Glen Cook, 'Sweet Silver Blues'

[hawkwing_lb]

Book 157, Fiction 149:

149. Glen Cook, Sweet Silver Blues: A Garrett, P.I., Novel.

Private investigator in a world that strikes me as remniscent of D&D - my uneducated opinion - is reluctantly convinced to track down the heir to a friend's probably-not-gained-entirely-honestly wealth.

What I liked? Garrett's voice, the interestingly quirked plot, the vampires, the hints of a larger world on the edges of the worldbuilding.

What I didn't like: Can we not has the cardboard wimmenz, pls? Do not want.

That pretty much spoiled the book for me. I might pick up another one, to see if there's any sort of change, but really, despite the good points, it pretty much left a sour taste in my mouth.

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I read that not so much as "cardboard women" but "narrator so deeply sunk in noir gender issues that he makes Archie Goodwin look progressive." I don't think you're going to find that changes enough to stop being annoying in the later books.

I need a noir userpic, come to think of it. This one's not quite it.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Thant's good to know. Since my exposure to noir has mostly been books with female protagonists, or at least modern sensibilities, I had no idea that it could be that annoying.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Personally, I find it a lot more annoying in Raymond Chandler, when it's unconscious assumptions about how the world works, than in something like the Dresden Files where the author is consciously doing noir worldview in order to play with its limitations - the ways it goes crunch when it bumps into the Queen of Air and Darkness, frex; it's been long enough since I read a Garrett book that I can't recall where along that spectrum I felt Glen Cook was, it's a somewhat patchy series and the ones I most like are parodying specific kinds and bits of mystery above and beyond Garrett being a San Spade/Archie Goodwin type and the Dead Man doing Nero Wolfe. It's probably worth saying that Cook is definitely capable of doing more with female characters than that, as witness The Dragon Never Sleeps.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm not giving up on Cook by a long shot (keep meaning to try and find his new series in paperback). But Garrett, probably.

I'm under-read in noir. Probably because I can't get past being annoyed at a book these days. It's only in the last three years that I've been able to give up on books I don't like.

The Dresden Files are interesting that way (though I'm saving five through seven up for the next plane journey I take). They've started to grow on me. I don't know that I'll ever be enthusiastic about them, but - unlike Harry Potter - I can see why other people can be. :)