{"id":467,"date":"2006-10-29T20:17:16","date_gmt":"2006-10-29T20:17:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=467"},"modified":"2024-02-23T21:17:52","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T02:17:52","slug":"friesner_esther","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2006\/10\/friesner_esther\/","title":{"rendered":"Friesner, Esther M.: Druid’s Blood<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Mely’s discussion of Esther M. Friesner’s works<\/a>, I checked Druid’s Blood<\/cite><\/strong> out of the library. This was an agreeable way to pass a couple of hours, though I’ve no strong urge to seek out the rest of Friesner’s work.<\/p>\n

Druid’s Blood<\/cite> is an alternate history of the “let’s have fun with historical characters” type rather than the “let’s rigorously work out the implications of a divergence” type. That is, in a world where Britain’s rulers are Druids chosen by winning magical battles for the throne and where a magical shieldwall encircles Britain, it defies probability that the same monarchs should have sat on the throne, and that Wellington, Kitchener, Byron, Lovelace, and Wilde should exist<\/em>, let alone be pretty much as they were in history (except for the oh-so-minor fact of not all being alive at the same time). It is also a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, narrated by the Watson-equivalent, “Weston,” except for a short prologue, which reveals that the Holmes-equivalent is actually an actor who made himself over into the character depicted in a few short stories published in the Strand<\/cite>. (Which is kind of interesting, though less is made of this than I thought might’ve been.)<\/p>\n

Like most (all?) interesting Holmes pastiches, the focus is someone other than Holmes, namely Weston, who finds himself caught up in a plot against Queen Victoria and the foundations of organized British magic. My impression of the plot—and again, this may be the fatigue talking—is that it’s less a coherent thing than an excuse for playing with various historical figures. However, the development of Weston is done nicely and keeps the book from falling apart.<\/p>\n

There is an unfortunately stereotypical portrayal of a non-British deity in the book. I can somewhat rationalize the portrayal as being consistent with the character who invoked the deity, but I’m not sure that’s supported by the text, and regardless I found it irksome.<\/p>\n

Finally, Friesner has a reputation for writing humorous novels, but I can’t say if this was funny, because I’m deficient at spotting humor in novels (you have no idea how many jokes I missed in the Aubrey-Maturin novels before I started listening to the audiobooks). I remember being amused on a couple of occasions, but my general impression is that this isn’t a farce, for whatever that’s worth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks to Mely’s discussion of Esther M. Friesner’s works, I checked Druid’s Blood out of the library. This was an agreeable way to pass a couple of hours, though I’ve no strong urge to seek out the rest of Friesner’s work. Druid’s Blood is an alternate history of the “let’s have fun with historical characters” … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Friesner, Esther M.: Druid’s Blood<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[218],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-friesner-esther-m"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2858,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}