(Greeboris?)
]]>I just got to the part of the book where Mo has her first extensive conversation with the SA in his office, and he says:
"And finally, there's you, Doctor. Combat epistemologist (...) and entangled with - sorry, bearer of - the Pale Violin."
Half a page earlier he describes Bob's Eater of Souls powers as the result of a process of entanglement.
So, at least according to the SA, there doesn't seem to be a fundamental difference between what's happening between Mo and the violin, and Bob and the Eater. His immediate self-correction, with the very deliberate emphasis on the word "bearer" (italics present in the text) seems to indicate that he's trying to accommodate Mo's interpretive preference there: he knows that she doesn't like to think of herself as entangled.
So it seems the difference really might be all in Mo's and Bob's approaches to handling their eldritch companions - externalisation vs. internalisation.
[As an aside: Does anyone else have something of a problem with Mo essentially spluttering so much during that conversation - and in a few more places in the book, too, I think. I get that she's shocked/surprised (though I kind of want to ask why, because most of the things she seems shocked at seem pretty obvious?) but it just doesn't really seem like her... usual conversational style.]
]]>Mo sputtering etc., internalizing vs. externalizing: that seems to be a general thing with Mo vs. Bob. Bob's narrator persona seems to be pretty close to the persona others see; his somewhat bumbling demeanor etc. He's a lot more competent/scary than he admits to himself (and that's one of Mo's grievances with him, but his internal narrative is pretty close with what he projects.
Mo, not so much. She's keenly aware of her capabilities (not so much her limitations; she pushes herself way too hard) but has a pretty big blind spot in how she appears to others. Her interactions with Mhari are a case in point: "Is she afraid of me?". And later, during The Mandate's appearance at the office, she wonders why Mhari keeps silicone ear plugs at hand. Yeah, Mo, why would your executive assistant who is terrified of you after you attempted to kill her using your cursed violin keep ear plugs within reach? It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma!
Nice touch: vampire Mhari as described by Bob: "on the striking/handsome rather than the pretty/beautiful scale" (paraphrasing). As described by Mo: "a willowy blonde with a figure fit to send vapid twenty-something non-supermodels into paroxysms of jealousy". (Both Bob and Mo seem to agree about Ramona with glamour having supermodel-level looks though.)
]]>That's the most wrong-headed, ass-backwards misinterpretation I've seen so far. But it's brilliantly constructed!
(When I do unreliable narrators it seems somehow ungrateful to be annoyed when people misinterpret what's going on ...)
]]>Yup. And the consequences of that -- and of Mo's promotion at the end of TAS -- become fully clear in the opening chapters of "The Delirium Brief", which I am currently chewing on. (That's book 8, by the way -- book 7 is a side-trip mostly about Alex the PHANG and Pete the Vicar. And elves. And a borrowed-not-stolen-honest kettenkrad.)
]]>You get to see more of Alex and Pete -- and of Pinky and Brains -- in "The Nightmare Stacks" (book 7).
Yes, book 8 is the Bob-grows-up novel. (And he wishes he hadn't.)
I am toying with the idea of using Mhari as the narrator for book 9, but that's a long way in the future ...
]]>Mr. Stross- since the Laundry series was well under way by the time this came out, do you guys know each other, or is it just a case of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery... otherwise there's some serious destiny entanglement going on. One hesitates to say plagiarism, since there aren't any words original to myself in this sentence, all are tropes of a sort borrowed from the surrounding cultural milieu. Which kind of begs the question on who gets to sue who, if to sue is what you do.
]]>I'd never heard of this before now.
I very much doubt it's in any way influenced by the Laundry series. Mo's violin first appears in "The Jennifer Morgue" which was published in November 2006 ... in a small press hardcover edition -- it didn't get mass market visibility in the shape of a trade paperback from a major publisher until summer 2007 9UK) or January 2009 (USA).
As comics don't draw themselves, it's vanishingly implausible to suppose that Gerard Way read it early enough for it to be an influence on "The Umbrella Academy". Also? The superhero thing didn't arrive until a couple of months ago.
There is this thing in SF/F known as "steam engine time"; when it's time to invent the steam engine, every goddamn engineer on the planet will invent it. Similarly, both Charles Sheffield and Arthur C. Clarke independently wrote and published the first two hard SF novels about/featuring space elevators within three months of one another. (Note: their publishers take a year to produce a book once they receive the manuscript, so there's zero chance of there having been any cross-fertilization.)
TAS is my favorite book in the series so far, with TFM a close second. I'll not make any excuses; I like my protagonists struggling. And I love Mo, warts and all.
Not much up to interpretation for Mo's state of mind by the end of the story; it's all in the text. I don't think I have anything to add that hasn't been said in this thread already.
But re-reading everything back to back did make me realize something important in context. Namely, the relevance of Bob killing Marianne in TRC.
Marianne is not possessed and neither is Bob's life acutely threatened at the time; he eats her soul because, stating it bluntly, she's a deranged psychopath and in the way, and not out of self-defense.
And lest anyone argue that Bob was in danger (after all, he had just seen Howe die) and killing Marianne was basically justified (or at least justifiable), let me remind you of the sequence in TAC where Persephone and Bob are storming Schiller's mansion and Bob has a lengthy interlude about the legality of him opening doors/breaking and entering in a foreign jurisdiction. While the owner of said house has opened a gate to the Sleeper in the Pyramid in preparation for a multi-million-human sacrifice.
My point being, Bob ordinarily really cares about this stuff. This is also frequently commented on by his superiors. Mo (having been in External Assets for years) finds it both endearing and naive. Bob taking a life intentionally like that is very much out of character for him, and very comparable to what Mo did in Vakilabad, which upset him greatly. (And which seems to be a root cause in the emotional detachment from Mo he's displaying in the second half of TRC and TAS).
So, yeah. Even ignoring all Eater-related issues, that's a pretty big thing for Bob to chew through, since it really doesn't fit his self-image.
]]>At the moment I'm wondering about the first Professor Freudstein caper. Maybe it was just dumb coincidence that this happened at the same time as Strip Jack Spratt was being a public nuisance. But of course long time Laundry readers would be expected to chalk up Spratt's sudden demise to a geas biting him - I certainly did! It had the signs of such a thing and was awfully convenient timing otherwise.
More later as I have things to say.
]]>In case it matters, Fretboard shows up on pg.186 too.
No comments about T-LEAF?
By any chance, does Mo's Magic Mascara contain the ashes of Black Cat Placenta? As in: "Who wishes to see [demons] should take the after-birth of a black cat, the offspring of a black she-cat, the first-born of a first-born, roast it in the fire, pulverize it, then fill his eyes with it, and he will see them." –from "Everyman's Talmud", A. Cohen If not, I call dibs--been wanting to use that in a novel for a while.
I think as far as the press is concerned, the Scary Violin Lady is likely to get dubbed The Fiddler.
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