I've noticed that when famous authors pass, their fans often express the wish that they find themselves in the worlds they created. When Douglas Adams died, all sorts of folks said they "hoped to catch you at Milliways," or the like. Again with Pterry, plenty of people hoped he would "swim with Great A'Tuin" or "visit Ankh-Morpork. To which I reply ( Read more... )

In a better world, one where the profit motive was secondary to emotional well-being, and where our emotions functioned in more predictable ways, employees would be allowed to submit a bereavement list: a list of people whose deaths are, no questions asked, grounds for an employee to immediately go home and mourn. Of course, that's not the world we ( Read more... )

Usually when I weep quietly at my desk, it's because of my job. But today, we lost a legend, and a beloved elder of the sf tribe ( Read more... )

So I learned an important lesson this week:

Don't read paranormal fantasy noir that apes Raymond Chandler right after reading Raymond Chandler.

I say this because I finally got around the reading The Big Sleep and Farewell, My Lovely, the first two Philip Marlowe novels, and right after finishing the second, I started Something from the Nightside ( Read more... )

Feeling a bit weird today about Tom Clancy's passing. A lot of people are very saddened by Mr. Clancy's death and understandably so. He was an immensely popular author with a rabid following, and a pretty amazing rags to riches (or at least polyester suits to riches) story. I feel like I should be sad, but I'm not ( Read more... )

So I've been reading the Temeraire books by Naomi Novik, and I'm enjoying them enough to keep reading, but not enough to run through them back to back, like I did with Dresden, say. I just finished book 6, Tongues of Serpents, and I think I've figured out why. She tends toward pacing issues, and never more so than in this book. The books are ( Read more... )

Just finished a very good book, Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed. It’s got the whole package: compelling plot, well-drawn characters, good writing, humor. It’s just good stuff. And it’s also interesting because it’s a fantasy based on the medieval Middle East and not Europe ( Read more... )

Got my mind boggled on January 4. That's the day when, thanks to the power of the Internet and my willingness to trust a stranger, I got my hands on a copy of A Memory of Light, the lastmost, final, and most of all, ending book of the main sequence of The Wheel of Time. (I qualify this not because the planned prequels and "outriggers" will happen- ( Read more... )

Day 24. Happy place

Rivendell is a happy place. It's full of Elves and they sing. At the House of Elrond there is feasting and good cheer, healing and rest. As Sam says, it has, "something of everything." Of course, it's not real, but why should that be a problem?

Day 22. Character you wish hadn’t died

I should probably award this wholesale to Katherine Kurtz' Deryni series, which is just a bloodbath of epic proportions. Even King Kelson's Bride, which is by far the warmest and fuzziest of the books, features a random murder of a not-evil character. If I had to pick one Deryni character I wish hadn't died, ( Read more... )