Bookblogging pt.2 (the Yukikaze novel)
Mar. 23rd, 2006 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia...It isn't a novel. =_= It's a collection of linked short stories. SF authors did that, once upon a time. There are eight stories, most of which are around 50 bunko pages long. I'm currently reading #5.
The problem with the linked short story format is the inevitable redundancy in establishing setting/characterization. It's like reading half a dozen of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories in a row - after a while you're like, "Okay, he's a badass, he's in it for the thrill of the chase, he doesn't give a damn about the feelings of the victim or the perpetrator, okay, I geddit! Let's all move on!" But latecomers who just happened to pick up the magazine have to be brought into the continuity fold. Thus FAF's background and mission are explained in every story, as well as Rei's status as a pilot in the Special Combat Unit with a rep for being rude assholes at best, cold-blooded psychopaths at worst - their job requires them to close themselves off from normal human emotion oh boohoo kawaisou etc. The problem is that this is not actually convincing from the text itself, because you spent a lot of time in Rei's POV, and while he's rude and standoffish he's definitely not emotionless - or even all that messed up. (Apart from being in love with his plane. OTOH I have crushes on anime characters, so who am I to talk.) He just kind of hates people and complains in his head à la Squall Leonhart. XD While I usually mock this brand of adolescent male emo I actually feel Rei is justified most of the time, since if I had to do his job I'd be completely annoyed at the universe as well. Rei loves flying itself, it's just the people who make his life difficult.
Also Rei has 1 x friend = Jack, and in the novel they spend a lot of time hanging around in the briefing room, knocking back regulation coffee and snarking re the FUBARness of it all. (The political aspect/nature of FAF in relation to the international power balance back on Earth is given quite a lot of play, actually, complete with academics and military affairs pundits and hints of espionage and massive cynicism on the part of the soldiers themselves. I have a feeling part of the setup's inspiration was Vietnam. You have this war dragging on a billion miles from home with no signs of ending, the rhetoric is all international coalition and idealistic saving-of-planet but the guys fighting it know they're scraping the bottom of the barrel, and most of them are only there in the first place because they ran out of options back home.) They're just... not the robotic killers of Lynn Jackson's fevered imagination. XD You don't even get to meet any other members of the Boomerang Squadron, apart from Lt. Burgadish who admittedly is a pill.
Short summaries of the stories, mostly to show how they vary from the anime:
1) "The Sky Where Fairies Dance": intro story. Rei shoots down a JAM craft disguised as a Super Sylph and gets court-martialed for his pains. While Cooley sorts things out Rei is literally grounded and made to assist Jack for a couple of weeks as the latter deals with a pressing problem: what to do when your squadron gets picked as the ceremonial guard for the arrival of a visiting dignitary, and they all boycott? (Answer: you can either convince thirty rude, assholish, uncaring psychos one by one, or you can get with designing androids to do the job.)
The intrinsic value of humanity versus machines that can do the job better is the major theme of the novel, of course, and this is how it's first broached. XD
2) "Question Not The Worth Of A Knight": the Karl Gunow / automated fighter plane system story. Happens pretty much as in the anime IIRC (not IMO the most interesting episode ^^;). Notable in that it's the first time Rei is confronted with the idea that humans may not in fact be necessary to fight JAM, against which he emotionally rebels as it would mean Yukikaze didn't need him. XD;; Jacks tells him humans are essential to the war because the war was declared by the aliens against humanity: it was made their concern, they don't have a choice in the matter.
Later on in the book you start getting the impression this isn't the case.
(While the "knight" in the title refers to Gunow's unmanned plane it could just as well be Rei, I think. XD Which means Cooley is the queen and Jack is the vizier or the master of the stables or something. It expresses the dynamic pretty well.)
More later, I've got to run. XD
The problem with the linked short story format is the inevitable redundancy in establishing setting/characterization. It's like reading half a dozen of Dashiell Hammett's Continental Op stories in a row - after a while you're like, "Okay, he's a badass, he's in it for the thrill of the chase, he doesn't give a damn about the feelings of the victim or the perpetrator, okay, I geddit! Let's all move on!" But latecomers who just happened to pick up the magazine have to be brought into the continuity fold. Thus FAF's background and mission are explained in every story, as well as Rei's status as a pilot in the Special Combat Unit with a rep for being rude assholes at best, cold-blooded psychopaths at worst - their job requires them to close themselves off from normal human emotion oh boohoo kawaisou etc. The problem is that this is not actually convincing from the text itself, because you spent a lot of time in Rei's POV, and while he's rude and standoffish he's definitely not emotionless - or even all that messed up. (Apart from being in love with his plane. OTOH I have crushes on anime characters, so who am I to talk.) He just kind of hates people and complains in his head à la Squall Leonhart. XD While I usually mock this brand of adolescent male emo I actually feel Rei is justified most of the time, since if I had to do his job I'd be completely annoyed at the universe as well. Rei loves flying itself, it's just the people who make his life difficult.
Also Rei has 1 x friend = Jack, and in the novel they spend a lot of time hanging around in the briefing room, knocking back regulation coffee and snarking re the FUBARness of it all. (The political aspect/nature of FAF in relation to the international power balance back on Earth is given quite a lot of play, actually, complete with academics and military affairs pundits and hints of espionage and massive cynicism on the part of the soldiers themselves. I have a feeling part of the setup's inspiration was Vietnam. You have this war dragging on a billion miles from home with no signs of ending, the rhetoric is all international coalition and idealistic saving-of-planet but the guys fighting it know they're scraping the bottom of the barrel, and most of them are only there in the first place because they ran out of options back home.) They're just... not the robotic killers of Lynn Jackson's fevered imagination. XD You don't even get to meet any other members of the Boomerang Squadron, apart from Lt. Burgadish who admittedly is a pill.
Short summaries of the stories, mostly to show how they vary from the anime:
1) "The Sky Where Fairies Dance": intro story. Rei shoots down a JAM craft disguised as a Super Sylph and gets court-martialed for his pains. While Cooley sorts things out Rei is literally grounded and made to assist Jack for a couple of weeks as the latter deals with a pressing problem: what to do when your squadron gets picked as the ceremonial guard for the arrival of a visiting dignitary, and they all boycott? (Answer: you can either convince thirty rude, assholish, uncaring psychos one by one, or you can get with designing androids to do the job.)
The intrinsic value of humanity versus machines that can do the job better is the major theme of the novel, of course, and this is how it's first broached. XD
2) "Question Not The Worth Of A Knight": the Karl Gunow / automated fighter plane system story. Happens pretty much as in the anime IIRC (not IMO the most interesting episode ^^;). Notable in that it's the first time Rei is confronted with the idea that humans may not in fact be necessary to fight JAM, against which he emotionally rebels as it would mean Yukikaze didn't need him. XD;; Jacks tells him humans are essential to the war because the war was declared by the aliens against humanity: it was made their concern, they don't have a choice in the matter.
Later on in the book you start getting the impression this isn't the case.
(While the "knight" in the title refers to Gunow's unmanned plane it could just as well be Rei, I think. XD Which means Cooley is the queen and Jack is the vizier or the master of the stables or something. It expresses the dynamic pretty well.)
More later, I've got to run. XD
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no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 03:40 am (UTC)As for... the book isn't any less slashy, actually. XD;; If anything it's more so, because Rei and Jack spend more scenes hanging out together. The tone of their interaction is a bit different, it's lighter and not as angsty (or maybe I'm not far enough in). Rei talks a lot more, Jack cracks jokes of the oh-break-up-with-Yukikaze-and-stay-with-me variety. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 03:44 am (UTC)Kills me...
I don't know why, but I always assumed their relationship (novel-wise) was more paternalistic. Like Jack could see himself in Rei (I've read somewhere before that before, when Jack WAS a pilot, he was rather different and detached from humanity somewhat and therefore he could see that old himself in Rei)...
And I don't like Edith either... her trampy attire for starter had me on edge.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 04:09 am (UTC)If anything what's different in the book is that Rei's feelings for Yukikaze are entirely set out in romantic terms. XD (Though she doesn't talk to him like she does in the anime!) In the anime you get it by implication, but in the book Jack is just like, "...You do realise you can't kiss a plane, right."
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 12:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 01:19 pm (UTC)the saddest thing is I get the impression (especially after you pointed out how Rei was worried about the concept of pilotless planes) that it IS a very one-sided thing, and Yukikaze doesn't actually need him, and the reason he develops this very Kira-in-the-presence-of-grinning-Gin expression on his face sometimes is because he is afraid she might find out. xD
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 02:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 04:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 04:53 am (UTC)