Birth of an SF/F Reader
My wife finished her first Fantasy series the other week. Okay, finished is a relative thing; she's caught up through the current published books in the series, and is eagerly waiting on the next installment.
Did I say eagerly? When she finished, she was seriously bummed for that first week because she had to wait to find out what happened next to her 'old friends'.
I couldn't be prouder of her.
To fully understand where I'm coming from, we'll have to go back to last December. After about 15 years, I'd begun to read SF/F novels again and I was wading my way into what became a huge pile of books to read. Our family had come back from an evening trip to the library, and when I reached for the novel I was reading at the time I noticed a fantasy novel that I didn't recall checking out. I turned it over a few times, checked the jacket and read the first chapter, but that didn't lessen my confusion any. "Dear?" I called. "Is this book yours?"
My wife came into the room, saw the book in my hands, and said, "Yes, I checked it out. It looked interesting."
I was stunned.
While my wife reads a lot, she's not been known for reading any adult fiction, much less SF/F. She did read Dune in college, and she used to read the "Hugo Winners" books back in high school (or so she informed me), but she really hasn't been into SF/F very much. Non fiction is her forte. But for her to not only pick up adult fiction but a fantasy novel (not meant as a gift) was very unusual. But her choice of a novel was, well, not a good one.
She'd picked up a novel from a fairly well known writer in the tie-in market (Star Wars, Star Trek, RPG, etc.), but that author was also well known for, well, not being too user friendly. If you were new to his style and the world he wrote in, you were going to sink rather quickly. Sure enough, shortly after she started reading my wife tossed the book aside, declaring that there were so many freaking names to remember that she was totally confused after two chapters. She figured she'd hang on for one more chapter, but then he dropped a whole bunch of new names to try to work through.
While I could almost hear the gears turning in her head, lumping most SF/F in with this author, I figured I had to do something to rescue this. I was not going to hear for the next decade how SF/F is too hard to read because of how much crud they expect you to digest in the books, so I cast my eye on what I'd recently read that would work for her. At the time, my list of completed books was pretty darned small, but I knew what ought to work: something familiar in how the world is constructed, good characterization, engaging story, slow buildup of characters, and a friendly style of prose. I pulled out a paperback and handed it to her. "Here," I told her, "this would be more to your liking."
"Green Rider?" She read the title as a question.
"Yes. I think you'll like Kristen Britain's writing. Besides, I think you'll like her descriptions of nature; you can tell that she was in the National Park Service just by that alone."
"Hmm. Okay." That wasn't a real positive answer, but I had to live with it.
For the next couple of weeks, I kept an eye on the paperback to see if she'd started reading it, but no dice. When I asked, she hemmed and hawed and said that she had trouble reading the fine print in mass market paperbacks.
"But you're not even 40 yet!"
"That doesn't matter, I can't see it that well."
I was sure it was an excuse, so I decided this called for extreme measures. I went to the library and put the hardcover version on hold for her. The next time she went to the library, she found the copy of Green Rider waiting there and rather reluctantly took it back home. She grumbled a bit, but that night she opened the book and began to read.
After about a week, I asked her one night how the book was going. "Shush," she told me. "Karigan's meeting the Berry sisters."
I knew then she was hooked.
Okay, she REALLY got hooked when she was done with First Rider's Call; she lasted about a day before rushing out to the library to get The High King's Tomb. She also informed me that if I was interested in getting her the trade paperback versions for herself, that would be fine with her.
Considering that I've already started buying the books in mass market, that's saying something.
Now that she's up to date on the series (and had even gone online to poke around to find out when the next novel is coming out), we've had a few discussions about where we think the series is going next. There has been a debate or two in the Alton vs. Zachary (or Amberhill?) question (for the record, I suspect Alton while she says Zachary), and what will happen when Estora finds out.
Since she's now a lot more charitably inclined toward SF/F, I'm thinking I'm going to have to get her eyes checked or something. There's quite a few SF/F books out there that she'd like, but are in mass market paperback only.
(I'm still not convinced that she actually has eye trouble, mind you, but I guess she'd know best.)