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Sep. 23rd, 2004 11:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutI don't think my ideas about high fantasy are ever going to cohere into a useful format to post here. So in the meantime, I wanted to pass on a recommendation to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
misia: Check out Dragon's Winter by Elizabeth A. Lynn. You might like it. It's certainly not Romantic in mode, even if otherwise resembles, in broad terms at least, the stuff we were discussing.
It's also one of maybe two or three books on my bookshelf that even vaguely qualify as high fantasy, I noticed. I will also make a note here that this is the book that I broke my long-standing "I will read no series" rule for. (Not, "I will read no series that isn't finished," but no series period.)
misia: Check out Dragon's Winter by Elizabeth A. Lynn. You might like it. It's certainly not Romantic in mode, even if otherwise resembles, in broad terms at least, the stuff we were discussing.It's also one of maybe two or three books on my bookshelf that even vaguely qualify as high fantasy, I noticed. I will also make a note here that this is the book that I broke my long-standing "I will read no series" rule for. (Not, "I will read no series that isn't finished," but no series period.)
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Date: 2004-09-23 12:48 pm (UTC)At the risk of sounding overly contentious and nit-picky, are you using a definiton of "series" excluding single stories that happen to be bound in multiple volumes by virtue of length ?
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Date: 2004-09-23 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-23 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 08:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 10:45 am (UTC)Anyway. Did you have any particular examples you were thinking of when you asked the question?
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Date: 2004-09-24 04:14 pm (UTC)I didn't see any real venom, either... Sure, it was a gritty
and not terribly realistic portrayal of the feudal period, but imho not notably worse than what's typically portrayed in fantasy fiction. Maybe grittier than most, but not venomous. Where do you see venom?
Plot you're right about -- definitely WAY overwritten, should've been about half as long, maybe shorter. She was trying to do too much without enough substance to her idea, largely by being, well, too clever for her own good.
The ending made sense to me, in an anticlimactic deus ex machina (ahem) sort of way. But then, after three re-readings of Illuminatus!, I thought Slaughterhouse Five, Catch-22 and Pulp Fiction all had perfectly straightforward and uncomplicated plotlines, so maybe I'm weird on that point. :)
I'm not claiming that Ash is good, by any means. I just don't think it's particularly bad, either -- kinda mediocre, really. I guess I'm just puzzled by how anyone could have a strong negative reaction to it.
[Disclaimer: Like I said, it's definitely overwritten. To be absolutely honest, I bogged down about halfway and skimmed through most of the second half until near the end. So it's very possible that I missed some egregious material, especially something that undermines my understanding of the ending. I'd be surprised if there was anything there to strongly change my opinion, though.
Of course, after The Architecture of Desire, maybe I shouldn't be.]
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Date: 2004-09-24 05:52 pm (UTC)not terribly realistic portrayal of the feudal period
How do any of us *know*?
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Date: 2004-09-24 08:02 pm (UTC)OK, fair point. :) I'll rephrase slightly: Her portrayal of feudalism does not strike me as being substantially different from what's typically portrayed in fantasy novels. Grittier, perhaps, but that's just a different form of melodrama.
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Date: 2004-09-23 02:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-23 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 03:17 pm (UTC)