Forum:House of Daniel

I know doing things this way is a bit behind the times, but for no reason I can easily identify, I just can't figure out how to create a User Blog post on this discussion. Very embarrassing.

Anyway, I have started THoD after all. The book I'd planned on reading next is really quite dense, and I won't be able to devote the attention it demands to it till the end of May, so I decided to read a bit of fluff in the interim. HoD is fun, and it's light: I'm averaging about two chapters a day.

I'm going to hold off on creating articles till I'm most of the way through, as I won't be able to do it in a way that makes much sense till then. In the mean time, I thought I'd discuss/warn of a few issues that will need to be addressed before I or anyone else can go to town on it.

The book's single POV writes in the first person, and we're well into Chapter 3 before we get his name. I was really worried about how to do articles on a book whose central character is unnamed, but at length he introduces himself to another character as Jack Spivey.

Nationality, now, that's a question we're going to have to deal with. This is in many ways a typical HT fantasy alter ego of the real world. You've got wizards, werewolves, vampires, and zombies. The first three are the same as HT always uses them. The fourth is not nearly as objectionable as I'd feared. They're pretty harmless: They don't attack humans, they just perform menial tasks as slave labor without really being aware of what they're doing. They're reanimated by magic, not some insanely implausible plague. The far greater danger is the Voodoo conjurers who stalk bad neighborhoods, looking to kidnap you and convert you into one. And they get plenty of volunteers: The Depression has made people that desperate. Still incredibly creepy and tasteless, but at least they're not causing one of those horrible Zombie Apocalypses (TM) for no reason.

There are also dust devils. You had those in OTL, too, but these are actual, anthropomorphic devils, who erode topsoil with malice aforethought.

However, unlike WBtP, EIaK, TCotTSD, etc, this book uses real-world geography: not essentially the same places with punny names in their places, the actual place-names. The HoD barker calls baseball "America's Game." The states all have their actual names (though Hawaii is the Sandwich Islands yet again) and are all where they're supposed to be, and numerous comments make it clear that the demographics in each work the same as we're used to. Mexico's south of the border. I don't recognize the names of all the towns in Oklahoma and Texas that we've visited so far, but I recognize enough of them to be willing to assume the others are legit. I don't know the old road networks in those parts, either, but Jack Spivey describes them in such loving detail that I can't imagine HT's just making it up. Mussolini's "make the trains run on time" is credited to "some king, or maybe he was just a minister, way on the other side of the ocean." Russia exists, and the Russians slaughtered the Czar some years back. Their new flag is red. Stalin is not mentioned, and neither are the communists; rumors abound that the new ruling class are secretly vampires. If I lived in a world where vampires were real, I might suspect Stalin of being one.

Stalin and Mussolini are not the only historical figures conspicuously not mentioned by name. We learn that politics are all screwed up, but we get no Hoover (not even a Hooverville) nor Roosevelt nor anyone else. We don't get any real-life ballplayers, either, not even as allusions, though I've noticed several points that seemed to beg a name-drop of "the Babe." In fact, the only individual name with which anyone would be familiar is the prophet Daniel. He'll require an article.

Team names do get the usual punny treatment. Not only is the House of Daniel rather than David, but there are Hilltoppers instead of Yankees (fairly clever, that) and Archdeacons instead of Cardinals (a bit more straightforward, but not groaningly obvious). They play in New York and St Louis, respectively (and the former city has some alternate name for the Polo Grounds that escapes me at the moment). There's a third major league franchise called the Wolves. The very casual name-drop of them doesn't give nearly enough context to identify who they're supposed to be; if I had to make a wild guess, I'd say the Tigers, since it's a team named for a land animal. (They're spoken of with awe, as a kind of perennial threat to win the Series, so it can't be the Cubs, can it?)

I guess that's a very long way of asking, Do we call these guys Americans? They're clearly from the United States, and just as clearly not. Turtle Fan (talk) 00:25, May 5, 2016 (UTC)