must be another wednesday
Jun. 26th, 2013 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishWhat are you currently reading?
The Price of Spring, the fourth of Daniel Abraham's Long Price quartet.
What did you recently finish reading?
Well, the first three of the Daniel Abraham quartet. These are fantasy novels that each take place fifteen years apart, which is kinda cool: you get to see the effects of some choices made in the first few books as the series goes on. There's magic, of a sort; there's a nation that has no magic and is slowly industrializing; there are very few wars apart from the third book and no Saving The World at all. Since you're mostly following two major characters you also get a wide variety of age perspectives. On the other hand, it has a very 1980s feel at times. There are no gay people at all, which in a large-canvas 21st-century fantasy series nags at me like a missing tooth, and women's roles are better than the average 1980s fantasy novel but only slightly. (Also, the cultural setup necessary for the Cunning Abortion Plot in the first book still sets my teeth on edge.) (No, that's not a spoiler, the plot's laid out for you in the first quarter of the book.) Still recommended, I think, but not strongly so.
I've also read the rules to 18OE, because what I really need is another giant game I will never get to play.
What do you think you'll read next?
I don't even know. Thinking about digging back into The Dragon Waiting, because it's never a bad time for JMF.
The Price of Spring, the fourth of Daniel Abraham's Long Price quartet.
What did you recently finish reading?
Well, the first three of the Daniel Abraham quartet. These are fantasy novels that each take place fifteen years apart, which is kinda cool: you get to see the effects of some choices made in the first few books as the series goes on. There's magic, of a sort; there's a nation that has no magic and is slowly industrializing; there are very few wars apart from the third book and no Saving The World at all. Since you're mostly following two major characters you also get a wide variety of age perspectives. On the other hand, it has a very 1980s feel at times. There are no gay people at all, which in a large-canvas 21st-century fantasy series nags at me like a missing tooth, and women's roles are better than the average 1980s fantasy novel but only slightly. (Also, the cultural setup necessary for the Cunning Abortion Plot in the first book still sets my teeth on edge.) (No, that's not a spoiler, the plot's laid out for you in the first quarter of the book.) Still recommended, I think, but not strongly so.
I've also read the rules to 18OE, because what I really need is another giant game I will never get to play.
What do you think you'll read next?
I don't even know. Thinking about digging back into The Dragon Waiting, because it's never a bad time for JMF.
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Date: 2013-06-28 03:02 pm (UTC)Yeah, I read them on Jo's recommendation as well, and was kinda disappointed. They are perfectly good above-average fantasy novels in most senses, but the main plot in the first book and the general theme of Exceptional Women Are Exceptional are keeping me from a wholehearted recommendation. De gustibus etc.
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Date: 2013-06-28 06:26 pm (UTC)Oh well, even above-average is good to find in these swamps of fantasy now dominated by self-published authors. (Some self-published authors are great. Others have let their egos get ahead of their sense and taste.)
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Date: 2013-06-28 06:36 pm (UTC)"This is a sneaky, sneaky book: a blood-soaked medieval fantasy; an elegant historical AU; a bleak, gritty political thriller; a witty Shakespeare fanfic; an intricate meta game full of buried jokes about Star Wars and Dracula; and a deeply serious and mature story about human damage (whether trauma or 'chronic conditions') and how we bear it, about suffering and grace."
no subject
Date: 2013-06-28 06:42 pm (UTC)