Book #25 of 2015: Frost Dancers

[thistlechaser]

Frost Dancers by Garry Kilworth
Rating: Liked (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



While I had a number of issues with this book, all in all, I liked it quite a bit.

I love "talking animal" stories, and this was a perfect example of them -- I believed every animal in the book as an animal, not a human in animal shape. More than that, each of his animal species were so different -- it was just so enjoyable to see how he handled otter characters compared to hedgehogs. Their speech patterns and personalities were just so different.

The main character was a hare, born in the highlands of somewhere in Europe (Scotland I assumed, though it's never named). He's captured in a... hare beating? Bunch of men banging drums to herd hares into a small area where they can be captured or killed. The story tells of his life after he's caught in that.

The book's antagonist was fitting for the story. (And "antagonist" is the only word to describe what he was: "a person who actively opposes or is hostile to someone or something; an adversary.") The book's antagonist was not a villain or a bad guy, it was a person bird who was made what he was by his environment. (Also, happily the greatest mystery of the book, just what kind of bird he was, was solved in the author's afterwards. I would have been highly frustrated if we had never learned what his species was.)

There were a number of things about the book that didn't work for me:

It was long. Very very long. My Kindle tells me how long it takes me to finish a book based on my reading speed. Most books take me about four hours to read. This one took me six and a half. The pages were not packed with story so much as lists. The author would do something like "And since it was spring, the hares ate... [three page list of all the plant that grow in the area]".

Somehow the writing was extremely dated. Before I had checked, I would have guessed that it had been published in the 30s-50s. It was published in 1992. I have no idea how one would even try to write in so dated a way...

It was in British English. Mostly this doesn't bother me in the least, but using single quotes for dialogue is distracting (and sometimes confusing -- what if there's a contraction or possessive in the middle of dialogue?). I had to use my Kindle's dictionary function on a number of words, and all of them turned out to be "chiefly British" or "archaic" words.

While it was about a hare's whole life, and it was an eventful life, it feels like the amount that happened in the plot no where matched how long it took me to read it. So all in all I enjoyed it, I just wish it had been a much, much shorter book. I'm very much ready to read something else now.

Comments

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

How do you think we get on with American books!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Just the same, I'm sure!

I can see how spoken language would drift into two different dialects, but I have no idea how written would, not once it became easy enough to move across the sea. A quick googling is no help.

[bacchuslives.livejournal.com]

Have you ever read Watership Down?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, long long ago. That's one of the reasons why I picked this one to read next, I wanted to use a subject line like "A book about rabbits that's not Watership Down". Then it turned out it's about hares not rabbits, and the author made a big point explaining how different they are, so out went that subject line.

[liedra.livejournal.com]

I've been at one of these hare hunts, in Germany in the mid-90s. We stood around in a giant circle in the deep snow with dogs and walked in toward the centre. I don't recall there being drums though. The most terrifying part for me was that when the hares started running and the guys with guns started shooting toward the centre of the circle - if they weren't accurate they might hit someone on the other side! But it was a very big circle - a huge field, so yeah. It was exhilarating and cold and I ate hare for dinner.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that doesn't sound safe at all!

It's possible drums weren't used. The story was told from the hare's point of view, so they would describe something in terms they knew and I'd have to guess what they were talking about -- a fun element of the book!

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

Hm, sounds like the book does have some issues but I'm still interested to read it and see what I think myself.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

For sure! I'll be interested to hear what you think of it.

[twissie.livejournal.com]

The publisher that I'm translating for insists on just using hyphens to indicate dialogue, and it drives me nuts, because their example sentences on what that should look like are all

- What was that? she asked.

And I'm just so confused, what if I need to insert a comma into the sentence being said, how will the reader be able to understand that it's part of the dialogue? 8D

I grew up learning British English, so British English books usually aren't any trouble. I once looked up all the differences between the UK and US releases of the Harry Potter books, and some of the alterations seem so random! Like... use a dictionary? That's what I did, learnt a lot from it too xDDD

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Wow, if I ran into hyphens for dialogue, I'd never complain about single quotes again ever. :P

And agreed, I love looking up words I don't know! It's a great way to learn. My Kindle makes it so easy -- just tap the word and it looks it up for me and gives me a little popup window about it.

[twissie.livejournal.com]

They called them "conversation subtraction signs". I wish I was joking 8D;

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Hahaha wow. At least that's an accurate name? :D