maybe it's time for more science fiction

[ironymaiden]

i'm tired of being fed a story in three parts. damn you Tolkien, and the book that was too big for the printing process of the day. damn the bean counters. can i pick up a "genre" book sometime that hasn't been christened book one of a trilogy, cycle, or series?

so this week i read Song of the Beast by Carol Berg and The Briar King by Greg Keyes. (why did he drop the J. Gregory? it doesn't seem to be branding like Iain Banks vs Iain M Banks since the fantasy books are J. Gregory and the contract stuff is Greg and they're all listed together in the front of the book oh whatever)

i like to follow authors, betting that if i like their voice and their storytelling once, i'll like it again. so i got both of these out of the library since both authors knocked me over with their previous work. (okay, i thought The Age of Unreason was uneven and i'm not likely to read shared world stuff unless the author is charming and buys me drinks, but The Waterborn, goddamn!) both books revisited the themes of previous work. i felt like their editors said "write me another one like that one" and they did. i enjoyed the books, i just felt like i had read them 18 years ago, and forgotten enough to make the reread really delightful.

the toughest thing is that The Briar King was so blatantly influenced by everything from Amber to Princess Mononoke. i say blatant because i found myself being thrown out of the trance that comes from reading a great story. oh, and the dark forest plants straight from CS Friedman. and the way i could give way too many characters a class, level, and alignment from D&D. i don't intentionally look for this stuff, but when it smacks me in the face...
And it features the headstrong littlest princess with religious significance and a way-too-loyal retainer, who tries to run away from home and likes to wear boys' clothes and has a stupid infatuation with an older man and discovers something of tremendous importance in an ancient underground passage and a bunch of people want to kill her but she escapes in the protection of an impetuous young man who had to leave home because he did something stupid but whose heart is in the right place in the company of his mentor with endearing character flaws but a high Wisdom score. Wait, or was that the Waterborn?

well, the Ranger and the Cleric are great characters, and while i tend to find lawful good characters insufferable, i like the Paladin as well. oh, and the Ranger's animal companion is kickass.

The Song of the Beast has a beautifully realized world that includes dragons. It didn't remind me of anything but the themes already explored in the author's previous work. but maybe i haven't read her influences :)

still, i really enjoyed both books and i will get the eventual sequels out of the library. no royalty dollars will be given for unoriginal work.



but that's just my opinion, i could be wrong.

Comments

[raevnos.livejournal.com]

Trilogies usually suck. So do never-ending series. I won't even read the latter, with a few exceptions for good authors (For example, anything Stephen Brust writes is fair game, and his Dragaera books don'tt just recycle the same elements over and over and over).

There is non-Extruded Fantasy Product out there. It just takes more and more effort to find it...

i should try that

[ironymaiden]

something distracts me every time i try to read a Steven Brust book. C keeps putting Freedom and Necessity into my hands, but i never get very far...but i think it's that epistolary novel thing. i'll look into the others.

my series weakness is George RR Martin. ooh those evil Lannisters.

Re: i should try that

[raevnos.livejournal.com]

It took a while for me to get into FandN (Jury duty helped) too, but it was worth it. Agyar's far and away my favorite Brust book. Alas, it's almost impossible to talk about without massive spoilers.

George Martin isn't writing a never-ending series. It's just him so long to write it that it seems that way. Grump.