F/F Friday: Empress of the World
May. 17th, 2019 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archer“Sometimes I think the reason I like archaeology so much is that it’s all over. I can analyze artifacts for the rest of my life, and in the grand scheme of things, if I put a clay pot together the wrong way, or decide that something was a weapon when it was actually a hairpiece, it won’t matter. Not to anyone alive.”
I liked Sara Ryan’s Empress of the World, but I would have liked it even more if it leaned more into the “voyage of intellectual discovery” thing that the above quote suggests. As it is, the book is more of a voyage of sexual identity, which is perfectly fine… but I wanted more archaeology, dammit.
Our heroine, Nicola, is taking a class on archaeology at a sort of gifted & talent summer camp for teens. (It’s like a cross between boarding school and college.) While she’s there, she falls in love with Battle, who has the most delicious iddy name. It sounds, and I mean this in the best way possible, like a total Mary Sue name, like the author just gave no fucks about things like “respectability” and “names that real people actually have” and gave the love interest exactly the sort of deliciously romantic vaguely angsty name that any teenager might want their summer romance to have.
Battle is a gorgeous blonde with a mildly dark past and a penchant for saying “words don’t work” when she doesn’t want to talk about her feelings. To be fair, sometimes even when you do talk about your feelings the words just can’t bridge the gap between two people… but at the same time, you can’t blame the insufficiency of words when you haven’t even tried to use them.
I liked Battle as a character and Battle and Nicola separately but given this particular penchant of Battle’s, I wasn’t totally sold on Battle/Nicola as a pairing. However, they are still pretty young, so possibly Battle will grow into talking about her feelings?
There’s actually a sequel, The Rules for Hearts, which focuses on Battle. I’m not sure if I’m invested enough to read it. Has anyone read it? What did you think?
I liked Sara Ryan’s Empress of the World, but I would have liked it even more if it leaned more into the “voyage of intellectual discovery” thing that the above quote suggests. As it is, the book is more of a voyage of sexual identity, which is perfectly fine… but I wanted more archaeology, dammit.
Our heroine, Nicola, is taking a class on archaeology at a sort of gifted & talent summer camp for teens. (It’s like a cross between boarding school and college.) While she’s there, she falls in love with Battle, who has the most delicious iddy name. It sounds, and I mean this in the best way possible, like a total Mary Sue name, like the author just gave no fucks about things like “respectability” and “names that real people actually have” and gave the love interest exactly the sort of deliciously romantic vaguely angsty name that any teenager might want their summer romance to have.
Battle is a gorgeous blonde with a mildly dark past and a penchant for saying “words don’t work” when she doesn’t want to talk about her feelings. To be fair, sometimes even when you do talk about your feelings the words just can’t bridge the gap between two people… but at the same time, you can’t blame the insufficiency of words when you haven’t even tried to use them.
I liked Battle as a character and Battle and Nicola separately but given this particular penchant of Battle’s, I wasn’t totally sold on Battle/Nicola as a pairing. However, they are still pretty young, so possibly Battle will grow into talking about her feelings?
There’s actually a sequel, The Rules for Hearts, which focuses on Battle. I’m not sure if I’m invested enough to read it. Has anyone read it? What did you think?
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Date: 2019-05-18 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-18 04:02 am (UTC)I read The Rules for Hearts. I've forgotten most of it (and it was quite some time after I read Empress of the World) and I think I liked it but not as much -- I don't remember it too well.
I just noticed that the book was reissued with what it describes as "extra short stories" but I think are actually short comics (graphic stories?) -- I remember reading some of them in a previous incarnation online. Did you get the reissue? I'm actually pretty curious about it now.