Posted by nightphoenix on Aug 25, 2011 in
Books,
Input Currently I’m about 3/4 of the way through A Dance With Dragons by George R. R. Martin, and I’ve got to return the book to the library by tomorrow. That is, of course, if Hurricane Irene doesn’t do a quick loop-da-loop and hit us after all.
I have mixed feelings about A Song of Ice and Fire (the overall series). My biggest problem is that I can make a pretty sizable list of things I don’t like: about the writing, about the characters (specifically how death is handled), about the sexism and sex and overall yuck factor, and…well you get the idea. On the other hand, I’m still reading it. None of these factors were enough to not bother with the current book, nor have they been enough to make me put the current book down. The story is still interesting enough, I guess. But see that’s just it. I can’t put my finger on why I haven’t had the urge to quit reading, and I can’t figure out why such a vague “like” factor should overrule that whole list of “don’t likes”. Read more…
Tags: authors, books, musings
Posted by nightphoenix on May 27, 2011 in
Books,
Input,
Process I just finished the Winds of the Forelands series by David B. Coe, and as fantasy epics go, it was pretty good. It’s rare that I pick up a series at random and have it be unique enough to hold my interest. Although it had many of the classic tropes of epics, they were combined and re-imagined in such ways that I couldn’t sit there and say “Ah, so it’s this kind of magic system”, etc. Read more…
Tags: authors, books, brainstorming, goals
Posted by nightphoenix on Dec 10, 2010 in
Books,
Novels,
Output First, Shades. I’ve finished the bird edit, and am now about two chapters into the line edit. Line editing is hard, mostly because I’m realizing how much I skim when I’m reading. Now I’m forcing myself to actually read every sentence, and make a judgment on whether that sentence says what I want to say in as few words as possible. Slow work. One interesting thing I’ve discovered are…well, I’m calling them “remnants”. Little snippets of phrasing in certain places that are from two or three drafts back. Most of them no longer belong, because the wording and motivation and flow of the scene have evolved so much. Interesting how common they are, and how easy they are to miss on a casual read-through.
I’ve begun re-reading my First Draft in 30 Days book, and thinking about how I’m going to approach re-writing the second installment in Shades. At the conference, I want to at least be able to say that I’m “working on” the second book. Hopefully if I start the re-write with a system, it will go faster than this first book has. Read more…
Tags: books, reviews, Shades
Posted by nightphoenix on Oct 10, 2010 in
Books They suck away whole hours and days of your life. They occupy your mind even when you aren’t reading them. The people in them can become as real or even more real than the flesh and blood people you actually know.
So what does that make us writers?
Anyway, I just finished The Maze Runner by James Dashner. It was good, but not the sort of book I’d write. Although I could take a page or two from him on how to pace a YA story, and how to sustain a mystery throughout a book in a way that’s intriguing, but not irritating. My only complaint was that sometimes the kids’ relationships in that book didn’t quite ring true. Honestly, they weren’t mean enough, petty enough, cruel enough. There wasn’t enough Lord of the Flies for me to quite believe it. But maybe that says more about me than it does about the author. 
On the recommendation of several different people, I have started The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. I’m enjoying it so far, but I don’t think it’s going to quite match the sheer scope and power of The Way of Kings. However, one quality that I appreciate is that fact that it’s not as fast-paced as most epic fantasy, and far less fast-paced than the typical YA fare I devour.
It puts me more in mind of Robin Hobb’s Assassins trilogy, in that the main character is telling the story of his life, and is in no particular hurry to get to the “good” parts. The character’s voice is equally if not more intriguing than the events taking place. It’s not that there’s nothing interesting going on, but it’s a book than I can read a few pages and then put down again without…pain? Can’t do that with The Wheel of Time. Can’t do that with The Way of Kings. I don’t think this is a book I could just sit there and read for hours and hours at a time…it doesn’t spur you on and on and on. He eases you into the character at a nice leisurely pace. Yet it’s interesting enough that I want to get back to it.
I think that’s the sort of pace I want my Tindaari epic to have. Because while it’s an epic, it’s a character epic. I’m following five or six people throughout a large chunk of their lives…several decades. Stories like that just can’t run at a breakneck pace. Tindaari is also less about War (like most epic fantasy), and more about the interaction of Religion, Intrigue, and History. Yes, there is war, but the story is much more about all the threads that led up to the war…the war itself is rather short, and right at the end. More like an almost-war. I will reserve final judgment until I actually finish The Name of the Wind, but so far I think it’s one I will definitely try to emulate in pacing.
My chief complaint about the book so far is that even though it takes place on a completely different world, the author keeps using specific fantasy tropes from our own world. (And I’m not talking about demons…that’s become a fairly generic class of creature.) For example: The Fae. I can accept that another world might have fairies, but I would expect those fairies to be somehow; in language, behavior, lore, whatever; connected to that world. Rothfuss is not doing that with the Fae in The Name of the Wind. He’s using OUR fairies, OUR faery lore, OUR conventions to characterize them. (Allergic to iron, sometimes called the folk, same organizations: Twilight Court and such, graceful, ethereal, elusive, mischievous, cloven feet, etc.) And every time he does it, it throws me out of his fantasy world…because I associate those kind of faeries with OUR world. They’re too specific, and thus they don’t mesh with the rest of the world he’s created.
I think maybe he’s trying to follow the rule of not calling a rabbit a shmeerp, just because it exists in an exotic world. He wanted Fae in his story, and so he simply called them Fae (instead of making up some word for essentially the same beings). The problem, however, is that the history and existence of the Fae are all tied up in the history of Britain, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, and other real countries.
Same thing with using words like Aleph or Ruach. Those are actual Hebrew concepts…with Hebrew connotations, weight, and subtleties that just don’t make sense and would probably never develop in a world where Hebrew culture never existed. It’s like the author has taken these ideas without bothering to really integrate them into the fabric of this other world he’s created. Aleph and Ruach don’t naturally arise from the history, lore, and mood of the his world. He hasn’t provided any reason for Fae, or words like Aleph and Ruach, to exist as they do in THAT world. It begins to feel like a cheap substitute for worldbuilding.
Which is odd, because other elements of that world are completely unique…like the Chandrian…and those play right out of the history and fabric of the world. Those belong, in a way that the Fae do not. It’s not like the author didn’t do his worldbuilding. The history of this world is actually quite interesting, and seems very well-thought out. I think maybe he though he could use the Fae like he used demons…in a generic sense. But to me, the Fae are too specific, and too tied into this world to transfer. It’d be like, instead of angels and demons, using Lucifer and Christian saints in a completely fantasy setting where Christianity never existed. You can’t do that. They don’t belong there.
That turned into a bit of a rant. Let me be clear that otherwise I’m really enjoying this book, and would recommend it.
Also on the reading list:
Finally finished White Cat by Holly Black. Not bad. Will be reading The Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Claire as soon as I get my copy from the library. Also thinking of reading the Coldfire trilogy by C. S. Friedman. I’ve read two other of her books and quite like her writing style. Going to see if I can find the Uplift trilogy by David Brin as well, on the recommendation of the guys on Writing Excuses.
And um, I’m going to be writing in there somewhere, too. I hope. Like I said, good books are dangerous.
Tags: books, reviews, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 25, 2010 in
Screen Um. It is not wise to go see Legend of the Guardians, and then finish the last book in the Percy Jackson series in a single night. Unless you want some really strange dreams. (I’m pretty sure there was some Rah Xephon mixed in there too. )
However, Guardians is worth seeing for about the same reason Avatar was worth seeing: it’s really, really pretty. The characters and story were all basic formula, but it actually wasn’t as bad or cheesy as you might expect. I think it worked simply because all the characters were owls, and that alone was novel enough to offset the cliche-ness. Having said that, it was very predictable. There were absolutely no surprises in that movie. All of the characters did exactly what I guessed they’d do, and I basically knew the part they were going to play before they played it. “Ah, there’s the love interest…there’s the traitor…there’s the gruff old mentor…etc.”
On the way home last night I was thinking about this seeming reluctance of movie-makers to allow non-formula stories in their films. Is it because movies are so much more expensive to produce than books, and therefore cannot afford to fail as badly? I mean, there’s a reason certain stories are “formula”…they work! But I’m kind of tired of walking away from every single movie feeling like I’m just seeing the same thing over and over again. Come on. Somebody do something different. Somebody take a risk and try something new!
And then, when they make books into movies, there’s this annoying tendency to make those follow formula too, even if the actual book did not. The Lightning Thief was actually a good book, and the rest of the series is good as well. I think it would have translated well to film as it was. But of course, with a series, they’re never sure if they’re going to be able to keep making more movies, and so they make sure the first movie can stand on its own. With The Lightning Thief, that meant cutting out any references to Kronos and the overarching plot of the series. But in doing that, they had to make Luke into a cookie-cutter villain. Remember my whole “they broke his GMC” post? Yeah, well, it doesn’t break in the book. And what’s worse, if they do make more Percy Jackson movies, they’re going to have to go and dump the Kronos plot back in, and it isn’t going to make as much sense as it would if it’d been set up naturally from the get-go.
Ah, well.
On a slightly depressing note, I have deleted 25 spam accounts from the database in just the last week. That’s probably about average. I wish they’d just make spamming illegal.
Tags: books, movies and television, reviews
Posted by nightphoenix on Sep 22, 2010 in
Books I suppose it would be redundant to call it epic. But, that pretty well sums it up.
It’s both similar to and very different from The Wheel of Time. For one thing, it’s still not entirely clear (to me, at least) where the overarching story is going. In TWoT, that was set up pretty concretely at the conclusion of Book 1: The Dragon Reborn is going to fight the Dark One in the Last Battle. Rand is the Dragon Reborn (that was pretty obvious at the end of Book 1, even though it wasn’t officially revealed until later). That is the quest; all else leads up to that.
In TWoK, things are not quite so clear. We know the Last Desolation is coming, but we don’t know exactly what that is. We know the Voidbringers are going to return, but we don’t know exactly what those are, either. We don’t know if the Knights Radiant will get rebuilt, because we don’t know why they disbanded in the first place. I’m not even entirely sure which side of things the Heralds are on.
I actually kind of like shrouding the central quest in mystery. Not that TWoT doesn’t have revelations and stuff you don’t know and have to guess, but the central quest itself is clear. I have a suspicion that my Tindaari epic (the one that’s been sitting on my computer for years, and will continue to sit there until I’m ready to write it) will need a mystery-shrouded central quest…which means that, like The Way of Kings, I will need to have some incredibly strong characters from the start.
On a somewhat related note, TWoK concentrates a whole lot more on the main characters’ lives, rather than the main characters on a quest. What they are doing is not unrelated to the central thread, of course, but they are not yet directly moving towards it. It’s a departure from the Tolkienesque plotline that seems to dominate most epic fantasy, and I like that.
Also, I swear I’ve never experienced three separate “holy shit” revelations within the space of fifty pages. The last section of the book was awesome.
If you are at all a fan of The Wheel of Time or epic fantasy in general, and you haven’t read The Way of Kings by Brandan Sanderson, then you need to.
Tags: books, reviews
Posted by Mistress of Feathers on Aug 10, 2010 in
Books,
News,
Novels,
Output I read The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau in one day, almost in a single sitting. My husband got kind of boggle-eyed when I told him that, and yeah, I guess that’s a bit quick, even for me. I mean, it usually takes me at least a whole day, maybe two, to plow through a several hundred page book. It was quite a satisfying read…I’ve seen the movie, probably a year ago now, and it was pretty faithful to the book. That sort of conciseness, common to the young adult genre in particular, is something I admire when I see it and something I need to do more. I have a tendency to write epically.
Right now I’m working on Inkheart, another book that I’ve seen the movie of. Pretty good so far.
I have a ridiculous weakness for M&Ms. In case the blog itself doesn’t give that away.
You might notice that I’ve tweaked the sidebar a little bit. That picture (and yes, that is me) is one the hubby took while we were in North Carolina. It was a nice foggy day, which made for some very neat photo opportunities. I also finally figured out how to eliminate the search thingy at the top. I never liked it there. I’ll probably put it somewhere else in the sidebar, so the blog is still easily searchable.
I’ve been thinking about the logistics of the coup Raphel is planning for the city of Aschera. Read more…
Tags: books, brainstorming, reviews, Shades, worldbuilding
Posted by nightphoenix on May 30, 2010 in
Process I’ve been tossing an idea around in my head these last few weeks, and it was brought to the forefront yet again the other night after seeing the Prince of Persia.
Which is, by the way, not a bad movie, and I quite enjoyed it. It wasn’t on par with Pirates, and I decided that a lot of that was because it didn’t have a Jack Sparrow to carry it. The actors in Prince of Persia weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either…imagine Pirates without Jack Sparrow or Elizabeth Swan. I honestly don’t know why a lot of the critics were saying that the plot of Prince of Persia didn’t make sense, because I didn’t have any trouble following what was going on. No, it’s not realistic…you’ve got a dagger that can turn back time, for pity’s sake. The whole premise is unbelievable, but at least it’s internally consistent and the story works. I’ll admit that I spent a great deal of the movie admiring Dastan’s arms. And thinking that his particular brand of crazy “I’ll handle the impossible gate” bravado is a lot like Raphel’s.
Read more…
Tags: books, ideas, movies and television
Posted by Mistress of Feathers on May 24, 2010 in
Novels,
Output Go me, I even spelled fortuitous right on my first try.
So a month or two ago, there was this author that had been recommended to me, and I kept telling myself I should check her out. Then, at the Cassandra Claire and Holly Black event in Vero, that same author was recommended yet again, by those two no less. I said to myself, “I really do need to look into that.”
Then, of course, I completely forgot the author’s name. Read more…
Tags: authors, books, editing and revisions, Raphel, Saeli, Shades
Posted by nightphoenix on May 9, 2010 in
News,
Output So I went to see Holly Black and Cassandra Claire at a little book signing in Vero Beach last Friday. (Good thing I do check LJ every so often, or I might not have known about it). Vero’s only about an hour drive from where we live, so it was really great that they came that close.
Both of them read selections from their new books (Cassandra’s isn’t out yet, Black’s is), and then they did a Q&A. Some of the questions were more interesting than others…heh heh. Kind of makes me think about how they must have to answer the same questions over and over again, and that if my books gain enough of a following that I get to do a tour, how I’d have to do the same thing. Although, having people that interested in what I write would be awesome, in the long run.
I took my stele along, of course, being the ridiculous fan girl that I am. While I was there, I decided to give it to Cassandra Claire, since hey, she invented them, right? She said no one had ever given her one before, so that was kind of neat. I gave her a business card, too.
Let’s see, what else. I ran into a gal I had met at the writer’s conference, and we got to catch up. She’s a fellow fan of Susan Hubbard, and we seem to like the same sorts of books and movies. I had a lot of fun with her at the conference, so it was good to see her again.
But I think the crowning moment of the night was the earth-shattering burp that emanated from the balcony about halfway through the Q&A. Seriously, even the two authors paused long enough to acknowledge it.
Yeah, that was Eli.
Now, I don’t know what’s worse: the fact that my four-year-old son managed to belch loud enough for the entire building to hear…or the fact that I recognized his burp. I remember turning to M and saying “That sounded an awful lot like my son…”
Yeah…the hubby confirmed it later.
Tags: authors, books, the real world
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