Review - Bridge of Birds
Dec. 2nd, 2009 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wilderthanBridge of Birds makes a nice change from the standard Western fantasy. Barry Hughart is a Western writer, of course, but he's drawing on non-typical settings and sources -- although, of course, a lot of the stories and lore in this book is made up for the purposes of the story, there are also things I recognise from the little I've read of Monkey (Journey to the West). It's different enough to be refreshing. Some of the stories it includes are lovely -- particularly the one that turns out to be central to the plot. It's quite fun to read: there were quite a few giggles and smiles, from me at least.
Although the story is told in first person, from the point of view of Number Ten Ox, you don't get to know the characters in very much depth. There are some nice touches to the character of Number Ten Ox -- doing things he used to do as a child for comfort, for example -- but mostly the important thing is the quest. The tone of it, too, reduces violent/difficult things down to quite simple, unemotional description, with death being almost casual, which is probably exactly as expected, but still impacted my reading of it. For me, it made it a quick read, but it unfortunately also produced a tendency for me not to remember characters properly and to get a bit confused by them, because I wasn't invested whether they lived or died and how we left them and how they might come to meet up with the main characters again.
The ending is unashamedly lovely, and worth the read almost in itself -- the way everything comes together, and you can see the fairytale that this novel would make. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'll certainly remember it as fun -- the characters will probably not stick in my head, though.
Although the story is told in first person, from the point of view of Number Ten Ox, you don't get to know the characters in very much depth. There are some nice touches to the character of Number Ten Ox -- doing things he used to do as a child for comfort, for example -- but mostly the important thing is the quest. The tone of it, too, reduces violent/difficult things down to quite simple, unemotional description, with death being almost casual, which is probably exactly as expected, but still impacted my reading of it. For me, it made it a quick read, but it unfortunately also produced a tendency for me not to remember characters properly and to get a bit confused by them, because I wasn't invested whether they lived or died and how we left them and how they might come to meet up with the main characters again.
The ending is unashamedly lovely, and worth the read almost in itself -- the way everything comes together, and you can see the fairytale that this novel would make. I enjoyed it a lot, and I'll certainly remember it as fun -- the characters will probably not stick in my head, though.
