Over Sea, Under Stone
Mar. 26th, 2012 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan CooperMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I am on a serious childhood nostalgia bender over here. Let that be a warning to you.
This series came back to me like a bolt from the blue on a perfectly normal day last week, and I suddenly had to read it right now. But, fantastic, no problem, I thought. When I originally read these books -- and read them, and read them, and read them -- it was on cassette. The good old National Library Service for the Blind cassettes in their snap plastic cases. And the NLS has been busily digitizing the collection (only about a decade late) and I could swear I saw these books go up . . .
Indeed. The NLS had digitized four out of the five, and I was sure I could ahem find Greenwitch on the back of a truck in one of the internet's ahem alleyways. So I snagged this first one and put it on my handheld and trotted off to groom the dog.
And then I turned on the book.
And it was not my narrator.
I remember her very clearly: she was British, a contralto. A gentle delivery, but with a lot of life for the children, particularly Barney, and even more gravitas for Gumerry. She read this book to me a good twenty times between the ages of eight and thirteen, and she was all that is right and proper.
And sometime in the last few decades, the NLS re-recorded the books and reissued the titles. Those old cassettes were wearing out, I'm sure, even the master copy.
And it was not okay. He was American, and he was doing his best, I'm sure, but he was not right.
Which consumed my attention for the entire book, so I don't actually have much to say aside from outraged nostalgia. This is younger and lighter than I remember. A quest story with cartoonishly simple us/them dynamics and some cute kids. Reminded me a startling amount of Arthur Ransom, because the whole thing had that quality of taking place in a bubble of childish creation, where great adventures happen and then you have tea. I was also interested to see the near-total lack of magic here, given the scope of the powers at work. Made me think about the work the rest of the series does to make sure the Drews, the mortals, remain separate. Three from the circle, three from the track. How that matters to these books in ways I'm still unpacking. But that's a subject for a later book.
But the narrator was wrong.
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Date: 2012-03-27 03:51 am (UTC)But first.....Ugh, nothing worse than THE WRONG NARRATOR. Lemony Snicket reading his own books was brilliant. The other reader....wtf? It's totally unfair to pit someone against Snicket's narration! Whoever did the original Vorkosigan books was just totally, utterly, wrong - and I didn't even have a previous narrator I bonded to in the past! A friend of mine wanted very much to have those books on audio....and I was so offended by the WRONGNESS of the narrator, I recorded Cordelia's Honor for her myself :D Along with Komarr, A Civil Campaign, Diplomatic Immunity....and then all of the ADS-verse I could manage :P
Similarly, if I ever replace my paper books (and I read them to pieces, so every few years I have to), I'll look long and hard for the same printing, cause having the words in a different place on the page, or in the wrong font, or the wrong weight of paper....um....I'm a very kinesthetic person. Things have to be in the space/time I expect them to be! Or I feel like the world is completely off kilter!
But, back to the thing!
For the times these books work, I'm willing to forgive world building with enormous holes all over the magical theory and some seriously forced retconning of "we saw some imagery a couple of books ago, better give it a call-back!"
I adore The Dark is Rising and The Gray King with huge passionate adoration. They both capture a very constant sense of atmosphere - setting, people, time and the feel of the magic. When Will wakes up, goes to the window seat and sees the snowy woods change while hearing the fleeting music.....I have that moment imprinted on my brain. Same with the time spent with Bran, Will and Cafall. The places are very real to the author (places she knew well since childhood), and it shows - they seemed to give her a jumping off point for a wholeness in both sensory and narrative feel.
Greenwitch has a lot of power and she nailed the sheer sense of strangeness of a pagan entity, but I felt like the hugeness of the got short shrift. I felt like there was more there. Over Sea and Under Stone is, as remarked above, some relaxing lark for Merriman. It just completely lacks weight. ....and as long as I can discard the last couple of pages, Silver on the Tree makes me happy because we get Bran & Will together (plus Wales) again.
BUT THE LAST COUPLE OF PAGES NEVER HAPPENED. CAUSE I SAY SO.
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Date: 2012-03-27 07:35 am (UTC)Re: Cooper, the last time I re-read these I found these posts useful (wow, are they really nine years old now?): http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=truepenny&keyword=The%20Dark%20Is%20Rising%20Sequence&filter=all
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Date: 2012-03-27 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-27 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-03-28 12:24 am (UTC)