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If I tried to sum up my experience of reading Lois's second Chalion book, Paladin of Souls, I could do it in a single word: paltry. There is a stunning richness to her science fiction that is altogether missing from Paladin of Souls. A sense of detail, of surroundings, of environment. Paladin of Souls reminds me of the joke about the difference between Star Trek and Blake's Seven: in the latter, it is the sets that are made of cardboard. Paladin is like that: there is a fabulous story here made weak by a failure of descriptiveness: poor naming choices, a dearth of adjectives, an inattention to detail. Lois sees with the eye of, well, of a geek, and that doesn't serve her well enough among the serving wenches and princesses of Chalion. Comparing Paladin of Souls to Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Justice, the last fantasy novel I read, might seem a little unfair, but it's the best comparison I have, and it tells me a lot. The lands of Terre D'Ange, Alba, and especially Vralia, are so exsquisitely vivid compared to the oddly unmemorable territories of Chalion. And that's not because so much of Carey's world is borrowed from real life: the territories of Moorcock's Melinbone, or Lynn Flewelling's Rhiminee will stay with me far longer than the Zangre or Porifors. Chalion is a colorless land furnished with routine extruded fantasy product furniture, more in the shade of Trudi Canavan's Black Magic Trilogy than anything significant. If I were her editor, I would have sent this back with a note saying, "Lois, you can do better than this." But then, if I were her publisher, I'd know there was a ready audience for Anything Lois Writes, so I'd say, "Well, it's better than Trudi Canavan, and she sold, and Lois will sell anyway, so ship it." Tags: books, review
Current Mood:  thoughtful
Current Music: Keiko Matsui, Sense of Journey
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I've just finished reading Justina Robson's Living Next Door to the God of Love, which has probably one of the loveliest, most shelf-ready eye-catching titles I've ever seen in my entire life. Which is a bit of a shame because the text inside is rather weak. Robson has created a universe in which a local light-cone controlling cosmic intelligence of undefined origin named Unity has apparently created a kind of cosmic crossroads with Earth, creating a whole host of "walking to another world" gates, and there are many different kinds of things walking around. Unity's apparent purpose is to discover the underlying meaning of life, and people run the risk of being "consumed" by Unity willy-nill as it looks for those who might have the answer. Some of the trans-universal stuff leaks into our space: creatures made of Stuff, and the Engines that maintain the portals and the human-friendly space between them. Unity isn't completely in control of the universe, and sometimes there are storms within Unity itself. One such storm broke off a piece of Unity, which calls itself Jalaeka. Unity wants the fragment known as Jalaeka back. The story is about a girl named Francine and how Jalaeka comes to understand that Unity can never succeed in its mission: that there are things that are ineffable to everyone, even the gods, and how he is the embodiment of the ineffability. From there, a massive cosmic battle ensues, Jalaeka vs. Unity, and the story... well... Y'see, that's the problem. Jalaeka is so very human most of the time. His relationship with Francine is told from each's point of view, with neither ever being clear (or convincing to the reader) about why they should fall so completely in love. They just do. She tries to avoid romantic cliches and somehow manages to avoid cueing us into the romance at all. Every scene in this book is completely gorgeous. Robson is a writer with a deep grasp of human nature and complete control of a lush and lyrical writing style that never gets in the way of her moving the characters from beginning to end. But the scenes never quite add up to a story. They never quite convince you; they never quite show you enough of the picture for you to feel satisfied with the ending. A lot of people liked this book, reading the reviews. I liked this book. I just wish it had more conviction. Tags: books, review
Current Mood:  awake
Current Music: John 5, 27 Needles
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 Sterlings, the Dead Tree Edition. There's something about seeing my work in print, in an actual damned book, that gives it an odd weight and heft. I was up way too late last night reading my own stuff in this entirely new format (it's very pretty, too) and discovered that I kinda liked seeing it this way. I also discovered quite a few flaws, places where I'm too wordy, or flubbed rewriting a sentence and left a word in, or used "then" when I meant "than," and so on. I also discovered why sometimes my writing is difficult: I write dialogue (Firefox's spell checker insists that's not right; Longman's Dictionary insists that it is) as if from a comic book, with the characters emoting in words because pictures are static in comics, but eschewing descriptive writing of their expressions or gestures. Instead, I save the descriptives for the beats, for the gutter (to use another comic book term). It makes dialogue somewhat interesting to read. Anyway, those of you who've been reading Sterlings now have a choice: you can read it at the pace at which I post it (in which case you'll be reading the last episode somewhere around June 2008), or in about two weeks you'll be able to buy the whole thing in dead tree format for $15 (plus shipping and handling, sorry) and read it in one sitting. I'll probably be going back through older works and prepping them for dead tree editions soon, so you'll be able to order copies of, oh, Travellogue and Aimee in the same formats. If only I had some nicer cover art. Tags: books, writing
Current Mood:  amused
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The premier magazine in the US for anime fans is Newtype, which is produced with articles from the original Japanese edition. Someone felt that what was needed was a strictly American magazine, one that catered to US fans without Japanese input or oversight, and that the market had room for more than one anime magazine, so out comes Otaku USA. The problem with this magazine is that there's absolutely nothing in that a well-tuned RSS reader can't give you. The "coming soon" articles are handled by various blogs, media release houses, and aggregators, I've read deeper and more significant reviews on rec.arts.anime.written, and (maybe this is just me) I don't find the industrial aspects of the craft all that interesting: interviews with directors and writers don't pique my interest in quite the same way that their output does. Launching a magazine in the era of blogging and RSS and pipes and Google news is a courageous one, but I don't think there's enough here in Otaku USA to sustain it for very long. Tags: books, review
Current Mood: concerned
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