The uses of fear
Dec. 6th, 2005 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonQuote of the day:
"No one expected to be safe until [the 20th Century]...Think of the thousands of years before—years with no law, when the sword ruled. No widespread system of justice; no immunizations against disease. The local lord free to kill the husbands, the husbands free to rape and kill their wives. Childbirth often fatal. No antibiotics. It's only here and now that women are raised believing they'll be safe. And it serves us false. It's not true. It dulls our sense of fear, which is what saves our lives."
—Charlaine Harris, Shakespeare's Counselor
Charlaine Harris, herself a survivor of rape, knows the dark side well, and I love her interpretation of it in her books as much as I love her humor.
I loved Harris's Shakespeare series (starting with Shakespeare's Landlord). Lily Bard, the MC of those books, was much darker than Sookie Stackhouse, the character for which Harris is more famous, and there wasn't anything paranormal going on. She had to discontinue the Lily Bard books, though, because she lost the paperback contract, and said it became economically unviable to continue them. But Lily made a guest appearance in one of the recent Sookie books—what a hilarious treat that was for those of us who loved her. I keep hoping her bestseller success with Sookie may revive Lily, but I rather doubt it will.
I just finished Grave Sight, the first book in Harris's new series featuring psychic Harper Connelly, and I really liked it. It's sort of Sookie-meets-Lily, although Harper is her own character, with her own set of baggage. But it combines psychic dealings with a darker eye towards human nature. Perhaps not as dark as Lily, but definitely not the hilarity of Sookie. One of the things I've loved about every Charlaine Harris book I've read (even when I haven't thought the books were her best work) is her dark sense of humor. That's here, of course. Just not as evidently on display as in the Sookie books. I also love her earthy and realistic portrayal of sex and the sexual dance between men and women, even when some of the men and women are bloodsuckers and shapeshifters.
Harper was struck by lightning one day and when she woke up, had a peculiar relationship with dead people. She didn't see them, couldn't really talk to them, but from that moment on, she could locate their bodies, and once she did could see and experience the moment of their deaths. This gets her into some trouble in a small Arkansas town full of buried—and unburied—secrets. No bloodsuckers or shapeshifters in this one, though. At least, not of the supernatural variety.
"No one expected to be safe until [the 20th Century]...Think of the thousands of years before—years with no law, when the sword ruled. No widespread system of justice; no immunizations against disease. The local lord free to kill the husbands, the husbands free to rape and kill their wives. Childbirth often fatal. No antibiotics. It's only here and now that women are raised believing they'll be safe. And it serves us false. It's not true. It dulls our sense of fear, which is what saves our lives."
—Charlaine Harris, Shakespeare's Counselor
Charlaine Harris, herself a survivor of rape, knows the dark side well, and I love her interpretation of it in her books as much as I love her humor.
I loved Harris's Shakespeare series (starting with Shakespeare's Landlord). Lily Bard, the MC of those books, was much darker than Sookie Stackhouse, the character for which Harris is more famous, and there wasn't anything paranormal going on. She had to discontinue the Lily Bard books, though, because she lost the paperback contract, and said it became economically unviable to continue them. But Lily made a guest appearance in one of the recent Sookie books—what a hilarious treat that was for those of us who loved her. I keep hoping her bestseller success with Sookie may revive Lily, but I rather doubt it will.
I just finished Grave Sight, the first book in Harris's new series featuring psychic Harper Connelly, and I really liked it. It's sort of Sookie-meets-Lily, although Harper is her own character, with her own set of baggage. But it combines psychic dealings with a darker eye towards human nature. Perhaps not as dark as Lily, but definitely not the hilarity of Sookie. One of the things I've loved about every Charlaine Harris book I've read (even when I haven't thought the books were her best work) is her dark sense of humor. That's here, of course. Just not as evidently on display as in the Sookie books. I also love her earthy and realistic portrayal of sex and the sexual dance between men and women, even when some of the men and women are bloodsuckers and shapeshifters.
Harper was struck by lightning one day and when she woke up, had a peculiar relationship with dead people. She didn't see them, couldn't really talk to them, but from that moment on, she could locate their bodies, and once she did could see and experience the moment of their deaths. This gets her into some trouble in a small Arkansas town full of buried—and unburied—secrets. No bloodsuckers or shapeshifters in this one, though. At least, not of the supernatural variety.