(no subject)

[semperfiona]

Strange thing. I just finished a book called Bloodtide, by Melvin Burgess. It is a hideous post-apocalyptic dystopia, with bloodthirsty cruel characters fighting a gruesome war, with human sacrifices for background decor. I had put it down for several days, and picked it up again tonight and finished it. (Usually I finish books the same day I start them. This one didn't hold me. Yet I wanted to know how it ended. I can count the number of books I have not finished on the fingers of one hand, while the books I have finished are uncountable. Even when I find them unpleasant and squicky, I tend to read to the end. The prose has to be truly turgid or the subject matter downright offensive before I will purposefully close it and not pick it up again.)

So there I was, scowling queasily at the book in my hand, and then I read the afterword, which says simply that the book is based on the first third of Iceland's Volsunga Saga, and suddenly while it wasn't any pleasanter, the off-puttedness I'd been feeling faded. Why should it's being an ancient legend make it any easier to take?

Comments

[krasota.livejournal.com]

well, the book went from a future post-apocalyptic tale to an ancient saga... all of a sudden, one realizes that we're not fearing the events in the book in OUR future, because they occurred in the future of someone born a couple millennia ago.

of course, human history recycles... ;)

that said, i'm fond of the volsunga. i'll have to keep an eye out for the burgess book.

i've often thought the kalevide or kalavala would be excellent if told in a burroughs-esque stream of consciousness narrative. ;)k