writing: Okay, seriously now...
I finished the book with the two-lines-of-smex-that-left-two-days-of-headache-for-the-chick and am COMPLETELY PISSED OFF. Because the book simply never got better, and it left ME with a headache. It took me a MONTH to read the damn book!! Not because I'm a slow reader, but because it was such a damn chore to read. Everything between chapter 3 and the epilogue was "Plot? What plot?" world-building, with character-assassinating romance peppered in. And a lot of regurgitating of messages I had already picked up on. And a lot of three dollar jargon words meant to appeal to the business-jet-set that had literally nothing to do with anything actually in the story and were completely gratuitous. And then, in the EPILOGUE, they finally get back to the actual plot. THE LAST FIVE PAGES. And IT DOESN'T EVEN WRAP IT UP. It leaves it hanging with no answers at all, to any of the questions posed. So, yeah, I guess, great sales gimmick, but FOR GODS SAKE YOU HAVE TO HAVE A BEGINNING, A MIDDLE, AND AN ENDING.
So I guess, to sum up, this last book ( 'The Family Trade' by Charles Stross) was about half the weight of the first book that pissed me off (S.M. Stirling's 'Conquistador') but it still contained every single one of the annoying bad literary traits. It was hard to read and NOT FUN. I'm losing faith in this whole corner of fiction and that sucks because this is the stuff I REALLY LIKE. The stories fascinate me, the 'what-if' is all just so much fun. And yet... It's like somewhere there's a list of "BAD WRITING TRICKS TO EMPLOY PER GENRE" and a book can't be published if they don't contain said tricks. And this irritates me. I outlined some of the reasons why in my last post, so I'll not go in to it all again.
So I turn to the internets and ask, PLEASE, recommend to me a book that does not suck? I'm interested in parallel universes. Of the nature of Harry Potter, which has the muggle world and the world visible only to wizards. Or Neverwhere, which has London Below and various other places. I want an actual GOOD novel, damnit. Not the obnoxious, annoying, un-enjoyable, wastes of time I've been finding.