shiny_monkey brought over for me, and I intend to spend the day on the sofa with that last trying to find some answers as to What Happened. There must be answers somewhere or people couldn't fic about What Happened, right? And if the answers aren't in Kaze no Umi Meiro no Kishi uhh don't tell me, OK, or I shall weep great salt tears. Whatever, 12 Kingdoms makes a change from what I /was/ reading, which was Alberto Manguel's Black Water, my third copy of same. I keep leaving it behind when I move, thinking 'I've read this several times before why drag a great thumping tome along with me' (back from Japan, last time- and last time I figured it'd be cheaper buying it here than shipping it back which was true, cause I got it at a yard sale for $3.) And then I need to read something in it again, and then I read other stuff, and then... well, then I get well and truly fantodded.
Granted, you're supposed to be fantodded by Black Water but it's not the otherworldliness that does it. It's the grim grimy and claustrophobic everyday details in certain stories, like Graham Greene's and Daphne du Maurier's. No offence to present company, but English writers have a genius for making life in England sound like Hell. Sometimes I think the last English novelist with any sunshine in her books was Jane Austen; and it only gets worse when you come to the 20th century. Children's writers don't count; they're generally quite wonderful (Dahl's nightmares apart.) But writers for grown-ups... (shudder)
(No, OK, Chesterton, if he counts as a novelist and not a genre writer. And my problem might just be people writing about London. London fantodded me completely every time I was in it, even when I was in my 20's and thought I loved the place. Then I went back a few years later and had to cut the trip short, I was so badly weirded out by the vibes. I'm not particularly psychic but London... just feels bad. And the feel-bad gets captured very well by anyone who writes about it.)
