Though I'm markedly closer to generating my own gravitational field

[rivkat]

I'm still reading books, and occasionally writing something about them.

Comments

[ter369]

I have trouble with big battles determined by a clash between Dark and Light; the victory always seems unearned or essentially arbitrary at the same time as it's obviously, for story purposes, inevitable, and the characters didn't move beyond their maiden, mother, crone two-dimensionality.

That sounds like the last eight books with fantasy universes and lots-of-female-characters-to-make-up-for-that-lack-in-Tolkien I picked up and didn't read.

"Unearned or essentially arbitrary" is v.v.g. I'm off to Armadillo Con this weekend, where the first panel I've highlighted to attend is "What's New in Heroic Fantasy". Somethin', I hope.

[rivkat]

Yes, a lot of the second book felt telegraphic, abbreviated. I was still interested in what happened next, and Lauren's journals were horrifying but felt appropriate. I would have liked to know more about what happened in the outside world. Perhaps that would have made it too easy to dismiss the daughter's perspective, though, if it had seemed like Lauren was right to focus on Earthseed instead of her blood relations.

Butler has a new book out this fall; I'm looking forward to it.

[rivkat]

I read the first one a long time ago and don't have much of a specific memory of it. I'm always interested in vampire stories (well, I just gave up on a romantic thriller that gives that statement a lie, but I'm usually interested in vampire stories) and I have a powerful attachment to Hambly based pretty much solely on Ishmael, but this one just didn't grab me. I did like Magic Time, which she wrote with Scott Zicree -- further details to follow eventually.

[circelily]

The Barbara Hambly book I love above all others is Stranger at the Wedding (Bogie and Bacall screwball feminist fantasy) although her Benjamin January (antebellum New Orleans mysteries with black lead character - Free Man of Color onwards)books are excellent too.

And Mother of Winter (Darwath) is shudderingly dark. And Bride of the Rat God (20s Hollywood) is fun. I like the way she keeps changing her palate, while keeping the characters good and the prose meaty. Having said all that, the "I'm so shy and innocent, why are all these men entranced by me" trope sticks in my throat too, and in "Travelling With the Dead" she is guilty as charged. But don't write her off...

shopgirl

[accommodatingly]

I had to review Shopgirl (anonymous) when it came out. I didn't like it very much. Steve Martin has a talent for the funny, not so much for the Chekhovian-pathetic.

By the way, is Wal-Mart a utility monster?

Re: shopgirl

[rivkat]

Probably not, since it's composed of people with likely-average preferences -- there may be a maldistribution of power & therefore wealth such that forcing it to pay higher wages would be better for everyone, but I doubt it's utility-maximizing just to transfer wealth to Wal-Mart.

Matt Ruff

[cofax7]

Ah, I missed this review. Fool on the Hill was Ruff's senior thesis at Cornell, and I love it, even though I shouldn't. It's sprawling and messy and everything but the kitchen sink is in it, with the gods and the rats and the elves and the talking dogs and the Bohemians and all. But oh, it's such a romp. Plus, with the dragon and the Rubbermaid. So creative. And the mandatory Broken Hero.

His later stuff is more controlled, certainly; but I'll always have a soft spot for FotH. Doesn't hurt that I was at Cornell around the same time as MR, and knew all the locations quite well.