In the Future, Aspirin Will Be Illegal

[misura]

Read (well, reread, but it'd been at least five years so) Jane Emerson's City of Diamond, which was great fun and I'd like to describe as 'a tragicomedy of cultures IN SPACE!', because I'm feeling fanciful. It's got a lot of characters, including but not limited to:

Spider, a small-time criminal and ghost, whose physical life has been saved by

Tal, a demon both unfamiliar with and disinclined to the social niceties practiced by humans until recommended a quaint book titled Pride and Prejudice by

Keylinn, who hails from an ancient warrior race that has sequestered itself from the rest of the universe both for its and their protection, who has no connection whatsoever to

Hartley, attractive (physically, at least), amoral, ambitious and a man with a hobby named

Willie, straight arrow, nice guy and not wildly keen on a promotion to the position of bodyguard to

Iolanthe, a young lady who's been raised on the cityship of Opal to be quiet, obedient and polite, arranged to marry

Adrian, a young man who's been raised on the cityship of Diamond to be responsible and mature and sensible and a good king, and maybe actually is one out of those (possibly two, depending on which of his advisors you talk to)

The book is rather open-ended, though (luckily, given that there's no sequel) more in the 'Let's use these last pages to set up the sequel' sense than that it ends on a cliffhanger.


Having also just reread Connie Willis's Blackout/All Clear it was fun to go from 'in the future, people will still appreciate and be able to quote Shakespeare' to 'in the future, people will still appreciate Jane Austen'. (To be honest, I think I'd prefer Austen over Shakespeare, purely for ease of reading?)

Rewatching Franklin & Bash, which is a bit like Boston Legal, except that there's two Alan Shores and more pool parties. (Also more throwing up, so it's a mixed bag.)

Comments

[sarren]

You had me at P&P demon :)

[misura]

Ha! To be fair, we don't actually get to see Tal use any 'lessons' he's learned from P&P - although I'm also not entirely sure what he'd pick up from it. (He basically gives people the creeps by walking into a room and doesn't really care that he does, so there's plenty of Pride [on his end] and Prejudice [on everyone else's end] involved, but ...)