(no subject)

[stellar_muddle]

Just finished rereading "The Tough Guide to Fantasyland" by Diana Wynne Jones. If you can get hold of a copy, read it. Very very very funny.

For instance, under slaves, female (or at least part thereof)

Often male tourists will sympathize with the plight of such Slaves, nobly reject their offer of free, no-holds-barred SEX, insist on assisting them to escape from the exploitative tyranny under which they have been existing, and then, after obviously done them a Good Turn, have free, no-holds-barred SEX before stranding them in the middle of nowhere to make their way thousands of miles back to their own COUNTRY.

Read up on Anglosaxon Cossacks, Barbary Vikings, Baths, Virgins, Imperious Females, Colour Coding, and all sorts of fun. Go one, you know you want to...

Stomach happier now.

Comments

[auntyyolly.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you like this, too! It's good, isn't it? I found a copy in a used book shop a few years ago, loved it, and was then very happy to see it starting to pop up in retail outlets again in a new print run.

She always has had a Pratchettian deconstructive tendency about fantasy, she just uses it on the non-satire side for the most part, although when she breaks out it's hilarious. There's a novel that I think is called Deep Secret (can't check, J has the horrible flu and is asleep in the room where it lives) where things go absolutely nuts at a sci-fi con (and DWJ nuts, so with real consequences). The bits where she's talking about the conference goers had me laughing out loud in parts. And in A Sudden Wild Magic, there's an unseemly amount of comical shagging.

In novels her humour isn't as core to her storytelling as Pratchett's is, but she's nevertheless very witty. I think in person, she might be the more fun to hang out with.