Balls. I hate ideas.

Yesterday and today my wordcount has been split between Hellion Prince and the intro to a project I want to promptly and emphatically back-burner... inspired by this.  It's a young adult, swashbuckling sense-of-wonder space opera serial (say that three times fast) tentatively called Starstuff, and for the parts that don't involve psychic alien vampire pirates, I'm wondering if anyone on my friendslist is interested enough in astronomy or physics to bullshit the science with me a little, and just discuss chirality and Cheshire charge and particles with negative mass and why Epsilon Eridani is a great place to put vacuum-dwelling aliens. 

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, first you must invent the universe.

Got my word count in early today.  Not satisfied, exactly, because I want to be working on Hellion Prince and I really really want to be putting Starstuff on the back burner.  Guess what my caffeine gave me words on?

But, what the Hell.  An excerpt:

 

( 251 words and an alien )

 

Book review #3.

King of Ithaka by Tracy Barrett. 

I picked this up on a whim at the library -- a story about Telemachos going looking for Odysseus sounded like a great time, the sort of thing that hits all my Literary Interest buttons just right.  Well, yes... and no.  Barrett has constructed a compelling and convincing setting, making mythical Greece feel very real -- from the imaginative use of mythical creatures such as centaurs, nymphs, tritons and monstrous titanspawn to the low technology, relative poverty, and extremely different cultural standards, it's a very well-realized world.  And it's recognizable to fans of mythology and history alike, in a gritty way, stripping the glamour and romance from brutal tyranny and making its hero-kings seem like complete assholes (which, if you read Greek myth, is pretty much how they were shown -- Barrett just doesn't suggest that a modern audience ought to like it). 

It's a horny, grungy, violent and treacherous Greece that the naive Telemachos quests across, and the twist ending (which I won't reveal but the text clearly suggests from early on) is a novelty, despite being telegraphed.  But that telegraphing is a major failure -- between robbing myth of its romance, which is a bold choice that I approve of, and the very open and accessible prose that's heavy on the foreshadowing, most of the things that bring me joy in any story are stripped away.  Barrett pulls off several very ambitious ideas in clever ways, and made me love the clumsy, naive, nontraditional hero Telemachos is presented as, but the story itself comes off as flat and unsatisfying in a number of ways.  I don't know whether to recommend it or not. 

Of note, despite the general grimness and historical verisimiltude of the text, the author still crams a whole lot of awesome into a number of the female characters, and gives them very interesting things to do, which is a welcome departure from classical mythology and many of its retellings. 

I'm very ambivalent about this book, so all I can say is that if it sounds good to you, it probably is; and if it sounds bad to you it probably is.  I think I'll try to find other books by Barrett and try them before I make any judgments about her writing in general.