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Review: A Strong and Sudden Thaw by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rwday
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Review: A Strong and Sudden Thaw
Now. It's taken me a while to post this, and I apologise profusely to rwday, but - although I have read the book before - I wanted to read the printed version of A Strong & Sudden Thaw at least twice through before I gave a review.
There just aren't enough of books of this quality and that's the truth. It was everything I remembered and even better than I had, in a way.rwday takes you to a world that is our world, and that's what makes it scarier in my opinion. This is good sci-fi without too much sci, it's something that you can imagine, something that is plausible. Forget global warming, this is global freezing. A second ice-age has come and no-one lives much further north than Washington. We are two generations on from any technology, and everything has been lost. The world has reverted to a Frontier land with horses and oil lamps.
David Anderson lives in Moline, Virginia (in, as we find out later, a "holiday home" owned by his grandparents family before the freeze) His family exist on a small holding with sheep and a few crops, trapping and trading and they do pretty well. Life is a struggle, against the hills - and against the dragons which have inexplicably appeared, hovering over the land and snatching sheep and children - but they manage. David's father is well respected in the area, and David, sixteen and nearly adult, has a good reputation and a lot to live up to. Then one day a new Healer, Callan Landers, comes to town and David begins to understand why he's been shying away from his mother's hints about marriage.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg, 'scuse the pun. There's so much more to this book than just a coming of age story, or a homosexual romance. There's a family saga here, a biting commentary on the way Right Wing morality is going on in America now, there's DNA manipulation, government conspiracy and so very much more.
But it's the characters that make it so very memorable. David is the narrator and after half a page you don't even notice his country dialect, asrwday writes it so skilfully that you are in his head and his grammatical faux pas seem part of your own as you "become David", by osmosis. David takes one of the biggest journeys in the book, travelling between young man and adult in a short time, coming out from the shadow of his impressive father and standing on his own two feet. He'll impress you, infuriate you and although you'll love him, you'll want to smack him at times, and that's how it should be.
Callan, too, although older than David by several years, takes a big journey too. He grows up as much as David, imho, and he learns so much - from David of all improbable sources - and I loved watching his experiences. He has such a fragility and a dark tension that he carries with him, and David's youthful enthusiasm threatens to sweep him away, but he manages to hold his own, and learns to step into the sun. I loved how he was cold, and how David worried about him. I loved his stubborness and his fatalism. Some pairs are perfectly matched - these two are not, but they fit together anyhow, as David would say.
Quite apart from the main couple, there are countless other characters none of whom are ever cardboard cut-outs. If you meet a character, then you learn about them, see their strength and their weaknesses (from David's perspective) and that's the magic in this book. If you live in a tight knit community, then you KNOW people, and David knows everyone. There's David's siblings, David's grandmother and mother, the mayor, and so many other townsfolk. When there's a town meeting, then a lot of people speak, it's not all down to one person.
The biggest character in the entire book (for me) is the landscape - and the weather. The weather is omniprescent and always dangerous. Either you are prepared, or you are dead, David says. The winter goes away (If the people of Moline are lucky) from late April to September, and even then, it's cold.rwday writes the weather in with every activity of the town, but in a way that David would accept it - as an integral a part of his life as getting up and washing is - and it never seems intrusive or out of place. The weather matters.
And the landscape, too.rwday knows these Virginian hills and it shows - the love of the land shines out with the first page onwards, and her descriptions are beautiful, but then rwday is a damned good writer, there's no point me saying that. I'm not going to discuss the dragons, you'll have to find that out for yourself.
Yes, she's my friend. Yes, I'm honoured to know her. But that has nothing to do with anything. This book is a triumph of imagination, and a damned good romance/adventure story that will make you laugh, cry, hold your breath in suspense and punch the air in relief.
And if it doesn't you can mock me privately.
And there are sequels. Oh yes indeedy. And I've read 'em.
rwday, but - although I have read the book before - I wanted to read the printed version of A Strong & Sudden Thaw at least twice through before I gave a review. There just aren't enough of books of this quality and that's the truth. It was everything I remembered and even better than I had, in a way.
rwday takes you to a world that is our world, and that's what makes it scarier in my opinion. This is good sci-fi without too much sci, it's something that you can imagine, something that is plausible. Forget global warming, this is global freezing. A second ice-age has come and no-one lives much further north than Washington. We are two generations on from any technology, and everything has been lost. The world has reverted to a Frontier land with horses and oil lamps.David Anderson lives in Moline, Virginia (in, as we find out later, a "holiday home" owned by his grandparents family before the freeze) His family exist on a small holding with sheep and a few crops, trapping and trading and they do pretty well. Life is a struggle, against the hills - and against the dragons which have inexplicably appeared, hovering over the land and snatching sheep and children - but they manage. David's father is well respected in the area, and David, sixteen and nearly adult, has a good reputation and a lot to live up to. Then one day a new Healer, Callan Landers, comes to town and David begins to understand why he's been shying away from his mother's hints about marriage.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg, 'scuse the pun. There's so much more to this book than just a coming of age story, or a homosexual romance. There's a family saga here, a biting commentary on the way Right Wing morality is going on in America now, there's DNA manipulation, government conspiracy and so very much more.
But it's the characters that make it so very memorable. David is the narrator and after half a page you don't even notice his country dialect, as
rwday writes it so skilfully that you are in his head and his grammatical faux pas seem part of your own as you "become David", by osmosis. David takes one of the biggest journeys in the book, travelling between young man and adult in a short time, coming out from the shadow of his impressive father and standing on his own two feet. He'll impress you, infuriate you and although you'll love him, you'll want to smack him at times, and that's how it should be. Callan, too, although older than David by several years, takes a big journey too. He grows up as much as David, imho, and he learns so much - from David of all improbable sources - and I loved watching his experiences. He has such a fragility and a dark tension that he carries with him, and David's youthful enthusiasm threatens to sweep him away, but he manages to hold his own, and learns to step into the sun. I loved how he was cold, and how David worried about him. I loved his stubborness and his fatalism. Some pairs are perfectly matched - these two are not, but they fit together anyhow, as David would say.
Quite apart from the main couple, there are countless other characters none of whom are ever cardboard cut-outs. If you meet a character, then you learn about them, see their strength and their weaknesses (from David's perspective) and that's the magic in this book. If you live in a tight knit community, then you KNOW people, and David knows everyone. There's David's siblings, David's grandmother and mother, the mayor, and so many other townsfolk. When there's a town meeting, then a lot of people speak, it's not all down to one person.
The biggest character in the entire book (for me) is the landscape - and the weather. The weather is omniprescent and always dangerous. Either you are prepared, or you are dead, David says. The winter goes away (If the people of Moline are lucky) from late April to September, and even then, it's cold.
rwday writes the weather in with every activity of the town, but in a way that David would accept it - as an integral a part of his life as getting up and washing is - and it never seems intrusive or out of place. The weather matters.And the landscape, too.
rwday knows these Virginian hills and it shows - the love of the land shines out with the first page onwards, and her descriptions are beautiful, but then rwday is a damned good writer, there's no point me saying that. I'm not going to discuss the dragons, you'll have to find that out for yourself.Yes, she's my friend. Yes, I'm honoured to know her. But that has nothing to do with anything. This book is a triumph of imagination, and a damned good romance/adventure story that will make you laugh, cry, hold your breath in suspense and punch the air in relief.
And if it doesn't you can mock me privately.
And there are sequels. Oh yes indeedy. And I've read 'em.
no subject
And yes yes yes to the landscape, and the weather and David's accent and all the other stuff you brought up that I didn't mention. I love how the hills and the weather can be so beautiful and so unforgiving at the same time.
And also, I loved that Callan was cold, I meant to say that. He was so very out of place in that world in a lot of ways, and his coldness seemed to symbolise it beautifully. I love him.
*runs back to bed*
no subject
What I found out while writing the review was that
1. I suck at reviews and
2. The book covers SO MUCH in 400 pages that it's impossible to touch on every aspect, even in the length of the review that you or I gave. I didn't realise just how impressive that was until I tried to condense it. Saying "it's a future history with gays and dragons" doesn't come anywhere near to it.
no subject
OMG ::swoon::
*is ded from joy*
no subject
You know it wouldn't exist, at least not in published form, if it weren't for you.
Love you,
xxxx
no subject
I am alsmot finished the book and LOVING it. The characters and the scenery are so real and I'm taking the book everywhere with me to grab a read whenever I can. We need to all post a review on Amazon, it deserves to be bought and read everywhere.