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Books 2012: some things are not for me
Apr. 30th, 2012 07:18 pmBooks 2012: 64-65
64. Alma Alexander, 2012: Midnight at the Spanish Gardens. Ebook, review copy provided by the author.
Some books are gorgeously written and so very much not my thing that My Thing sits in the corner and pulls faces at them. This is one of those books.
Five friends meet at their old college dive, twenty-one years after graduation. Over the course of the night, each of them will have the chance to experience a different life: the life they could have had, if things had been different.
Alexander here, as ever, has a very shiny way with prose. The slice-of-life thing, however, has never really been my preference, and I can't disentangle the story qua story, the book I was reading, from the book I wanted to read. But if slightly-askew gorgeously-written magical-realism character studies are your thing, this is the book for you.
65. Sharon Shinn, Fortune and Fate. Ebook on loan from a friend.
...Which is probably illegal, although I wasn't so in love with the Twelve Houses series up to Reader and Realynx that I would've gone looking for a continuation on my own. Which would have been a good decision, because Fortune and Fate, while moderately diverting, is by no means a good book. It is a phoned-in fantasy with a romance in it, unbalanced and with wonky pace and tension, and somewhat odd characterisation. Also angst by the bucketload. Briefly, I hoped that Shinn would buck the boringly cliché and go for lesbianism, but alas, it was not to be.
Dear world: I want all the books. Please send me more employment so I can acquire them. Kthnx.
Interesting links:
Charlie Stross on Olympics 2012, and Kari Sperring on Euro-Fantastic.
64. Alma Alexander, 2012: Midnight at the Spanish Gardens. Ebook, review copy provided by the author.
Some books are gorgeously written and so very much not my thing that My Thing sits in the corner and pulls faces at them. This is one of those books.
Five friends meet at their old college dive, twenty-one years after graduation. Over the course of the night, each of them will have the chance to experience a different life: the life they could have had, if things had been different.
Alexander here, as ever, has a very shiny way with prose. The slice-of-life thing, however, has never really been my preference, and I can't disentangle the story qua story, the book I was reading, from the book I wanted to read. But if slightly-askew gorgeously-written magical-realism character studies are your thing, this is the book for you.
65. Sharon Shinn, Fortune and Fate. Ebook on loan from a friend.
...Which is probably illegal, although I wasn't so in love with the Twelve Houses series up to Reader and Realynx that I would've gone looking for a continuation on my own. Which would have been a good decision, because Fortune and Fate, while moderately diverting, is by no means a good book. It is a phoned-in fantasy with a romance in it, unbalanced and with wonky pace and tension, and somewhat odd characterisation. Also angst by the bucketload. Briefly, I hoped that Shinn would buck the boringly cliché and go for lesbianism, but alas, it was not to be.
Dear world: I want all the books. Please send me more employment so I can acquire them. Kthnx.
Interesting links:
Charlie Stross on Olympics 2012, and Kari Sperring on Euro-Fantastic.
