Janny's Reading Journeys - 2013

Welcome to my first ever stab at a reading journal. I make no bones about it: I am a tough customer about certain things. If I can predict the plot, or if a book ends in a cliffhanger, that WILL set my hair on fire. Rants when this happens can break things, fair warning.

I'll post thoughts on books that I love and enjoy, and exactly why they worked for me.

The best reads for me have deep plots, memorable characters that change and reveal themselves throughout the story, and in the best cases, also use the language with beauty and verve, and carry an original voice. I like books that play well, or even better, upon re-reading - that it may take more than one pass to encounter all of the surprises.

Those books are very rare and highly treasured.

To kick off the year, I am re-reading Dorothy Dunnett's Johnson Johnson mystery series - so complex and convoluted that I know no one who gets all the clues in one pass. They have recently been reissued under new titles, and since I read them first as library books too long ago to mention, and not in order, and likely missed some, I've picked them up on my e reader to savor at leisure. At this point, I am reading the second, Ibiza Surprise, which is the new title for an older work.

On deck will be The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells, whose works I've enjoyed in the past, with her favorite work to date being Death of the Necromancer.

OOOOH, this sounds very entertaining! Starring this thread for sure.

What Clam said!

I think this could be highly educational. (Starred)

I love the Johnson Johnson series! I never could get into any of Dunnett's other work, though. I'll have to check the re-issues because I'm missing one or two.

I've never heard of the mystery series by Dorothy Dunnett. I'd only heard of her historical fiction, which I yet have to read. I keep meaning to as Dunnett was recommended to me by Guy Gavriel Kay the first time I went to see him speak (on his Ysabel tour, when I asked him what he enjoyed reading.

We seem to have very similar reading tastes, so I will be following your thread with interest (and trepidation as I'm sure my tbr pile will grow as a result!) I too hope to read The cloud roads this year, so am looking forward to reading your thoughts on it.

I look forward to reading about hair-on-fire rants...

#2 and #3 Entertaining? # 4 Educational??? (scary thought)

I am passionate, so the hair on fire rants will curl your socks and bounce things off the ceiling (warn your cats, if you have them). I will try to warn you if it's a spew coffee moment, but can't promise. (Someone should have invented an EMOTICON for that bit, dammit.) will this work:

:O:::::!

:X is my own shorthand for gagging a spoiler.

For years, I've lurked everyone's reading thread here - so I have some sense of who you/where your tastes may lie in the book world.

LONG POST WARNING:

# 5 Tardis - On Dunnett: she is not everyone's cuppa, perhaps an acquired taste. Her habit of filling a book with unreliable narrators - who ALL get the picture wrong - makes entry into one of her books immediately challenging....you have to read ALL of the book, no matter how badly you seem to swim against the current - to 'get' the punch line - if you do finish, the reward is absolutely fascinating. She is a masterful plotter/perhaps bar none.

The second challenge: her complexity and her language are difficult, at best. She lays so many quirky subtleties and insinuations and even, allegorical references, into her beautiful grasp of language - the prose runs on so many levels. You cannot skim. You cannot possibly grasp all of it in one take. More, you have to put up with characters you hate - she's dreadfully good at making you as the reader MAD to the point of frustration with her protagonists - because often the viewpoint/sidekick character's picture of the central character or story event is Dead Wrong, and when the unveiling hits (and she gives you the moral grounds) finally - the ah hah! moment is awesome - but if you do not finish the whole book or series, you miss the incredible depth she develops with such care and such masterful misdirection - she has your gut looking HERE, and your intellect blinded - so when the shoe drops and you 'get' what was really going on - the entire picture shifts, and you have to go back and re-read to see what was in front of you ALL ALONG - not many authors can blindside me. This one did - repeatedly, to my crowing delight.

The upshot: I see people rush her work and give up WAY too soon. Why you see such a love/HATE pattern to her reviewers.

I get that 'life's too short' for books that don't click right off the bat - and readers in this crammed world of instant entertainment don't want to waste time - but SOME books (rare!) are complete gems that build to awesome finish, and the baby gets tossed with the bath water by quitting too soon.

Third: her research is beyond stellar - it is scholarly. Her grasp of history is gorgeous and accurate. Read her MacBeth - King Hereafter - it is standalone. Nobody researched the period as she did, and in fact, after a decade of study, she unveiled a new theory about MacBeth - that she COULD HAVE spent another decade verifying and made scholarly history - she debated and finally chose to finish out her contract for the fiction title.

I actually find her mysteries denser and harder to read - due to the double entendres in the language, and the fact she uses certain things from British culture/class jargon, or other areas that it is near impossible for an American of my background to catch on to. Example from Ibiza Surprise:

'...Daddy never had a decent party in his life till old Forsey swanned in and the whole of Cine Citta and Almanach de Gotha poured in after.'

I can hack the colloquial language, but the references? Holy Crap! Outta my depth, time to try to lean on context....I have to be in the right frame of mind to read her stuff. It's not simple.

There are two volumes of The Dorothy Dunnett Companion published that define all her references, and for the historicals, translate the vast depth of the period literary references quoted in foreign languages. I don't own those books - part of the fun was in deciphering those clues in re-reads without the map.

Dunnett (and her husband Alasdair, who helped contribute the poetry so I understand) had a dazzling intellect - and her books are the treasure chest of her life interests. She was Scottish, and educated, she also painted. And sang. Her work reflects that incredible richness. She held back nothing, and damn all to the hindmost - I admire that brand of literate courage. And she told amazing stories.

She has left a legacy of influence: Guy Gavriel Kay for certain, and if you ever read Ellen Kushner, definitely.

I will finish with a incredible anecdote I read on another forum discussion: that a reader who was up to the LAST FEW PAGES of the final book in one of Dunnett's historical series got SO ticked at what appeared to happen on the page - she screamed aloud and TOSSED THE BOOK OUT THE TRAIN WINDOW as it was pulling into the station. A gentleman on the platform picked it up - read the title - and politely handed it back to her saying, "Ma'am, you definitely want to read what happens next, if you don't, you will regret it for the rest of your life."

Few authors can pull a reverse like that - after SO MANY reverses you think you 'get' her game - and make you believe it.

See? I said it would be an educational thread! Full speed ahead, Janny! Now I'm going to go look into that Macbeth book.

Thanks - I actually am more interested in reading Dunnett's historicals now, although historical is not one of my preferred genres, which is the main reason I didn't go for them before. I am in some respects a lazy reader :)

Happy new year, Janny. I too have wondered about Dunnett in the past and didn't know about her mysteries. They sound like something I would enjoy--I don't mind a bit of work in my reading, in fact I prefer it. Thanks for mentioning these. What is the new title of the first one?

#11 jillmwo - I hated school a LOT so 'educational' did not mean fun....I still run like mad from anything that looks pretentious. The passion is all about enjoying the stories.

#12 tardis - not a book or an author to be lazy over - choose the right mood for it. I read the first one when I was on an overseas trip and had that huge tome with me - and NOTHING else to read....was sorta boxed into a corner that way, or I may have abandoned ship...once I reached the last third, and the false presumptions began to unravel, it got Amazing fast....no looking back - one you have this author's game you enjoy getting blindsided, and it's crazy how she pulls the wool over your eyes time and again. Your expectations fall very hard and it's a delight.

#13 Jim53 - the mysteries are VERY short in a brief, sharp style and the depth of information packed into each sentence is huge. The new titles (in order) are:

Rum Affair - touchstone Wrong
Ibiza Surprise
Operation Nassau
Roman Nights
Split Code
Tropical Issue
Moroccan Traffic, I did not get the e version of that one as I own the hardback, then titled Send a Fax to the Kasbah

I believe she died before she finished the entire puzzle - leaves a lot to speculate on.

I probably ought to mention my reading habits - usually I have several titles going at once.

There will be the book I read that stimulates thought and carries great imaginative depth, something that can wow me as a writer - and these are hard to find! I am always searching for more.

I have a book going that is Just A Great Book - not too deep to grasp, but I will definitely select for complexity of character and depth of plot. This sort of book is apt to be displaced by riding or music or if my time is tight. I will choose from any genre except horror.

I have a 'desk book' that is either a re-read OR a story that I am pursuing, often to stay current in the field (fantasy/SF) - it will NOT be a book that grabs me and consumes my attention, there may be lots to admire, but it will stay one that is easy to pick up and put down - pursued in the moment here and there where I want my brain on 'idle' but not carried off track. These titles may take months to finish - the last one I read in this fashion that I posted here in a group read was Lies of Locke Lamora. Often the 'desk book' will be a re-read. My current is The Hobbit - and the marker is a bit past the last quarter.

Every now and then a desk book runs away with me, and it becomes a 'hookey book' - if it sucks me away and I neglect my life for it, it hops the track onto the stellar reads list.

Dunnett: I FORCED myself to finish Game of Kings and HATED it. Her writing is beautiful, but I didn't like not having a clue what the main character is up to. He became, due to his behavior an annoying little turd in my view, even given that you learn what he was up to at the end. Ugh. I like surprises, but I like to get at least a hint inside the head of the main character. I don't necessarily have to understand what they're up to, but I want to understand their feelings about things.

Ok, now this is a thread to follow!

I know nothing of Dorothy Dunnett but to hear that she is an influence on Guy Gavriel Kay has me interested instantly...

Watching this thread. I have a feeling this will contribute to my TBR list.

Janny, you are a treasure. Starred your thread, yes, I have and I hope to keep up with you. I am having a major crisis of To Read Threads or To Not Read Threads. When, or when, will I get my books read. Currently, reading Anna Karénina, The Last Unicorn, and Howl. Now that is variety! I just bought Throne of Jade to carry on with that Naomi Novik series, and Extraordinary Theory of Objects which was an impulse buy. So, you can see how I'm torn. Ah! What a wonderful new year. And oh, my camera is back from the repair shop so I'm wanting to do that, too. Retirement! Really.

#16 Majkia - you are in great company....not everyone likes this author. She plays her game EXTREMELY close to the chest, and won't tip her hand before you THOROUGHLY fall for the mask. It's a long series, and she doesn't give you all the keys until the very end. Yes, it's a long, even arduous journey, and the reprehensible bits, seen from the unreliable narrators perspective DO, and are meant to make the reader thoroughly charged up and angry. And her characters have flaws. This is an engrossing journey, not a coast or a comfort read by any stretch - the reward is superbly hidden until it is sprung, and Nothing you see is without a reason. Expect to be parboiled into a fury while you are made to wait for the shoe to drop, and when the characters misjudge or make mistakes, the consequences are great. I can definitely appreciate the hater's perspective.

Tane (I love Kay, have ever since his first pub;ication) and Narilka, nice to have you here!

Maggie1944 - you should have NO trouble keeping up with me, except that you are reading a whole ton of stuff and have cute, demanding pets. :) I don't go through a book quickly unless it's a fluff read, because there is ALWAYS a new book in creation eating my time, in addition to all the other activities around here (bees, garden, horses, music, band and painting). Anna Karenina - well, hugs on that one, I'll pass! I'd be terrified to crack that one, since the story looks to fall squarely on the futility stack along with A Fine Balance, after which I pitched a low down, gut-punch-worthy fry-the-rug tantrum! HATED that book with a fury that still scorches bone deep for the time-waste wallow in defeatist self-pity.

Yes, it showed how nasty life can be, in India. That bit wasn't what singed me. It was the punch line message of apathy.

If it had not been a library book, (checked out and TORTUOUSLY read only for a neighborhood book club read) that title would have gone straight on the Select HOT List to be passed on to Mallory. (edited to add, this is not a reference to the author, Mallory...some Green Dragoneers here may recognize the innuendo from a past post of mine.)

I am not fond of characters and whole books that immerse us in train-wrecked lives and leave us awash in characters who crumple into senseless lives and who leave us an epitaph of useless tragedy. Conclusion: Futility is not my bag...I'll enjoy seeing what you make of Anna, argue the case for that book as you go, since, my Avoid reaction may be sheer prejudice.

I read The Last Unicorn forever ago. And also the Novik title, way back when it first came out. And your camera, and your dogs - keep the gorgeous pictures coming! I'd be torn, too.

Glad you're doing a journal this year. Really looking forward to following along and may even throw in a comment or two somewhere along the way.

Thanks, Janny. It is always a pleasure to know someone understands. I'm up in the middle of the night because one of the doggie is needing some unusual out in the yard time.

Thanks for the info on Dunnett's mysteries. Naturally my library has none of them, so they're added to my master search list. I'm another GGK fan, looking forward to the new title this spring.

WRT GGK, I stopped reading him because I hated Tigana. Beautifully written, but so bloody depressing, I couldn't finish it. Got about halfway through, or perhaps a bit more. I really don't need depressing.

Are his other works less grim? I did read his Arthurian trilogy and enjoyed that very much.

Maggie - I hope your doggie is better if he's (she;s?) a little off.

Jim53, Kay is on my Buy Instantly in Hardback list so I will be reading A River of Stars the instant, on release, that my schedule permits a day off!

Majkia - Tigana is a love it or hate it kinda book. The theme is backed by Dante, which gives you a clue it is a 'hellish' sort of story - and the 'theme' behind it is how LOW people can fall for the 'good cause' after suffering an annihilating defeat. So it is NOT about the pleasant aspects of human nature at all....it is actually my least favorite story by Kay - not because it is not well done, but because of its hellish connotations.

The people who favor the grit in human nature LIKE this book a lot....or for some other reason it resonates with them. The writing is beautiful if the theme is not. I recently tried to re-read it and failed - because it represented its theme far too well. I just didn't want to go there, again.

Other works of Kay's have a far different flavor - only the language and the complexity of the characters are the same.

For a themal exploration of MYTHIC fantasy that pulls from MANY cultural sources an astonishing list of ancient venues, all rolled into one, (yes, you will see 'familiar' themes from fantasy venues - but they are drawn off the roots of older sources, NOT copies of modern writers as many with knee-jerk opinions may suppose. Mostly those modern writers derived their stuff from these mythoses, and the ancient stories came FIRST, whether they are recognized by modern readers, or not. The numbers of myths Kay ties into the 'tapestry' are awesome and he re-writes some of them in fascinating ways, bringing some familiar story threads to requital and to different resolutions - that trilogy would be his first work, The Fionavar Tapestry beginning with The Summer Tree.

The later titles are sort of 'historic' fantasy where different locales and histories reconfigured as fantasies and the characters are fictional. My total favorite of Kay's work would be Lions of Al-Rassan and it still remains in the top slot for me, mostly due to character engagement. It is a haunting and beautiful read about friendships that cross the lines of culture and conflict.

I would definitely NOT abandon Kay if it was Tigana that turned you off - just because reprehensible actions of the characters were the center point of that one story, and not everything he wrote explores such a grim theme.

Interesting to read your views of GGK's books. I'm a big fan too, of most of them. The Fionavar Tapestry and Lions of Al-Rassan and Tigana are my favourites. I didn't find Tigana to be grim, though. Maybe I could handle such things better back then when it was fresh off the presses ;) I found the themes - the story of a people who could be the only ones to remember their country and history, and the quandry of the woman and the wizard (trying not to give anything away!) - to be close to my heart because they are familiar to me personally. It also helps that I attended a reading of the book by GGK himself. It would be interesting now, after reading your impressions of it, to read it again and see how I feel now. I look forward to his new book.

One of my friends loved Tigana so much he named his daughter that. GGK is on my buy-in-hardcover list, too, and that is a VERY short list. I loved all his books, but the last one, Under Heaven is my current favourite.

I don't have a problem with the grimness of Tigana because so many of the characters are beautifully drawn. I think secondary characters are one of his great strengths. Lions is my favorite, although I hate the way he jerks us around in the epilogue.

Now that we've turned your thread into bright weavings II, I'm conscious that I haven't read any of your books for many years! Time to put one back on the list.

Also following of course!

I not a big GGK fan though - I don't generally like historical fiction, and something just didn't work for me about Tigana. But I mostly liked Under Heaven.

Tigana was my first GGK, prompted by a group read here in the Dragon once upon a time when I first entered the pub. Not my favourite, even so.
The name has always sounded funny to me though as Tigana to me is a former French football (soccer) player.

Ah, this is such a good thread to follow, I'm sorry I can't hang out here more often.

Dog #1, the marvelous Greta Garbo, needed the outdoor time due to her inappropriate ingestion of some candies. She is teaching the cute, but sometimes way too energetic, dog #2 - Benny - how to be mischievous while Karen is away. One, or both, of them climbed up on chairs and rummaged their way through the top of several tables, shelves, etc. in just one hour while I took the great niece home, yesterday. Devil dogs they are! Sometimes.... ETA: Greta is recovering. Both doggies got a bath yesterday.

So, now I am doing a dedicated job of clearing off the flat surfaces in my house, and putting flotsam and jetsam away. More clear, less clutter, and then hopefully - time for reading!

GGK is definitely on my piles of TBR books!

WRT Tigana

****mild spoiler alert*****

I just found it incredibly sad and such a waste for perfectly wonderful persons to throw their lives away by focusing only on revenge, and ignoring the wonders of life.

This is sort of how I feel about the ABC series Revenge but I don't find that one quite so sad.

Brightweavings II - heh - All you Kay enthusiasts are welcome to discuss his works here, I don't get tired of his work a bit. I have read all the books, excepting his short fiction.

Maggie I am glad you doggie is OK....brings to mind a FUNNY story about a friend's little devil dog in a 5th floor walk-up apt who raided the counter and ate BUCKETS of junk food and the owner had to carry it down all those flights when the S hit the Fan... hem, not a pretty picture! Though it had us in stitches, in the recount.

Majkia - I tend to hate revenge themes, too - Kay doesn't repeat that venue. Perhaps try another title.

READING RECOUNT: now that I've finished year end taxes, I got liberated from the dungeon of boredom imposed by the Gov't, Lord How I Hates accounting....I cracked open the current desk read, which is The Hobbit. I had not re-read this since high school, and wow - what a different experience. I think, in this moment, I can vastly forgive P. Jackson for making Gimli into the spot of humor in his filming of LOTR....in The Hobbit, the dwarves so far have done NOTHING. The hobbit is so busy being forced to save their bacon, and the lake man kills Smaug. Helped by a little birdie. What a Deus Ex Machina sort of plot bit. Explains why I was not (then) as enamored of The Hobbit as I became, upon reading LOTR. I am up to the chapter The Gathering of the Clouds.

I have finished up The Hobbit and still digesting the new angle on it. It was never my favorite of Tolkien's works - and I that hasn't changed, on this pass. Things I loved then - the total awesomeness of a story written LIKE a fairy tale but invented by a living writer. Things I liked least: the way the various tensions in the plot resolved through outside agency. I had forgotten all the moralizing. A nice tale for children, still. I enjoyed Tolkien's little drawings (I have the slipcased edition) and the dragon taint on the gold - I missed the epicness of the writing done with such larger than life grandeur, in his style in Lord of the Rings. On re-read, the interest also lay in seeing where the greater story fitted.

Not sure what 'desk book' I will select next, maybe a reread of The Last Unicorn I still own the Ballantine Fantasy Series edition that was pictured in the thread. Long time since I visited that one. I heard on the grapevine at one point that (?) Beagle had written a sequel, but don't know if it ever sold for publication.

I finished off a chapter draft and made reward time also reading another few chapters if Ibiza Surprise which slammed my reading speed back to slow, after The Hobbit. The prose in these mysteries is the densest EVER, not due so much to complexity, though there is that - the visual descriptions are a marvel - but due to the amount of information and reference packed into single sentences. The layers of innuendo leave me dizzy. And lost, as I said, since cultural references are from another country, another 'class' and even, another era. It's like trying to read beautiful writing, a packed plot, and all that, using every single hip bit of jargon and innuendo - with no word and no reference without meaning to the plot.

Sometimes the dizzy bits give you a rest. The description of a drive that developed into a car game of 'chicken' through Ibiza was breathtaking: You really feel the countryside whizzing by the driver's car, and the author's visual acuity: here's a quote from the lead up -

'Small white houses with tiled roofs faced the sun, shining, and the white cylinder of a well, or the tall pylons with their spidery windmills. Olives, with their brown twisted barks, and orange trees in their thin, spindly sticks. Poppies. Fir trees like thick furzy cushions of dense yellow green, and yellow haystacks like mushrooms. A flower like a telegraph pole, with yellow blossoms on each short, outflung arm caught the sun over and over, at the side of the road. I was happy.'

I recently read a self published thriller by Steve Trotter called Resurrected: an Adam Wolf Thriller - one of the rare self pub books that was polished - it had a wonderful quirky humor and also a dense style - dense with wry commentary that just bang on hit the ridiculous, and the view was 'split' between poking fun at both N. American first world countries....it was a lighter read than Dunnett by far, but it had a style so lovely with innuendo you also could not rush. My husband read it too, and loved it, and I recommended it to my neighbors who also are having fun.

Janny, I loved that quote. I can see why your reading speed slowed, so much to catch, and almost spend time actually visualizing... whizzzzzzz

I loved "the white cylinder of a well," - definitely a picture I can put in my mind's eye.

She does have a knack...like this sentence: 'There was nothing to see on his face but a polite smile, eyebrows, and glasses.'

I have to say I really enjoyed my reread of The Last Unicorn. While not an intricate story, some of the wording is absolutely beautiful. I finished it today and still need to write a review for it.

I don't want to hijack Janny's thread too much, so if this question would better be in its own thread let me know and I'll create a new one. I have never read Guy Gavriel Kay and now I'm curious. Tigana doesn't sound like a good starting point for me. Would Lions of Al-Rassan be better? Or something else maybe?

Tigana is probably my favourite book. Ever. I just really resonate with it, though I can understand why it isn't to everyone's taste. Re-reading it also reminds me very strongly of the first time I read it, years ago, and I think that's more than half the reason why I enjoy it so much.

Lions of Al Rassan is also a beautiful book, and may be a more uplifting way in to GGK's work (actually I think uplifting is probably the wrong word here, but I'm not sure what the right word would be?) - but generally if you're interested in detailed, emotional, evocative alternate history stories then give any of his work a try.

I'd start with Kay's first three books - The Summer Tree, The Wandering Fire and The Darkest Road.

Janny, it sounds as though you've been kept tremendously busy in recent weeks! I love all the tidbits you've included about the books you've got going!

I quite agree about the Hobbit. It's both charming and clunky in its structure (not least because every time things get exciting or messy, Bilbo gets knocked out.) I can also see where it would feel like being knocked about a bit to bounce between Dorothy Dunnett and J.R.R. Tolkien!

It's interesting to me that while her King Hereafter is available in a Kindle edition, as are the Game of Kings series titles, the mysteries don't seem to be available in anything except used editions of mass market paperback.

I'd been thinking about starting a GGK thread, and I finally got around to it. Everyone who's interested, please come visit and share your thoughts here!

Jillmwo #40, yes, the Dunnett mysteries are available in e books - I have them on Kindle....had no trouble finding them under the new titles that are listed above. They are also available in paper under those titles, Amazon lists them. Curious why you could not find them.

Yes, I found the complete 'shift' to avoidance when the plot got tense, with The Hobbit - it was certainly reined in to stay a story for little kids - much wonder and a family suitable rating/no nightmares involved. I had not re-read this since I FIRST started Tolkien and it was never my favorite work of his. I was far more taken with Lord of the Rings - and even that was read a long LONG time ago! I have not revisited Middle Earth since my 20s, beyond Children of Hurin which was one long wailing tragedy - with that mythic feel, but not much to laugh or smile over and no rest from the grim.

#37 Narilka, if I revisit Last Unicorn it would be due to the exceptional language, which I scarcely recall/the oversimple story line was completely what stuck in my memory. I have the Ballantine Fantasy edition, still.

Jim and Tardis, I have responded about Kay in that other thread. DEFINITELY anyone who hated Tigana might want to give this writer another shot, unless it was the prose style that was the tripping point. Kay is a stylist, brilliant and poetic - not a minimalist. All his works are lavishly written.

I am still digesting my recent journey through The Hobbit. The startling ways in which the plot shifted gears is what is sticking with me, since.

Points of tension that were built up, then just not followed through keep niggling. Among the biggest was the behavior of the Wood Elves. SPOILERS! They take the dwarfs prisoner, and are generally NOT friendly - Bilbo manages to arrange the escape - yet when he meets them later in the story, they are treated as magnificent and he wants to be closest to the elf king during the battle near the end. WHY?

The behavior of the elves was not in the least magnificent - or ethical. This is the kind of plot switch that happened a lot - where a point of tension might have been, but when the crunch came, it wasn't.

I wondered why Gandalf was shown in disguise in the black cloak.

I wondered why there were so many quirky 'rescues' that avoided the meat of a confrontation, except that it seemed to stay rosy, as a children's tale.

The eagles at the ending were a little more plausible, since, before Smaug's death, they could not have acted freely.

I wondered WHY the Arkenstone was so important to the dwarfs- and when it was recovered, it was just buried in a tomb. It glowed - did it have powers, or was it just a sparkly bauble?

I kept waiting for the shoe to drop and characters who had slighted one another in various ways to REACT with tension - then they didn't.

I recall reading this book with a flashlight under the bedclothes into the wee hours in Jr High and being terrified of the Gollum scenes. Those bits stuck with me, and the attack by the goblins on the wargs. But I'd totally forgotten the bits in Laketown and Dale - and in the revisit, it was 'wow, where is this going?'

In hindsight, the dwarfs' nature - their leaning toward gold and their hanging back from danger until they wanted to be obstinate - was most fleshed out, beside the Hobbit.

It was definitely in LOTR that I became enamored of this author - Gandalf's role and the other characters grabbed my attention and the Elves and Ents were just magical. I found the teensy role given to Elrond in The Hobbit astonishing - I had remembered such a Presence. Again, that impression may have become backfilled by the later books.

One thing certain: if I had started reading this today, beginning at this volume, my take would have been very different.

For one, points of tension that are built and built, then just passed off with a shrug have become an issue for soapbox FURY - lots of very popular authors who have done this trick have contributed to rounding my molars - such whimp sidesteps to Avoid Emotion have my teeth grinding for days. Often, I will lurk and see posts from folks who read stories that have this Glaring Gap, that has me stomping and blowing cinders - like Since When did Character A forgive Character B for THAT! - and I wonder and wonder and wonder - that the shift in tone gets missed - the readers focus must be elsewhere, and how did that happen, or did they never get worked up?

Must be a writer thing.

If a story has character tension and those two characters confront each other, I expect SPARKS or some sort of explosive resolution - if they make up after, fine, but if it just Happened Off Stage, it always leaves me mystified.

I loved Dr. Strange and Mr. Norrell for many reasons, but that was a prime screamer for two characters finished off on a whimper...manners trumped the fact that one of them had totally, completely done his utmost to derail the other protagonist....and worse....yet when the payoff moment came, there was none, another plot bit just leaped to center stage. Left me feeling empty handed at the shoot out, or something.....what I enjoyed most about that title was the sly wit and the satire - it did such a smooth job of poking fun at the society of the times. There were priceless moments - the idea that the British could 'rearrange' a foreign country (literally alter the landscape with magic) and forget to put it back! and the adherence to society's formal manners completely buried with the characters actually felt and thought. The scene with the magic in the cathedral near the start totally blew me away.

The story was so complete in some ways, and so left with dangling threads in others. Does anyone credit the rumor Suzanna Clark is writing a sequel? Perhaps these points will be addressed, yet.

Or I missed the point completely and thought I was reading another story entirely.

I also adored Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Janny, but I was all right with the way it ended and found it oddly satisfying. Yes, Norrell had done his sniveling best to destroy Strange but in the end, after all the drama, they were two of a kind and both understood that, and so their eventual fate together was a twisted sort of happy ending.

If she's writing a sequel, will it take her ten years to write as JS and Mr.N did, I wonder?

43: I had a similar response to my rereading of The Hobbit, noted here:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/130101#3739880

If I'd read The Hobbit first instead of many years after LOTR, I'm not sure I'd have gone on. I came to the Tolkien trilogy when I was in my early twenties, and The Hobbit when I was probably twice that.

I was a great reader of fairy tales as a youngster and went through the Andrew Lang "color" fairy books over and over, as well as many others. LOTR was the most complex, most sustained, and most-like-a-believable-world fairy tale that I'd ever read, and I think that was its enchantment for me in the beginning. The Hobbit, by contrast, didn't seem to have as much going for it as The Princess and the Goblin.

I also reread The Hobbit recently, and what struck me was that it felt as though it had been written down by someone as Tolkien told the story to a child. He directly addresses the reader (listener) all the way through and the tone is that of a parent reading aloud. The discontinuities that you mention, Janny, also made it feel as though it was being made-up spontaneously - that Tolkien misremembered what he'd stated earlier. I don't know much albout Tolkien and his writing process, but I'm quite sure that The hobbit was not written as I've described it, but it really had that feel of an oral telling to me. (And sadly, like you, I found that the tale had lost much of the magic that it had for me as a younger reader.)

>46 Sakerfalcon: Wasn't that the point though? I believe The Hobbit was a story for his children.

>47 Morphidae:: Yes, I knew he'd written it for them, but had forgotten just how strongly it feels as though it is actually being read aloud. I rather enjoyed imagining that he was reading it to me, at least for the first couple of chapters, before my critical self reared up her ugly head ;-)

#44 Marissa Doyle - funny how a read will affect us differently. Norrell tried to destroy Strange's BOOKS! And hoarded knowledge - and other scarier destructive things. The attacks resonated with me (killing another author's book out of jealousy!?!) - so the very mannered final encounter that became either resignation or reconciliation felt unsatisfying.

Maybe an author thing....the fact Strange just waved that direct attack off unmentioned didn't feel authentic.

Even if, perhaps, for the time period it was sterling, I could not relate to the character's lack of response.

For a period bit of writing and some very sly pokes at the culture of the times and the amazingly superficial way people dealt with issues and their cultural blindness, the work is brilliant. I enjoyed the journey more than the conclusion. Where each of us 'sees' the conflict and how we reflect on the characters' decisions forms so much of individual opinion. I get why people love this title. I can't think of it without a stab of pique - one only GETS that sort of reaction when the book was so very good, one facet can rouse a kickback emotion.

#45 Meredy - you have hit it precisely. I read TONS of fairy tales and myths and every collection I could get my hands on. When I found Tolkien, it was like, WOW - this man made up his OWN and did them as NOVELS? Groundbreaking/earth-shattering COOL. I was introduced to the books by my high school reading friends - and they MADE me start with The Hobbit....I wanted to go straight into Fellowship of the Ring in the worst way, and they howled NO! Sat on the book, and only let me check out The Hobbit. I read it overnight in the excitement to get to the 'real meat' - so it was taken as a childrens' tale you HAD to use as a stepping stone to get to the good stuff. This is the first look I've had at it as a work, by itself/not in a rush to see the rest of the story.

There is a LOT of stuff on Tolkien's writing process, and I do own his book of letters - the correspondence is very very interesting and reveals a lot of his thinking as he answers questions from readers and also, gets egged on by his editor to finish. I agree that the Hobbit is a tale told aloud for a small child, and if I recall right, it was written that way, too. I am not a Tolkien expert - just an admirer that branched out and read onward with only the one look back (and that re-read was in my early 20s). At that point, I have avoided any sort of re-read (except for the Silmarillion, read when it came out) because the work was so powerful, I did not want to linger under the influence. There are some things Tolkien did that stand unequaled - many have copied and failed to capture the sweeping, resonant depth/whether or not the antiquated style works for everyone, he created a masterpiece that broke the mold and set the stage for modern fantasy as an individual (not a historic folktale) creation.

In hindsight, The Hobbit is a children's tale that does not flinch from depicting flaws and a mix of non-heroic behavior...it was a far cry from Disney, and the mistakes made by the characters certainly threatened to have a grave price, certainly scared you with dread, even if the story swerved toward a kindly rescue and spared the child the adult experience of reflecting on tragic remorse.

Jillmwo, in retrospect, I think (to find the Dunnett mysteries) I had to go to her author page and THEN click on kindle editions and keep on paging until I found them...

General note: I did more reading with Ibiza Surprise yesterday. The stories in this series are each told from another woman's perspective - a career woman, or one carrying on a career, but with other life interests in mind - all of them with a very strong character viewpoint. This could not have been typical of the times. Each book fills in the greater story of Johnson Johnson (the problem solving protagonist who is a 'portrait painter' with a classy yacht, and lot lot LOT deeper background going on undercover) with exquisite twists and depth. I like the character color brought to each volume, and the zany, understated stubborn courage of the viewpoint characters, each one so VERY different, and each one such a determined individual. Not to mention the incredible tangibility of the local color. Dunnett surely must have visited the places she chose as backdrop for these novels.

Addressing the reader directly, with remarks like "now, you might think..." and "you will be surprised to learn..." and even "Dear Reader..." is typical of children's books of the nineteenth century. You will also find it in novels for adults. I am currently reading a novel by Sir Walter Scott that doesn't shy away from asides to the reader in the author's voice. Dickens did it too, did he not? If I'm not mistaken, there was some of that as late as Thomas Hardy.

This was long before the notion of "author intrusion" became stylistic anathema--and during a time when families read aloud in the evenings and storytelling was still a comfortable fireside art.

So there is nothing singular about Tolkien's choosing that style for his narrative. Modernized versions of older stories may remove those remarks that sound so odd to us, but they were a familiar convention in the authors' own times, or at least in the books that they more than likely read as children. My mother, who was a child in the 1920s, was still reading books that had been published before the turn of the twentieth century, and she passed them on to me. Tolkien was her senior by only three decades.

When I was a very young child and my mother read me such books as The Princess and the Goblin and Pinocchio (the real, long, thick book, untouched by Disney), I was of course entirely unaware of literary conventions, and I was charmed and delighted by the sensation that the author was speaking right to me.

Meredy, #50, yes, it was a common plot device and not out of place for the time. I recall (as a child) loving the Mowgli stories by Rudyard Kipling. They were so findly recalled that when my husband's 11 year old niece visited (her first time away from her parents) and a neighbor casually mentioned a home break-in in front of her - and subsequently terrified her too much to sleep - I sat up in the middle of the night and pulled my tattered, very old copy of All the Mowgli Stories from the shelf to read to her.

And was astonished at the intrusiveness of the author voice and the moralizing that went on for pages....as a kid, I had TOTALLY tuned all that stuff out and only remembered the cool bits, with the animals and the adventures in the jungle. Needless to say, the story bored a smart phone using 11 year old to fidgeting impatience.

I have a lot of stuff on my shelves from my grandmother's library, and other very old books collected from many a trip to a used book shop. I just hadn't looked into anything written in that time period lately. The Woman in White was my most recent venture into a classic like that, and I read that one about 4 years back.

Janny, thanks for the tip on finding Dunnett's mysteries. I'll have to go rummage about some more on Amazon.

Edited to update: That was the necessary trick! I did get to them via her author page and have downloaded the first in the series. Many thanks!

Let me know how you like it!

I have finished Ibiza Surprise, and as always, the action just cranks through the ending bits. There is a chase through the streets, entangled with a religious procession/festival that just brings the entire setting to interactive life, as well as some clever language that just had me in stitches. (penitents in robes and pointy hats, caught goggling, that were described as 'pelicans fighting'.)

Other favorite mystery writers I've enjoyed are Dick Francis and Ngaio Marsh.

Couple of fantasy reads this month: The Priest by Monica La Porta and Crown of Vengeance by Stephen Zimmer. Nothing that'll blow you away: 2 and 3 star reads, respectively.

Disappointing, but not without their bright spots. Oh well. Them's the breaks.

#54 - Sorry to interrupt, but I just love your user name. :o)

Also, I have to mostly agree with those who say that if they read The Hobbit first they might not have read LotR. I didn't read The Hobbit until several years after LotR, and it suffered by the comparison. I was probably too old to appreciate it by that point, being 16 or so. (Both of my children read The Hobbit at a much younger age than I did and loved it.)

I did not read LotR until I was about 21 and I loved it. I knew from some research that The Hobbit had been written for children so I read it for completeness not expecting it to be the same as LotR.

When The Hobbit really came into its own was when I read it at bed time to my three eldest children when I was in my late 30s.

I picked up with Cloud Roads by Martha Wells - and am enjoying it as a lighter read. It is not as textured or deep as her Death of the Necromancer so far, as the characters are not (yet) as deep, but the alien world and the intricacies depicted so far are well presented. I have not read a book by this author that disappointed me, though Necromancer remains the favorite, still, by head and shoulders.

I have finished Cloud Roads and liked it a lot. I'll be going on to the sequel, definitely, though I may space another read in before starting the next.

What I liked: there was plenty of tension, but not cynicism. Characters cared about each other, and when they had disagreements, it was not because they were villainous. The story line was strong and very direct.

The world was absolutely stunning. Old ruins and fascinating traces of a former civilization, that has been over-run with teeming LIFE. Nothing simplistic about the biology here.

Wells has created a fascinating society/colony of creatures with complex forms - and she introduces it through the active story line with seamless finesse.

The writing was concise and I enjoyed even the bits that you just knew were (likely to) turn out this way or that, her characters solved the problems in interesting ways.

A good comfort read, definitely. Best thing I've picked up in quite a while, but as I had said, Wells has never disappointed.

but as I had said, Wells has never disappointed.

Looks like I need to add another author to the need to check out list

I've never read Wells, but I do have Cloud Roads in the TBR mountain. Perhaps I should dig it out.

I think, like others, I need to explore her works. She sounds interesting.

I hope to get to The cloud roads soon. Based on your comments, and previous good experiences with Wells' writing, I think I'm going to enjoy it. Wells has her first YA book coming out later this year, as well as another Raksura book - so much to look forward to!

If any of you do try Martha Wells let me know how you like the books. My very favorite remains Death of the Necromancer for an intricate story that develops beautifully - with complex characters and an intricate setting that feels SO TANGIBLE you can walk in it. It was satisfying on all counts, and even survived a re-read a decade later with flying colors.

#62 Sakerfalcon - I generally avoid YA, not because it isn't good, but because it doesn't engage me deeply enough. I get bored with the teen angst and the 'first look at romance' pretty fast - and while some of them had fascinating premises - Abhorsen being one - they just were developed too shallowly to grab hold. The Do Stuff with little repercussions on deeper levels - I just crave a lot more on my plate than most YA delivers. So while I love this author, I will likely not seek out her YA.

If you liked Wells' other work, I can't imagine you would not enjoy the Cloud Roads.

I am currently trying another title before reading the sequel, and sure sign I enjoyed a book, it was a tug to pick up a title by a strange author, I was still engaged with the Raksura.

The title I'm trying in between was one of those recommended by someone on the Green Dragon, a title gone out of print/author providing a copy on their website. It is INTERESTING, but so far the main character is such a Stu, I could pull hair and boot a chicken, if I had any around....(if you have NEVER kicked a chicken to express frustration, take note: you usually miss by a mile, but the alarm squawk is MOST entertaining. I once had a landlord, when I rented a carriage house, who had FIFTY OR MORE LOOSE!!!! FOWL and they crapped on cars like you cannot EVER imagine....so yes, I am uselessly expert at aiming kicks at ducks, turkeys and geese as well as roosters that came from fighting cock stock, with SPURS that could create nightmares.)

Back to reading this new book - I am not mentioning what title this is, until I see where it is going/and as a courtesy to a professional peer who is trying to gain readers in a good way (offering a book free). There is NOTHING wrong with the writing or the flow of the story - and part of what is going on May just be meaningful. The world it takes place in is still developing and the politics are not straightforward; there could be a double blind situation going on. I am too early on in the book to make a judgment call, and will see where it leads to the last page/whether it is an OK filler read, or one that puts this author on my watch list.

Quite often, I will revisit an author who does a decent job that just misses the resonance of mature depth later on and see how they have developed in their career.

{Removed 'cos I'm reading-impaired}

#64 - ???
How does this relate, in any way, to this topic?

Well crap... I'm sorry. I somehow got to the wrong thread. I've removed the message. My apologies!

WillyMammoth - no big deal, you just had me very puzzled!

Finished, the interrim book - interesting enough to finish, but won't be looking up more in that series. Reason: the politics didn't convince, the characters had no depth, and the entire ending swing on a lover's triangle. I don't mind any of those elements if they throw me an emotional curve or surprise, and if there is more characterization in depth - this book didn't.

I went on and read The Serpent Sea to fulfill the urge to read something fun. It did not disappoint - Martha Wells continues in her usual smooth style, defining a world and some unusual characters with odd biology. In fact, she really goes to town with the crazy quilt mix of concepts - the ecology of this planet is fascinating, continuously. The characters are fun and engaging - and the brawling amusing. I put these with the Liaden books as great comfort reads with likeable characters and quick action and fun, offbeat world building. I will certainly go on and buy the sequel.

Next up will be something I can sink teeth into, had my fill of lighter reading for the moment..

I've been a bit slammed, working, and it's also piping season, and also riding and training season, the days getting longer and the weather here idyllic for outdoor pursuits - but have been reading despite the full schedule.

(Hoping my bent humor wasn't TOO twisted - I am a softie with anything living/no hurt chickens - they squawk with alarm at anything at all, which likely inspired Chicken Little in the first place)

I have done a leisurely read of Operation Nassau and again, am in awe of Dunnett's ability to paint a visual setting into a riveting story and her amazing ability to blind side the reader's perception.

I will be attending the International Conference on the Fantastic in March with several peers and that will provide some incentive to catch up on their latest. I may start the latest installments by Stephen R. Donaldson and also, a reread of Transformation by Carol Berg for a group read elsewhere, as I loved the title and in fact the entire series - very original and always, dependable with this author, a great setting and characters that deepens as the series progresses.

Both of these authors have great skill in depicting characters you may not like at first, or who are not what they seem - and as their stories unravel, you either get a huge moment of character epiphany - and they change course - or you see under the exterior and discover a whole other set of motivations - the stories get richer and deeper and more psychologically complex. In common also: neither author ever leaves the story untold - the finishes are spectacular. These are qualities of storytelling genius, and the fact the twists get you so very emotionally immersed - even furious - until the epiphany changes the landscape underfoot (for either the reader OR the character) - I admire books that do this without predictability very much.

I very much enjoyed Carol Berg's Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone. Must look out her other books (sighs and adds to long list...)

Another (newish) fan of Carol Berg here! I have The daemon prism lined up to read in the near future, but will be sorry to see the series come to an end.

YAY! Sometimes it frustrates me when a great author like this works for years and takes so long to be discovered....once, I felt the same way about Guy Kay - it took about ten years before his books really got the mention they deserved.

If anyone has not read Carol Berg and want to try her work, she did a lovely stand alone called Song of the Beast - awesome story/totally not predictable. (The beast is a dragon).

There goes my wishlist! ... again... why does it never get shorter? :-)

Janny is a bad woman. Bad, bad, bad... ;)

Actually, you were so RIGHT about Dorothy Dunnett, I'm seriously thinking of picking up something by Carol Berg to see if lightning will strike twice!

I did go look up Internation Conference on the Fantastic and it looks like you will have a blast, based on the authors who will be there as well as the topics being discussed. How big of a meeting is it in terms of registration?

You may well like Carol Berg....the unreliable narrator, the lovely attention to detail, the reverses in the plotting, and a nicely individual style are all trademark...her work is not as densely written (but much more stylistic than many). I feel her very best work for complexity is the Lighthouse duology, Flesh and Spirit and Breath and Bone. She does a superb job all around - with characterization, world building, and a plot that astonishes as it unfolds layer on layer.

Like Dunnett, Berg can create characters who are not readily likeable - then they and the story develop and you get this startling reverse. You can NEVER predict the endings, and the second book (or second half) of the duology is just stunning for its beauty and depth. If you buy the first, get the second as the story is totally incomplete unless you read the whole thing.

The standalone is also a good place to start.

Forgot to add: the International Conference on the Fantastic is very very small and intimate - though given the guest this year, who knows?

Janny, although I do not share your appreciation of and fascination with complex, deeply layered, subtle novels, I do love reading your journal here! Very interesting. I think I have a life-long intellectual laziness which keeps me from really appreciating all that stuff.

And chickens: yes, I remember fondly how noisy and excited they can sound even when you are just walking innocently past. An everyday chuckle.

The outdoors are beginning to call to me, too. I have some work to do out back and the ground is still quite saturated with rain water, but still, there is work to do! And the fresh air is smelling good.

Hope your week is going well!

Don't worry, Karen, I read my share of fluff too! Mostly when traveling - problem is, that sort of book gets quickly forgotten when done, or it hits the wall because after chapter one, the entire story runs along predictable lines. (Don hates it when I watch TV or movies, I tend to spit out the next line of dialogue before it happens, or nail all the plot twists, ditto). I like to be surprised when I read.

I hope your tooth is better today!

I'm on a crime-thriller kick - the second of Steve Trotter's Adam Wolf series. I read the first for a group read elsewhere, and was pleasantly surprised by the cynical wit, the fun insights to the foibles of Canadian/Quebec and US culture. The style can't be read quickly, it's quirky and clever, but I had a lot of fun with it.

It features a 60 year old decorated combat vet who writes YA for teen boys as the hero - and cracks a lot of jokes about aging - if you enjoy seamy, snide, nasty to the n'th degree villains seen by a vigilante out for vengeful justice - I think with a lot of dose of tongue in cheek - it's a fun read with some quirky, unexpected insights. My husband and two friends who tried the first book on my rec enjoyed it - it has the same sort of pungent zap as the Caine books by Mathew Woodring Stover.

Given the dark thread of over the top seamyness in the underbelly of society, for a nice change the hero is NOT alcoholic, or divorced, or a dysfunctional loner, and he has a rather normal and nice relationship with his mother.

The second book is called Heaven's on Hold: An Adam Wolf Thriller - am about halfway through and seeing how he handles the finish this pass. The touchstones don't work/I don't think this author shows on the system, yet.

He's a self-pub maverick, and it is one of the very extreme few I've tried that's been polished enough to reach a standard. The style is too clever to skim, but the books are short and the plot moves extremely quickly.

I don't like huge doses of crime fiction or thrillers, but occasionally do read them when the mood strikes. My dad and I shared a lot of reads when he was alive, it's a nostalgic thing - and this was writer I'd certainly have recommended to him, he'd probably have enjoyed the wit, the extraordinary characterization (Dick Francis was a master at sketching in a vivid character, even a passing one, with a few graphic nuances, and this guy does it incredibly well, too) and the black humor.

I finished Martha Wells' Raksura series with The Siren Depths on Sunday just because I needed a comfort read. Enjoyed it immensely - the entire trilogy was extremely consistent and an excellent standard of storytelling. The world continued to be varied and rich and the imagination involved topnotch.

Not sure what I will look at next. I have some road trips coming.

I needed a road trip read for the ride up to Jacksonville Scottish Games, and picked Megan Whalen Turner's Thief (Bah! ignore the touchstone, it went to the wrong book) on recommendation of - was it Majkia? Perfect little fun read, with plenty of plot twists and a clever protagonist. It seems to be labeled YA - but there is no teen angst whatsoever, and in fact, the age of the protagonist was scarcely mentioned. It was in no way a coming of age story.

Janny, yes it was me who suggested Thief. Glad you found it enjoyable!

Well, I got slammed with a cold when I got back from the games at Jacksonville, and read the other two in that series. I did find the stories a delight, though quite a few of the twists were predictable - only in a good way. I felt the books got better as the series progressed, and the switch to third person in the last one made it stand head and shoulders over the others, in first person.

Made me wish the entire series had been done in third person, it would have been far more effective.

Thanks for recommending these - they were perfect reads for the moment, absorbing enough to take me away when I felt under the weather.

I also re-read The Blue Sword for the same reason - wow, what a difference several decades of experience do make! This story was a favorite, back when, and kept on the comfort reads shelf. I'd not had a look at it in a very long time - and while the suck fairy did not steal the heart from it, I was amazed at how the heroine just simply sailed through all of her challenges. There were greater conflicts at hand, but such a sense of 'security' in that, I never felt the lead character was threatened. What edges there were - wrapped in cotton wool so deep, they were nonexistent. I still love the story. But from this perspective in life, it reads like a very sweet fairy tale.

Wonders if this book would hit with the same impact, if it was written in today's times? I still love Robin McKinley and have kept up with her career all along.

Not sure what I will read, next. If there had been a sequel to the Turner books, it would be that, since certain threads and at least one major conflict were left dangling. I'd have liked to find out what happened when it came to the crunch with the Mede.

I totally agree about The Blue Sword, but as a counterpoint, I would say that it's nice to have some good fantasy fiction with "soft edges" for younger readers to have for themselves. I remember it and the Alanna adventures quite fondly, and re-read them with pleasure even now, even though the challenges are solved a bit too easily for my adult taste.

Yes, I re-read The Blue Sword specifically *because* of the somewhat-silly escapism; also, I am a sucker for horses.

JannyWurts> You mentioned reading the next two stories in The Queen's Thief series. There's a 4th, A Conspiracy of Kings which is excellent as well. Turner has been quoted as saying there are 2 further books to come. I hope it's soon.
Have you read The False Prince? The main character, Sage, reminds me of a young Eugenides. Her 2nd book, The Runaway King is on my TBR list.

#85, RowanTribe, you betcha, it's nice to have some soft edges for younger readers, and when this book came out, having a woman in a structured society DO SOMETHING/be strong enough to save the bacon rather than have a man do it for her was truly wonderful, and what I remembered best. Just hadn't recalled it being Quite so devoid of tension....still fond of the story, it stays firmly on the comfort reads shelf. I only keep books I will re-read and the McKinley titles are all there in hardbound. The only one I have had difficulty finishing is Spindle's End and it was only put aside to complete later.

# 86, Recondite Reader - well, grin. Yes. The horses - I am a sucker for them as well, and THESE are completely imaginary, wishful thinker's fairy tale critters, in a good way. I love horses, ride them, have kept them in my life since I scraped up babysitting and leaf raking money, then bought and supported my own pony at the hair raising age of 13.

A few things rang my yaffle bone till it screamed. HAIR ON FIRE RANT - brace for it :) - Have you EVER ridden an 18 hand horse??? that wasn't a draft breed? Once, I did. It was an Irish thoroughbred, rented from a hunting stable to ride over fences, cross country, for fun. Well. YOU NEED A LADDER! to get on something that big. I don't like using a mounting block, but to get on this fella, I had to lower the stirrup ALL THE WAY to the last hole just to reach the iron with my foot. He was a lovely gentlemanly fellow, but it felt like its gaits were all in slow motion, the stride was so long....not something I'd consider 'nimble' - or that could have been neatly mounted with a lovely little vault from the ground! (It would have been an ass/up ungainly Scramble to make it astride at all!) Size of horse - 18 hands fer lord's sake - is like (ahem) a status brag, the way some macho fools stretch an inch when they measure their - well - never mind, grin. Status/brag factor way more than sensible practicality.... ;)

But that is not what really set me crazy (as in, launched me out of the story on a firecracker) - THIS - said best in a blog post I wrote last year/recopied here to save time (WARNING! spew alert - swallow coffee NOW!!! to spare keyboard, THEN read:

Oh, Lord Save Us, it's happened again:

Yet another author's book does the headbanger....if I see Another Reference to 'kneeing' a horse, I will SCREAM.

This is anatomically impossibly STUPID!!! It's like a disease non-riders get from reading fantasy written by folks who have no clue, and a fallacy that should be mercilessly exposed/stamped out for the ridiculous bit of arm chair dreamer's wishful thinking that it is.

Want proof? just TRY straddling your sofa, or a bench draped with a pillow, and then try to rotate your whole leg at the hip so you can DIG YOUR KNEE into the upholstery - your lower leg will flap out at a dangerous angle like a chicken wing, (subject to being swiped by a tree/fence post or other nearby obstacle, not to mention Scaring Daylights out of your horse, who is a prey animal with wide peripheral vision, and who will BOLT at any startling movement glimpsed behind) Note: you won't be capable of nudging anything with your knee, for the excruciating pain to your hip socket, and you will LIKELY FALL OFF, fruitlessly trying, while your sofa horse laughs its padded butt off - you use your HEELS to nudge a horse forward, fer gods sake!!!! This keeps your full leg in contact with your mount, keeps you astride, doesn't uselessly thump (what?) the saddle, or the horse, too high on the barrel to be effective, and delivers a signal the horse can actually notice.

LOL, if knees made the horse move ahead, WHYEVER are spurs in fact fitted on the HEELS of riding boots???

End Rant. ;)

87 - Donnao - thanks, yes, I found it - Amazon sent me an update, or I would not have realized except that you posted. I've ordered it....the cold is in retreat, now, thank goodness, so I can think straight enough to write. (translation: YA/comfort read kick well over and done for the moment).

I do look forward to reading this one. The characters were thoughtfully drawn and a great deal of fun. If I like the way this series finishes off, I will certainly keep the other two titles in mind for my next 'under the weather' moment.

You make me laugh, Janny, you do! I am no horsewoman but I did a wee bit of riding when I was a preteen. And yes, an 18 hand horse is one big one! And I'd for sure be looking for a four logs tall log fence to use to get on it, no shame at all! Western, you know. No mounting block was ever even seen by me on the Shorthorn beef cattle ranch/wheat farm. Oh, you mean the stump we used when we chopped the chicken's heads off.... that? That is a mounting block?

Any way. I just wanted to say, yes, I know what you mean.

Now about "knee" signals to the horse.... does a squeeze of the knees signal something? Not a dig, I get that is anatomically impossible but just a little nudge?

In any case, you remind me how smart and careful an author must be to write about what they know and even when writing fantasy to not get too far out there....

Fun post, my friend. You gave me a good big smile this evening.

Oh, good, at least somebody caught the humor! (I did wonder :) if sometimes my comments were seen as 'too serious')

Grin - yeah, no fan here of mounting blocks. You need to be able to get on your horse from the GROUND/or you're doomed....lacking a four log high fence. Yes, I know how to 'vault' onto a horse and even mount them bareback/did it all the time/flying dismounts, too. But: You'd need a springboard for 18 hands.....

Knee: doesn't work.....you'd use the calf of your leg, absolutely, yes, or your heel - but to 'knee' a horse, even to nudge it - no. Invite you to try....if you lift your knee off the horse's side to 'nudge' it - heh - fine FINE way to unbalance your seat and get yourself DUMPED at the first lateral move.

You discover pretty quick: you can't use your 'knee' anatomically - only your entire thigh. What happens then:

You can SQUEEZE the horse with your upper legs - but if you try this on only ONE SIDE, and not the other, as in telling the critter to turn - wham - note the incredible mess you make of your balanced seat. In short: good luck!!! It's a surefire recipe for a fast way to INITIATE FALLING OFF.

And from 18 hands, let me say: the THUD! would be Impressive, all right, as you bit the dirt. :)

Yes, indeedy, I've had a THUD or two in my life, and not from 18 hands, either.

Hugs to Recondite Reader - I DO read The Blue Sword as a faery tale comfort read, absolutely including the fabled aspect of the horses. :)

The list of fantasy books that have riders 'knee horses' is so long, so INCREDIBLY prolific, and increasing all the time: I think the ridiculous cliche has gone viral.

I get knocked out of stories by this silliness ALL THE TIME, and if I let it wreck the enjoyment of certain favorite titles, I'd be lost.

I just can't stop myself laughing, every time.....

Fortunately, I have absolutely no first-hand knowledge of horses, so I can keep on loving The Blue Sword in blissful ignorance. :)

I have seen a 5-foot-tall woman vault her way onto a 17-hand horse from the ground, but she could only do it a couple times, and then she needed to find something to stand on. And 18 hands is even bigger!

But Harry has the Gift, that powers her life in many subtle ways...perhaps even assisting with a vault. And she is tall for an Outsider woman, too.

To break away from the sweetness and light sort of tale, I read my second book by Elizabeth Bear - Blood and Iron - about as edgy and pain ridden a view into faerie as I've ever encountered. If I had not had (already) an extensive background knowledge of Child's ballads/old celtic folklore and the more obscure branches of Arthurian legend, I wonder if I'd have been able to keep up with the complexities of the plot.

Bear has taken the tapestry of those varied myths and sprung them in some very modern, offbeat directions. The intellectual twists were what kept me intrigued, amid a wide and varied cast of characters. No warm and fuzzies here, though plenty of originality given the backdrop of established lore used to create this intersection of imaginary worlds.

For anyone inclined to read this, I suggest looking up the lyrics to the oldest versions (and longest!) of the ballads Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and also, Greensleeves - as well as the older tales from celtic myth and also, a grasp of the various types of dark supernatural beings that people them. While Bear does describe what she's writing about, the lore behind the thrust of her story is not well defined in depth, and the quotations from the original ballads are so mixed out of order, it would have added a layer of obtuse confusion IF I had not been thoroughly familiar with the ancient stories, beforehand.

But don't you think that then becomes a flaw in the book, if the writer doesn't try to ensure that the reader can sufficiently pick up the references to the ancient stories to some extent without prior familiarity? If you need to know Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, etc., to "get" the depth of the world before you can properly appreciate Bear's novel, isn't that a problem?

Jillmwo - I felt it could be - that's why I put the notation there...it's pretty hard for me to see for sure whether a reader unfamiliar with Scottish/Irish folklore could make their way, or not, because I do have that background, in depth. Between reading and all the music I've done on stage (I specialized in those ancient ballads, and also have albums and albums of artists who recorded them).

People may have heard Tam Lin as done by Fairport Convention, or Thomas the Rhymer by Steeleye Span - but all the lore in Faerie/and the supernatural creatures aren't featured.

Bear is quite well regarded in the field....her Promethean age series is reviewed favorably in general, so what would I know? For a person who loves this flavor of folklore, the mix of the ancient and the modern may have a very enticing sort of appeal.

I did warn I have somewhat maverick taste - that in formulating my likes and dislikes I look at a whole lot of different angles. While the mix of ancient and modern was the premise of this book, I didn't click with it smoothly as I did not feel it 'added' much intrigue to the elder legends. Not in the same sort of mystical way that, say, Terri Windling's The Wood Wife has - that one created an atmosphere of mystique in modern day Arizona that did evoke an intriguing tapestry that had enough soft edges to the interface to feel creepy and eerie and wonderful all at the same time - that you FELT you were experiencing something other.

I am trying to put my finger on why the work I just read didn't have this - whether it was the raw sex, or the raw blood/the constant tie to the physical or whether it was (?) a failure on my part to engage with the characters. The 'heartless' ones from Faerie were cold, but not mystical (?) and the 'human' ones with hearts - were coldish, and not really THERE emotionally (?) enough to engage me. The surface motives were stated, but I failed to FEEL engaged with them as much as I'd have liked.

The premise and the ideas were splendid - what I lacked was the rapport, and I also wondered (a lot) if it was the way in which the older tales were spun in.

Guy Gavriel Kay's Fionavar Tapestry also pulls in the older folklore and tales - in that case, the emotional passion was up front and in the reader's face and it worked better (for me) - because while the tale IS a tapestry woven of all that older folklore, I didn't feel you HAD to know those stories to engage with the passions and stresses of the story - the characters were faceted enough that their feelings sucked me in/and I wasn't bothered by the lean toward the older tales in the structure.

Might be interesting to hear if anyone else read Blood and Iron and how they felt, if they weren't familiar with ballads and folklore....a new reader would have no problem finding the lyrics to these works online - or in a copy of the collected Child's Ballads by Francis James Childs (Yes, I have the whole collection, upstairs, owned it since College. Also The Ballad Book and several others that specialize in Scottish and Irish and English ballads. Gah, yes, by far, most of my books are not catalogued on here! (Time, she cries, pulling her hair).

ah, yes, Time! She makes our lives so interesting as we choose and dole her out. What shall I do next?

Well, I did read Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner (excellent!) as well as lots of fiction that references Tam Lin...

102 - reconditereder - By all means, then, with that background, give this title a go; curious if you do, to see what you will think - as I also thought Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner was completely superb. I read it when it first came out, and that nice cover art and beautiful hardback was an instant keeper. I loved the story.

I am a sucker for Ellen Kushner. One more thing to add to my wishlist... :-)

Time to catch up this thread....between caring for the shelter cat we adopted (a long, messy tale of parasites of every variety that totally slipped through the cracks, no matter what tests were done) and summer mowing in a wet season bonanza of rain, I've had little free time.

But I did do lots of reading in the cracks, mostly things that were not going to engross me too much, or suck me away from my work.

C. S. Friedman's new trilogy, a very dark thread, as you might expect from this author. Made it difficult for me to engage with the main characters.

Silver an urban fantasy by debut author Rhiannon Held, based on Julie Czerneda's recommendation. Light summer read.

The Summoner by Gail Z. Martin
The Unremembered by Peter Orwellian
both of these were coming of age quests - nothing complicated.

The Stigma by Steven Gould - surprised me, had an interesting originality and a strange future dystopia that was regional to the US southwest.

After the Golden Age by Carrie Vaugn - another surprise, short, light read also, but enjoyable in a wry sort of way, with a really unusual look at comic book style super heros.

Bring Down the Sun by Judith Tarr - another mythological/historical /with romance that seems her special niche.

The most exquisite of the recent reads:

River of Stars by Guy Gavriel Kay - another triumph. I loved this one almost as much as Lions of Al Rassan

Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer - which engaged me from start to finish - the action was nonstop, the characters were well drawn, and the prose sparkled - this is the best (new to me) author I've encountered in quite a long while.

I have on the TBR pile Sherwood Smith's Banner of the Damned and a longer list of books that were not on the self at B&N, but had to be ordered, a few being preorders prior to release date. Not sure which I'll pick up first, when they arrive:

Flame of Sevenwaters
Raven Flight
Shadowfell
Necessity's Child
Trade Secret
Regenesis
The Third God

The books you review seem quite intriguing. I am however sticking to the books I already own for August this year. I am working hard to reduce my holdings so I can comfortably move into a studio sized space in a retirement community. But I do enjoy reading your comments.

The summoner and The unremembered are on my Tbr pile, so perhaps I will move them up a few places. Undemanding reading sounds like what I need at the moment! Banner of the damned is there too, but it will probably require more energy than I have right now.

I hope your new kitty is healthy now and a part of the family.

mmmm.... Must get around to River of Stars.... still on list.... !

I must have joined this group after March, since I hadn't seen it yet. Quite enjoyable, I spent a few days slowly working my way through the posts. I liked the rants! And I had to buy another book because of you: The cloud roads by Martha Wells. Looks highly promising!

106 - Maggie 1944, I tried that, too, and totally blew it. NO willpower, eh?

107, Sakerfalcon, undemanding in every respect.

108 - reconditereader - Lord, I can never sit on a Kay book for long! How do you do it???

109 - zjakkelien - I loved that series a whole lot, very refreshing and fun.

For one book off the list above, my fall off the wagon acquisitions:

Leviathan Wakes
The Tainted City

Ah, summer. Too bad I can't read on the mower....but great for days I have to unplug the computer due to severe thunderstorms/or afternoons when the power goes out.

Janny, I am taking some satisfaction from bloating my wish list! But as my cataract situation causes me to read only in very small bursts, I really need to stop with the acquiring. I am doing good so far, I have bought no books since August 1 although I did but a power cord for my Kindle. Ha!

My word, how life can slide past in a huge blur of busy! Last day of the year, and of course, I'm playing catch up. I have been reading all along - just in spurts between other events, festivals, artshows, concerts, and another unanticipated cat rescue...so before the last candle burns out for 2013, here's the summary of books that hit the spot (I tend not to mention books that did not work for me; they were written for somebody else, end of story/so that other readers can form their own opinions uncolored by mine.

These titles were on my TBR and I've since read them all, except The Third God for the simple reason that I have to get the middle one in the series, and it's currently only available as an e book, and I'd like to complete the series in paper, if I can.

Flame of Sevenwaters
Raven Flight
Shadowfell
Necessity's Child
Trade Secret
Regenesis
The Third God

Flame of Sevenwaters - enjoyed, but I discovered that I'd missed a prequel, which took some of the shine off - have to locate the missing book at some point, though the opening of this one quite spoiled the ending. Juliet Marillier dependably has solidly drawn female characters and a winsome style of storytelling. This one delivered a good story, but it is not my favorite of her lexicon. I read Raven Flight and Shadowfell together, straight on, and even though these were billed as YA, they were brilliant! beautifully done, and I will be looking out for the sequel to this trilogy with eagerness.

Necessity's Child was, as always, a great relaxing and fun comfort read - I've enjoyed this series from the very first book issued by Ballantine - definitely not a read to be overexamined, or taken seriously - there is a lot of merit, here. I have always loved characters with spine, where diligent hard work and merit matter - good counterpoint for all the bitter dystopias that seem to be everywhere one turns. Trade Secret - this was definitely not my favorite of the series; It may have been my mood, but with all the character shifts, and rapid pacing, I had trouble relating to the story - which was not expected, as in every other case, I've found the Liaden books delightful.

Regenesis was unusual for me, in that, mostly I read Cherryh the moment she releases a new title. I held of on this one because it was sequel to Cyteen, and I was (wrongly it turns out) afraid I'd miss something, for having read the first installment so long ago....didn't matter. Within a page or two, I was right back up to speed. Carolyn's titles are always memorable, and that is saying something, since I've read so many of them over the years, and countless other titles in between.

I finished Banner of the Damned at a leisurely pace - as it was a leisurely paced book with a lot of detail. Eventually the story fleshed out, and damned indeed, it ended with a stumper of a poignant moment - cliffhanger? - will there be a sequel, and if so, it could be very interesting where Sherwood Smith takes this....this book is hard to classify, but it has a somewhat classical approach - a LOT of detail, a lot of characterization, a lot of inner dialogue with the rather niaive female protagonist - I found the characters around her to be the driving interest, which, perhaps, is what the author intended....the plot point seemed so OBVIOUS, I wanted to shake the silly girl for being so downright DUMB. Which is perhaps what the author intended.....I do feel Sherwood Smith has not gotten the recognition she deserves for Inda and The Fox in particular - if one is new to her work, I'd not start with Banner, but one of the earlier works.

I read and loved The Tainted City, which is sequel to Courtney Schafer's Whitefire Crossing - a middle book in a trilogy that soundly lived up to its opening salvo. I await the final volume with not a little impatience. She's got a lovely tension going between two very different cultures, some unusual and well drawn characters, a tendency to flip assumptions upside down, and a ferocious grip on how to hold suspense and tension. Recommend this author.

After Schafer, I thought the next book would be a hard act to follow - but it wasn't. I tested the waters with Leviathan Wakes and cursed throughout that I'd done two un-put-downable books back to back.

From there, I tried Blood Song by Anthony Ryan - another new to me author. And a good book - although it took some fairly well trodden tropes for a fantasy, nonetheless it held my interest, which is not always easy to do. Nothing heavy or jaw dropping, just a solidly decent read.

Moved on to Range of Ghosts due to Stefan Raets (Beyond Reality blogger) giving that a glowing review. It was another action/cross cultural fantasy that moved along briskly, the most memorable part of it the worldbuilding. I also read the sequel, which turned into a multiple viewpoint political/conquest story with a whole LOT of squick - it followed in line, pretty much, with the first - I missed the fact the motivations of the different factions were not further defined for a second installment. Elizabeth Bear has a sparkling imagination, and a very visual aspect to her prose, so scenes from this story remain quite vivid in my mind, even after finishing this several weeks ago.

We had a couple of book club reads - Honolulu - which covered some interesting periods in Hawaiian history. Again, here, the backdrop events and the cultural insights were far more moving than the main character. Our book club makes a dinner surrounding the themes of the various titles, and in this case, the cuisine was dazzling!

End of the year, my book in progress is Hilde, again a new to me author, based on Stefan Raets strong review. It's a historical that is extremely long on research - digs right into the grit of day to day living for its time period. I have not gotten far enough into the book, yet, to know if the story is more than a period piece.

Two books I would highlight from my list in 2013:
River of Stars - for an author I've followed since the start that scores high marks for brilliance.
Whitefire Crossing - for a new author in the field I expect to follow for a career to come.

Looking forward to more of your reading thoughts in 2014!

Also, did the cat rescue go well? Will we be treated to photos?

Hi Mrs. Lee, thank you for stopping by! The cat rescue is going very well, and I will have photos updated shortly (we just completed year end taxes, which always makes the first days of January serious business - I hate doing it SO MUCH, I try to tunnel vision to get it OVER WITH.)

Stardust's first pic is here: https://www.facebook.com/JannyWurts
Brynli's I'll have to post up.

I will be starting a 2014 reading topic, too - I'm still stuck on Hilde due to being too busy to read as much as I'd like, and because the neighborhood book club will meet soon, and the title for that is Drinking Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury.

A final note, for fun: I read OVER fifty books last year - probably somewhere in the sixties, just, there were a batch not worth the commentary. I NEVER do numerical challenges - rather read spontaneously, and this is the first year I ran back over the list to actually keep track. I was startled the number was so high, given the crammed schedule, the band, the riding, the bees and garden - all the other outdoor stuff the property requires just for maintanence, and the travel to art shows and the painting. If anybody asks, I don't dance, I don't play golf, and I definitely hardly sleep....that helps!

To be continued in a 2014 topic, soon as I have something to put in there.

I've followed your thread and will continue in 2014, even though I have the sense that our reading lists don't overlap by much.

After my first year of tracking (2012), I too was surprised to see that the titles totaled more than fifty--more than a book a week, and most of them were pretty long books. I like the idea of all those other thoughts, perceptions, and experiences passing through me like an endless flowing river. Reading keeps me from going stale--or, at any rate, from feeling stale.

Janny, that kitty is lovely. Looking forward to lurking on your new thread.

I do think LibraryThing and the threads are very good for encouraging reading. Even with cataract surgery, packing up and selling my house, putting everything in storage, and 14 days in Hawaii, I was able to get 36 books read. Amazing. Three each month, sort of - I did cheat and put a few kids books in there. But I did read them. (-:

>114 JannyWurts: What a lovely cat!

I find that I also have to my reading spontaneous, or it just stops- in 2012, I had an ambitious plan to read 75 number of books I'd already bought that had been sitting around in such and such order and it was going to be great, and I ended up reading only 18 books, less than half of what I did in 2011. Last year I went for a numerical target without any particular rhyme or reason, and it was much better, but I crammed in a lot of reading to make the target at the end of December and I think I'm feeling the burnout from that now- I can't seem to get into anything I pick up.

Perhaps there's such a thing as "reader's block"?

Yes, isn't she? She chases her own tail with a vengeance, too - amazingly long as it is, which doesn't show in that pic.

I can't stand the thought of a 'numerical target' for books read; the very idea makes me cringe inside - no shame about it - everyone is different. But it would make reading like something I had to do, when it is a sheer pleasure, no pressure.

This year I counted in hindsight just as a curiosity.

I find I go into reading 'slumps' when I am shifting what I value - the old intrigues are dry and I am looking (often) for something else - either deeper, lighter, or just plain off the beaten track. I get into them when I pick up hyped books that don't reach expectations. I don't let it bother me - it always passes. Plenty else to do meantime.

118: Perhaps there's such a thing as "reader's block"?
There is. I've heard many people about it, and I've had it myself. Reading some light or something different can help on those occasions. And removing all pressure from what you're reading!

I finished Hild and ended up enjoying it very much.

It's not a quick or light read, but the hyper awareness of the natural world, the superb research reflected in depicting pre-industrial times when people lived much closer to the land - the sheer feel and heft of the way day to day life was depicted in this book - was a joy to behold. There were some rather visceral scenes, laid cheek by jowl with down to earth bucolic sensuousness - this wasn't a style that pulled any punches or idealized the period.

While the first half of the book moved very slowly, and the pace of the plot never became breakneck, the story wound tight as a clock-spring would - little to no tension to very tense indeed.

Definitely a work to remember.

so I guess I have to add Hild to Planet TBR.

Heh - well, maybe. I suggest you look at a sample of the text to make that call - it's a story that focuses on detail like a microscope and leaves a lot to be figured between the lines. It's taken me most of the month to read it, and it helps if you don't mind banging your tongue over welsh or archaic terms and spellings.

The author thinks nothing of using the terms used THEN to describe how day to day tasks were done. So a scene in a dairy is sorta like visiting a museum on period methods. But the captured feel of the moment is stunningly portrayed. I'm not a fan of modern perspective in a historical piece, that sort of complexity is refreshing given how often books and language get dumbed down for mass comprehension.

This book is unique in that respect - I wish more authors took chances like this, it inspires a unique angle of experience.

Hild sounds like it might be one for me, too.

Just so you're ready for a meandering read. The suspense takes a while to come into focus.

My next read will be The Golem and the Jinni, which for me is taking a chance. So many times I'll get swayed into trying something that's 'the going thing' and find it doesn't live up to the hype. But this one was strongly recommended by a friend who tends to share similar taste, it's a group read that is current, and I caught it on sale for 2.99, so it seemed little to lose to give it a whirl.

I'm glad to see your praise for Hild; some of the people in one of my other groups have not been enjoying it at all.

I have The golem and the djinni on Mount Tbr; looking forward to seeing what you think of it.

Sakerfalcon - On Hild - I see why - it's not a read that will reward impatience, and if you have to KNOW or have everything explained all at once, it won't deliver on any sort of timetable. If you like the primal feel of lives tied to seasons, agriculture, animal husbandry, and the sort of livelihood done with the hands - when women not only wove the cloth, but oversaw, even did the day to day work of supporting a household - if you regard that sort of detail the way some people enjoy, say, Edwardian fiction with all it's highly mannered social structures - and you sense the action between the nuances, then the book will work. It can't be hurried.

I consider a book dull when it is predictable, when the tropes fail to surprise . I always finish ones that have this sort of depth and richness, no matter how slowly they develop, you can't see where they are going, exactly. It's a good book to sink into, but that likely will not keep you up past your bedtime. And if you skim, you will miss it entirely, because so much of what draws it taut in the end is deducted from what is shown.

For people who loved Hild, I'd recommend Witch Light by Susan Fletcher - a period look at the massacre of Glencoe. It had a similar sort of intense connection to the land, the seasons, and was one of the most beautiful reads I've ever encountered. These two titles have a similar sense of weight - and in both cases, I did not see the ending ahead of time. Both were told from the perspective of a woman, and a seer - and both seem to stick tight in mind, afterwards.

Janny, is Hild really what you'd call a meandering read, wandering off the track, or is it more like a deliberate pace, unrushed by an impatient reader's expectations? If I can handle Scott and Eliot, I'm not concerned about modern conventions, but I don't want to see useless padding or aimlessness, and I don't want to read a novel whose main job is to show off the author's research.

Hi Meredy, it does meander, but with a purpose - not off track - Hild was a historical figure. Where it Feels like wandering - the author doesn't hold your hand....the complex relationships, kin ties, political maneuvering, war making, petty king's allying with other petty kings, and the rise and fall of power - you get hit with a lot of names and places that do not match today's map. So you travel where Hild travels, learn as she learns - and she starts out as a very young child, born to a politically ambitious and savvy (sometimes dangerously savvy) mother.

The child has NO idea that the maneuvering is survival....(the book opens when her father was poisoned)....and has NO idea of the danger involved in shifting alliances.

It may feel like wandering, but when you look back (at about the halfway point) you realize it is a deliberate pace. Lots of people won't give a book that long.

There are areas where you feel the tension start to build, then it slacks - so it may feel like the book is going nowhere fast....if it ended that way, I'd not have enjoyed it. It's a book and style of story telling that didn't win me quickly, but grew on me tremendously as I went.

Hope that helps.

Witch Light is tighter knit, plot wise, and I was much more familiar with the historical pressures surrounding the massacre of Glencoe. Hild (who was St. Hilda) and her time period are not as well known to me.