(no subject)

[bedlamsbard]

I…I didn’t think you could write a retelling of the Thousand and One Nights and actively remove the storytelling aspect as being an important part of the story, but apparently you can and it really bothers me, because even though this isn’t my favorite fairy tale that part – the power of stories, the power of being a woman who tells stories, the power of fantasy – is really, really important to me. And it’s not…totally removed, it’s still there in a way, but not in the story-telling sort of way. And its removal from the story is lampshaded in a way that’s kind of actively unsettling to me.

Like, I’m sure other people who’ve read this book will disagree with me, but I didn’t even realize I was attached to it until it was gone.

(The book is A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston, and between this and the fact that I was pretty meh on Ahsoka (thoughts coming later when I reach that point in The Schedule), I think I'm not going to search out any more of her books unless she writes another Star Wars novel.)

Comments

[dhampyresa]

I didn’t think you could write a retelling of the Thousand and One Nights and actively remove the storytelling aspect as being an important part of the story

Also did not know this was a thing one could do! I feel the same way.

[bedlamsbard]

It honestly really weirds me out. Like, I guess you could argue that it's still there in a form, but it's not...it's not a storytelling form, really. The protagonist doesn't tell her husband stories, she tells him about things that happened in her life. And those are important because it shows...how tough she is? How she comes from a different social context than him? Her power doesn't come because she's good at telling stories, it's because in her absence her family has basically elevated her to godhood and now she has POWERS.

[dhampyresa]

That's not the same thing at all >:[

It sounds like it could be an interesting story in its own right, but it's not bloody Scheherazade.

[bedlamsbard]

Yeah, I can definitely see how the author got there from 1001 Nights, but it also seems to remove something essential from the story? (Not to mention the thousand nights of the title are the time that the King spends possessed by the demon, not the nights the protagonist spends with him. Also, I keep saying "the protagonist" because...she doesn't have a name. No one has a name. The only character with a name is the king.)

[dhampyresa]

Nobody has names?! But... HOW?

I always felt the storytelling aspect of 1001 was the most important aspect of it -- and for this reason I really appreciated when Leverage went out of its way* to praise Scheherazade's storytelling.

* The episode is titled The Scheherazade Job (s3e04) but it's after the violin solo.