Oops, I tried to comment, but hit something wrong..anyways, I was saying that I tried to read this book a few weeks ago and thought pretty much the same thing. But it came so highly recommended that I think I will try to reread it late.
Yeah, I picked it up because people were talking about To Ride a Rathorn. I suspect it may work better for me some other time, but this time just didn't seem to click at all.
The mystery of the Hodgell recommendations is that the cool elements don't really come together... but it is entirely likely that next month you will recommend them to someone anyway. I've done it myself. (Actually, To Ride a Rathorn does tie things together a bit, so works a whole lot better than previous books. Still, three-plus novels is a bit long to wait for that.)
Huh! I think I got really confused -- I couldn't quite figure out if I was supposed to be concentrating on the more picaresque bits on the city or the giant grand mythology. Or maybe both!
I had pretty much the same reaction; I get the idea that it's a common one. If the stuff about the Kencyr did anything for you, you might want to go ahead and read Dark of the Moon, which is significantly less... polyphonic? I didn't actually feel sure I understood what had happened at the end of God Stalk when I moved on, and needed the explanations in the later books to explain it to me.
Yup. There are always other things going on, because heaven forbid there be only one plot per book (it doesn't work that way!), but the events are mostly linked to Perimal Darkling and Jame's people squabbling in amusing ways.
(Though I say all this not having yet read the fourth book. Maybe things get completely insane again there.)
Oh, please do give it another chance sometime! This is an old favorite of mine, but I think that I also said "meh" on the first reading. The burglary incident at the tower stuck with me, though, and a few years later I decided to track down the book - and loved it.
P.C. Hodgell manages to be dark without being at all pessimistic. I love her rather sardonic voice, and to me, the city of Tai-Tastigon is almost a character in its own right. I also find Bane to be a marvellously ambiguous character - evil and yet fascinating and sexy. (Actually, he strikes me as being very manga-esque, but perhaps everything looks like manga to me at the moment ... .)
I probably will at some point, since there were lots of things that I liked in the book -- it was just that nothing managed to congeal for me into a coherent whole. I figure I will let it sit for a few years (given my to-be-read list) and then possibly pick it up again when I want to read about girl thieves or cities or etc.
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(Though I say all this not having yet read the fourth book. Maybe things get completely insane again there.)
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Oh, please do give it another chance sometime! This is an old favorite of mine, but I think that I also said "meh" on the first reading. The burglary incident at the tower stuck with me, though, and a few years later I decided to track down the book - and loved it.
P.C. Hodgell manages to be dark without being at all pessimistic. I love her rather sardonic voice, and to me, the city of Tai-Tastigon is almost a character in its own right. I also find Bane to be a marvellously ambiguous character - evil and yet fascinating and sexy. (Actually, he strikes me as being very manga-esque, but perhaps everything looks like manga to me at the moment ... .)
- Cho
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