Books 2010: "Now, dear Demos, beware of being a slave to the last word spoken!"

[hawkwing_lb]

Books 2010: 57-58


57. Aristophanes, The Birds and Other Plays, translated by David Barrett and Alan H. Sommerstein, Penguin Classics, 2003.

Consisting of Knights, Peace, Birds, The Assemblywomen and Wealth. Very Classical Athenian. Which is to say, misogynistic and concerned with court cases, poking fun at prominent gentlemen, and the state of the polis. But also whimsical, humourous, and frequently deft: the translation succeeds in large part in preserving both a lyric and a comic tone as appropriate.

Now I have to go read the rest of Aristophanes, Menander, and Roman Plautus as well, in the hope of getting some insight into ancient attitudes to health and disease. (Alas. Soon I will have to branch out from theatre to poetry and prose and papyrii.)


58. David Drake, The Legions of Fire: The Books of the Elements Vol. 1

I loved this book.

Drake's fictional Carce is Rome, c.30 CE, and his characters are very believable Romans. (Having a Rome called 'Carce' is a little jarring, but, you know, it's a pretty decent workaround to signify that this is Not Real History.) What happens when metaphysics and magic comes into play is interesting, internally coherent, and makes wonderful use of both Roman and Norse mythologies.

Caveat: I've noticed across a number of Drake's books that his characters tend to be very similar in type to characters he's written before. The cast of The Legions of Fire has recognisable similarities to that of Lord of the Isles et sequelae. Which, since I rather liked Isles, was good by me.

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

On David Drake: yes, and this becomes blatant in his "updated" version of the Odyssey. I find him too spare and lean in his writing to really enjoy it, although I've read a fair number of his books.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I like his fantasies rather a lot; his science fiction much less so.