"the Velvet Underground album of 1980s fantasy novels"

[jazzfish]

As of today The Dragon Waiting is back in print. It's got a lovely introduction by Scott Lynch, in which he draws the obvious-in-retrospect comparison above. (I think it was Brian Eno who said that only around a hundred people bought the first Velvet Underground album when it came out, but all of them went on to start their own band.)

As a reminder, rydra_wong has a better review of the book than I have ever been able to put together. Also skygiants has accurately and hilariously broken down the book's structure.

Also it turns out that one can get Josephine Tey ebooks for a buck apiece, which means that (once I get through The Black Count) I will be reading The Daughter Of Time and then rereading TDW for the nth time, just to see how the one plays off the other.

Comments

[sartorias]

I cherish my old yellowed paperback, but I will get the new one.

[malkingrey]

As John M. Ford plots go, The Dragon Waiting is positively transparent.

If the man had a flaw as a writer, it was a deep-seated fear of being obvious.

(In fact, the answer to a writer's question, "Am I being a bit too obvious here?", is almost always, "No," but good luck getting any of us to believe it.)