Still not dead
Writing reviews calms me down. I hope.
This might be a good time to comment that I think the general tenor of my life affects how receptive I am to fiction - less how I perceive certain books, and more how ready I am to read and enjoy fiction in general.
[Rats and] the Ruling Sea seemed to me to drift a little in comparison to its superb predecessor. Raw author, second book, middle of a trilogy - it had a lot of structural things working against it. But Robert Redick is still very good at blowing shit up. The beginning and middle felt... I don't know whether it was getting reacquainted with the characters after the long pause, or that I was stressed, or that I was reading it in short bursts, or what, but they felt a little lacking in drive and arc, and certainly none of the witty repartee from The Red Wolf Conspiracy was in evidence. But then [stuff blows up] and then [more stuff blows up] and a little while later [yet more stuff blows up], so then the protagonists are [juggling all these explosions and hence all out of cope when even more stuff blows up]. And this is why I love Mr. Redick's books.
The Dragon in Chains, by Daniel Fox, irritated me, and I'm not sure how much of this was due to my being a little thin on patience lately. It read like the author was totally in love with Dune and completely failing to grok why that book worked, and the attempt at using Chinese culture was really quite insulting and appropriationist (is that even a word?) - he simply got a lot of stuff wrong, and the elements inserted didn't add depth, whether or not Chinese culture is familiar to you. That said, I finished the book, it was sometimes a decent piece of fantasy, and I'm reading the second, so he's really not all that bad. I think possibly I was just grumpy about it.
This might be a good time to comment that I think the general tenor of my life affects how receptive I am to fiction - less how I perceive certain books, and more how ready I am to read and enjoy fiction in general.
[Rats and] the Ruling Sea seemed to me to drift a little in comparison to its superb predecessor. Raw author, second book, middle of a trilogy - it had a lot of structural things working against it. But Robert Redick is still very good at blowing shit up. The beginning and middle felt... I don't know whether it was getting reacquainted with the characters after the long pause, or that I was stressed, or that I was reading it in short bursts, or what, but they felt a little lacking in drive and arc, and certainly none of the witty repartee from The Red Wolf Conspiracy was in evidence. But then [stuff blows up] and then [more stuff blows up] and a little while later [yet more stuff blows up], so then the protagonists are [juggling all these explosions and hence all out of cope when even more stuff blows up]. And this is why I love Mr. Redick's books.
The Dragon in Chains, by Daniel Fox, irritated me, and I'm not sure how much of this was due to my being a little thin on patience lately. It read like the author was totally in love with Dune and completely failing to grok why that book worked, and the attempt at using Chinese culture was really quite insulting and appropriationist (is that even a word?) - he simply got a lot of stuff wrong, and the elements inserted didn't add depth, whether or not Chinese culture is familiar to you. That said, I finished the book, it was sometimes a decent piece of fantasy, and I'm reading the second, so he's really not all that bad. I think possibly I was just grumpy about it.