Borderline, Mishell Baker
I'm rereading Borderline in preparation for reading Phantom Pains.
(Be warned that although these are not dwelt on unnecessarily during the book, and I didn't notice any notable bad handling, the main character suffered emotional abuse and a suicide attempt before the book starts.)
I love the basic concept. The main character, struggling to cope with borderline personality disorder, is recruited by an ad-hoc agency dealing with various supernatural stuff. More like negotiating stuff than SWAT raids. I'm being deliberately vague because I like the way the main character finds out about this stuff so I want to avoid spoilers.
Writing about a character whose perceptions shift so radically is really hard. Whenever you're dealing with a main character's flawed perception, you need a balance between, narrative presents their point of view at least superficially plausibly, and yet sooner or later gives enough information that the reader can tell its skewed. But when "this person is great" and "this person is horrible" can abruptly switch places without warning, it's really hard to carry the reader along. Somehow it feels like it doesn't really "count" if the main character believes it but I don't. Borderline handles this well (although not so well I didn't notice).
The supernatural worldbuilding is also really interesting (spoilers below), although it did feel sometimes like it hadn't been fleshed out enough.
I followed the author on twitter and was really pleased when she was nominated for a Nebula.
The premise is, a parallel earth and faerie world. Various practical and agreed restrictions on how much people can go back and forth. Finding your counterpart in the other world gives you a boost creative-genius-wise which is one of the biggest calls for traffic, and represents many top hollywood creatives. The main character is drawn into the organisation that manages a variety of this stuff.
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comments so far.
(Be warned that although these are not dwelt on unnecessarily during the book, and I didn't notice any notable bad handling, the main character suffered emotional abuse and a suicide attempt before the book starts.)
I love the basic concept. The main character, struggling to cope with borderline personality disorder, is recruited by an ad-hoc agency dealing with various supernatural stuff. More like negotiating stuff than SWAT raids. I'm being deliberately vague because I like the way the main character finds out about this stuff so I want to avoid spoilers.
Writing about a character whose perceptions shift so radically is really hard. Whenever you're dealing with a main character's flawed perception, you need a balance between, narrative presents their point of view at least superficially plausibly, and yet sooner or later gives enough information that the reader can tell its skewed. But when "this person is great" and "this person is horrible" can abruptly switch places without warning, it's really hard to carry the reader along. Somehow it feels like it doesn't really "count" if the main character believes it but I don't. Borderline handles this well (although not so well I didn't notice).
The supernatural worldbuilding is also really interesting (spoilers below), although it did feel sometimes like it hadn't been fleshed out enough.
I followed the author on twitter and was really pleased when she was nominated for a Nebula.
The premise is, a parallel earth and faerie world. Various practical and agreed restrictions on how much people can go back and forth. Finding your counterpart in the other world gives you a boost creative-genius-wise which is one of the biggest calls for traffic, and represents many top hollywood creatives. The main character is drawn into the organisation that manages a variety of this stuff.
You can also comment at http://jack.dreamwidth.org/1031165.html using OpenID.
comments so far.