Yeast Extract
Jun. 18th, 2008 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threemonkeysYou ever get a hankerin' for something. Something fairly specific. For example you might get the urge for some toast and Marmite*. Only there is no bread or Marmite in the house. Vegemite on a rice cracker just isn't going to cut it. The other day I just felt the urge to read some modern fantasy. I don't know why that was, but the more I thought about it, the stronger the urge became. Some Tim Powers or maybe Jonathan Carroll would have done the job nicely I think. The thing is, I didn't have anything unread like that in the house and I didn't think re-reading would do the trick.
The nearest, Vegemite on a rice cracker, I could find was The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. For reasons not well remembered I bought all three of this series from a bargain bin. When I read the first volume, Night Watch, I initially thought I'd wasted even the small amount paid for the books, but I persisted and it started to grow on me. This volume continued that trend - the more I read, the more engaged with it I became. It never really got to the core of the craving, but it kept it quiet for a while.
The key thing that kept me interested I think is the sense of strangeness. Here we have our modern world, except that it is a strange and magical place that we don't know at all. But here is the interesting thing - it isn't really all the magicians, vampires etc going at each other that is what is so unfamiliar. In fact, I have been reading fantasy far too long to think of that as strange. What is most disorienting about these books is Russia and Moscow in particular. The Author is Russian and as far as I can tell these books are a genuine product of the culture. A culture that is not like any one I'm familiar with. Some of it is the obvious things like the way Taxis work on Russia, but some of it is more subtle like the implicit attitude towards hierarchies or personal destiny that the characters display. Yet I wouldn't be satisfied as well by a straight non-fantasy story set in Russia. The two go well together - like toast and Marmite.
*The New Zealand kind - the "real" Brit stuff is vile (despite the protestations of those raised on it that the reverse is true). The local stuff is actually quite similar to Vegemite - just not the same.
The nearest, Vegemite on a rice cracker, I could find was The Day Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko. For reasons not well remembered I bought all three of this series from a bargain bin. When I read the first volume, Night Watch, I initially thought I'd wasted even the small amount paid for the books, but I persisted and it started to grow on me. This volume continued that trend - the more I read, the more engaged with it I became. It never really got to the core of the craving, but it kept it quiet for a while.
The key thing that kept me interested I think is the sense of strangeness. Here we have our modern world, except that it is a strange and magical place that we don't know at all. But here is the interesting thing - it isn't really all the magicians, vampires etc going at each other that is what is so unfamiliar. In fact, I have been reading fantasy far too long to think of that as strange. What is most disorienting about these books is Russia and Moscow in particular. The Author is Russian and as far as I can tell these books are a genuine product of the culture. A culture that is not like any one I'm familiar with. Some of it is the obvious things like the way Taxis work on Russia, but some of it is more subtle like the implicit attitude towards hierarchies or personal destiny that the characters display. Yet I wouldn't be satisfied as well by a straight non-fantasy story set in Russia. The two go well together - like toast and Marmite.
*The New Zealand kind - the "real" Brit stuff is vile (despite the protestations of those raised on it that the reverse is true). The local stuff is actually quite similar to Vegemite - just not the same.
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Date: 2008-06-18 10:38 am (UTC)Also ditto on the Marmite. The UK stuff is foul.
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Date: 2008-06-18 06:52 pm (UTC)