ancillaries but actually I do, because they both have a moral core that's deeply concerned with the edges of personhood, and the ethics of policing, and they're into the personification of place which is all totally my bag too, of course.

So obviously Peter is Station Security for London Station, one of the first few classes of human station security after London lost its ancillaries*. One of her moms is a local provincial and the other one is Old Radchaai, just not very successful at it, which sort of puts her between worlds.

And Punch is a manifestation of Station dealing really badly with losing its ancillaries & being messed about in its accesses, with the result that it's turning citizens into half-ancillaries without their consent (or knowledge.) Lesley keeps her face but loses other things.

Sword of Thames is the local Radchaai military presence. Probably still has ancillaries but also has a set of really interesting lieutenants. Molly is an early-model Presger translator who mostly worked but was missing an essential bit of functionality for a translator so they dropped her on the station when she was little as an experiment.

Captain Nightingale wanders around armored in an intimidatingly correct high Radchaai accent and enough memorial pins to deflect a Presger bullet and Peter hasn't dared ask what Ship she was Captain to.

*Canon implies that Stations didn't ever have ancillaries but London is clearly a Station, not a Ship, so whatever. Or maybe London Station is a former Justice who was decommissioned and turned into a Station, depending on when you want to set it in Radch history and how much you want to play with London's feelings about its decline as an imperial power.

Edited 2016-10-19 19:18 (UTC)

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.

Also, I feel like vestigia & music, or vestigial and omen casting / divination would map weirdly well? Like moral weather conditions & environmental magic traces are closer than they first appear.

ETA: individuals could have theme songs or specific combos of emanations+patron god associations in place of signature vestigia.

Edited (I can spell. Really.) 2016-10-19 22:23 (UTC)

Yeah, I feel like there's not a lot of magic per se in this verse, unless you just want to transplant in a magic system so you can have wizards, but Nightingale can definitely figure out things with an omen cast that are way too specific, and also helpful coincidences tend to just fall into place around her in a statistically anomalous way (Peter has charts.)

And of course Molly is... Molly.

Edited 2016-10-19 22:51 (UTC)

It depends on how you define magic, of course. Alternative relations with supposedly immutable laws of physics could describe both Rivers of London-style magic and Presger translator (and presumably Presger) states of being. Environvental manipulation could involve manipulating the elements or manipulating/influencing the AI in control of the local contained environment. I could see Captain Nightengale as having especial influence with her Station AI (perhaps Nightengale has verging-on-ancillary ancillary implants that permit unusually deep access, Station permitting, to Station's data stream and a deeply personal relationship (the kind that takes at least ten years to establish to 'staff' level-intimacy) with Station. Maybe Nightengale apprenticed herself directly to Station as Station's next best thing to having her own ancillaries.

Yeah, you could certainly have lots of things that fill magic's role in the story. I'm pretty sure Nightingale, for example, has Accesses that don't officially exist (probably related somehow to whatever resulted in all those memorial pins), that Station knows all about even if she never uses them. And Molly, of course, can Do Things.

But I'm having trouble figuring out anything that would be a direct equivalent of Peter becoming an apprentice wizard. (Some kind of clientage to House Folly, obviously, that Peter refuses to call clientage. But in terms of a secret art Nightingale is teaching her?)

I'm hesitant to make it any kind of close consensual relationship with Station just because if Station is standing in for London I want to keep the complicated-grudging-respect relationship that London and Nightingale have in canon, but that could be interesting. But I feel like if anyone's going to have that kind of deal with Station it would be the Faceless One.

These are excellent thoughts, and I will think on them! In the meantime, have some naming ideas for this budding fusion thing:

Station of London
Datastreams of Station
Flows of London Station
Tributaries of Station Imperial

Edited 2016-10-20 21:22 (UTC)

Rivers of Justice / Rivers of Sword(s) / Rivers of Mercy? Even though there are no actual rivers in it.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

'Rivers of Justice', etc. would be amazing: yessssssssssss.

And Mercy "droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven".

The only problem being they work so well as titles that it's not immediately obvious it's a weird crossover. :P

Eh, I think we could lean on tags / metadata (not to mention summary!) to get 'surprisingly apt weird crossover' across.

The scenario that jumps out to me is Peter getting shanghied from her initial assignment to Station security by Captain Nightengale to be a baby lieutenant instead. Maybe everyone thought (including Nightengale) that her Ship AI was slowly going mad after a terrible battle where all the rest of the crew died or retired shortly after, and Ship refused new crew and stopped talking in words to anyone. Ship's Sword body now orbits Station, mostly quiescent, and has done so for so long that most everyone refers to it as the Folly after Nightengale's House, since Captain Nightengale is all that stands in the way of Ship's body being junked and the AI permanently "retired". Most of the time Captain Nightengale lives apart in the Folly along with her servant, Molly, secretly Ship's last surviving ancillary, formerly the body of an early undercover Presger Translator.

(Anaander Mianaai knows that this Ship has a former Presger Translator as an ancillary, maybe even arranged it as an experiment, and is convinced it went wrong and that the hookup was not simply one way. She sent Ship and Ship's crew out against a non-Radchaii enemy, and when Ship limped back to Station decided to just see if time would complete what war left undone. In the meantime, Capatain Nightengale is occasionally useful as an isolated military officer who can deal with situations with aliens, ancillaries, and non-Radchaii humans on Station.)

Edited 2016-10-20 22:30 (UTC)

Ooooh. I like everything about this.

Although the idea of Molly as any sort of ancillary is terrifying, it does make sense.

I want Nightingale's ship to be a big, empty troop carrier instead of a sword, though. Waaay lonelier once everybody dies, right? But also a lot more in common with civilian policing. And Ananaander is less interested in troop carriers these days. ('Justice of Atë'?)

Ooo, yes! I would subscribe to a 'Justice of Atë' newsletter.

The way Molly shows care and irritation maps eerily well onto what we know of Ships using ancillaries to tend to their favorites (and take small acts of purposeful neglect revenge as needed). A Rivers of London AU where Molly became the genius loci of the Folly would not surprise me at all.

Edited 2016-10-20 23:32 (UTC)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only