Reading roundup

[hamsterwoman]

29. Cate Tiernan, Immortal Beloved -- less addictive than SWEEP or even those Chalice books I never read the end of, but still oddly readable. This is YA paranormal stuff not nearly at its best, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been based on the premise.

Comments

[nutmeg3]

I would never in a million years have thought of Sunshine as a YA. I'm glad you liked it, even if it didn't transform the vampire genre for you. I do wish there could be a sequel, and I'm not sure I know why there won't be - sales? no desire on her part to write one? - but it does seem clear it's going to be a standalone.

Not really related, but have you ever read Wen Spenser's Tinker? That one did get a sequel, but I haven't read it yet. I do think in that case it was sales that kept her from doing more.

[hamsterwoman]

Yeah, I wouldn't have pegged Sunshine as a YA either... perhaps it was just mis-categorized by the library, since McKinely does have books which are YA.

The lack of sequel -- I was Googling the book and "sunshine mckinley sequel" was one of the suggested combinations, so I clicked -- is due to lack of authorial desire. She actually has a fairly irritated blog post about it, along the lines of, "Will you people stop asking about a Sunshine sequel?! I write what comes to me, and that story is finished, and before you ask me you should read this post." I'm sure it gets old, getting a question like that over and over, but I was kind of put off by how she went on about it. Oh well, guess I'll just file McKinley under Authors I Enjoy Whose Blogs I Should Stay Away From, like grrm.

I have not read Tinker -- or anything by Wen Spenser, actually -- but having looked it up just now, seems like I should -- I'm easy for Elves in urban fantasy :)

[tabacoychanel]

because I was mixed at best on the last couple of GGK books I read, and I came pretty close to outright hating Tigana
So at some point after I went on LJ-sabbatical I finally read the Sarantine Mosaic, and "mixed" would be the best way to describe my reaction to that. So, we are in the same boat! However, every time I remember our divergent opinions of Tigana I am a sad panda. It's not like Tigana is my favorite GGK by a wide margin - Lions of Al-Rassan is pretty close - but after reading your review I think you enjoyed Under Heaven more than I did? Hmm. It's hard to tell how I enjoyed it, actually, because I never wrote up anything except that one-paragraph blurb, and by now I have limited recollection of plot points and characters. However, all the things that bothered you

villains whose motivations aren't really believable, which especially stands out alongside nuanced shades-of-gray characters, prose that's overly stilted in places, overreliance on repetitiondefinitely stood out to me too. On balance, I don't think this was a

[tabacoychanel]

It's weird because I read Sunshine as a young adult - 15 or thereabouts - and I have given up on multiple attempts on both The Blue Sword and the Hero and the Crown. I don't know. I think that the age that you first read certain books does matter, although not always and not absolutely, and it also depends on if you are a rereader? Tolkien was apparently not big on rereading and he allegedly complained that certain books - Dickens, maybe, or Thackeray - were "ruined" for him b/c he read them too young or something. (Ugh can't find link to article about this.) Anyway I'm sorry this long-awaited reply ended up being more rambling about my changing literary preferences than about the book you wanted to talk about, have a picture of Arya at lightsaber practice for recompense!

<33

[hamsterwoman]

You know, I think the deal with GGK is -- and I heard this from two other people who read him over a longish period of time -- is a kind of familiarity breeds contempt thing. I really liked the first books of his I read (Al-Rassan and the Sarantine Mosaic), and then kind of liked them less and less until I got to Tigana. Under Heaven reversed that trend, but it's possible that my expectations had gotten so low that it was easy to positively surprise me.

The two major tics of his that come to mind are (1) how stylized his prose is, and (2) how manipulative he is. Yep. And I think those are pretty much the things that lead to the diminishing returns effect he seems to engender

[tabacoychanel]

You know, I think the deal with GGK is -- and I heard this from two other people who read him over a longish period of time -- is a kind of familiarity breeds contempt thing
Oh thank god I'm not the only one who feels this way! The order in which you read his books probably matters (I read Arbonne and then I immediately read everything else of his I could get his hands on, starting with Tigana .... then when I read Sarantine Mosaic 2 years later I was like .... wait what?). Anyway it's good to know one is not alone when it comes to bookish feelings like this. Yeah, I guess Under Heaven didn't do as much to "reverse the trend" for me as it did for you.

I think Tigana is actually the one I remember best on the plot-level (because I was so busy hating it XP)
Omg this has happened to me before. Sometimes your dislike is so strong that you mentally catalogue every fault so as to ... idk, hurl it at somebody? Not sure why this happens but it does.

I think you're right about the age thing, too. There are books, both children and adult,