reviews

[fanbeatsman]

Things I have read/watched/become unduly obsessed with recently:

1) Naomi Novik's Temeraire book series (or, The Great Platonic Love of One Man and His Dragon):

Comments

[fanbeatsman]

I think the space opera comparison works, yeah - you just sort of have to take a deep breath and jump into them, and then you can appreciate what does work.

I really should get hold of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell; it does sound like the kind of thing I'd like. Magic is an insta-draw for me, idk why - I don't think it's the standard "wanting something more special than this boring world" explanation, I think the thing I enjoy most is actually (and this makes me sound like such a loser, haha) seeing the different fantasy disciplines and epistemological systems that writers imagine would have developed around the existence of magic :3

I have heard of ladyjaida, but I didn't know that about her; that's pretty awesome. I wonder if she'll give up writing fic completely now she's published - a lot of the HP fic authors-turned-pro seem to have done, and I can understand why, but I do think it would be a shame. shoebox_project is one of my favourite ever HP fics. I haven't checked out Havemercy, though, because I've heard very mixed things...I'll probably pick it up when it's in paperback and available in the UK (whenever that might be).

[valentinite]

Yeah, Jaida's writing as a fan was kind of uneven -- Shoebox was a huge watershed in fandom because of the multimedia aspect, but looking back (or, well, you can't look back right now because it got hacked, but) the writing itself was good-not-great. And wow, I sort of have the desire to go hunt down some of my old HP bookmarks and reread fic, which I really haven't wanted to do since HBP came out.

But I expect it's at least better than most of the first-author-fantasy that gets churned out, and it's evidently full of canon slash. (Or whatever one wants to call it, since "canon slash" is sort of an oxymoron.)

[fanbeatsman]

It can't be much worse than Cassandra Cla(i)re's Mortal Instruments books, at least, the first two of which I read in a fit of morbid curiosity, and...yeah. Unlovable in many, many ways. I was actually going to review those too, but I realised that I've just got a whole load of incoherent bile stored up about them and it would be more a rant than a review.

Idk, maybe the transition from BNF to original novel writer is harder than people think. They are very different types of writing in a few fundamental ways. I'm just thinking of another one of my favourite HP fic writers, Maya/mistful/sarahtales, who's got a first fantasy novel coming out soon, and the exerpts she's posted have actually been kind of underwhelming.

Canon slash is a funny term. Sometimes it makes me want to bang my head against the wall saying that's not what slash is damnit, but then sometimes I wonder if you could ever define it meaningfully - if "slash fiction" is developed enough as a genre, if it has recognisable tropes and syntaxes (which it may not do, idk), enough that you could write original fiction that followed slash conventions. Maybe something that reads like the kind of text that gets slashed, but actually resolves the romantic friendship/childhood rivalry/foe yay into romance. Who knows.