Arinn Dembo's Blog: Mill on the Inspiration River - Posts Tagged "mill-on-the-inspiration-river"

Ganymede by Cherie Priest

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I did myself a small disservice when I read this book; I picked it up off the shelf at the public library and did not consider whether I should backtrack and read the earlier novels in the series first.

Accordingly, although I enjoyed the book and particularly got a kick out of its last third, which is where most of the real action takes place, I could probably have enjoyed it much more if I had done myself a favor and noted that this is NUMBER FOUR of a series in which a great many details of the characters and milieu were probably well established in earlier books.

That being said, as a stand-alone reading experience, Ganymede will still hold up reasonably well. I am not a fanatic for the genre, so a book cannot simply slide by my critical eye by giving me a few corsets and cogs; it takes engaging characters and some sort of intelligent approach to technology, politics, and social issues to make me willing to re-write the past.


I enjoyed the classic New Orleans characters of the books, the rebellious Free people of Colour who have dug in their heels to resist the occupation of their city by a pro-slavery South and a pro-Southern Republic of Texas. I am as willing as the next girl to indulge in the fantasy of air pirates as well, since I've always had a weakness for airships and those alternate universes where they are a dominant mode of transport.


As an archaeologist I was already quite familiar with the excavation and history associated with the H.L. Hunley, the Confederate-era submarine which was declared a historic site on the sea bottom in Charleston harbor in 1995. Naturally I had no problem with the submarine which gives the novel its name as a subject for a work of fiction; in fact I was delighted that Priest had used the submarine as a real-life inspiration for a steampunk novel.


For those readers who may have had difficulty visualizing the submarine, in particular its stated resemblance to an airship, perhaps a picture is worth a thousand words:







In any case, this book was a fun read and I appreciated the one or two strong female characters, despite the persistent wearing of corsets. The only flaws in the book probably derive from reading it out of sequence; I suspect that certain events might have had a greater emotional impact if I had been following the story for longer, in particular the scene in which one of the characters is revealed to be living under an assumed gender.

All in all, good clean fun. I shall have to see if I can get my hands on the first book in the series; research indicates that it has won many awards.



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Just had the chance to read a lovely review of my collection, Monsoon and Other Stories, on SF Site. It's been a very good summer for support from the reading community, in many ways.

Mario Guslandi had many kind words about my short stories, and even a few about my poetry. I don't believe I've ever been compared to Bob Dylan before! That is definitely a first.

The second half of 2012 was a catastrophically busy time, and the majority of 2013 looks to be equally busy. One of my resolutions for the coming year was to be more careful to make my leisure time count--when I don't have a lot of time to re-charge, I have to try and re-charge efficiently.

The vast majority of my work time and a significant portion of my play time is spent on a computer or at a desk, stringing words together. When I need to genuinely unwind, I find that what works best are reading and exercise. Making some kind of art or craft also works. Over the years I've made quilts, jewelry, furniture--all sorts of things.

What's interesting is that nowadays, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I can now combine one or two of these re-charge activities at the same time. Audiobooks allow me to read and exercise, or read and work with my hands, all at the same time!

Over the Christmas break this winter I decided to dip my toe into the waters, and try a few e-books. My daughter has always been a big fan of Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden novels, and I discovered that the audiobook versions were going to be read by James Marsters (who played "Spike" on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel). Win-win!

I downloaded the first and thoroughly enjoyed Marsters reading the first-person narrator of Butcher's books. It was excellent! And I'm now on my third audiobook in the series, genuinely enjoying the quiet, reflective moments when I sit painting figurines and terrain pieces, sewing or sketching, and listening to a story spin out on my iPad.

Harry Dresden is an interesting character. The style and format Butcher has chosen inevitably recall Laurell Hamilton, just as Hamilton herself inevitably recalls the first-person hardboiled detective novels and romance novels that serve as an antecedent to her own work. Butcher has not stinted on his world-building, and he has created not only a consistent magical system, but a consistent system of ethics, law and justice to go along with it--an important component of any fictional universe which contains Very Special People.

In general I find Harry a sympathetic character, but I think I was somehow on the fence about him until a critical scene in the third novel, Grave Peril. That was when Butcher genuinely surprised me, and shocked a hard, loud bark of disbelieving laughter out of me--which is hard to do, believe me.

The man who fought a demon in the howling rain dressed in nothing but the suds he hadn't washed off in the shower?

The man who threw himself out of a moving car to blast a truck full of werewolves with a blast of eldritch power?

Him, I could take or leave. Action heroes, however bumbling, are a dime a dozen.

But the guy who showed up at the Vampire Masquerade Ball dressed in a cheesy Halloween vampire costume, complete with a moth-eaten cape, plastic fangs and fake blood...

...that's a man I could love.

I like a guy who makes me laugh.