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juushikaA Book of Tongues is basically an ode to the fact that loving someone is no guarantee that you will do right by them.
Dee bought the rest of the Hexslinger novels (which somehow I'd forgotten would even exist, despite following their writing process?? this is why you can't trust me with series: I so begrudge the extended demand of my time/resources/investment that I will actually wish away the knowledge of sequels), so I'm rereading from the start.
I collect interpersonal relationships—they're my main draw to all media, and the relationships here hit my buttons: they're messy, crazy intimate, unconventional, unforgiving; it reads like what it is, original fic that functions as fanfic, settled firm at character- and id-level, for all that the Aztec-apocalypse plot may blindside you. My love of interpersonal relationships runs an uneven line between the gratifying and the meaningful—I'm personally invested in the concept of unusual (by which I mean, apparently bizarre or unhealthy) intimacy in particular, but most fictional interpersonal relationships fascinate me rather than speak to me.
This particular one, however, does.
I have a few formative mantras, like my compulsive honesty; I know exactly where they come from, and at this point perhaps they shouldn't define me so completely, but I can't shake them because—well, I suppose because they're necessary parts of how I understand myself and explain my history. "Love is not enough" is one of those mantras. Someone can love you, or claim to love you; they can intend to do what's best for you, or claim to; they can still cause you inadvertent and even willful harm.
Unlike most weird intimacies, that particular dynamic isn't something I fetishize—although it works a lovely tandem, here, with everything which is fetishistic, so that the tension between want/don't want is never allowed to fade. But, unexpectedly, I value it. This is the sort of book I'd expect to have feels about, sure, but not more. Wild West with horror and magic and apocalypses and slashfic! it's shouldn't be heartfelt meaningful to me—and yet. It's such an important mantra. It explains huge swaths of my adolescence. There's a joyless, fierce vindication in seeing it in a book.
Dee bought the rest of the Hexslinger novels (which somehow I'd forgotten would even exist, despite following their writing process?? this is why you can't trust me with series: I so begrudge the extended demand of my time/resources/investment that I will actually wish away the knowledge of sequels), so I'm rereading from the start.
I collect interpersonal relationships—they're my main draw to all media, and the relationships here hit my buttons: they're messy, crazy intimate, unconventional, unforgiving; it reads like what it is, original fic that functions as fanfic, settled firm at character- and id-level, for all that the Aztec-apocalypse plot may blindside you. My love of interpersonal relationships runs an uneven line between the gratifying and the meaningful—I'm personally invested in the concept of unusual (by which I mean, apparently bizarre or unhealthy) intimacy in particular, but most fictional interpersonal relationships fascinate me rather than speak to me.
This particular one, however, does.
I have a few formative mantras, like my compulsive honesty; I know exactly where they come from, and at this point perhaps they shouldn't define me so completely, but I can't shake them because—well, I suppose because they're necessary parts of how I understand myself and explain my history. "Love is not enough" is one of those mantras. Someone can love you, or claim to love you; they can intend to do what's best for you, or claim to; they can still cause you inadvertent and even willful harm.
Unlike most weird intimacies, that particular dynamic isn't something I fetishize—although it works a lovely tandem, here, with everything which is fetishistic, so that the tension between want/don't want is never allowed to fade. But, unexpectedly, I value it. This is the sort of book I'd expect to have feels about, sure, but not more. Wild West with horror and magic and apocalypses and slashfic! it's shouldn't be heartfelt meaningful to me—and yet. It's such an important mantra. It explains huge swaths of my adolescence. There's a joyless, fierce vindication in seeing it in a book.
