DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
Members' Mausoleum => Calendar Events / Announcements Archive => Calendar Events / Announcements '24 I => Calendar Events / Announcements '16 II => Topic started by: Gothick on July 21, 2016, 03:03:10 AM
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I don't see any posting regarding the appearance of a publicity blurb for Lara Parker's new DS novel. It seems to have been posted on Amazon and other venues sometime around the 4th of July weekend. The blurb seems very poorly written--particularly the tortured, repetitive syntax of that final sentence.
http://www.collinsporthistoricalsociety.com/2016/07/victoria-winters-returns-in-dark.html
The blurb doesn't mention Barnabas, but he is featured in the cover art, which has as its source one of the old publicity stills from 1968 (if I recall aright, a photograph from the same session was used for the cover of the very first issue of the magazine AfterNoon TV back in 1968--such was the prominence of DS on the daytime scene in that era).
Thanks for my fellow fan Michael C. for pointing this out to me.
G.
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the "condo" plot sounds so suspenseful! [ghost_rolleyes]
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is anyone reading Lara Parker's latest DS fiction 'Heiress of Collinwood'?
i'm not generally a fan of her writing but this one is centered on Victoria so i picked it up. without "spoiling" too much i'm on page 110 in a state of complete bewilderment.
i suppose it's her story and she can take it where she wants to. but what i'm most struck by is her complete lack of understanding/memory of the basic structure of the original story. her work seems to take place in some sort of "parallel time"variation of events. i have no idea how she came up with the outline of this plot?
Vicki as a television reporter in Bangor in 1972? she really seems to have no memory at all of what actually happened to the character in the OS. or that Maggie replaced her as Collinwood governess. the dates and timelines of everything is completely wrong. none of it lines up with OS canon. none of it makes sense.
not surprisingly she also doesn't seem to understand the fundamental nature of the character. what made Vicki "tick".
i'm trying enjoy it as a "stand alone" story but the huge gaps in continuity are extremely distracting. i can really only compare her work to an "inspired by" story along the lines of the Ross novels or the Dynamite comics more than OS continuity.
anyone looking to her work for OS plot "resolutions" is in for a rude awakening. [santa_rolleyes]
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What also struck me was the way that this book didn't even seem to fit very well into her own continuity. I read it a few months ago and I'm already vague on many of the details, but isn't Barnabas supposed to be human in 1972 of the Harper/Perkerverse? Maybe this takes place before the cure. If so then where is Julia? Again, I read an advance copy of this, so I'm foggy on the details but it does not seem to mesh with her own books. i'd love to stand corrrected on that.
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the "present day" sequence takes place in 1972 of all years. was Barnabas still "cured' when he and Julia returned from 1840? was that even addressed? i forget.
apparently Julia is not even referenced once in the entire book.
and there's just sloppiness. when Vicki's rummaging through city records she finds "newspaper articles" about Jason McGuire's "disappearance" (which of course there was not) but she also knows what really happened to him (which of course she didn't. no one ever did).
and since Parker wasn't in the first year it's obvious her extremely limited knowledge of that period and the original story setup is based on skimming synopsis and maybe watching a few episodes just as a cursory reference point. i recall in TSB she described Liz in the black gown and jewels getup she wore only in the pilot episode as if that was how she dressed daily. and here she has Liz a "recluse" into the 1970s when, of course, that period ended in 1967.
she also knows Barnabas is a vampire, as does the entire Collins family, which is completely innaccurate in terms of the original story. the whole thing is bizzaro land.
given the title i'll assume the big "reveal' is going to end up being the fan favorite Liz-as-Vicki's-mother theory but with all the other major continuity gaffes i can't even consider that "resolution" or "closure" although many fans already consider that mystery to be "solved".
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there are also multiple references to present day Quentin who of course Vicki never knew. something like that is extremely easy to cross reference even without first hand knowledge.
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i turn each page with increasing mystification...
Vicki "seems to recall David mentioning his mother". forget that she knew Laura well and was intimately involved in her storyline.
she gets EVERYTHING wrong. [santa_tongue]
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Why don't any of the things you bring up surprise me? Oh, could it be that after she changed actual 1795 dialogue from the show to suit her purposes in Angelique's Descent (no doubt because the actual dialogue wouldn't have supported her premise for the book) I vowed never to read another one of her books. She thinks nothing of twisting canon for her own needs. And that would have been fine, if, as you say, the books were supposed to be an alternate take - but AD was promoted as fitting completely within the canon of the show - but it does not. Whether or not her writing is no longer supposed to fit with canon I couldn't say because I haven't paid any attention. But at the very least the new liberties she's taken seem extremely strange...
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here she's not just twisting canon to suit her own agenda...
she simply doesn't understand, really at all, the underlying foundation of the show. particularly characters and storylines she herself did not play in.
at the end of the day these were just actors who simply memorized the scripts they were handed. they did not write or create the story. and it's obvious Parker's basic grasp of the material is minimal at best.
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and it's obvious Parker's basic grasp of the material is minimal at best.
Agreed. And that's true even when it comes to plots she was in...
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there's also a misfired attempt to "modernize" Vicki by making her more progressive and sexualized.
granted a 1960s Gothic ingenue wouldn't "read" particularly well today. her preternatural naivete coming across as dated and dim. but this character doesn't "feel" like Vicki at all.
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this character doesn't "feel" like Vicki at all.
Other fans have said the same of Julia and other characters, too. Another reason why I haven't read anything beyond AD. I figure why set myself up for disappointment?
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in one of the most laughable attempts to i guess to tie the story into a "larger mythology" the founder of the Hammond Foundling Home, in New York City, where our dear heroine was brought up, was none other than...
MISS CHARITY TRASK. who subjected a young Victoria to all manner of Victorian cruelties.
i "guess" this throwaway detail is mean to illustrate now Vicki was "persecuted" by the Trasks "across the centuries" but it makes absolutely no sense. [santa_shocked]
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Her first novel, Angelique's Decent, stuck to the canon. It was so well-written. As for the rest of her work, pheh. The one where Liz was a flapper when, by the cannon, she was actually only 10-years-old, forget it.
Gerard
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i only consider the OS to be "canonical" but for many fans the RTC presentation and subsequent BF audio dramas have become "official" continuity. and Parker clearly doesn't try and mesh her work with what's happening with that timeline. this story goes completely outside the structure of the OS and all other subsequent attempts at continuity.
it's a self contained story. fine. but it really doesn't make any sense at all. [santa_rolleyes]
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apologies for the blow-by-blow but this book gets weirder by the page...
in a bizarre attempt to, i guess, merge the Elizabeth character with the actress who played her here was have Liz as having been a winsome blond movie star in the 1930s!
this totally random detail adds nothing to the overall plot of the book. just another example of Parker's staggering lack of understanding of the basic structure of this story. [santa_rolleyes]
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No need to apologize. I, for one, am finding each revelation you share to be fascinating - though not necessarily in the way the novel's author may have hoped...
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Lara has made no secret of the fact that she doesn't remember a lot about her own time of DS. Memory is a tricky thing at times and certainly not exclusive to Lara. I have not purchased Heiress of Collinwood as yet but I pulled my copy of Wolf Moon Rising off the closet shelf and found some interesting things in the forward. Again, Lara refers to "all the story lines that I couldn't possibly remember." Fair enough. Her agent and editor are presumably not DS fans, so they would have other concerns about the book than adherence to continuity. So she turned to Marcy Robin and Kathleen Resch for story information. I'm sure that they could have given her the correct information. Whether their input was taken is something else entirely. What I did find baffling is that she thanks Jim Pierson twice "for facts and details that I had forgotten." Since the book bears a copyright notice by Dan Curtis productions, it would seem that Pierson would have been a bit more zealous about guarding the integrity of the property. Maybe, to paraphrase Jim Aubrey, with your audience, it doesn't matter. [santa_shocked] [santa_rolleyes] [santa_shocked]
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What I did find baffling is that she thanks Jim Pierson twice "for facts and details that I had forgotten." Since the book bears a copyright notice by Dan Curtis productions, it would seem that Pierson would have been a bit more zealous about guarding the integrity of the property. Maybe, to paraphrase Jim Aubrey, with your audience, it doesn't matter. [santa_shocked] [santa_rolleyes] [santa_shocked]
It never mattered when Paperback Library, Gold Key, or the comic strip were published. I think DCP or whatever the rights are held by now only care about the licensing fee.
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under ordinary circumstances i wouldn't hold someone accountable to accurate recollections of things that happened 40-odd years ago.
but Parker's made a decision to write and sell books based on this show. the VERY least she could do is familiarize herself with the basic framework of the series.
she gets almost EVERYTHING wrong. timelines. dates. backstories. the fates of most of these characters. she simply has no understanding of this material. just typing the name "Barnabas" on a page doesn't really make it a DS story.
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It's not just KLS who has gotten things wrong or passed over misinformation in the PomPress books - Pierson has as well. I honestly think that with the possible exceptions of Marcy Robin and Kathleen Resch, no one who publishes DS material has as much and certainly not more knowledge than we fans do. I mean, even the writers often had to go outside to ask the studio fans about certain plot twists. And even at that, DC never gave the fans credit for paying close attention to the show's plots - quite the opposite, in fact, because he always thought no one would notice if/when goofs came up. So, apparently the people behind all the current books share DC's same thinking. [santa_rolleyes] But we did - and we still do...
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when KLS goofs in the Pompress books it's one thing. it's really just a recollection...
she's not trying to craft a story out of this source material. that's why Parker's fiction is so frustrating.
here she has Vicki leaving Collinwood..on her own two feet..to move to Bangor in 1970. that simply IS NOT what happened to the character. she "disappeared in time" with Peter in 1968. ALL she had to do was get that simple, easily referenced detail right and this story could have launched effectively. she could have taken it anywhere. but getting basic framework like that so wrong makes the rest of the story impossible to follow.
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Given that the whole series has been available for quite some time, it would seem obvious that if one was planning on writing something based on it, that the first thing to do would be to familiarize oneself with it!!! It's incredible that she hasn't!!
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it really gets more ridiculous by the page...
i think Parker is trying to create some sort of larger "mythology". a "grand sweep" across the centuries by randomly dumping a bunch of 1897 characters..Charity Trask, Magda, Quentin, Aristede..characters who would have been long dead, into the narrative. even though it doesn't make sense.
and needless to say Parker has her "Mary Sue" moment by describing this iteration of Angelique (a character she herself played) as a radiant, ravishing, incomparable beauty. it really reads like bad fan fiction.
and again simple details, like when Vicki was written out of the OS and how, could easily be referenced with a quick glance at one of her BFF's almanacs or episode guides. [santa_rolleyes]
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Thanks for all the info. I had considered reading this because Vickie is one of my favorite characters, but having attempted to read her other swill, I was wary. This sounds worse than anything Sam Hall could write.
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when KLS goofs in the Pompress books it's one thing. it's really just a recollection...
she's not trying to craft a story out of this source material. that's why Parker's fiction is so frustrating.
Completely agreed! Though the greater point I was attempting to make was that TPTB all seem to be following DC's belief that no matter how blatantly they goof, whether it be in a reference book or in plotting a DS novel, none of us are ever going to pick up on the goofs. [santa_rolleyes]
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The plots of DS stories are available everywhere, from books to the internet. There's no excuse for not knowing the "canon."
Gerard
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Wow, Parker didn't even bother to look up an online entry on the Victoria Winters storyline when she wrote that thing?
That "research" would have taken her all of about five minutes.
Happy New Year!
G.
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Surprisingly, the reviews of the book on Amazon give it 4 or 5 stars.
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[pointing-up] And right there could be the sad proof that no matter how blatantly they goof, whether it be in a reference book or in plotting a DS novel, some DS fans really aren't picking up on the goofs - or they don't care. [santa_rolleyes]
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I think you're onto something there, MB. I think that the fact that it has the name Lara Parker attached to it has a lot to do with it. If it was written by another writer, who has not been established as a brand name, I doubt if it would have been as successful.
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I read on Lara Parker's web site that she states she does not make all that much money on her DS novels. I guess her novels are a "labor of love."
However, after reading the comments here, I'm not in a hurry to read any of Ms. Parker's DS books. Sorry, Angelique. [santa_undecided]
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I think you're onto something there, MB. I think that the fact that it has the name Lara Parker attached to it has a lot to do with it. If it was written by another writer, who has not been established as a brand name, I doubt if it would have been as successful.
in the past i've been told i was "mean" for being critical of Parker's writing. but i treat her as fairly as any other author in the same position.
the 2012 Burton/Depp film was skewered but for many in the fandom anything associated with the original cast gets a pass. i don't care for the BF audiodramas. to me they are dreary and depressing. and Parker's Mary Sue fiction veers so far outside OS canon i cannot take them seriously. but because the OS stars are involved in these productions they are considered the "real deal" by many fans.
again it's Parker's story. and ifs she simply had gotten the basic structure of the series accurately she could have decided Vicki came from outer space. but you have to get the framework right to effectively launch the story.
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but you have to get the framework right to effectively launch the story.
Well, try to take comfort in the fact that there are many DS fans who agree with you.
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Wow, Parker didn't even bother to look up an online entry on the Victoria Winters storyline when she wrote that thing?
That "research" would have taken her all of about five minutes.
she gets the train ride right and makes an "inside joke" about Maggie calling Vicki a "jerk". and describes Liz as a "recluse" garbed in jewels and black evening gowns. so i gather her "research' consists of watching episode one. [santa_rolleyes]
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speaking of Maggie for reasons not made clear she is still a waitress at the Collinsport diner in 1972...
and Vicki inquires as to the well being of her father and learns Sam died "two years earlier". when, of course, Vicki knew exactly when and how Sam died and was intimately involved in his death.
the hits just keep on coming! [santa_shocked]
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I thoroughly enjoyed SE Hinton's Hawkes Harbor which was initially an entry into the first collapsed novel re-boot by HarperCollins. It basically was a "biography" of Willie Loomis, from his childhood through his "adventures" with Jason Maguire leading up to his arrival in Collinsport and his "meeting" Barnabas Collins. When the book series died, she simply took her story, changed the names of persons and places (although she did leave one name "accidentally" unchanged as a tribute to DS fans) and - voila - a DS novel without breaking any copyright laws. What was amazing, though, was her knowledge of the canon. She did have to do tweaks here and there for the purpose of the plot, including the heart-breaking ending. But yet she knew the "facts," the backgrounds, etc. If Ms. Hinton could avail herself of all of that, why couldn't Ms. Parker?
Gerard
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i also enjoyed HH. and although she did take the story in it's own direction she got the foundation spot on. which made it fully understandable.
i could "feel' Willie and Jason on the page. Parker's characters leave me mystified.
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HH was a fantastic DS novel, wasn't it, Michael? I cried at the end - that blanket; oh, god, that blanket. One could tell that Ms. Hinton was a true fan of the series, knowing the storylines and trying to keep within them (a total impossibility because of the TV series' own inconsistantsies). She knew the material. That's why "fan-fiction" is so important in keeping the franchise alive. Too bad the PTB don't accept that. Anyone who tries to put out in the public a true continuance is suddenly met with a bevvy of lawyers from you-know-who. I'm surprised Ms. Hinton wasn't sued for mentioning the one name from the series as a tribute to us.
Gerard
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what name did she use i forget? i just recall the Maggie equivalent was called "Katie" which felt like an inside joke.
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It was for the character based on Roger; I forget his name and I'm too lazy to go get the book off the shelf. Anyway, more towards the end, instead of using the "new" character's name, she said: "Roger Collins."
Gerard
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I think that the Roger counterpart was named Richard.
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SE Hinton is an accomplished writer with a seriously honed talent. Her novel THE OUTSIDERS is now something of a classic. Lovely to hear she is also a fan of our show. I haven't read HAWKES HARBOR. The title alone is an in-joke for DS fans. Maybe I should see if the book is available on Kindle. Although I still enjoy print very much, I can get through a lot on my commute and lunch breaks now with the Kindle.
I'm repeating myself, but I thought ANGELIQUE'S DESCENT was very good until the final part where she had to write material that was canon and she flubbed so badly and her tone was so off that it was, for me, a trial to get through those pages. For the record I felt the some way about Gregory Maguire's WICKED. Very readable until he got to the material that repeated the original Baum novel. Then, whoopsie. He has a lot more talent than does Lara Parker the writer. I always enjoy Lara Parker the actress.
cheers, G.
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i did not read her last work the Quentin-themed 'Wolf Moon Rising' but it would seem that 'HTC' has perhaps at least followed her own continuity in one regard...
[spoiler]here the big "revelation" was that Vicki is the illegitimate offspring of the rather yucky Elizabeth/Quentin relationship told in that variation on the tale. gross, and it makes absolutely no sense in terms of OS canon but i believe it links these two stories on that point. [/spoiler]
like i said i didn't read it but i believe it connects the two books at least on that. it would seem Parker's making a rather clumsy attempt to create some sort of larger "mythology" linking the characters "across the centuries". but it's a misfire. [santa_rolleyes]
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[pointing-up] And right there could be the sad proof that no matter how blatantly they goof, whether it be in a reference book or in plotting a DS novel, some DS fans really aren't picking up on the goofs - or they don't care. [santa_rolleyes]
It maybe that many of the readers, perhaps most of them, are people with only a very general idea of what DS is about. Maybe they picked up the book with only vague memories of Barnabas and "that girl he liked." These books have to be going out to a much larger audience than the people who attend festivals.
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i don't care for the BF audiodramas. to me they are dreary and depressing. and Parker's Mary Sue fiction veers so far outside OS canon i cannot take them seriously. but because the OS stars are involved in these productions they are considered the "real deal" by many fans.
I take the audiodramas seriously and consider them canon because the cast is continuing the story. But that's not the sole reason. The audio series is the only continuation of the show that has paid attention to continuity and told quality stories appeal to DS fans and also those unfamililar with the series. They have quite a following in the UK and have won several awards. They've resurrected characters I'd never thought I'd hear again like, Hallie Stokes, Amanda Harris, Danielle Roget/Eve and a host of others. I was dreading the return of Roger Davis as Charles Delaware Tate. I was prepared to loathe it because I really don't like his acting style on DS. They managed to record a very poignant and touching story that was as haunting as it was tragic. Do they always get the continuity correct? No they don't. They've made some errors, but then so did the original show. They couldn't decide how old certain characters were or whether Angelique was a child in Martinique or over 100 years old. I think it holds together with the orignal series remarkably well. I think it's a testament to the quality of the stories that they've released over 60 stories and lasted ten years.
One thing they did NOT get wrong was "Cassandra Collins." Many fans think that they just decided to call Angelique Cassandra in order to pair her up with Tony. That did not happen. Angelique was using the alias to gain entry to an island in order to obtain an artifact she desired. Angelique Collins does not exist. She has no ID, no friends, or references. Casssandra Collins is the former wife of Roger Collins. This identity got her invited to the private island where she met up with Tony and they were forced to work together. Their relationship developed and well..any more would be spoilers. Attention was paid to continuity though, unlike the way Cassandra was handled by Gold Key.
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KLS and Lara are writing for a limited but loyal market. It seems that everything they publish is guaranteed a certain amount of sales, irregardless of quality or content. It's doubtful that they would achieve the same volume of sales outside the DS niche.
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I actually don't mind some "revamping" of the canon in the various novels that came out from the late '60's through today. After all, "Marilyn (or is is Marylin?) Ross" created his own parallel universe in his various DS novels. Few followed the canon, especially as the series of books progressed. They certainly weren't literary classics but us young fans who bought them devoured them. Of course, there were the horribly drawn Gold Key comic books. Don't forget the year-or-so-long daily and weekend "comic" series that appeared in newspapers. It was well drawn, but the plots were awful and as far from canon as could be. Yet, no one trashed any of this; it has all been held in various forms of esteem at keeping the series alive and out there.
As I stated, I truly enjoyed Angelique's Descent. I thought it was a marvelous novel and for the most part stuck with the canon. Were there tweaks, especially at the end? Of course. The equally marvelous Hawkes Harbor had its tweaks. Considering the inconsistencies within the TV series, tweaking has been necessary. As for "AD," I thought Ms. Parker did an incredible job with one of DS's biggest inconsistencies: Barnabas, by 1796, was around 40 years old, yet had a nine-year-old sister. That would take some "crunching of the numbers" especially regarding Naomi's "birthing hips," yet Ms. Parker explained it. She crunched (as I'm sure Naomi also had to) and it worked. Ms. Parker looked at what the childhood of Angelique was like and even did it with controversy, the main one being that Angelique was mulatto. Her mother was an African slave woman; her father was a French plantation owner (from what I recall). That's some heady stuff. Good for Ms. Parker. Why would some skinny white girl be a witch? Better Ms. Parker's explanation (she received her supernatural abilities from her mother who was a voodoo queen) than from the DS "canon" from the messed-up 1840/41 plot where she was a witch going back to at least the 1600's (if she was so powerful, how did she end up being a servant girl a hundred years later? - she needed to have a conference with Samantha and Endora).
I didn't like Ms. Parker's later novels not because they so much traveled from the canon, but because they were poorly written. No, I didn't like having Elizabeth being a flapper and movie star and some such stuff in the 1920's, when she was born, according to canon, in 1917. That would make Liz over 60, at least, when the series began. There are other things to pick at. Sometimes canon is absolutely necessary. And tweaking the canon is also absolutely necessary. If Dan Curtis and the PTB stuck with canon, we would've had an entirely different series. After all, Josette died in the 1830's according to canon. Then, when the Barnabas plot took a soap opera low in the ratings into high (if not the highest) in the ratings, suddenly she died 40 years earlier. And don't forget that Julia, Barnabas and Eliot so drastically changed not only the time-line but also the family history in 1840/41, that when they returned to 1971, none of the Collins family the knew and loved would've been there.
Gerard
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I don't have much of a problem with veering away from DS "canon"--even wildly, as it sounds like is sometimes happening. (I've not yet read Lara Parker's novels after Angelique's Descent.) As long as the novel is written well and is able to tell a good story that doesn't contradict itself, that should be fine. Each novel should probably be considered as a stand-alone story, not part of a continuity. After all, the world generally is able to accept changes to characters, settings, and plot elements in derivative works based on Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. Why not also Dark Shadows? I suppose the difficulty may be that we're not used to that kind of freedom being taking in works deriving from much more recent original works.
Regarding Angelique's Descent, I enjoyed the book very much, although I had difficulty with the latter part that recounted events from the series. It read much more like an outline of the story, not as fleshed out as the rest of the book had been.
And as for Hawkes Harbor, I thought it was wonderful. I had a prepublication galley copy, and read it sitting on the beach in Cozumel one Thanksgiving week. (What a fabulous week...) It took me a little while to realize that it was based on DS, since I knew nothing of the book's origins, and picked it up at the publisher's exhibit booth based on the author's name. What a shame that DCP didn't accept it for the DS book series. While the atmosphere of the book was quite a bit different from DS (for me), it worked very well and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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From what I recall, KMR, "HH" was accepted for publication for the revived HarperCollins novel series. However, in the interim the series collapsed when HarperCollins and DCP couldn't agree on how to split the take. It was to be the third entry (after Ms. Parker's "AD" and Mark Rainey's Dreams of the Dark, the only two that were published). There were others that were to follow, including another one by Mr. Rainey. So as not to waste her work, Ms. Hinton simply took the DS names of persons and places, changed them (save for the deliberate retaining of "Roger Collins" in that one line), and had it published.
Gerard
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I actually don't mind some "revamping" of the canon in the various novels that came out from the late '60's through today.
I don't mind if the characters are pretty much kept the same. I enjoyed "Dreams of the Dark," the second Harper Collins novel. It really didn't fit continuity, but it felt like a lost story from the OS, even though Vicky was more like the '91 version. It was set after 1795 but there was no sign of Dr. Lang, Cassandra, or Nicholas. It's my favorite authorized DS novel.
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There were others that were to follow, including another one by Mr. Rainey.
Mark Rainey did finish his novel and has offered it as a free download. If it had been published, it might have been the first novel to be consistent with the original series. I'm not sure whether HH would have been.
http://www.stephenmarkrainey.com/dslabyrinth.htm
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Thanks for the info about the HarperCollins series, Gerard. I had no idea! I thought I'd heard that Hinton's novel had been rejected, but that was apparently misinformation. Good to know that DCP did approve of it, at least. I still think it's strange that S.E. Hinton wrote it. It's totally outside of the world of literature for which she's known, but she did a fabulous job with it.
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Oh, BTW, I had the pleasure of speaking very very briefly with Ms. Hinton on the set of Tex back in summer 1981, then saw her again and took her picture at the world premiere the next summer. I've been a fan of hers for a long time.
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backpeddling a bit as to whether or not Parker even follows her own canon from book to book i'll have to say NO...
the only other one i read was TSB and i pulled it out for a quick cross reference. it's set in 1971 and without completely rereading it it doesn't seem to mesh at all with what's happening in HOC which takes place a year later. it's basic setup was closer to what would have actually been happening with OS continuity. HOC might as well take place on another planet it's so far off base.
again a year passes between the two. so i suppose Parker gave herself a bit of "wiggle room". but the framework of the story seems completely different.
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actually the "Angelique" equivalent is a completely different character in both books.
so she's clearly not bothering to follow her own canon. [snow_shocked]
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Thanks for the info about the HarperCollins series, Gerard. I had no idea! I thought I'd heard that Hinton's novel had been rejected, but that was apparently misinformation. Good to know that DCP did approve of it, at least. I still think it's strange that S.E. Hinton wrote it. It's totally outside of the world of literature for which she's known, but she did a fabulous job with it.
I read somewhere, KMR, that Ms. Hinton was a long-time fan of DS and jumped at the opportunity to write a novel (I also read that it was to be called Collinsport - hence the title name-change to Hawkes Harbor, "Hawkes" obviously another bow to all DS fans since that ended up being Carolyn's married name). It was a real coup that one of America's most beloved and venerated authors was contributing to the attempted novel re-boot. Again, her knowledge of the canon is remarkable (even though - again - she needed to tweak things to fit the plot). The novel concentrated on the life of Willie Loomis, something not touched by the series but did she ever touch it in an incredible way and led up to his arrival with Jason to Collinsport and, well, we all know the rest of the story. The climactic ending was heart-breaking. I'll always remember that blanket. It causes me to tear up.
Gerard
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This is pretty close to off-topic, especially for this thread. But at the moment I'm reading GENERATION LOSS by Elizabeth Hand. It's the first in a series of three novels (to date) featuring anti-hero Cassandra Neary, a middle-aged punk survivor from the 70s. In this first book, Cass travels to an isolated island off the coast of Maine where she encounters some very unusual people, and visits the ruins of an abandoned hippie commune from 1973.
One of the towns in the area on the mainland is called Collinstown. I can't help wondering if that is a nod in our direction from Ms. Hand. Her books suggest that she might have enjoyed DS both as a child and later on (she's around my age).
G.
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actually the "Angelique" equivalent is a completely different character in both books.
so she's clearly not bothering to follow her own canon. [snow_shocked]
Yeah, I could never figure that out. How can you have two characters that are the reincarnation of Angelique? She never explained that. She just expected us to accept it, I guess and not question how it worked out. Maybe it's something like Adam and Barnabas sharing a soul.
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backpeddling a bit as to whether or not Parker even follows her own canon from book to book i'll have to say NO...
the only other one i read was TSB and i pulled it out for a quick cross reference. it's set in 1971 and without completely rereading it it doesn't seem to mesh at all with what's happening in HOC which takes place a year later. it's basic setup was closer to what would have actually been happening with OS continuity. HOC might as well take place on another planet it's so far off base.
again a year passes between the two. so i suppose Parker gave herself a bit of "wiggle room". but the framework of the story seems completely different.
My memories of the past books is sketchy I admit, but I don't think the books were consistent either. I think they are set at the same time and yet in TSB the house is densely populated and totally abandoned in HOC. Again though, my memory is not very clear about the former book and I'm not really up to going back and checking it right now.
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yes in TSB it's pretty much business as usual chez Collins circa 1971. the gang was all there.
amazingly HOC doesn't make a single reference to Julia. not one. was she dispatched with in the other books?
and apparently Collinsport, Maine was crawling with Angelique incarnations assorted and sundry in the early 1970s. you couldn't walk out the door without bumping into one. which makes absolutely no sense.
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yes in TSB it's pretty much business as usual chez Collins circa 1971. the gang was all there.
amazingly HOC doesn't make a single reference to Julia. not one. was she dispatched with in the other books?
I'm not exactly sure how this fit the previous books but Barnabas is there, however briefly. I also don't recall Julia ever being mentioned. She was there througout the other books [spoiler]but she became a vampire if I remember correctly in either the second or third book.[/spoiler]
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Like Amazon, the reviews on Goodreads are also largely favorable, so I guess that the book has found its audience. It got 5 stars from someone named Lamar Hawkins. It probably isn't her but I did find it amusing just the same.
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That's pretty funny. Lara Parker's name (in what is laughingly called real life) is Lamar Hawkins.
G.