The Celestial Globe.
Jul. 12th, 2010 14:27![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starladyRutkoski, Marie. The Celestial Globe. New York: Farrar Strauss & Girroux, 2010.
So I really liked the first book about Petra Kronos, The Cabinet of Wonders, and I think I actually liked this the second book even more. Thanks again toshveta_writes for recommending them to me!
Petra and Neel's accomplishments in the first book are revealed to have in fact made their families' situations far more precarious; Roma in Bohemia are being rounded up and imprisoned on the orders of Prince Rodolfo, and Petra's cousins only just manage to flee to the south of the realm before the prince's foulest servants, the Gristleki or Grey Men, come for her and her father. In the confusion of their attack Petra is separated from her father and brought to London by her erstwhile protector John Dee, while her friend Tomik stumbles onto the seacoast of Bohemia (no, I'm not kidding) and falls in, much to all parties' discomfort, with a shipboard of Maraki Roma and Neel, who are sailing in search of the Celestial Globe created by Gerard Mercator. Reunited with its twin the Terrestrial Globe, the two together will allow whoever possesses them to travel virtually anywhere in the world via the Loopholes they map. Meanwhile in London, Petra takes fencing lessons from the young ex-spy Christopher Rhymer and magic lessons from Dee and schemes to get home to her father.
When she handed me these booksshveta_writes commented that Astrophil, Petra's animate metal spider and friend, is a lot like Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and though I certainly saw that in the first book, I think that it's in The Celestial Globe that the comparison becomes even more relevant. Specifically, there's more than a little of Lyra, Roger and Will in Petra, Tomik and Neel; Rutkoski, crucially, shuffles traits among the trio and gives the Roger character (Tomik) agency and powers of his own, which obviously changes the character arc considerably. That said, Rutkoski also backs down from one of the things I find so absolutely compelling about Lyra and HDM: that Lyra herself is the betrayer, rather than the betrayed like Petra.
I sort of…okay. On some level it irks me as a reader that only rarely are truly canny characters allowed to be fully good. To switch into HP terms, Petra is a Gryffindor to the core, noble, judgmental, heroic and rather naîve; she spends a lot of this book making wrong decisions based on her own wrong initial impressions of people, which Rutkoski portrays convincingly but which, I don't know, I just must be jaded, I find frustrating after a while. That said, the mystery and the denouement are handled perfectly, and I particularly loved the cameos by Will Shakespeare and Ariel. (Among other things, the magic in Rutkoski's world is totally a vindication of some inaccuracies in Shakespeare's plays, which amuses the literature geek in me to no end.) I also really loved Tomik & Neel and their adventures and their dynamic, and I can't wait for them to sail to the Roma homeland to see the queen. John Dee and his family are also a fascinating bunch, and I found myself with a great deal of sympathy for all of them. I hope they'll be back in later books; we'll see.
All that being said, this book definitely puts paid to any incipient anti-monarchy sentiments that might have been detected in the first volume. This is not entirely unexpected; I suppose I'll just have to reread Fly by Night. Another thing that struck me again in this book was Rutkoski's decision to engage with race and racism, though not in so many words--but she does throw around terms like "white" in a way that strikes me as possibly anachronistic, but which I don't think I mind. Obviously the book is a historical fantasy, and I'll trade historical fidelity for contemporary relevance by way of possibly anachronistic terminology any day. So kudos for that, and for the entire book; I want to read the next one, now.
So I really liked the first book about Petra Kronos, The Cabinet of Wonders, and I think I actually liked this the second book even more. Thanks again to
shveta_writes for recommending them to me!Petra and Neel's accomplishments in the first book are revealed to have in fact made their families' situations far more precarious; Roma in Bohemia are being rounded up and imprisoned on the orders of Prince Rodolfo, and Petra's cousins only just manage to flee to the south of the realm before the prince's foulest servants, the Gristleki or Grey Men, come for her and her father. In the confusion of their attack Petra is separated from her father and brought to London by her erstwhile protector John Dee, while her friend Tomik stumbles onto the seacoast of Bohemia (no, I'm not kidding) and falls in, much to all parties' discomfort, with a shipboard of Maraki Roma and Neel, who are sailing in search of the Celestial Globe created by Gerard Mercator. Reunited with its twin the Terrestrial Globe, the two together will allow whoever possesses them to travel virtually anywhere in the world via the Loopholes they map. Meanwhile in London, Petra takes fencing lessons from the young ex-spy Christopher Rhymer and magic lessons from Dee and schemes to get home to her father.
When she handed me these books
shveta_writes commented that Astrophil, Petra's animate metal spider and friend, is a lot like Pantalaimon in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and though I certainly saw that in the first book, I think that it's in The Celestial Globe that the comparison becomes even more relevant. Specifically, there's more than a little of Lyra, Roger and Will in Petra, Tomik and Neel; Rutkoski, crucially, shuffles traits among the trio and gives the Roger character (Tomik) agency and powers of his own, which obviously changes the character arc considerably. That said, Rutkoski also backs down from one of the things I find so absolutely compelling about Lyra and HDM: that Lyra herself is the betrayer, rather than the betrayed like Petra. I sort of…okay. On some level it irks me as a reader that only rarely are truly canny characters allowed to be fully good. To switch into HP terms, Petra is a Gryffindor to the core, noble, judgmental, heroic and rather naîve; she spends a lot of this book making wrong decisions based on her own wrong initial impressions of people, which Rutkoski portrays convincingly but which, I don't know, I just must be jaded, I find frustrating after a while. That said, the mystery and the denouement are handled perfectly, and I particularly loved the cameos by Will Shakespeare and Ariel. (Among other things, the magic in Rutkoski's world is totally a vindication of some inaccuracies in Shakespeare's plays, which amuses the literature geek in me to no end.) I also really loved Tomik & Neel and their adventures and their dynamic, and I can't wait for them to sail to the Roma homeland to see the queen. John Dee and his family are also a fascinating bunch, and I found myself with a great deal of sympathy for all of them. I hope they'll be back in later books; we'll see.
All that being said, this book definitely puts paid to any incipient anti-monarchy sentiments that might have been detected in the first volume. This is not entirely unexpected; I suppose I'll just have to reread Fly by Night. Another thing that struck me again in this book was Rutkoski's decision to engage with race and racism, though not in so many words--but she does throw around terms like "white" in a way that strikes me as possibly anachronistic, but which I don't think I mind. Obviously the book is a historical fantasy, and I'll trade historical fidelity for contemporary relevance by way of possibly anachronistic terminology any day. So kudos for that, and for the entire book; I want to read the next one, now.