Vellum

[coalescent]

My travel reading over the past week has been Hal Duncan's debut novel, Vellum. It's a book which has been attracting a fairly significant amount of attention in the sf world, and it's also getting a big marketing push from Pan Macmillan (the proof copies, from a limited run of 600, are things of beauty). You can read a very short extract here, and

Comments

[mokatiki]

Ok I admit that normally I just glance over these reviews without much interest. Today however I think the words '...a tale of War in Heaven.' jumped out and made the theology hoer in me go 'oOo'. I would probably read it just for that, especially with the looks into imagination.

I have to say that i kind of liked the alliterative quote you...err...quoted. Alliteration is meaty and as a carnivore I appreciate that, also as an easily amused girly girl it's just plain fun! That kind o thing would make me read it out load two or three time, then giggle. (Hell just by Vast Void I was grinning).
Hmm i may have taken the wrong meaning from that, but you have to laugh at that kind of pretension (and yes alliteration to that degree if meant seriously is pretension)

Speaking of pretension, prose makes my teeth ache. It also makes me want to through things, which is why there is a David Copperfield shaped dent in my wall. Especially gratuitous prose, where it's nothing more then something to fill the page.
That whole ‘vast, green, rough, soft’ bit? I mean come on, he’s a moment away from describing her hair as ‘a rippling field of flaxen wisps blown lightly by the wind’ or maybe if she’s a brunette ‘a flowing main of raven locks’. Oops… did just turn this into a bad romance novel?

Ok now that I have successfully ran away from the point I was going to make I think I’ll go before I get thwaped

[coalescent]

Ok I admit that normally I just glance over these reviews without much interest.

Not to worry. I think those who read the reviews are a minority. :)

(Hell just by Vast Void I was grinning).

...

Hmm i may have taken the wrong meaning from that,

It's possible. :p

but you have to laugh at that kind of pretension (and yes alliteration to that degree if meant seriously is pretension)

I think it's meant ironically, in a I-know-this-is-OTT-and-you-know-this-is-OTT-but-isn't-it-great? kind of a knowing way.

It's a bit like Illuminatus, but with less of a sense of humour.

Ok now that I have successfully ran away from the point I was going to make I think I’ll go before I get thwaped

If I promise not to thwap you, will you tell me what the point you were going to make was?