Not Quite the Illiad

Wicked Beauty, the 3rd novel in Katee Robert's Dark Olympus series, essentially rewrites Homeric epic poetry in a fun way. 

We have 3 narrators here. Helen (here, Perseus' sister, son of the former Zeus), Achilles (who in this is an orphan, raised in Hera's orphanage), and Patrocles (here the beloved son of of two lesbians who left Olympian politics to protect their family.) At the start, we learn the previous Ares has died, and Athena is running the trials to replace him. Zeus sweetens the pot by giving Helen's hand in marriage to whomever wins the trials. 

Helen isn't pleased by the latter, and enters the trials herself to retain her autonomy. Which sets her in opposition to Achilles, who is second in command to Athena, and his lover Patrocles.  Well, except for the fact that Achilles is so convinced of his own path to the title, that he really has no beefs with Helen. Helen, it seems, knew Patrocles as a child. 

As the trials begin, Achilles and Patrocles and Helen form a triad relationship, which amazingly allows for the two men to continue to have sex with each other as well as her. (In what bits of this style of writing I've read, two men generally won't touch each other once a woman gets involved. Not the case here.) 

One of the better parts comes from the revelation of what a jackass Paris is. Indeed, during his prior to the narrative romance with Helen, he spent most of his time destroying her self esteem. 

Honestly, even if this series seriously deviates from the source material, it has grown on me. I find myself amused by what the author can come up with to reimagine characters and stories. I do hope we eventually get a book focused on Hermes and Dionysis, since they remain the two most fun characters supporting the narratives.

Darkness falls

 This is mildly delayed, mainly because of some personal trauma. 

I recently finished John Rechy's 1959 novel City of Night, which I had picked up in London back in July. I thought I had read this one before, but I think my head confused it with his later Coming of the Night (which is in my TBR pile now.) 

Te story concerns a nameless hustler from El Paso, as he passes through several big cities and his idea that all of them exist as part of a bigger city where it's always night, where people like him can hustle marks for money. While one gets the rather distinct impression our narrator is a cypher for the author, and most of the stories are just renamed people he encountered in his travels, the afterward does mention that many of the people in here are amalgams of people he did know, and a really nice thought about how every reader helps keep those folks alive. 

There's honestly not much of a plot here, we get tales of the narrators exploits mixed in with vignettes about friends and foes he meets along the way, and portraits of the gay world as it stood towards the end of the 1950s. We get probably the most explicit sense of his journey towards the end in New Orleans during Mardi Gras as a guy who he winds up with for most of the actual party confronts the narrator about his life, and what he wants from it, even as the narrator struggles to maintain the mask he wears as the butch number who is only interested in money. I mean, the overall theme that everyone is wearing a mask in relation to what it is the actually want is interesting, particularly in this day and age where we tend to look at our queer antecedents as being more fundamentally honest in their rather more gender bending ways. Honestly, what comes through here is the idea that all the ways we exress our inner me is a mask to cover our true emotional needs. 

Mind you, this isn't true for all characters in here, or more to the point, they express themselves and then add a layer over it. Like Trudi and her beads, which are the fates rattling their beads to bring people down. Or Miss Destiny, who actually uses language that would not be unheard of today about how G-d gave her the wrong equipment. (It's one of the few cases in here you could point a finger at and say that she would be trans under current definitions. Many of the queens running around in this narrative could fall under several categories, and it's always going to be a mystery where they would fall under today's labels. Something else in here that amused and saddened me was the couples who weren't scores or youngmen, who basically just wanted a relationship with another man, preferably without a transaction involved. 

This book also speaks to the narrative I ran deep into back in the 1990s about the people of the streets and the secret world most of us don't look at. It's depressing, and frankly post 1980, it gets even worse. But it's still there. 

Well worth reading to get a sense of the other side of the vaunted Family Values era.

And we come full circle

 Realized that thanks to July being re-reads, I haven't had an opportunity to update over here in a month or so. 

Just finished Robert Jackson Bennett's finale to his Founders Series, Locklands, which was a pretty well written conclusion to a world involving people rewriting reality.

Sancia and friends have moved to Giva, and 8 years have passed as Tevanne has captured Crasedes and pretty much all the major land masses except for the islands. The time has come for everyone to confront one another, as Sancia, Bernice and Clef first have to find Crasedes, the prepare for the final battle to prevent Tevanne from opening the door to the creator's realm where all of reality can be remade. 

It's a long journey, and ends up with the Heirophants remembering their past, finding their original home, and a whole bunch of WOW. (I'd love to get deeper into this, but honestly, it would ruin a few major plot twists.) 

While the climax is satisfying, and a great place to wrap up this trilogu, the actual ending reminded me quite a bit of Clarke's Childhood's End. Which is not an insult in the least, but it does tend to fit a paticular trope that isn't used quite as often anymore. 

I do hope Bennett writes more, since his books are really well written and thought provoking.