Talking Soup

The Good:

So this book. Melusine. By Sarah Monette. It's fucking amazing. I...the...I'm incohrent with my love for this book. The world Monette has created is simply astounding, full of detail, I mean we're talking a world bordering on the Tolkienesque for how much thought she's put into everything. Everything! The story is utterly incredible, and utterly beautiful. The characters, the chemistry, the relationships...I die. You're lucky to find writing this brilliant in this day and age. We get so much slop in the fantasy genre these days, but this, augh, I love it to death.

The story, pretty much, is you've got two intertwining narrations, that of Felix Harrowgate and Mildmay the Fox, two guys who at first glance couldn't be more different. Felix is a wizard, kind of a jackass, and all but a slave to his former master and lover Malkar (*seethes* Think Muraki here). Mildmay is a cat burglar in the Lower City, away from the rich types in the Mirador, where Felix is. They both go through utter hell--Felix loses everything, from his position to his sanity, and Mildmay lives life on tenterhooks, expecting to die at any second.

Thing is, it's all written in first person--Felix and Mildmay, shifting between them.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a story with multiple narrators? Do you have any idea how hard it is to write a story with multiple narrators in first person? The thought alone makes me flinch. But oh my God when you find a writer who can pull it off, it's like reading heaven.

You've got Felix's self-conscious, sorrowful, crazy, broken, and often jackassy voice. You've got Mildmay's straightforward, no-bones-about-it, snarky, observant, self-depricating, and under the hard demeanor, compassionate voice. It's not every day you meet such three-dimensional characters. I'm talking about characters you love but also get pissed at, characters you can understand, characters who are completely real. Oh. My. God. Monette does characters like, like Monet does landscapes. Monette, the Monet of writing--pun intended.

It's not till the middle nearabouts that the two actually meet, and when they do...the chemistry between them, their relationship is so fucking well done, so fucking brilliant. I won't spoil anything, but I want to hug them both.

And the richness of the story itself holds firm through the whole book, and leaves you with the good kind of ending--with some things wrapped up, but other things just starting. It's part of a trilogy/series, after all.

In short, the whole book, beginning to end, is pure love.

Go. Read. It.


The Bad:

See, here's the problem with stopping medication. You go back to where you were before you started, only a lot worse.

I have acid reflux, pretty much, which is the kind of thing that people don't seem to take too seriously. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say, "You can't have heartburn, you're too young!" or "I don't think heartburn is real" (I love that second one). Yeah, people don't think it's a big deal, until it happens to them.

Here's what it feels like. It's nothing at all like fire. It's like there's this giant motherfucking vat of acid just above your solar plexus, and all the organs in that vicinity are just boiling in it. Your esophagus wants to crawl up out your throat, your stomach feels rather like the walls are dissolving, and nevermind your chest and throat themselves. It's nothing like fire and everything like acid, cause that's what it is, after all. Lying down the wrong way, leaning backward a little or to the side sets it off like someone's pouring battery acid down your throat, and you start eyeing things like soda and anything with tomatoes as being the spawn of Satan. Oils, spicy foods, chocolate even. On really bad days you can't eat nearabouts anything, and nevermind drinking anything unless it's milk. Hot drinks are hell, and if you forget and drink a glass of juice in the morning you'll be up all night wondering when you're gonna start coughing blood, since that's what it feels like.

So. After years of this bullshit, I go to my doctor, they give me a prescription for Aciphex. Which helped--I mean a lot. It didn't cure eveything, because that's too much to hope for, but at least I didn't have to actually set aside part of my savings for antacids (alright, I'm exaggerating, but in all honesty I probably spent well over $1000 on Rolaids in the last year alone. Don't get me started on Tums).

But then the insurance company comes along, and it would have been nice if they'd been quick about it, but no. A week after I run out of Aciphex (and oh boy, what a week. I've gone through two gallons of milk in the last three days, I swear) they finally say, "Sorry, we're only gonna cover you for this generic shit." Which I would have been fine with, if they had goddamn given the shit to me sooner.

And the kicker, of course, is that I had to wait about a week for Aciphex to even start working. I took my first pill of generic shit today, and of course it's not working yet. I'm running out of Rolaids, I'm spending money I really can't spend on fucking milk, I'm running out of Zantac 150, which only sort of worked. The Rolaids and the milk even have all but stopped working. It says on the Aciphex label, "Don't stop taking the meds!" and this is why--because you fall back to way the hell worse than before you started.

So, thank you, insurance guys. If I get esohpagael cancer, your asses are so fucking haunted.


The JKFDLSAJFDL:

After reading Melusine nothing but a death or holocaust could mess up my day, but this article really set me off. The gist? They want to start gearing abstinence-only education--to people over 18. 19-29 year olds. Since they're so fucking worried about all those single mothers.

....yeah, ponder that for a minute.

It's never gonna pass, but it's shit like this that makes me want to learn how to fire a shotgun.

But it's all good. I've got Melusine and poetry on the brain.