One Night on the Run in Sixes
Sep. 2nd, 2014 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHi,
So I finished up a couple more books this week.
First up One Night in Sixes by Arianne Thompson. So I really liked this book and I really hated this book. One the one hand, it’s a great book. It’s sort of an Old World fairy tale meets a New World western and for the most part, it works pretty well.
Sil Halfwick is tired of living out in the frontier and hopes to sell some horses and turn enough of a profit to get out from under his boss and head back East to the easy life. His partner is Appaloosa Elim, a half-man, half native “mule” who has a knack for horses. Unable to sell any of his horses, Sil takes off across the border to the river town of Sixes where he hopes to sell his stock to the native Sundowners. Against his better judgement, Elim follows along, hoping to keep his partner out of trouble and get him home intact.
Sixes was a former settlement overrun by the natives and now plays host to a wide range of native peoples from various tribes and clans each with their own talents, abilities, and culture. Sil and Elim very quickly get in over their heads and soon Elim is accused of murder and Sil is bouncing around in a volatile situation he doesn’t fully understand.
So yeah, this sort of “humans visit fairyland and get in trouble” kind of tale with a serious Western slant. I think it handles its racial analogs pretty well. To Sil the natives may seem inscrutable but as they converse with each other, you get a better sense of the complexity. In fact, that’s one of the things the book does really well. There’s a glossary/index in the back that can explain a lot of what’s going on, but it’s a lot more fun to just read through and get the world details spooned out to you a bit at a time and you figure it out. Maybe I’ve read enough of these kinds of tales that I grokked what was going on faster, but I still like books that make you work a bit to understand everything that’s going on.
So a good book and recommended...but. So it’s the first book in a series and that’s fine, but the book finds a clanger of a stopping point to end on. It’s not really a cliffhanger but it’s certainly not a good resting place. It rather looked like everything was going to converge in the streets of Sixes in a spectacular denouement, but instead it just veers off and then “TO BE CONTINUED”. A full letter-grade off for that. Still, if you can deal with that, it’s a pretty good book and a fun read.
Next up, something a little more serious. With Furguson in the news the past couple of weeks, you might be wondering what daily life would be like in such a place. The timely release of On the Run : Fugitive LIfe in an American City by Alice Goffman. Ms. Goffman essentially spent her entire college career (undergad and grad) doing fieldwork in a black suburb of Philadelphia. Originally, she was interested in the lives of women in the neighborhood but she fell in with a group of young men and got interested in how their legal woes shaped their lives.
In particular, she focused on the fact that many young men have outstanding warrants -- some more serious than others and what those men do when they’re trying to avoid the attention of the police and the activity of the police in trying to run them down. Interestingly, although these men are “on the run”, much of their life comes to a stop. They can’t easily get or hold down a job, the people they know and the places they go are the first places the police will check if they’re actively hunting the fugitive. In particular, fugitives are very reluctant to visit hospitals for medical care or to witness the birth of their children because cops will run the names of everyone walking through the door. Obviously, this places a tremendous amount of stress on the young man and his family and loved ones. How they manage to make a normal life for themselves makes for compelling reading.
Additionally, Goffman expands her view to encompass loved ones and family members who are affected, unrelated people who provide much-needed goods and services to fugitives and even people in the neighborhood who stay out of legal trouble and how much or little they interact with the rest of the neighborhood. Finally, at the back, she provides a breakdown of her methodology which describes how a white, Jewish, college girl embedded herself in a predominantly black neighborhood and gained the trust of its inhabitants.
So, an excellent book and highly recommended.
later
Tom
So I finished up a couple more books this week.
First up One Night in Sixes by Arianne Thompson. So I really liked this book and I really hated this book. One the one hand, it’s a great book. It’s sort of an Old World fairy tale meets a New World western and for the most part, it works pretty well.
Sil Halfwick is tired of living out in the frontier and hopes to sell some horses and turn enough of a profit to get out from under his boss and head back East to the easy life. His partner is Appaloosa Elim, a half-man, half native “mule” who has a knack for horses. Unable to sell any of his horses, Sil takes off across the border to the river town of Sixes where he hopes to sell his stock to the native Sundowners. Against his better judgement, Elim follows along, hoping to keep his partner out of trouble and get him home intact.
Sixes was a former settlement overrun by the natives and now plays host to a wide range of native peoples from various tribes and clans each with their own talents, abilities, and culture. Sil and Elim very quickly get in over their heads and soon Elim is accused of murder and Sil is bouncing around in a volatile situation he doesn’t fully understand.
So yeah, this sort of “humans visit fairyland and get in trouble” kind of tale with a serious Western slant. I think it handles its racial analogs pretty well. To Sil the natives may seem inscrutable but as they converse with each other, you get a better sense of the complexity. In fact, that’s one of the things the book does really well. There’s a glossary/index in the back that can explain a lot of what’s going on, but it’s a lot more fun to just read through and get the world details spooned out to you a bit at a time and you figure it out. Maybe I’ve read enough of these kinds of tales that I grokked what was going on faster, but I still like books that make you work a bit to understand everything that’s going on.
So a good book and recommended...but. So it’s the first book in a series and that’s fine, but the book finds a clanger of a stopping point to end on. It’s not really a cliffhanger but it’s certainly not a good resting place. It rather looked like everything was going to converge in the streets of Sixes in a spectacular denouement, but instead it just veers off and then “TO BE CONTINUED”. A full letter-grade off for that. Still, if you can deal with that, it’s a pretty good book and a fun read.
Next up, something a little more serious. With Furguson in the news the past couple of weeks, you might be wondering what daily life would be like in such a place. The timely release of On the Run : Fugitive LIfe in an American City by Alice Goffman. Ms. Goffman essentially spent her entire college career (undergad and grad) doing fieldwork in a black suburb of Philadelphia. Originally, she was interested in the lives of women in the neighborhood but she fell in with a group of young men and got interested in how their legal woes shaped their lives.
In particular, she focused on the fact that many young men have outstanding warrants -- some more serious than others and what those men do when they’re trying to avoid the attention of the police and the activity of the police in trying to run them down. Interestingly, although these men are “on the run”, much of their life comes to a stop. They can’t easily get or hold down a job, the people they know and the places they go are the first places the police will check if they’re actively hunting the fugitive. In particular, fugitives are very reluctant to visit hospitals for medical care or to witness the birth of their children because cops will run the names of everyone walking through the door. Obviously, this places a tremendous amount of stress on the young man and his family and loved ones. How they manage to make a normal life for themselves makes for compelling reading.
Additionally, Goffman expands her view to encompass loved ones and family members who are affected, unrelated people who provide much-needed goods and services to fugitives and even people in the neighborhood who stay out of legal trouble and how much or little they interact with the rest of the neighborhood. Finally, at the back, she provides a breakdown of her methodology which describes how a white, Jewish, college girl embedded herself in a predominantly black neighborhood and gained the trust of its inhabitants.
So, an excellent book and highly recommended.
later
Tom
