Book Binge 2009-2010, Part II

[adelynne]

If you're wondering why these things are taking so long, blame Dorothy Dunnett and Francis Crawford of Lymond. Blaming Lymond in particular seems to be a time-honored tradition, so you'd only be joining in. Otherwise, the book binge continues! Once again, spoilers in the discussion of series books, but nothing major.

Comments

[adelynne]

Not an RPer, but had to agree with your description of Kaylin's personality being arrived at by that mode -- that, and the repetition, and the clunkiness (and the sentence fragments, dear god, the sentence fragments) annoyed me a lot in the first book.

I think it is very noticeable in the first book, and then she starts not doing it so much (aside from the "Oh noes, not the Emperor" bit). Which is good, but it detracts from the story and the world. I don't want to be recommending a series despite how it's written.

Actually, the world-building at first felt like someone made it through a role-play design, too, in the first book. "Let's see, Castes are different races, and each has pluses and minuses. Dragons are all non-player characters, except Tiamaris, who is visiting with his character sheet and has more XP to burn." I'm glad that it no longer feels that way to me, in part because I dropped the last book that did that and never picked it up (The Lies of Locke Lamora, if you're wondering).

what I've read of them didn't quite win me over, though from Reason's name and obsession with math, I was kind of hoping they would.

I was hoping for that too, and yet. She eventually gains the ability to see everyone's magic, and to her it all looks like numerical patterns, which I found a bit cool. Though I was wondering if she kept looking, would she find a divergent series or something?

[hamsterwoman]

Actually, the world-building at first felt like someone made it through a role-play design, too, in the first book.

Yeah, it did. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I think I might've even said that in my write-up of the first book. Which is why I liked very much that subsequent books seemed intent on exploring the races on a much deeper level. I mean, I can't say that the Barrani add anything wildly original to the faux-Elves canon (but I don't mind, I'm happy with tried-and-true faux-Elves, too) and the Tha'alani I'm not terribly interested in, in practice, though there are some neat ideas there. But I like what she's doing with them.

Lies of Locke Lamora, huh? I've heard things about that series that made me intrigued, but haven't gotten to picking it up yet.

Though I was wondering if she kept looking, would she find a divergent series or something?

Hee! That would be pretty cool, actually. Though I wonder what it would mean... (nothing good, I assume). But, yeah, even from my partial reading, it seems like there are some neat ideas there, but not sufficiently developed and floating in a sea of OK-ness.