Novik is an excellent storyteller in the the sense that she's got very decent pacing, dialogue, and characterization. Her major flaw as a writer is that she doesn't seem to think through the logical consequences of her Cool Idea, until someone points them out, and then she has to retcon. You can see this in the Temeraire series, where the Cool ( Read more... )

I'm reading Naomi Novik's new novel, A Deadly Education. ( Mild spoilers )

I was indeed getting a cold, which I am just now kinda-sorta getting over. It never got bad enough to call in sick to work, of course, especially as I work from home and there was no question of my infecting anyone else via Skype. But it settled in and made me miserable for a good long time ( Read more... )

I foolishly made a comment on Facebook the other day, to the effect that I used to love the Pern books, but couldn't enjoy them any longer, because [reasons.] This ticked off a bunch of Pern fans. Which was my fault; I shouldn't have made a negative comment on an "I love Pern!" post. (
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Kathy's mother invited me out for the second, non-cruise week of their vacation in Florida as an early birthday present, so I have been gone for a bit. We drove up to St. Augustine and Savannah, just in time for the cold front pushed down by the storms in the northeast. Savannah and St. Augustine are beautiful and full of interesting history, but ( Read more... )

The Hugo Awards are out. I need to pick up Ancillary Justice, as I've heard nothing but good things about it, and (pause for moment of squee) XKCD's "Time" won best Graphic Story! I'm very stoked about that; watching that story unfold over days/weeks/months was incredible ( Read more... )

I got a B&N gift card for my birthday, and since several people on my flist had raved about it, I picked up the "Magic Verbs" series by Ilona Andrews. (Aside: Wouldn't it be cool if there was really a book called "Magic Verbs?") I'm finding it acceptable popcorn reading, but apparently my standards are ridiculously high, because I don't think it' ( Read more... )

I am a sucker for amnesia stories... well, for certain kinds of amnesia stories. What I'm interested in as amnesia as a device for character exploration - to what extent do your memories make you you? I love stories where a badass character loses their memories but is thrust into a situation where they have to pretend to know what's going on and ( Read more... )

I picked this book up cheap from Amazon, Technomancer. It was one of their .99 Kindle editions which are intended to suck you into reading the rest of the series at full price. And it's not bad enough to make me quit reading, but not good enough to make me rush out and buy the rest of them, and I'm reading along all "Meh, whatever," and I'm about ( Read more... )

I did not know that Mervyn Peake was an artist as well as a writer. Or, well, I knew he'd done illustrations for the Ghormenghast trilogy, but apparently he was a pretty well-known artist and illustrator in his day ( Read more... )