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torture in series books
May. 16th, 2009 05:23 pm2nd Beka Cooper (Bloodhound) by Tamora Pierce: the "cage dogs" torture people the street dogs have picked up, to find out what they did/what they know. Waterboarding included.
most recent Jim Butcher/Harry Dresden novel, title escape mes: Shagnasty (a Skinwalker) tortures Thomas. Mostly by flaying his skin so he has to regenerate so he's crazed with hunger, and then leaves a nubile young thing there for him to drain to death so Thomas feels horribly guilty, too.
_Dead and Gone_, Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris: Neave and Lochlan, a pair of very bad fairies, torture Tray (a were) and Sookie, and they have a long and storied history of torturing others (including fae and vampires) who, despite the ability to heal and regenerate, lost their souls/personalities to the pain of the process.
The first example listed (Pierce) is very close to what's been in the news lately. The second and third examples are much less close to what has been in the news lately, in terms of purpose, technique and end result. The emphasis in those examples is more on people telling the victim how amazing they are to have survived something that utterly destroyed others.
Obviously, one doesn't have to look too far in other books by these authors (even in the same series) to find other people being beaten up, sometimes in a systematic way to gain a particular end. These stood out in my mind because of all the talk of torture in the news. In the Pierce instance, the very tight resemblance in detail really stood out.
Anyone else seeing this in current fiction? These are all genre examples, but I've got a friend who thinks of movies and so forth as manifestations of the collective unconscious and this would seem to be more of the same.
most recent Jim Butcher/Harry Dresden novel, title escape mes: Shagnasty (a Skinwalker) tortures Thomas. Mostly by flaying his skin so he has to regenerate so he's crazed with hunger, and then leaves a nubile young thing there for him to drain to death so Thomas feels horribly guilty, too.
_Dead and Gone_, Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlaine Harris: Neave and Lochlan, a pair of very bad fairies, torture Tray (a were) and Sookie, and they have a long and storied history of torturing others (including fae and vampires) who, despite the ability to heal and regenerate, lost their souls/personalities to the pain of the process.
The first example listed (Pierce) is very close to what's been in the news lately. The second and third examples are much less close to what has been in the news lately, in terms of purpose, technique and end result. The emphasis in those examples is more on people telling the victim how amazing they are to have survived something that utterly destroyed others.
Obviously, one doesn't have to look too far in other books by these authors (even in the same series) to find other people being beaten up, sometimes in a systematic way to gain a particular end. These stood out in my mind because of all the talk of torture in the news. In the Pierce instance, the very tight resemblance in detail really stood out.
Anyone else seeing this in current fiction? These are all genre examples, but I've got a friend who thinks of movies and so forth as manifestations of the collective unconscious and this would seem to be more of the same.