Book comments: Valiant, by Holly Black
Jun. 13th, 2005 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mnemeComments on Holly Black's Valiant, made as I read it...
subways have a middle rail? Ok, I guess middle left.
I suppose as a Jersey girl who freqiently visits NYC,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
blackholly is excellently qualified to write about, well, a Jersey girl who visits NYC.
Hmm. The swordplay stuff isn't -bad-, exactly, but there are a few flaws. The true edge is the one toward the knuckles, as opposed to the false edge (which is toward the rear of the hand or hands) -- so called because the strenght a hand can exert on the true edge is far greater than that it can exert toward the false one.
On the other hand, I very much like the "stop thinking" bit -- it rings true, though one generally gets it later in study than Val does. But training it in distance drills makes enough sense.
On the third hand, the sword drills feel more kendo/kenjitsu than anything else, which might explain the true/false edge point a bit (a one handed blade will often enough (usually, really, since you parry with the true edge) have the true edge pointing away from the opponent, wheras it's kept forward more consistently with a two handed weapon. (and eastern swordsmanship, unlike western, parries with the flat, largely due to the differences in weapon construection, so the same is probably true for Japanese one handed sworsdmanship).
OTOH, most Japanese weapons are single edged -- so no "true edge" or "False edge" to speak of.
The story wakes up, somehow, after the attempted theft -- there's almost too much before that, though.
Ok, in the meat of it now -- I just realized that the harp is -so- Twa Sisters. Way cool, and reasonably subtle (and fits Mabry's character well enough).
The drug stuff...works. Not drugs-as-metaphor-for-magic, but magic drugs, plain and simple.
The cameo....I dunno. I think it works, but I'm not a virgin reader in that respect.
And in the end, what makes it is the dialogue -- "You make it sound like it was hard..." or the "Never..."
Looking back over it, I like the foreshadowing -- the conversation on page 72 (and the scene description on 71) take on an entirely new light when coonsidering later events.
It has some pacing problems, but in the end, it's a coming of age story, and a love story, and extremely neat.
subways have a middle rail? Ok, I guess middle left.
I suppose as a Jersey girl who freqiently visits NYC,
blackholly is excellently qualified to write about, well, a Jersey girl who visits NYC.Hmm. The swordplay stuff isn't -bad-, exactly, but there are a few flaws. The true edge is the one toward the knuckles, as opposed to the false edge (which is toward the rear of the hand or hands) -- so called because the strenght a hand can exert on the true edge is far greater than that it can exert toward the false one.
On the other hand, I very much like the "stop thinking" bit -- it rings true, though one generally gets it later in study than Val does. But training it in distance drills makes enough sense.
On the third hand, the sword drills feel more kendo/kenjitsu than anything else, which might explain the true/false edge point a bit (a one handed blade will often enough (usually, really, since you parry with the true edge) have the true edge pointing away from the opponent, wheras it's kept forward more consistently with a two handed weapon. (and eastern swordsmanship, unlike western, parries with the flat, largely due to the differences in weapon construection, so the same is probably true for Japanese one handed sworsdmanship).
OTOH, most Japanese weapons are single edged -- so no "true edge" or "False edge" to speak of.
The story wakes up, somehow, after the attempted theft -- there's almost too much before that, though.
Ok, in the meat of it now -- I just realized that the harp is -so- Twa Sisters. Way cool, and reasonably subtle (and fits Mabry's character well enough).
The drug stuff...works. Not drugs-as-metaphor-for-magic, but magic drugs, plain and simple.
The cameo....I dunno. I think it works, but I'm not a virgin reader in that respect.
And in the end, what makes it is the dialogue -- "You make it sound like it was hard..." or the "Never..."
Looking back over it, I like the foreshadowing -- the conversation on page 72 (and the scene description on 71) take on an entirely new light when coonsidering later events.
It has some pacing problems, but in the end, it's a coming of age story, and a love story, and extremely neat.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-13 09:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-14 06:37 am (UTC)Actually, while I did have problems picking up the book before I got to the "theft" scene (noting that some of these were my own attention deficit issues, and that I -did- finish the book in all of two days), my bigger pacing issues were towards the end of the book. I wouldn't describe the final sequence as "rushed", really, but I did feel that it was the coolest part of the novel, and the part where the plot really got moving, so it felt like it should have been a greater percentage of the book. I mean, in there you have what? Val getting over a rather -nasty- drug addiction (as much as one gets over such things -- something I very much liked, btw, was how the addiction angle was handled, but I did think the recovery was a bit too fast), the confrontation and "outing" at Belvedere (or in the ramble? Not sure exactly where what for want of a better word I'll call the "wild court" is in real world terms), the break in and discovery scene, the standoff and near-death scene, an all-to-brief family reunion, a chase to the wilds of New Jersey (um, the unseelie court was in NJ, right? If a real world location was given in this novel, I think I missed it.), a capture by the unseelie court, a Court confrontation (with obligatory, but cool, cameo descriptions of beloved characters from Tithe), a somewhat unconventional duel, a rescue, and a pair of summing up scenees? And this all happened in something like the last 50 pages?
Still, as harsh a critic as I sometimes am, it's a -very- enjoyable work.
no subject
Date: 2005-06-14 08:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-06-15 06:31 am (UTC)Actually, I think it points out an interesting aspect of pacing—that the percieved pacing of a story (ranging from "slow moving" to "energetic" to "fast paced") only has a marginal relationship to the brevity or density of said story. In fact, there are threee things there.
For example, certain added descriptions can increase the first two (when used in moderation), but as additions, decrease the third.