Book ramblings
Jul. 11th, 2005 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenayIt's a rest day today. No Tour comentary from me. No Tour watchage for me.
That doesn't mean I won't watch today's Tour recap on ITV3. Yes, I really am that addicted to cycling :-)
I'm coming out of a succession of two (yes, two) books that I didn't enjoy :-(
Magician - Raymond E. Feist
The Last Light of the Sun - Guy Gavriel Kay
There were different reasons for the lack of enjoying, but it's still rather depressing to have two in a row :-(
Magician was picked up because it was one of the top 100 books in last year's BBC poll. I'd read all the other fantasy books in the poll so I felt that I ought to try Magician and see what it's like, as so many people thought it was a good read. The book is very thick - not a problem because I love long, involving books. It's the first in a trilogy, again not a problem. Except I finished the book with absolutely no desire to read the rest of the trilogy. I didn't precisely hate the book as I read it, but I didn't have that overwhelming need to find out what happened next that usually has me reading in every spare moment I can find. It was just kinda...meh. I felt as though I should like the characters. Really, the author was desperately trying to make me like them and it just seemed to fall flat.
It was frustrating because I genuinely liked Pug and Thomas in the early chapters. I'm not sure whether it was because the book kept skipping a few years (y'know, it was epic) or whether it just lost my interest.
The whole thing felt like an epic attempt to garner my attention and sympathy, but for no real reason that I can put my finger on it fell completely flat.
The second book was more annoying because reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana was one of the highlight's of last year's reading list. It was one of those books that I simply didn't dare read over breakfast because I'd still be there, completely entranced, at lunchtime.
That may be one of the reasons why I'm so disappointed. Quite frankly, my reaction to reaching the end has been "At last! It's over!", which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. The book plots and there isn't any kind of driving narrative or character development. It feels as though there's no point to it. Where is the book going? Why are these characters doing this? Who are they? I don't expect an epic narrative in every book - many of my favourites don't have that - but I do want to care about the outcome and feel as though there is some conclusion that the book is straining towards. It's part of what keeps me turning pages.
The other major problem that I found with this book was Kay's need to tell me the fate of every single minor character that the book touches. Seriously, there were characters who should have had two paragraphs and instead I got treated to a two page dissection of their life before and after the central characters passed through their lives. Including their eventual deaths and, in some cases, the fates of their grandchildren.
WTF is that about?
It slows the narrative and the books would be at least fifty pages shorter without that. The book would also be much easier to get through. It's nice that Kay has thought so carefully about his incidental characters, but I really don't need that stuff. If I were writing, all of that detail would go into my background notes and never make its way into the book unless it has some direct impact on the plot.
To make up for two bad books in a row, I am now working on two extremely good books at once:
Lois McMaster Bujold's Hallowed Hunt won't be published in England, but it came out while I was in Canada and I made a special trip to Chapters for it. I finally allowed myself to start it on Friday and I'm already three-quarters of the way through. It's completely enthralling: characters I like and sympathise with, evil characters, characters that I can't decide about, strong plotting and no excess verbiage. One of the things that I'm really enjoying about this book is the intrigue and Bujold's talent for feeding information at just the right rate. She allows it to slip out just gradually enough to keep me turning the page, looking for the next clue, and that's a large part of the reason why I can't put it down.
HH is, unfortunately, a hardback so I can't haul it around with me to work. My handbag book is currently Hammered by Elizabeth Bear, another trophy from my Chapters trip in Canada. Sci-fi rather than fantasy, (yes, there are even guns rather than bows) it's caught me and I'm only thirty pages in. Again, Bear is feeding out information at a rate guaranteed to keep me turning the page withouth resorting to padding or verbal dysentry. I like the central character, Jenny Casey, and the rest of the characters are suitably grey so I have no idea who is good, who is bad, and whether there's a real good side at all.
Harry should be arriving on Saturday so I'll be trying to avoid spoilers for the next couple of weeks. I should have HH and Hammered finished by then so my task will be not getting deeply involved in another book that gets dropped in favour of Harry. Of course, Harry won't be a travelling book and that could get a little frustrating next week.
I'm such a book geek.
That doesn't mean I won't watch today's Tour recap on ITV3. Yes, I really am that addicted to cycling :-)
I'm coming out of a succession of two (yes, two) books that I didn't enjoy :-(
Magician - Raymond E. Feist
The Last Light of the Sun - Guy Gavriel Kay
There were different reasons for the lack of enjoying, but it's still rather depressing to have two in a row :-(
Magician was picked up because it was one of the top 100 books in last year's BBC poll. I'd read all the other fantasy books in the poll so I felt that I ought to try Magician and see what it's like, as so many people thought it was a good read. The book is very thick - not a problem because I love long, involving books. It's the first in a trilogy, again not a problem. Except I finished the book with absolutely no desire to read the rest of the trilogy. I didn't precisely hate the book as I read it, but I didn't have that overwhelming need to find out what happened next that usually has me reading in every spare moment I can find. It was just kinda...meh. I felt as though I should like the characters. Really, the author was desperately trying to make me like them and it just seemed to fall flat.
It was frustrating because I genuinely liked Pug and Thomas in the early chapters. I'm not sure whether it was because the book kept skipping a few years (y'know, it was epic) or whether it just lost my interest.
The whole thing felt like an epic attempt to garner my attention and sympathy, but for no real reason that I can put my finger on it fell completely flat.
The second book was more annoying because reading Guy Gavriel Kay's Tigana was one of the highlight's of last year's reading list. It was one of those books that I simply didn't dare read over breakfast because I'd still be there, completely entranced, at lunchtime.
That may be one of the reasons why I'm so disappointed. Quite frankly, my reaction to reaching the end has been "At last! It's over!", which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. The book plots and there isn't any kind of driving narrative or character development. It feels as though there's no point to it. Where is the book going? Why are these characters doing this? Who are they? I don't expect an epic narrative in every book - many of my favourites don't have that - but I do want to care about the outcome and feel as though there is some conclusion that the book is straining towards. It's part of what keeps me turning pages.
The other major problem that I found with this book was Kay's need to tell me the fate of every single minor character that the book touches. Seriously, there were characters who should have had two paragraphs and instead I got treated to a two page dissection of their life before and after the central characters passed through their lives. Including their eventual deaths and, in some cases, the fates of their grandchildren.
WTF is that about?
It slows the narrative and the books would be at least fifty pages shorter without that. The book would also be much easier to get through. It's nice that Kay has thought so carefully about his incidental characters, but I really don't need that stuff. If I were writing, all of that detail would go into my background notes and never make its way into the book unless it has some direct impact on the plot.
To make up for two bad books in a row, I am now working on two extremely good books at once:
Lois McMaster Bujold's Hallowed Hunt won't be published in England, but it came out while I was in Canada and I made a special trip to Chapters for it. I finally allowed myself to start it on Friday and I'm already three-quarters of the way through. It's completely enthralling: characters I like and sympathise with, evil characters, characters that I can't decide about, strong plotting and no excess verbiage. One of the things that I'm really enjoying about this book is the intrigue and Bujold's talent for feeding information at just the right rate. She allows it to slip out just gradually enough to keep me turning the page, looking for the next clue, and that's a large part of the reason why I can't put it down.
HH is, unfortunately, a hardback so I can't haul it around with me to work. My handbag book is currently Hammered by Elizabeth Bear, another trophy from my Chapters trip in Canada. Sci-fi rather than fantasy, (yes, there are even guns rather than bows) it's caught me and I'm only thirty pages in. Again, Bear is feeding out information at a rate guaranteed to keep me turning the page withouth resorting to padding or verbal dysentry. I like the central character, Jenny Casey, and the rest of the characters are suitably grey so I have no idea who is good, who is bad, and whether there's a real good side at all.
Harry should be arriving on Saturday so I'll be trying to avoid spoilers for the next couple of weeks. I should have HH and Hammered finished by then so my task will be not getting deeply involved in another book that gets dropped in favour of Harry. Of course, Harry won't be a travelling book and that could get a little frustrating next week.
I'm such a book geek.
