The Blood Knight, and macro vs. micro performance
I just finished The Blood Knight, the third installment of Greg Keyes' current fantasy series, and it left me unsatisfied. Keyes writes very well: his characters may be straight out of the catalog, but he draws them well, and keeps them moving from page to page. Where he fails (in my opinion) is in sticking too closely to a single rhythm. Put one of the heroes in an impossible situation, then come back three sections later to show how they escaped; set the Cart of Romance rolling, place a Pothole of Despair in its way, then bounce past it, and so on. It's kind of like listening to a B.B.King album: the individual riffs are solid, but every damn song has the same twelve-bar structure.
Five days to go (unless we go into overtime). I have 50 books queued up at the Toronto Public Library (the maximum allowed) to get me through the coming year... ;-)
Five days to go (unless we go into overtime). I have 50 books queued up at the Toronto Public Library (the maximum allowed) to get me through the coming year... ;-)