Words, words, words

[hawkwing_lb]

Wordcount!

Progress:

"Dreamdark, or, the Confused-Title Story"

New words: c. 1000
Previous words: c. 800
Total relevent words: c. 1800
Old-and-now-irrelevant-but-I'm-still-counting-them words: c. 20,000
Total words: 22,000
Estimated words required: 120,000
Unpleasant things that characters were subjected to: rain, mud, fear, close encounters of the sharp and pointy kind, deaths.

21,800 / 120,000 (17.0%)

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My current reading is eclectic again. Sigh. Started a new book on the First Crusade - the first book about the crusades I've ever read, so should be interesting. I'm reading for college, of course: art and architecture books this week, because Thursday = test. And I'm halfway through CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station.

I'm feeling somewhat ambivalent about Downbelow Station. The prose is solid, the characters are solid and interesting - even if they do all seem to sound alike, and come from the anti-hero end of the scale - but... I dunno. I'm not being gripped, but yet I feel that I should be.

Partly it's the humanocentric view of the future. Partly it's because I can almost see real-world politics informing the text (uh-oh, literary phrase. help, please), but mostly, I think, it's because I could care less if all these characters went to hell in the same handbasket.

I can almost identify with Signy Mallory. But not really. They're just a little bit too far around that corner of unlikeableness (or non-entity-ness) for me to form any kind of connection.

::sigh::

I'll finish the book - I'm interested enough to want to find out how it ends - but I don't think (unless something major changes in the next few hundred pages) that I'll be getting any more of Cherryh's SF. Although, interestingly enough, I've read other books by the same author and found them much easier to connect to.

Question, if anyone's out there who's read Downbelow Station and feels like answering: am I the only one who feels this way about it? Interested to know.
-------

I'm off to type up my wordcount now, and to try to get it to make sense. *g*

Comments

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oh, I've read Downbelow Station and had much the same thought. Or thoughts. Some of her work is like that, where I just didn't _care_ enough about the characters, and I thought it was all me. It's been so many years since I actually read CJ Cherryh that I can't remember which ones I really did like. I suppose I'll have to go dig them up from storage and re-read them now, drat it. ;-)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'll have to go dig them up from storage and re-read them now, drat it.

Oh dear :-).

I'm glad to know it's not just me, anyway. Downbelow is the first of her SF I've read, I think - I read Paladin (title?) out of Baen's webscriptions and liked it a hell of a lot more.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Well, looking through her website reminded me of the titles, so here goes:
Liked = Serpent's Reach, Faded Sun (trilogy), Chanur series, Cuckoo's Egg, and some of the Merovingen Nights series

The rest were eh.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recs. I'm not sure I've heard of all of them before (insert rant about Irish bookshops and limited selections, ahem) but I know I've seen the name 'Chanur' around. Something to check out when I have the time!

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Ah, well, don't be so hard on the Irish bookshops; many American bookshops are just as dismal these days. What we need is the small shops with intelligent owners who roam the booklists. Sadly, that's uncommon and rapidly disappearing.

And then there's Amazon.com. Oh, if you're interested in other online bookshops, consider Powell's Books or Elliott Bay Books. Those are on the west coast (Oregon and Washington State), but have quirky selections.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

many American bookshops are just as dismal these days

I submit that you have not seen the horror that is Easons' SFF shelving. Separated out into SF (Star Wars, Star Trek, and, um, maybe a handful of [old] original authors) and fantasy (Jordan, Goodkind, Eddings, and maybe a handful of others). SF and fantasy, separated. Even books by the same authors. And Easons is pretty much Ireland's Big Bookshop.

Hodges Figgis has the best selection in Dublin, and the sanest attitude to shelving. Unfortunately they just told me flat that they can't/won't order Elizabeth Bear's Worldwired in for me (Bantam Spectra, which I thought was a pretty big publishing house), because it doesn't show up in their computer system. But I've seen other Bantam Spectra titles on their shelves!

Yikes. I'm ranting again, amn't I? And here I thought I wasn't going to do that anymore.

::sigh::

Incidentally, if you haven't read Bear's Hammered and Scardown I really can't recommend them highly enough.

Amazon is really handy. The only problem is the shipping time and the price of said shipping :-). Still mostly works out cheaper, but... I dunno. I think I'd rather deal with real people. If I had that option.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

I believe I was in Eason's, in Dublin if not also in Westport (Mayo) -- or it might have been in Castlebar. It was somewhere in there, before we drove the dual carriageway to Dublin. I missed Hodges Figgis. Where's that?

You'll just have to go to Canada then; I remember some decent bookshops in Toronto, and I've been told (by Canadians eh?) that Montreal has lots of bookshops.

Oh, and you'll be happy to know you've led me down the path of corruption: I've ordered Hammered and Scardown as well as some of the Karen Traviss. Drat you, Hawkwing! Now I'll have new books to read :-D

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Hodges Figgis is on *wracks her brains for street name, as opposed to just knowing where to go* Dawson St. I think. I'm pretty sure, anyway. One street over from Grafton St.

Trinity is just across the road from Dawson St. As you might guess, this is Not A Good Thing when it comes to keeping my covetousness under wraps. :-)

Mmm, Montreal. I could combine French language study with a shopping trip, couldn't I? (excuses, excuses)

I will push Bear and Traviss, yes I will. City of Pearl... is not nearly as good as The World Before, even though it's (IMO) brilliant. And matociquala has one of the most interesting blogs I've come across yet (convinced me to get her books, so).

Although karentraviss is... well, look here: http://www.livejournal.com/users/karentraviss/228875.html. I draw your attention to this phrase: For shock-horror value: I wrote 36,000 words in 48 hours and deleted 5,000.

I think the polite word is driven.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Hm. So close, and yet so far...I was on Grafton Street (much nicer now than it was in 1981), and I was at Trinity. I should say, _we_ were at Trinity, to peruse the Library Store and attempt to see the display of...whatever it was that day. Probably the Book Of Kells, but it might have been something else.

Yes, you could study french. I'm sure there's plenty of good reason to do immersion in Canada. I leave that as an exercise for the student.

Now I shall counter with Tanya Huff. If you haven't read any of her stuff, get thee to a bookshop. Beg, borrow, or steal anything with her name on it. Here: http://www.sfsite.com/lists/thuff.htm

I have word from Amazon that my order is shipping. You will have much to be sorry for. :-D

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Book of Kells - you know, as a TCD student, I have free entry to that? But I was dragged to see it on a school trip in primary school, so. In no hurry to see it again.

Let's see: most of my Tanya Huff stuff is in boxes. I thought the Four Quarters series was very good, the Vicki Nelson likewise, and the Keeper books (I've read the first two) reasonable. Oh, and her two SF 'Valor' books, pretty good. There are actually some Tanya Huff books in Hodges Figgis - the Vicki Nelson series, AFAIK, was also published by a UK publisher.

(Yes, I am a book addict. Once I was able to recall all the books I owned and/or had read: no longer.)

You'll have to do better than that. :-) *shoves inappropriately competitive spirit back in the box where it belongs and sits on it*

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oo. Oooh. :: rolls up sleeves, buckles down :: All righty then!

Have you tried Lee Killough? Blood Walk? Another take on the vampire myth, in a Huff-ish vein (ok, ok, pun intended) only before Huff. Reprinted by Meisha Merlin a few years ago. You might have heard of her other books as well...

::note to self: ransack library at home for more titles to throw at young whippersnapper ::

::tries to stifle competitive beast within::

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of Lee Killough. I take it this is a state of existence that I should attempt to rectify at the soonest possible moment?

Mercy, mercy! You denizen of the Evil Emp - ahem, sorry, you inhabitents of the marvellous USA - have a leg up on the rest of us when it comes to books; they usually come out much later in the UK and Ireland, if they come at all. *sends jealousy to the same box as the well-and-truly-crushed competitive spirit*

Recommendations welcome, oh older, infinitely more experienced one. :-)
(Even though I already have a list as long as a giant's arm.)

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Phew.

Ah, Lee Killough hasn't written much in recent years, but she had a bunch of books out in the 80s. A Voice Out of Ramah was her first "big one"; it was ok. Then she had a series of books about law enforcement officers (Leos) in the future, which was nicely done; a combination of SF and mystery. IIRC, Doppelganger Gambit was the first in this series, then there's Spider's Play and Dragon's Teeth. She also had a bunch of single titles like The Deadly Silents and Aventine. Later she wrote her police officer-turned vampire (Gareth Mikaelian) series, Blood Hunt and Blood Links, which were reprinted as Blood Walk. I think she's recently published another Gareth Mikaelian book, but I haven't read anything of hers in years now.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Oh, and trust me: American bookshops also sort out into SF and fantasy. Not all of them, but enough of them. The factory-line series of books shoulders out all the decent reading, and the Star Trek/Star Wars conglomerates take up still too much space on the shelves.

[cathemery.livejournal.com]

I didn't care for that one. I liked Tripoint better, and Rimrunners, Serpent's Reach, and Merchanter's Luck - and Heavy Time and the one that goes with it - better. I liked Cyteen, too. OTHO, 40,000 on Gehenna didn't grab me. It might be worth noting that, barring Cyteen, the ones I liked are shorter.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that. :-) Downbelow's a hefty read, and I was wondering if all the rest of Cherryh's SF was in the same vein. Obviously not!

[(Anonymous)]

Merchanter's luck
And Angel with a sword (IIRC) are the only two I've bothered to re-read. Some a lot lighter than Downbelow. The later Chanur ones (where the bilogy drove me spare) were distinctly light. Cherryh has IMO an unfortunate prose-style. I really struggle to 'get in' to her work and bind to her characters although the plot and setting are good

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Hello, anonymous. Thanks for the recommendation :-).

What's wrong with the biology, if you don't mind my asking? [Haven't read any Chanur yet to see for myself, if indeed I could see, not being particularly biologically-trained :-)]

[davefreer.livejournal.com]

Sorry,'twas me. I hadn't logged in. You should have guessed by the spelling. Um. I have problem with her extrapolations leonine of behavioral biology to the aliens. Ask Ginger. Her field. And yes, it does seem to be the style she uses for sf. Her fantasy is more accessibly written. I just don't like it as much

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Oh, it was you. I thought the style seemed familiar, but I wasn't quite sure. In future I'll be more confident of my ability to identify people by orthographical means :-).

Thanks for expanding. I haven't read enough Cherryh to have any kind of opinion on her style, but so far Downbelow Station is losing out to Thomas Asbridge's much more accessible The First Crusade (non-fiction). This is rare, for me. I finish most fiction within 48 hours of starting it.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

Actually, I'd read Chanur before vet school, so my perceptions of the books would be vastly different now. Yes, her writing is sometimes oddly dense to the reader. The reason I remember Chanur is those books were less dense, more accessible. It was almost a different writer.

Thinking of biology affecting behavior reminds me of Tanya Huff and her take on werewolves. This I read as a resident, and the behavioral differences in Huff's werewolves was awesome -- and made such good sense I wondered why no one else had thought of it before. Wolf (and wild canid in general) society is very different from the human concept of "family", but we tend to think of canids as being family-types because they join our packs so nicely.

Lions have different packs and different social structures. I vaguely recall that the Chanur books at least addressed the typical "lioness hunting/lion lazing about" sort of thing.

Heh..musing over what you'd written, I pondered momentarily the possibility of melding Cherryh's plot and environment with Misty's characterizations. Yeah, I know, it's been done (Merovingen Nights). Still.