Only less cute. Just the puffy-faced, snuffling, huddled-amidst-crumpled-paper features, the paper being kleenex rather than the crumpled paper balls that iconically signify the trials of literary creation. (tangent: what will be used to signify false starts now that paper is so rarely required for them?)
Yes, I still have the horrid cold. At least today is sunny and clear, unlike the streaming rain of yesterday. Also, last night, after I got up to clean up the cat puke, I dreamt I was on a double-decker bus with Neil Gaiman.
So things balance out, I suppose.
I meant to do a post about things I don't like reading in fantasy: monocultural worlds. But I will use the horrid cold as an excuse to postpone that, and instead refer you to Zoe's excellent post on building multicultural worlds here.
And to the works of the late (and much-missed) Jo Clayton, most especially her three Wild Magic books.
And to the works of Martha Wells, especially City of Bones and Wheel of the Infinite. There's also a moment in The Wizard Hunters where someone from a culture that has no representational art (only pattern making) encounters a trompe l'oeil painting and is fascinated by the idea of painting that looks like real things, which made me-the-reader bounce happily.
And obviously to N. K. Jemisin and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and its sequel The Broken Kingdoms.
And to Alaya Dawn Johnson's books Racing the Dark and The Burning City. Which I want to post a proper review of, when my head contains more braincells than mucus. Short form--Racing the Dark does have some first-novel markers (I don't hate adverbs, but I do notice them) but damn! the world building and the non-generic settings and the heart-wrenching turns of the story and the characters and ... oooh.
And, natch, a pointer to Terri-Lynne DeFino and her first novel Finder, set in a big sprawly fantasy world that (yay!) is not Northern Europe with jumbled place-names.
There are more, but they must wait until the proper thoughtful analytic post. Suggestions welcome....
2 comments:
Thanks for the shout-out! Yay for non-European worlds. :) Though, to be fair, the northern continent is quite southern European in my head--southern and Eastern, actually. ;)
((((((((((((B)))))))))))))
Feel better, love.
(Though I should be miffed at you for adding more titles to my Amazon wishlist!)
More shout-out as I have time to read on :) but gah, deadline approaching - take cover!
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