Bloodsucking Fiends

[glummdead]

I'm reading a book by a chap called Christopher Moore. It was one of those "buy three books for a tenner" deals, so I picked up Bloodsucking Fiends and another one called something like The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove. The cover blurb promised me something different, and the over all feel of the book from what I could gather before actually

Comments

[b_sides]

I found a similar problem when I flicked through one of his books in a shop a few weeks back. His tone is just all over the place, like he has read a Discworld book, liked it and tried to replicate the style while missing the point. It had that irritatingly common habit of trying to be ironic about its subject matter, which rarely works well since all that really does is sneer at how silly the ideas are. Rather than engaging the reader, it alienates them from the concept - after all, if the writer can't (or won't) take it seriously, how can the audience? It then doe not matter how good the writing is, we utterly lack investment.

It's actually the same problem I developed with Rankin (well, one of the problems, at any rate), and the main reason I can't abide the SHREK movies.

[glummdead]

Yes, that's it exactly. If he can't bring himself to care about what he's writing, why should I? I think that at least where Rankin is concerned, he treats his subject matter with at least a little good natured humour. He has great affection for what he's writing, even if it's not always evident. I didn't get that feeling from the later books, I suppose that's why I stopped reading his stuff.

[b_sides]

I think you're right in that Rankin cares about his material, but I think he's a little too casual with matters that give off entirely different semiotic readings to what he may intend (I think it was in Apocalypse: The Musical that Elvis stops time to have sex with a hostess - all very funny until you stop to think about it and you realise that he has had one of his heroes rape someone)

(Actually, rape is one of those things that pops up in his work with an almost Millar-esque frequency - off the top of my head I can recall a band in another book announce "We are here for your women - those we cannot rape, we eat!". I don't think Rankin has any pro-rape/anti-women bias or anything so disturbed, but he does have a tendency to be too blasé on occasion).

[glummdead]

A bit rapey. Gotcha.
I'd not noticed that.

[_midoriko_sama_]

Oh dear 'He can write'. That somehow is very telling, seeing that the person writing it KNEW that it was going to be printed and not have a tone assigned to it, and that the book editors were hard pressed enough to chose it as a blurb :s You really can't judge a book by it's cover.

Recently, I've been looking into Robin Hobb, who I encountered by chance at an Agenda Book Sale. However, I've mostly been nurturing my guilty pleasure of re-reading all of Hiccup's epic dragonesque adventures. There's nothing like a myschievous dragon to keep you entertained.

[glummdead]

You really can't, and these covers are quite nicely designed. A friend of mine only reads things with a Guardian review, so I took a small amount of pleasure out of showing the book to her. :D

Robin Hobb is good! I've read her Farseer trilogy, and the second series, the Liveship traders is better, and set in the same world with a few of the same characters.

Third series, the Tawny Man books... not so good.