Sick books
Jan. 26th, 2006 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossNo, not books whose content is seriously warped, or books in sad need of repair, but books that amused me while I was sick. Actually, I still am sick, but the awful lung crud is mostly gone and what I have left is an ordinary cold, so I'm feeling well enough to get out of bed, catch up with a few things. First, the good ones:
Jerry Oltion, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, Tor 2005. Young, inventive egalitarian couple from small town take their modified truck into the stars and have fun adventures. Light, engaging, full of imagination. Not epic the way Poul Anderson did space adventure, but easy on the mind.
Juliet Marillier, THE DARK MIRROR, Tor 2004. I enjoyed her earlier work, so was favorably disposed from the beginning and had a grand time. Normally, Celtic fantasy leaves me cold, but her version of an almost-sort-of Pictish King Arthur (battling Irish Gaels as well as Christian missionaries) was different enough to hold my interest. I kept hoping she'd move beyond the Christians as bad guys, but she never did, or explain what was so bad about them except that they took people away from the "true" faith of their ancestors (which incidentally involves human sacrifice); but this is only Book One, so there is still hope.
Sarah Mickem, FIRETHORN, Bantam 2004. I almost gave up in the first chapter, which felt like endless generic backstory, girl with Gift in pseudomedieval world. But I hung in there and was well rewarded. It's sort of gritty, bloodthirsty Jane Austen in a medieval military camp, full of different sensibilities and genuine romance. I'll look for her next.
James Herbert, NOBODY TRUE, Tor 2003. Herbert is apparently a bigname horror writer in the UK. I usually avoid horror, but the premise was intriguing enough to get me started, and the writing kept me going after that. I just closed my eyes through the gore, and there isn't much of it, although it is strong. The hero comes back from an out of the body experience to discover he's been murdered. So he's not exactly a ghost, not exactly alive. A page-turner not for the faint of stomach.
Now for the ones I didn't finish:
Michelle Welch, CHASING FIRE, Bantam 2005. Too generic a setting, too confusing, no payoff for wading through having no idea what's going on. I lasted 50 pages of jumping around in time/setting/character/country. Mostly, I'm pissed that the cover looks like a Louise Marley, whose work I adore.
Kim Harrison, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNDEAD, HarperTorch 2005. Looked a bit like Laurel Hamilton's Anita whatever vampire hunter knockoff, but just too cutesy for me. Trite language, nothing I care about at stake.
William Dietz, FOR THOSE WHO FELL, Ace 2004. Ten years ago, I'd probably have slogged through the beginning until I got into the story, but I'm much less tolerant now and having one woman character be jealous of another because of her looks (when one is an ambassador and the other a diplomat, and constantly referred to as such) just lost me. There are better ways to work in physical descriptions of the characters. YMMV.
James M. Ward, MIDSHIPWIZARD HALCYON BLITHE, Tor 2005. Billed as combining elements of Horatio Hornblower, Harry Potter, R.L. Stevenson and Robin Hobb -- okay, I'll give it a try. Just couldn't stomach the mishandling of scene after scene. The author is a professional game designer and it reads like that. Take a writing course.
Peter Watts, BEHEMOTH, BOOK ONE: B-MAX. Tor 2004. Okay, I went along with the prologue, which felt very much like catching me up on 5 volumes of backstory. But 10 pages into badly handled present tense with unbelievable dialog and almost no character depth was enough. Am I getting picky in my old age, or just cranky from being sick?
Isabel Glass, THE DIVIDED CROWN, Tor 2005. Cool cover of leopard sphinx drinking from stream, with reflection of real leopard, but the beginning was too generic, filled with dubiously pronouncable, pseudo Celtic names, and far too many of them. Nothing to catch my interest.
Mel Odom, LORD OF THE LIBRARIES, Tor 2005, with a cool Hildebrandt cover that looks like it was originally done for the siege of Gondor in LotR. This might have worked it I'd read the earlier books or was in a sillier mood, but the 20th time I read the word, "goblinkin," I was done.
Lest anyone leap to the conclusion I went out and bought any of these books, they all came to me on loan, so I felt perfectly free to stop reading and go on to the next one.
Jerry Oltion, ANYWHERE BUT HERE, Tor 2005. Young, inventive egalitarian couple from small town take their modified truck into the stars and have fun adventures. Light, engaging, full of imagination. Not epic the way Poul Anderson did space adventure, but easy on the mind.
Juliet Marillier, THE DARK MIRROR, Tor 2004. I enjoyed her earlier work, so was favorably disposed from the beginning and had a grand time. Normally, Celtic fantasy leaves me cold, but her version of an almost-sort-of Pictish King Arthur (battling Irish Gaels as well as Christian missionaries) was different enough to hold my interest. I kept hoping she'd move beyond the Christians as bad guys, but she never did, or explain what was so bad about them except that they took people away from the "true" faith of their ancestors (which incidentally involves human sacrifice); but this is only Book One, so there is still hope.
Sarah Mickem, FIRETHORN, Bantam 2004. I almost gave up in the first chapter, which felt like endless generic backstory, girl with Gift in pseudomedieval world. But I hung in there and was well rewarded. It's sort of gritty, bloodthirsty Jane Austen in a medieval military camp, full of different sensibilities and genuine romance. I'll look for her next.
James Herbert, NOBODY TRUE, Tor 2003. Herbert is apparently a bigname horror writer in the UK. I usually avoid horror, but the premise was intriguing enough to get me started, and the writing kept me going after that. I just closed my eyes through the gore, and there isn't much of it, although it is strong. The hero comes back from an out of the body experience to discover he's been murdered. So he's not exactly a ghost, not exactly alive. A page-turner not for the faint of stomach.
Now for the ones I didn't finish:
Michelle Welch, CHASING FIRE, Bantam 2005. Too generic a setting, too confusing, no payoff for wading through having no idea what's going on. I lasted 50 pages of jumping around in time/setting/character/country. Mostly, I'm pissed that the cover looks like a Louise Marley, whose work I adore.
Kim Harrison, THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNDEAD, HarperTorch 2005. Looked a bit like Laurel Hamilton's Anita whatever vampire hunter knockoff, but just too cutesy for me. Trite language, nothing I care about at stake.
William Dietz, FOR THOSE WHO FELL, Ace 2004. Ten years ago, I'd probably have slogged through the beginning until I got into the story, but I'm much less tolerant now and having one woman character be jealous of another because of her looks (when one is an ambassador and the other a diplomat, and constantly referred to as such) just lost me. There are better ways to work in physical descriptions of the characters. YMMV.
James M. Ward, MIDSHIPWIZARD HALCYON BLITHE, Tor 2005. Billed as combining elements of Horatio Hornblower, Harry Potter, R.L. Stevenson and Robin Hobb -- okay, I'll give it a try. Just couldn't stomach the mishandling of scene after scene. The author is a professional game designer and it reads like that. Take a writing course.
Peter Watts, BEHEMOTH, BOOK ONE: B-MAX. Tor 2004. Okay, I went along with the prologue, which felt very much like catching me up on 5 volumes of backstory. But 10 pages into badly handled present tense with unbelievable dialog and almost no character depth was enough. Am I getting picky in my old age, or just cranky from being sick?
Isabel Glass, THE DIVIDED CROWN, Tor 2005. Cool cover of leopard sphinx drinking from stream, with reflection of real leopard, but the beginning was too generic, filled with dubiously pronouncable, pseudo Celtic names, and far too many of them. Nothing to catch my interest.
Mel Odom, LORD OF THE LIBRARIES, Tor 2005, with a cool Hildebrandt cover that looks like it was originally done for the siege of Gondor in LotR. This might have worked it I'd read the earlier books or was in a sillier mood, but the 20th time I read the word, "goblinkin," I was done.
Lest anyone leap to the conclusion I went out and bought any of these books, they all came to me on loan, so I felt perfectly free to stop reading and go on to the next one.
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Sarah Micklem
Date: 2006-01-26 08:54 pm (UTC)http://www.fast-forward.tv/
I have not read FIRETHORN yet, but it is definitely on my reading list for 2006.
As far, as I know Book 2, WILDFIRE, has been delayed to 2007.