When Are They Going to Get to Canterbury? (original) (raw)

The Spirit Glass, by Roshani Chokshi – The author of the Aru Shah series now turns to Philippine mythology, and she has that kind of ancestry as well as Indian. Corazon Lopez is from a family of babaylans, basically the same as shamans, but hasn’t come into her own power. She lives with her powerful aunt, and while her parents are dead, they come to visit her once a week. Her house also has a personality and does things for its inhabitants, which reminded me of Encanto, although the trope is definitely older than that. When her soul key is stolen, she goes on a magical journey to create a new one. She’s accompanied by her familiar, Saso, who takes the form of a gecko, but sees himself as more like a crocodile. Later, Corazon joins forces with a ghost who wants to be a writer. The personalities of these characters are pretty entertaining. In the end, she finds out more about her family’s history. I was intrigued by the binidbuds, demons that would tie up people’s stomachs to keep them from eating too much, but pretty much the only thing that comes up when searching for the term is this book. It presumably derives from the Tagalog for “tied,” which might be related to the English “bind.” I assume the Biddybuds from the Mario series aren’t related.

Skeleton Key, by Piers Anthony – Wasn’t the pun in the title used way back in Heaven Cent? I guess that doesn’t really matter. We’re still with the Fire Boat and the ever-increasing group of children that started with the orphans from a potential future, with Squid as the main character. The story is all over the place, including a visit to a world of human-animal hybrids and a lot of gender switching by magic portal. It ends with another case of someone teaching a lesson to an incredibly powerful Demon, in this case Chaos. Entertaining enough, but I can’t say I got much out of the story.

Backpacking Through Bedlam, by Seanan McGuire – This book covers the return of Alice, Thomas, and Sally to Earth, but not until after stopping by the dimension of giant insects where Sarah had recently found herself. They reestablish themselves at their own home to an extent, but soon find out that the Covenant of St. George has declared war on her family. So they travel to New York to meet up with Verity and husband and daughter, who are staying with a dragon colony in the Meatpacking District. We learn some more of the family’s history with the Covenant, and there’s some fighting between the two sides. The accompanying novella, “The Mysteries of the Stolen God and Where His Waffles Went,” is the first I’ve read that’s partially from the perspective of an Aeslin Mouse, although it’s mostly about James, a sorcerer who’d also been adopted into the family, and, through a weird coincidence, also Sally’s best friend from childhood.

The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Ronald L. Ecker and Eugene J. Crook – This seems like the kind of thing that would have been assigned reading in school, or at least part of it would have been, but such was never the case. It was written in Middle English, which is pretty similar to the modern language, but still not something in which I wanted to read twenty-four different stories. It’s an interesting premise, with a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury Cathedral stopping at an inn in Southwark and telling each other stories. It allows for many different literary styles, each also taking into account the personalities of the tellers. Some of them are retellings, like the Clerk’s Tale being a traditional Italian story, and the Nun’s Priest’s Tale of Chanticleer being part of the Reynard the Fox cycle. They sometimes even argue over the quality of the tales, like when the others cut off a knightly romance (as opposed to the tales Chaucer just never finished). And that’s a story the author narrates himself, so I suppose there’s a certain amount of self-parody. It’s well-known that several of the stories are quite vulgar, and there seems to be a recurring theme of bad couples, with a lot of cheating wives. The Clerk’s Tale, that of Patient Griselda, is a pretty nasty story of a guy who tests his wife by claiming that he’s having their children put to death, then that he’s divorcing her. None of these things are true, but she never makes a complaint. The clerk does call the husband out to some extent. And the Wife of Bath’s Tale has a man discover that what women most desire in a relationship is agency. It takes place in King Arthur’s England, one of many references to older mythology and legend. The Knight’s Tale is about two knights jousting over a woman in, anachronistically enough, Theseus‘ Athens. The Merchant tells a story of an unfaithful wife that brings in Pluto and Prosperpina as characters, and references the marriage of Mercury to Philology, which seems to originate from a fifth-century allegory. The Philosopher’s Stone is also mentioned, in the context of a canon scamming a priest by pretending he knows how to make one. The unfinished Squire’s Tale has Genghis Khan receiving magical gifts from a traveling knight. The framing story never actually has the pilgrims making it to Canterbury, although there was a fifteenth-century addition that covered that. Chaucer’s original plan was to have each pilgrim tell multiple stories on the way to and from Canterbury, but I guess that ended up being too daunting of a task. They probably ended up arguing over who had to walk home, because they had brought one too few horses.

This entry was posted in Animals, Arthurian Legend, Authors, Book Reviews, British, Christianity, Fairy Tales, Gender, Greek Mythology, History, Humor, incryptid, Language, Magic, Monsters, Mythology, Philippine, Piers Anthony, Relationships, Religion, Rick Riordan, Roman, seanan mcguire, Xanth and tagged alice price-healy, aru shah, babaylans, backpacking through bedlam, binidbuds, chanticleer, chaos, cryptozoology, demons, dragons, eugene j. crook, genghis khan, geoffrey chaucer, heaven cent, mercury, patient griselda, persephone, philosopher's stone, pluto, prosperpina, puns, reynard the fox, ronald l. ecker, roshani chokshi, sarah zellaby, shamans, skeleton key, the canterbury tales, the mysteries of the stolen god and where his waffles went, the spirit glass, theseus, thomas healy, verity price. Bookmark the permalink.