In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

[james_davis_nicoll]

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan

Comments

[sethsellis]

Illustrations by my ex-student Carolyn Nowak, who won an Ignatz last year and is nominated again this year (for this book)!

[(Anonymous)]

I giggled, a lot. I was in the right mood for this. Light and sweet, and perhaps very Mary-Sue-ish if your day job is as a foriegn service type. Mine is not.


But maybe you could explain my main confusion -- what was a NY Jewish kid doing in the English countryside? The fantasy land, I could suspend disbelief about, but small verbal Jewish kid in Devon???

(Or is that a fan fic trope, that I'm too familiar with the thing itself to see past?)

[ethelmay]

"NY Jewish kid in Devon" immediately brings to mind Peter Beagle's Tamsin to me.

[rosefox]

There are Jews in England. Quite a number of them. Some are small and some talk a lot. I am confused by your confusion.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, yes. But Anglo-Australian Jewry has a very different feel to the memory of the Catskills Borscht belt, and young Elliot smelled of the latter.

Though a smart child without community is raised by books, so maybe Elliot just read too many compendiums of 1950s NY Jewish culture; he won't have been the only one.

(Google reminds me that, after the expulsion of English Jews in 1290 -- where they left for Poland, the NY of the times --- Jews returned to Exeter in the 18th century CE. Elliot does not read like his cultural identity was built in Exeter.)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, yes. (((I'm one of them))). But Anglo-Australian Jewry has a very different feel to the memory of the Catskills Borscht belt, and young Elliot smelled of the latter.

Though a smart child without community is raised by books, so maybe Elliot just read too many compendiums of 1950s NY Jewish culture; he won't have been the only one.

(Google reminds me that, after the expulsion of English Jews in 1290 -- where they left for Poland, the NY of the times --- Jews returned to Exeter in the 18th century CE. Elliot does not read like his cultural identity was built in Exeter.)

[spiralsheep]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Synagogue

[spiralsheep]

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_Synagogue

[athanadar]

Your critic pushed me to order the Kindle edition for my iPad. I am reading the arrival at the summer holidays of the first year. I must say that Luke Sunborn is more sympathetic to me than the supposed protagonist. For the moment Elliott appears more as a smartass than a hero.

I don't remember where I found the link to your critical blog, I followed your LiveJournal More Words, Deeper Hole since many years. I remember also you from RASW and SHWI usenet groups in the 90's, your article on Wikipedia mentioned also rec.art.sf.lovers, memories for me from aggregate of discussion of Babylon 5.

[scott_sanford]

Another rec.arts.sf.lovers reader emerges! Greetings, fellow ancient one.

[nocowardsoul]

SRB was known for writing Harry Potter fanfic.

Feels like fanfic

[ejmam]

What do you think it was that gave you that impression? I'm curious because there is such a diversity of fanfic in so many places that I don't know what is giving you that feel.

There's a feel of amateur writing, but this doesn't have that for me. It's an examination of existing texts, which a lot of fanfic does, but then so do many of my favorite books. Did Diana Wynny Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland feel like fanfic to you?

I haven't read SRB's potter fic, but I've read her other published books and this feel like those. I've read Novak's fanfic and her published books and those have a different feel, mainly that she takes shortcuts in fanfic on the assumption that readers already know about these characters, shortcuts that she mostly avoids even in the later volumes of Temeraire books.

[scifantasy]

As I understand it, the story itself was never fanfic--like, this isn't file-off-the-serial-numbers. But as was said above, Brennan got her start in fanfic, and this story got its own start as free fiction published online, called "The Turn of the Story." http://sarahreesbrennan.com/2014/10/the-turn-of-the-story-master-post-plus-new-story/

(It got updated, expanded, and revised before publication.)