still wednesday
Finished (finally!): Sharon Penman, While Christ and His Saints Slept, which kind of fizzled out. Rather like the War between Stephen and Matilda, or Maude. Henry marries Eleanor and becomes Henry II. Eustace dies from a surfeit of eels. Every book should have a surfeit of eels in it.
Overall verdict: much less depressing than most of Penman's historical novels, which usually end with the defeat of everything good by evil, or sometimes Edward I. But since this will probably turn into a series, there's still plenty of time for tragedy.
Now reading: Reamde by Neal Stephenson. I am enjoying this very much so far; it reminds me more of Cryptonomicon, which I remember liking very much, than his more recent work (I liked Anathem, but bounced hard off the Baroque Cycle). The thing I like about Stephenson is the sense that he pays attention to what doesn't work so well in his writing and then tries to fix it -- so for example, my major criticism of Cryptonomicon was that it felt like the author had never had a conversation with an actual woman. But here the major focalizing character is female, and you can really see Stephenson trying to get her right. It's not 100% there -- she's still kind of more "female character" than "character who is female" -- but it's really good. I also recall that there was a major geological problem with the climax of Cryptonomicon, and getting geology right is a major theme in the first part of the book. So far the plot is engaging, and although it's obviously trying to be edgy and relevant, the fact is that Stephenson is a good enough plotter that it doesn't feel "edgy," it just feels like a good story which happens to involve hackers, security men, petty and not so petty criminals, spies and terrorists, all of a variety of nationalities.
Next up: Johnny Alucard, the new Kim Newman book. Yay!
This entry has also been posted at http://vaznetti.dreamwidth.org/39040.html, where it has
comments. Please comment here or there, as you like.
Overall verdict: much less depressing than most of Penman's historical novels, which usually end with the defeat of everything good by evil, or sometimes Edward I. But since this will probably turn into a series, there's still plenty of time for tragedy.
Now reading: Reamde by Neal Stephenson. I am enjoying this very much so far; it reminds me more of Cryptonomicon, which I remember liking very much, than his more recent work (I liked Anathem, but bounced hard off the Baroque Cycle). The thing I like about Stephenson is the sense that he pays attention to what doesn't work so well in his writing and then tries to fix it -- so for example, my major criticism of Cryptonomicon was that it felt like the author had never had a conversation with an actual woman. But here the major focalizing character is female, and you can really see Stephenson trying to get her right. It's not 100% there -- she's still kind of more "female character" than "character who is female" -- but it's really good. I also recall that there was a major geological problem with the climax of Cryptonomicon, and getting geology right is a major theme in the first part of the book. So far the plot is engaging, and although it's obviously trying to be edgy and relevant, the fact is that Stephenson is a good enough plotter that it doesn't feel "edgy," it just feels like a good story which happens to involve hackers, security men, petty and not so petty criminals, spies and terrorists, all of a variety of nationalities.
Next up: Johnny Alucard, the new Kim Newman book. Yay!
This entry has also been posted at http://vaznetti.dreamwidth.org/39040.html, where it has
comments. Please comment here or there, as you like.