Let's take this baby out for a spin! (and by this baby, I mean 2011)
At the last drinkies I had with my pack of girl awesomeness before I flew to Queensland to dice with Christmas and floodwaters, I discussed the difficulty of finding an acceptable non-denominational festive-season breezy one-line wish. I find "Happy Holidays" completely fatuous (sorry folks who use it and love it - it's just me!) because I'm not saying "have a fun time not being at work", I want to say, "I hope that when the spirit of capitalism hijacks this conglomerated passel of seasonally bizarre (at least for Australia) midwinter festivals, it leaves behind for you still a hefty helping of peace, joy, good will towards and from others, giving you a warm glow that may or may not involve mince pies (...I'm very fond of mince pies) regardless of the name of your particularly identified midwinter festival".
But you see how that's sort of long. I was toying with "Have a cool Yule," but since I could never deliver it as magnificently as saintsomeone did, I'll just say: "Whatever you call yours, I hope you had a good one."
I honestly don't know what the State of Dee's going to be this year. I don't know if I'll be any more fannish. Certainly not as fannish as I'd like. I don't think fulltime work, writing a novel and selling another one, moving house, planning a wedding, and going overseas again is going to allow it. But maybe I'll surprise myself. In the meantime, stuff.
I picked up The Painted Man by Peter V Brett from the library because the Zeno Lit Agency (with whom my submission is currently nervously auditioning) said in the call for submissions to which I responded that they were looking for the next one of him. I'd been eyeing the thing in bookstores for ages, so I figured I should finally give it a read. Glad I didn't buy it, though, because frankly, I found it dull.
Oh, there's plenty of action. And that's mostly my problem. "Oh look," I said, "he's killing another demon. Yawn. Let's flip the page and see if we're past the ouch-ichor-rah-takethat yet." Yes, it's boy-fantasy with its hack and slash, running that same solitary-hero's-hard-journey that we see so often in this area. It just doesn't appeal to me. There's minimal character interaction, and what there is is given hard edges by the hardness of the world, because this is post-post-apocalyptic (...if that makes sense. It's the long struggling-to-survive and build anew that comes when the post-apocalyptic panic has subsided) and everyone's nasty. So it's not really complex. It's bleak. And too much bleak gets really boring.
This is the nutshell, really: I'm not sure how many of my dislikes come from what the story is, rather than how it's done. I think it's possibly done very well. I think maybe I just don't like what it is. For instance: the female lead character's secondary motivation in everything in her whole damn life seems to be sex - or rather, not having it, or rather, having it on her terms. And oh my god, that irritates the hell out of me, and I start thinking uncharitable things like how it was just such a big thing so that she could be a ~*virgin*~ when she and the hero get it on and ohGOD. But honestly, in the world as (strongly and consistently) created, that is the one piece of self-determinatory power she really has, and why shouldn't she cling to it?
The other major irritation was all that hack and slash. I don't mind some violence; I mean, I'm not a completely contrary epic fantasy reader. But fighting monsters is so goddamn boring. Hordes of goblins, hordes of zombies, hordes of demons. It's computer-game, DnD territory, and it's not interesting to me because there's no real challenge to character in there - not to a character's humanity, and that's what I'm interested in. So, perversely, the sequel to Painted Man actually looks like it could be interesting, because there's an actual human antagonist looming on the horizon, and that is interesting to me.
Anyway, took that back to the library still mulling, and picked up Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold. This is my first foray into Mr Abercrombie's work, and I know that I should've done the First Law trilogy first, but those were all out, and this was there, so we're just going with that. And maybe I'm missing some richness because of that, and that's part of the reason for my opinion, but said opinion is: this is very good, but it's also just a more gritty, less nimble Locke Lamora.
Hey, look, I'm enjoying it. It's very good. It's just not an endless cavalcade of dirty delights, but it looks enough like one to have me daydreaming about it. Not its fault. And I'm only halfway through, so maybe it will get up momentum and make me forget about other harlots. We'll see.
Last night we eagerly trooped to the movies and made grabby hands at The King's Speech. And it was EVEN MORE wonderful than I'd hoped it was going to be - and considering the cast, I was hoping for quite a lot of wonderful. Then again, I was always going to be easy for this movie. I've loved the story of Edward and George VI from the first moment I heard it. That was possibly one of the first things that ever fired my writer's brain with fizzing enthusiasm: his brother just dropping him in it, into mud that he was never supposed to have to wade through. And they all just did so well - all of them, and Helena Bonham Carter was just splendid - but Colin Firth was amazing, from the first moment on screen until the last. Amazing.
(The non-denominational wish closest to my heart - "I fucken hope we win the Boxing Day test" - has turned out to be a sour and vain one. Bah. Good show, England - you're not just a bunch of prettyboys after all!)
But you see how that's sort of long. I was toying with "Have a cool Yule," but since I could never deliver it as magnificently as saintsomeone did, I'll just say: "Whatever you call yours, I hope you had a good one."
I honestly don't know what the State of Dee's going to be this year. I don't know if I'll be any more fannish. Certainly not as fannish as I'd like. I don't think fulltime work, writing a novel and selling another one, moving house, planning a wedding, and going overseas again is going to allow it. But maybe I'll surprise myself. In the meantime, stuff.
I picked up The Painted Man by Peter V Brett from the library because the Zeno Lit Agency (with whom my submission is currently nervously auditioning) said in the call for submissions to which I responded that they were looking for the next one of him. I'd been eyeing the thing in bookstores for ages, so I figured I should finally give it a read. Glad I didn't buy it, though, because frankly, I found it dull.
Oh, there's plenty of action. And that's mostly my problem. "Oh look," I said, "he's killing another demon. Yawn. Let's flip the page and see if we're past the ouch-ichor-rah-takethat yet." Yes, it's boy-fantasy with its hack and slash, running that same solitary-hero's-hard-journey that we see so often in this area. It just doesn't appeal to me. There's minimal character interaction, and what there is is given hard edges by the hardness of the world, because this is post-post-apocalyptic (...if that makes sense. It's the long struggling-to-survive and build anew that comes when the post-apocalyptic panic has subsided) and everyone's nasty. So it's not really complex. It's bleak. And too much bleak gets really boring.
This is the nutshell, really: I'm not sure how many of my dislikes come from what the story is, rather than how it's done. I think it's possibly done very well. I think maybe I just don't like what it is. For instance: the female lead character's secondary motivation in everything in her whole damn life seems to be sex - or rather, not having it, or rather, having it on her terms. And oh my god, that irritates the hell out of me, and I start thinking uncharitable things like how it was just such a big thing so that she could be a ~*virgin*~ when she and the hero get it on and ohGOD. But honestly, in the world as (strongly and consistently) created, that is the one piece of self-determinatory power she really has, and why shouldn't she cling to it?
The other major irritation was all that hack and slash. I don't mind some violence; I mean, I'm not a completely contrary epic fantasy reader. But fighting monsters is so goddamn boring. Hordes of goblins, hordes of zombies, hordes of demons. It's computer-game, DnD territory, and it's not interesting to me because there's no real challenge to character in there - not to a character's humanity, and that's what I'm interested in. So, perversely, the sequel to Painted Man actually looks like it could be interesting, because there's an actual human antagonist looming on the horizon, and that is interesting to me.
Anyway, took that back to the library still mulling, and picked up Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold. This is my first foray into Mr Abercrombie's work, and I know that I should've done the First Law trilogy first, but those were all out, and this was there, so we're just going with that. And maybe I'm missing some richness because of that, and that's part of the reason for my opinion, but said opinion is: this is very good, but it's also just a more gritty, less nimble Locke Lamora.
Hey, look, I'm enjoying it. It's very good. It's just not an endless cavalcade of dirty delights, but it looks enough like one to have me daydreaming about it. Not its fault. And I'm only halfway through, so maybe it will get up momentum and make me forget about other harlots. We'll see.
Last night we eagerly trooped to the movies and made grabby hands at The King's Speech. And it was EVEN MORE wonderful than I'd hoped it was going to be - and considering the cast, I was hoping for quite a lot of wonderful. Then again, I was always going to be easy for this movie. I've loved the story of Edward and George VI from the first moment I heard it. That was possibly one of the first things that ever fired my writer's brain with fizzing enthusiasm: his brother just dropping him in it, into mud that he was never supposed to have to wade through. And they all just did so well - all of them, and Helena Bonham Carter was just splendid - but Colin Firth was amazing, from the first moment on screen until the last. Amazing.
(The non-denominational wish closest to my heart - "I fucken hope we win the Boxing Day test" - has turned out to be a sour and vain one. Bah. Good show, England - you're not just a bunch of prettyboys after all!)