Havemercy reminded me a lot of Sarah Monette's Felix & Mildmay books in general aesthetic, though that series has at least one female character and IIRC doesn't feature being at war with an Asian culture.
I thought overall that book had enormous race and gender issues, which saddened me as I think they are fandom-ers gone pro.
I'm in a weird position relative to Jaida Jones in that I don't personally know her, but my fiancee went to high school with her, so I know random things about her like her actual legal name despite never having met her -- she is, yeah, a fanfic writer gone pro, from HP fandom among others (her fandom name also has "jaida" in it, so I assume she doesn't mind having the connection made).
I haven't read her second book, but I enjoyed Havemercy when I read it (and it says something about how embeded in the genre evil foreign invaders who are foreign are that they didn't even register with me the first time around because I'd seen so much that was worse). I had to have the total lack of female characters of any description pointed out to me by someone else, and then I felt vaguely embarassed for not noticing (the Publisher's Weekly review even mentions the degree to which women are absent and the Ke-Han are "stereotypically Asian." Personally, I found myself hoping the conflict was going to parallel the Russo-Japanese war to some degree, given that the Ke-Han were clearly Asian-inspired and the main characters' country had obvious pre-revolutionary Russian influence at least in some of the names, but it didn't really).
I think the first book, at least, (the one I read) did better with the gay relationship in it then it did with women, though -- the characters' sexuality wasn't a big, huge deal that had to be angsted on and on about, and it was a fully developed relationship, not just [insert six more pages of sex here]. The Royston/Hal relationship is obviously modelled at least a little on classic romantic tropes, with the decadent city nobleman and the innocent bluestocking scholarly governess tutor, but Hal didn't feel overtly feminized or uke-fied to me.
On the other hand, that and the Rook/Thom pairing (which I'm pretty sure is intended to be slashy and subtexty as all hell despite [SPOILERY SPOILER THING]) both have a younger, less experienced, more scholarly young man and an older, more cynical and overtly masculine man. But that's a classic trope in a lot of gay fiction and lesbian fiction (that's actually by gays and lesbians) as well as in het romance, so I'm not sure if it's heteronormative or not. (Especially when, in lesbian fiction anyway, a butch/femme dynamic is not necessarily heteronormative -- being a butch is not the same thing as being "the man" in a relationship).
There were some aspects of the steampunk dragon fighter pilot squadron that felt right to me, in terms of WWI/WWII fighter pilots and combat and PTSD, but I can only guess at whether the authors came at all close to accurately depicting gay men.
I have a vague idea that Jaida Jones is LGBT herself, but that's based on second hand accounts of who dated who in high school and not on any official information she's actually provided about her own identity that I've seen, so it's more of a wild guess then anything else.
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Date: 2010-02-10 10:25 pm (UTC)I thought overall that book had enormous race and gender issues, which saddened me as I think they are fandom-ers gone pro.
I'm in a weird position relative to Jaida Jones in that I don't personally know her, but my fiancee went to high school with her, so I know random things about her like her actual legal name despite never having met her -- she is, yeah, a fanfic writer gone pro, from HP fandom among others (her fandom name also has "jaida" in it, so I assume she doesn't mind having the connection made).
I haven't read her second book, but I enjoyed Havemercy when I read it (and it says something about how embeded in the genre evil foreign invaders who are foreign are that they didn't even register with me the first time around because I'd seen so much that was worse). I had to have the total lack of female characters of any description pointed out to me by someone else, and then I felt vaguely embarassed for not noticing (the Publisher's Weekly review even mentions the degree to which women are absent and the Ke-Han are "stereotypically Asian." Personally, I found myself hoping the conflict was going to parallel the Russo-Japanese war to some degree, given that the Ke-Han were clearly Asian-inspired and the main characters' country had obvious pre-revolutionary Russian influence at least in some of the names, but it didn't really).
I think the first book, at least, (the one I read) did better with the gay relationship in it then it did with women, though -- the characters' sexuality wasn't a big, huge deal that had to be angsted on and on about, and it was a fully developed relationship, not just [insert six more pages of sex here]. The Royston/Hal relationship is obviously modelled at least a little on classic romantic tropes, with the decadent city nobleman and the innocent
bluestockingscholarlygovernesstutor, but Hal didn't feel overtly feminized or uke-fied to me.On the other hand, that and the Rook/Thom pairing (which I'm pretty sure is intended to be slashy and subtexty as all hell despite [SPOILERY SPOILER THING]) both have a younger, less experienced, more scholarly young man and an older, more cynical and overtly masculine man. But that's a classic trope in a lot of gay fiction and lesbian fiction (that's actually by gays and lesbians) as well as in het romance, so I'm not sure if it's heteronormative or not. (Especially when, in lesbian fiction anyway, a butch/femme dynamic is not necessarily heteronormative -- being a butch is not the same thing as being "the man" in a relationship).
There were some aspects of the steampunk dragon fighter pilot squadron that felt right to me, in terms of WWI/WWII fighter pilots and combat and PTSD, but I can only guess at whether the authors came at all close to accurately depicting gay men.
I have a vague idea that Jaida Jones is LGBT herself, but that's based on second hand accounts of who dated who in high school and not on any official information she's actually provided about her own identity that I've seen, so it's more of a wild guess then anything else.
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