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Feb. 18th, 2010 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreI'm reading Dust and Shadows by Lyndsay Faye right now because it is Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper and I am easy for things like that. Sherlock Holmes crossover fanfic was a staple of my high school reading, because there was a period when I would read anything that told me it had Sherlock Holmes in it,* and if it also had Dracula or Dr Jekyll, well, that just made things better. One of the great sorrows of my life is that my library does not have the majority of the wacky Holmes fic that I read in high school - I mean, the Hockessin library had a freaking Fu Manchu crossover. Which I read not knowing anything about Fu Manchu at all, because I would read anything with Sherlock Holmes in it.
And that, friends and neighbors, is why I have read The Canary Trainer. Which I totally do not recommend, OMG. (Angel of the Opera, if you need a Phantom crossover. It has no Watson, but at least it gets Erik's freaking name right.)
Anyway! Dust and Shadows is pretty decent. It is not the best Holmes pastiche ever but it's entertaining and well, I am also easy for Jack the Ripper. (It makes me kinda want to reread The Last Sherlock Holmes Story** but that was a little traumatic.) I find myself playing a game while reading it, though, which is new. It is the "plug in different versions of Holmes and Watson" game.
See, usually when I read the canon or non-canon Holmes fic, my mental Holmes and Watson remain the ones that I've had in my head since I was about 10, which is to say that they look like Sidney Paget illustrations. And sound like Sidney Paget illustrations, if that makes any sense. (It probably doesn't.) But I have been consuming a lot of Holmes-based media recently and now, in certain scenes, my brain provides different versions of Holmes and Watson. Sometimes, Holmes is Jeremy Brett, which makes the voice in my head very different. Sometimes, he is Clive Merrison, who oddly makes Holmes look different, despite the fact that Mr Merrison's Holmes in entirely audio-based. (He has lighter hair. I have no explanation for that, other than that Clive Merrison doesn't sound like he has black hair. It's weird.) And, of course, sometimes Watson looks like Jude Law. (Poor Lestrade just gets his name pronounced inconsistently.)
I noticed that I was doing this about a quarter of the way through the book and now, at about the halfway point, I'm trying to do it deliberately, to read scenes more than once with a different Holmes or Watson in mind. It's amazing how much different some things end up looking in my head that way.
I think the only other books I've ever been able to do this with were Lord of the Rings and there I didn't have near so many options.
*To be entirely honest, that period has not so much passed at all, actually. I'm a little more discerning now, but not much.
**Which my library doesn't have either!
And that, friends and neighbors, is why I have read The Canary Trainer. Which I totally do not recommend, OMG. (Angel of the Opera, if you need a Phantom crossover. It has no Watson, but at least it gets Erik's freaking name right.)
Anyway! Dust and Shadows is pretty decent. It is not the best Holmes pastiche ever but it's entertaining and well, I am also easy for Jack the Ripper. (It makes me kinda want to reread The Last Sherlock Holmes Story** but that was a little traumatic.) I find myself playing a game while reading it, though, which is new. It is the "plug in different versions of Holmes and Watson" game.
See, usually when I read the canon or non-canon Holmes fic, my mental Holmes and Watson remain the ones that I've had in my head since I was about 10, which is to say that they look like Sidney Paget illustrations. And sound like Sidney Paget illustrations, if that makes any sense. (It probably doesn't.) But I have been consuming a lot of Holmes-based media recently and now, in certain scenes, my brain provides different versions of Holmes and Watson. Sometimes, Holmes is Jeremy Brett, which makes the voice in my head very different. Sometimes, he is Clive Merrison, who oddly makes Holmes look different, despite the fact that Mr Merrison's Holmes in entirely audio-based. (He has lighter hair. I have no explanation for that, other than that Clive Merrison doesn't sound like he has black hair. It's weird.) And, of course, sometimes Watson looks like Jude Law. (Poor Lestrade just gets his name pronounced inconsistently.)
I noticed that I was doing this about a quarter of the way through the book and now, at about the halfway point, I'm trying to do it deliberately, to read scenes more than once with a different Holmes or Watson in mind. It's amazing how much different some things end up looking in my head that way.
I think the only other books I've ever been able to do this with were Lord of the Rings and there I didn't have near so many options.
*To be entirely honest, that period has not so much passed at all, actually. I'm a little more discerning now, but not much.
**Which my library doesn't have either!
