the fresco

[rone]

Here's another book for the "sell" pile. Sheri Tepper builds up Benita Álvarez-Shipton as a female sort of Thomas Covenant, a main character so sad and pathetic that your pity is practically demanded. But, hey, that goes right out the window when she's given an alien device that functions as an instant anti-depressant and miracle therapist, all in a handy hand-held shape! Now we have assertive Benita v2.0! Take your pity and stuff it, gentle reader!

The story is just plain bloody annoying, and the worst of it is the gratuitous use of bad Spanish:

• "Funga demonio"? "Funga" isn't a word!
• Her son's name is Carlos and she calls him "Carlito", not "Carlitos".
• "Hombres son duro, pero mujeres son durable": in Spanish, adjectives must be pluralized to agree with the noun; duros, durables.
• "Dios siempre bate bendiciones con dolor" is translated as "God always mixes blessings with pain," except "batir" is only understood as "to mix" when used in a kitchen's context. More literally, it means "to whip" or "to beat", as when you whip cream or beat eggs.

Tepper, or at least her editor, should've had someone check her Spanish.

Add to that the heavy-handed "ALIENS KILL MEAN ENVIRONMENT-HATIN' MEN!" section and i was ready to throw the book away; unfortunately, i ran the risk of hitting someone else on the train. I read the first four chapters, skimmed the next two (including a cheesy alien journal meant for Benita in which the alien keeps excusing itself for sporadically using its own language... wow, crazy aliens who use a write-once medium! no backspace key or rewind button for them!), and gave up.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

The only Sherri Tepper stories I've ever read were short ones. But Sam's read a couple of her novels and tells me that they tend to have all the subtlety of a 900-foot Jello Biafra standing on top of a 9000-foot Mary Daly hitting you with a giant clown hammer inscribed with Luther's 95 Theses in glowing Comic Sans to the tunes of "Pink Floyd The Wall".

funga

[littleamerica.livejournal.com]

I'd expect funga to be a distinctly female fungus/fungi; likewise fungo distinctly male.