{"id":94,"date":"2002-02-06T17:26:24","date_gmt":"2002-02-06T22:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=94"},"modified":"2002-02-06T17:26:24","modified_gmt":"2002-02-06T22:26:24","slug":"ford_john_m_las","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2002\/02\/ford_john_m_las\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford, John M.: Last Hot Time, The"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> <\/a> <\/p>\n

Since John M. Ford and Neil Gaiman will both be at Boskone<\/a>, I thought I should re-read their latest novels before then. I started with Ford’s The Last Hot Time<\/cite><\/strong> (although maybe Ford isn’t going to be at the convention, because I don’t see his name on the preliminary program any more. Bummer; hope he’s well.). In a way, I think this is the silver lining of having the early stages of carpal tunnel syndrome in my left wrist and having to cut way back on typing: I really like this book, but it’s oddly difficult for me to be coherent about it, so I have an excuse to make this short. Short-ish, at least.<\/p>\n

The Last Hot Time<\/cite> is connected to the Bordertown<\/a> shared universe, but does not take place in Bordertown. (The connections are ambiguous enough, to my reading at least, that I will not venture to say whether the book is set in the same world or a similar one.) Elfland came back sometime in the 1990s; the book is set the Levee, the part of Chicago that borders Elfland. Danny Holman is a paramedic escaping his small-town life in Iowa for the big city; he is given a job by Mr. Patrise, the Levee’s leader, who also dubs him Doc Hallownight. Though the book is set, as best I can tell, in the equivalent of the near future, the style is very much of an earlier era: wide-lapel suits, snap-brim hats, big cars and Tommy guns and smoky nightclub singers and gang wars and all the rest. (Cf. Doc Sidhe<\/cite><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

That’s the setup. I’m reluctant to talk about the plot, because it sort of unfolds and ties together in a way that might be easy to spoil. There is<\/em> a plot, let’s just say, though the direction of it might not be obvious at first. And, of course, if a young man runs off to the big city, he’s going to learn a lot about life and himself, which Doc does indeed.<\/p>\n

Why do I like this book so much? It’s very strange, but I can’t point to one thing; there are a lot of great things about it, but even naming them all seems oddly insufficient. I will point out that it’s a book that requires careful attention to who the viewpoint character is and how events get filtered through his eyes; I don’t know, maybe I like it so much because it’s a Ford book where I understood<\/em> all of the key points on my first read! I think, though, that it probably just hit me in just the right time, place, and manner to really resonate. It’s very finely done (and short), so I certainly recommend it, even if I can’t be coherent about it.<\/p>\n

(In case you were wondering: my wrist is feeling much better than it was at the end of last week, thank you; I’m just trying to be careful.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since John M. Ford and Neil Gaiman will both be at Boskone, I thought I should re-read their latest novels before then. I started with Ford’s The Last Hot Time (although maybe Ford isn’t going to be at the convention, because I don’t see his name on the preliminary program any more. Bummer; hope he’s … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ford, John M.: Last Hot Time, The”<\/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":[215],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-ford-john-m"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","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=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}