Noreascon 4: Sunday

[kate_nepveu]

Sunday was actually a fairly programming-heavy day for me. This is appallingly long, as a result. But we're almost done!

Comments

[pnh]

(1) "Managing Editor," in book publishing, is the head of the production department. I'm not the managing editor of Tor. I'm a senior editor and the manager of the SF and fantasy department.

(1) "PNH: an editor in the field was unhappy about the bookstore placement of his first novel" ...

ObGEnie: *cha/editor/author/

[kate_nepveu]

(1) Oops, sorry.

(1)' Will fix, though I disclaim responsibility for _that_ error.

[filkerdave]

When he wakes up in the morning, I'll tell The Grim Sweeper that you liked him. He'll be very pleased!

[cheshyre]

Send our compliments as well -- that was a brilliant idea!

[kate_nepveu]

Great! He should be, it was excellent.

[marykaykare]

Mel Odom writes librarian hero novels (The Rover, The Destruction of the Books).

I've just finished Rover and cannot in good conscience recommend it. The copy editing sucked rocks. I kept reading things and saying to myself, "But that contradicts/doesn't match what he just said in the previous paragraph." Over and over and over. Also, it appears to have been run through a spell-checker rather than proofed. In numerous cases a wrong word appears which is just a letter away from the correct word. This was particularly unfortunate when sagacious got turned into salacious. Then there's the writing. Cliches abound. Also verbal tics. Everytime the narration refers to the hero by something other than his name, it's always "the little librarian." That same phrase for 500 pages! Somebody else is always "the master thief." You get the picture. And good grief the clumsy stealing from Tolkien. Elves, goblins, and halflings. Even plot points. This plot for this is rather similar to The Hobbit but runs more than 500 pages. Very

[corruptedjasper]

The rosy-fingered dawn must have gotten to brave odysseus on that one.

[kate_nepveu]

Thanks for the information--I was planning to flip through them in the store, but after this, I'll spend my time otherwise.

[rushthatspeaks]

I think Tolkien, McKillip and Earthsea were used as examples of fantasy in which religion and gods are more or less irrelevant and magic is at least somewhat downplayed much of the time. (I would not agree with this assessment of Earthsea.)

[kate_nepveu]

That was probably it, thank you.

[kate_nepveu]

Commute musing: Why isn't there organized religion in non-elven society in Middle Earth?

[schulman]

The sequel to Jumper is Reflex and will be out in October.

Woo-hoo! Good revenge fantasy is always a good thing, and terrorism revenge fantasy is awfully relevant these days.

Matthew Hughes writes witty, interesting SF (Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice from another house, and new novel Black Brillion).

_Fools Errant_ feels like a throwback to sixties/seventies Vancian SF (in a good way). The allegory gets pretty heavy-handed, though.

[kate_nepveu]

And _Reflex_ is a far better title than _Jumper(s)_.

Thanks for the allegory warning, I'll keep it in mind.

[orzelc]

I thought Helm was pretty good, and there's a review of Blind Waves on my web page. But then, I wasn't unhappy with Wildside, either.

All of his books have a strong element of "I will now explain the proper way to go about this task" to them. Jumper works through both how to set yourself up in high style using teleportation ability, and the revenge fantasy. Wildside has the business organization stuff you complained about elsewhere, and Helm has both the running of a city-state and a bunch of martial arts stuff. Blind Waves is the most straightforward adventure story of the lot.

I find the organizational stuff enjoyable in the same way that the craft sequences in Modesitt's Recluce books are enjoyable. If that stuff bugs you, you're not going to like those books.