Out of Touch Once Again
I don't get around much:
Either on the internet or in the real world, but even I kept hearing about this dystopian SF novel by Hugh Howey called Wool. Apparently, the author had written it as a short story and was selling it through Amazon's Kindle store where it made such a splash that he wrote a sequel story, then another and another and another, gaining fans with each new installment. Finally, he put all the stories together, called it a novel, sold the print rights to Simon & Schuster, and our Main Library bought a copy. So I put in a request for it, checked it out--
And found it to be as badly structured as anything I've ever read. And most of my leisure-time reading the past three years has been My Little Pony fanfiction.
Not wanting to get too "spoilery," I'll just say that the world and the characters were serviceable, but when I quit reading somewhere around page 130, maybe a quarter of the way through, the plot was only just starting to kick in. I would've stopped much earlier, worn out by all the water treading, but I found myself curious as to how long he could go without getting to the story.
Now, yes, I understand that this is a "fix-up novel," a thing that more grew than was written. But coming to it cold as I did and being met by most of the standard "industrial post-apocalyptic" trappings, I wanted to see what the author would do with them. And since it took him 130 pages to start doing anything, I decided I was done and sent the book back on its way to the Main Library.
I've been thinking about "fix-up novels" a lot lately is the thing, the way I've got these eight stories about Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel sitting around staring at me, but I can't imagine just slapping them into a set of virtual covers and calling them a novel the way Howey seems to have done. That he's done it so successfully, though, makes me think that I'm once again experiencing the gap between the things I like and the things most other folks like... :)
Mike
Either on the internet or in the real world, but even I kept hearing about this dystopian SF novel by Hugh Howey called Wool. Apparently, the author had written it as a short story and was selling it through Amazon's Kindle store where it made such a splash that he wrote a sequel story, then another and another and another, gaining fans with each new installment. Finally, he put all the stories together, called it a novel, sold the print rights to Simon & Schuster, and our Main Library bought a copy. So I put in a request for it, checked it out--
And found it to be as badly structured as anything I've ever read. And most of my leisure-time reading the past three years has been My Little Pony fanfiction.
Not wanting to get too "spoilery," I'll just say that the world and the characters were serviceable, but when I quit reading somewhere around page 130, maybe a quarter of the way through, the plot was only just starting to kick in. I would've stopped much earlier, worn out by all the water treading, but I found myself curious as to how long he could go without getting to the story.
Now, yes, I understand that this is a "fix-up novel," a thing that more grew than was written. But coming to it cold as I did and being met by most of the standard "industrial post-apocalyptic" trappings, I wanted to see what the author would do with them. And since it took him 130 pages to start doing anything, I decided I was done and sent the book back on its way to the Main Library.
I've been thinking about "fix-up novels" a lot lately is the thing, the way I've got these eight stories about Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel sitting around staring at me, but I can't imagine just slapping them into a set of virtual covers and calling them a novel the way Howey seems to have done. That he's done it so successfully, though, makes me think that I'm once again experiencing the gap between the things I like and the things most other folks like... :)
Mike