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Melusine
While I will save my commentary when I complete the book for Jaida's community, and I'm sure it will contain some of this, I just have to get this out now.
I find it intolerable. I adore the theif character -- his cadence gives me his face, but so far it all stops there.
The problems?
A lot of it has to do with naming. I understand the desire to create a world different from our own and to do so with subtle clues that address relatively mundane things like time, religion and social hierarchy, but I find the frequency with which the author has chosen to do this irksome, mainly because with these many pieces of small information I'm still lacking any cohesive view of the world -- there are no hints to me of history or evolution, just a hodgepodge of words and syllables apparently required of the fantasy genre. They are occassionally clever, but more often distracting, and frequently, I find, not that well imagined. All this matter of septads? Just an awkward way to say "see, fantasy world!" -- it grants the reader nothing.
Other stuff is irritating me as well, including the way it has thus far handled sex work and sex magic(k), although how many readers she expected to have with the frame of reference was probably less than even a handful. Also, the sex needs more or less detail (I don't care which), the way it's been so far it's just logistically sloppy.
Felix's character interests me not at all. Class issues are one of the tropes of fantasy literature that can actually interest me, but writing status stuff in real or fantasy worlds is very very hard unless you have an internal as well as external understanding of status (this is a lot of what the workshop I submitted to Phoenix Rising is about). This may improve (I'm on about page 60), as might the treatment of the sexual issues I've raised above, but I am not counting on it.
Also, couldn't Malkar have a slightly more subtly nefarious name than Malkar? Also, could we please please get some motivaations for him or get a sense of why he's powerful other than we're told he is over and over.
Also, writing people who are high is always hard. Writing people high on drugs you've made up, really, really hard. Still, teh suck!
This book is driving me up the wall.
I don't want to be any of these people, I don't want to know any of these people and I don't want to exist in this world, because I've yet to see what's compelling about it, what it takes it succeed in it, or anything where I go "I could do that better than you." I fail to see the benefits of its constraints or the sexiness of breaking them.
I find it intolerable. I adore the theif character -- his cadence gives me his face, but so far it all stops there.
The problems?
A lot of it has to do with naming. I understand the desire to create a world different from our own and to do so with subtle clues that address relatively mundane things like time, religion and social hierarchy, but I find the frequency with which the author has chosen to do this irksome, mainly because with these many pieces of small information I'm still lacking any cohesive view of the world -- there are no hints to me of history or evolution, just a hodgepodge of words and syllables apparently required of the fantasy genre. They are occassionally clever, but more often distracting, and frequently, I find, not that well imagined. All this matter of septads? Just an awkward way to say "see, fantasy world!" -- it grants the reader nothing.
Other stuff is irritating me as well, including the way it has thus far handled sex work and sex magic(k), although how many readers she expected to have with the frame of reference was probably less than even a handful. Also, the sex needs more or less detail (I don't care which), the way it's been so far it's just logistically sloppy.
Felix's character interests me not at all. Class issues are one of the tropes of fantasy literature that can actually interest me, but writing status stuff in real or fantasy worlds is very very hard unless you have an internal as well as external understanding of status (this is a lot of what the workshop I submitted to Phoenix Rising is about). This may improve (I'm on about page 60), as might the treatment of the sexual issues I've raised above, but I am not counting on it.
Also, couldn't Malkar have a slightly more subtly nefarious name than Malkar? Also, could we please please get some motivaations for him or get a sense of why he's powerful other than we're told he is over and over.
Also, writing people who are high is always hard. Writing people high on drugs you've made up, really, really hard. Still, teh suck!
This book is driving me up the wall.
I don't want to be any of these people, I don't want to know any of these people and I don't want to exist in this world, because I've yet to see what's compelling about it, what it takes it succeed in it, or anything where I go "I could do that better than you." I fail to see the benefits of its constraints or the sexiness of breaking them.
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I also feel bad (really bad!) for making anyone suffer while reading the first book for the club, but I especially want to be able to articulate what doesn't work about the books we read as well as what does. So, yeah, like I said, I really can't wait to see the discussion get off the ground on this one.
I do have to add that I really, really agree with you--a lot--re: your feelings about both Mildmay and Felix.
Anyway, my apologies for torturing you! I feel quite sheepish.
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I'm in the book club so that you're guaranteed that someone won't have a problem bringing up issues. Also: one good thing about this when we get to Swordspoint. I had been sort of annoyed that on the list because I've read it 100 times, but it's a perfect compare and contrast case of how to make the tropes of fantasy work for or against you.