Just finished reading: Sherwood Smith's Once a Princess (with spoilers)

[estara]

How rare and delightful: two excellent books read in two days (and not just rare because my eye trouble isn't over yet, only lying low for a while). And they're very different too, so they don't take away from each other.

Comments

[sartorias]

Glad you enjoyed the story--though the conclusions people come to re relationships interest me, especially when assumptions are made that aren't true.

[estara]

^^ - you mean I assumed something that wasn't even in the book? Or that I followed the thoughts of certain characters that will turn out not to be true?

I know why I never call them real reviews when I do them ^^, I don't remember in enough detail when I vanish into the story and come out at the end.

Or did I misunderstood your addendum completely, heh?

[sartorias]

Your assumption about Roger and Sun. *g*

[estara]

Oooh!!! will that be made clearer in the next book? Or should I just ask you right out what the truth was there, because it'll never be referred to again?

[sartorias]

It'll never be referred to again as it's irrelevant.

A few things: Sun was a hippie, young during the years of the sexual revolution.
For her, sex never meant much of anything, but she learned the hard way that others' expectations afterward could tangle you hard. For her, relationships had to be carefully spelled out. Roger knew she would never marry him, that he was her cavalier servente--her companion. (The one hint, the one that felt right for a daughter to write about her mother, was the bed in the hotel room.) He never believed her story, and kept hoping that she would marry him; this will never be in anything Sasha would write, as Roger is history as far as she's concerned, but he assumped that when Sun's daughter moved in with some fellow, Sun would feel free to marry Roger. He never believed in the marriage in another world, but thought she was speaking in hippie-fantasy metaphor, and of course that was part of the fun of their relationship.

[estara]

Ah!! I really misread that cavalier wording.

Makes me like him better for what he is ^^. Thank you for clearing that up.

[sartorias]

Hey, like I said, it's always interesting to see what assembles for the reader at the other end of the text. Try as I can to control all aspects of the experience, well, it's like 52 pickup!

[estara]

And the magic of the internet makes me able to ask the author to clear up the misunderstandings, which makes reading your books extra interesting ^^.

I do think this is the Golden Age of Internet: once everyone comes up with the idea of asking authors individually all the time, all of you writers won't have time for that anymore!

[sartorias]

Well, minor people like me would never have much of a problem, but I can image the best sellers have to hide themselves.

[estara]

I think you're a long-tail author: There shall be steady sales of all the books continually ad perpetuum... or else my wrath shall come over them all!

OH and good night ^^. It's half past one here. <-...That's a downside of the magic of the internet ^^.

[sartorias]

ayieee!!! get some sleep!

(for the rest, there is always the little matter of publishers . . . I am in the unenviable position of no contracts. Ah well, there is always the wiki.)

[estara]

I did, that's why I mentioned the time.
I do hope Norilana does more of your CJ notebooks and so on... or DAW. Ack for the economy!

[asakiyume]

(can I just say--oh, maybe a million times--that I love how you do relationships? I love how you do relationships)

[sartorias]

*beam*