![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leahbobet(Published in accordance with the Tenets of Book Reporting and the support of Viewers Like You.)
So far this year...
#1 -- M. John Harrison, Nova Swing
#2 -- Barth Anderson, The Patron Saint of Plagues
#3 -- Stephen King, The Waste Lands
#4 -- Stephen King, Wizard and Glass
#5 -- Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
#6 -- Patricia McKillip, The Book of Atrix Wolfe
#7 -- Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
#8 -- Stephen King, Song of Susannah
#9 -- Julia Alvarez, !Yo!
#10 -- Stephen King, The Dark Tower
#11 -- Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange
#12 -- Paul Melko, Singularity's Ring
#13 -- Sarah Prineas, The Magic Thief
#14 -- Sarah Monette, The Bone Key
#15 -- Marie Brennan, Midnight Never Come
#16 -- Michelle West, The Broken Crown
#17 -- Nick Sagan, Edenborn
#18 -- Karl Schroeder, Permanence
Not-#19 -- Joel Shepherd, Crossover
#19 -- Ilona Andrews, Magic Burns
#20 -- Nick Sagan, Everfree
#21 -- Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam, Therefore, Repent!
#22 -- Barth Anderson, The Magician and the Fool
#23 -- Patricia McKillip, The Moon and the Face
#24 -- James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia
#25 -- Caitlin R. Kiernan, Murder of Angels
#26 -- Michael Swanwick, The Dragons of Babel
About an hour ago, I asked![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matociquala, who loved this book, if we could chat about it when I got those last fifty pages tucked away, because I wasn't sure what he was about here and my hope was wearing thin. This book wanders. It's a picaresque, episodic and without any strong through-line, except unlike, say, Candide it doesn't have a strong unifying thematic argument to hold it together in that absence. Or so I was thinking before I sat down for the last fifty pages.
The thesis comes in the last fifty pages. It comes in the last five. And the art of this book, the thing that has me on-the-floor impressed right now, is that it was carefully and delicately set up all along, with the left hand while you were watching the right, so when Swanwick flicks that domino it comes down with a BOOM.
I think I burst into tears. Good tears. Boom.
I wanna learn how to do that.
I may write a short essay on this one later, something rife with spoilerdragons. But for now I don't really want to spoil this one. Go and read. Then we talk about it.
So far this year...
#1 -- M. John Harrison, Nova Swing
#2 -- Barth Anderson, The Patron Saint of Plagues
#3 -- Stephen King, The Waste Lands
#4 -- Stephen King, Wizard and Glass
#5 -- Margaret Atwood, The Penelopiad
#6 -- Patricia McKillip, The Book of Atrix Wolfe
#7 -- Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
#8 -- Stephen King, Song of Susannah
#9 -- Julia Alvarez, !Yo!
#10 -- Stephen King, The Dark Tower
#11 -- Melissa Marr, Ink Exchange
#12 -- Paul Melko, Singularity's Ring
#13 -- Sarah Prineas, The Magic Thief
#14 -- Sarah Monette, The Bone Key
#15 -- Marie Brennan, Midnight Never Come
#16 -- Michelle West, The Broken Crown
#17 -- Nick Sagan, Edenborn
#18 -- Karl Schroeder, Permanence
Not-#19 -- Joel Shepherd, Crossover
#19 -- Ilona Andrews, Magic Burns
#20 -- Nick Sagan, Everfree
#21 -- Jim Munroe and Salgood Sam, Therefore, Repent!
#22 -- Barth Anderson, The Magician and the Fool
#23 -- Patricia McKillip, The Moon and the Face
#24 -- James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia
#25 -- Caitlin R. Kiernan, Murder of Angels
#26 -- Michael Swanwick, The Dragons of Babel
About an hour ago, I asked
matociquala, who loved this book, if we could chat about it when I got those last fifty pages tucked away, because I wasn't sure what he was about here and my hope was wearing thin. This book wanders. It's a picaresque, episodic and without any strong through-line, except unlike, say, Candide it doesn't have a strong unifying thematic argument to hold it together in that absence. Or so I was thinking before I sat down for the last fifty pages.The thesis comes in the last fifty pages. It comes in the last five. And the art of this book, the thing that has me on-the-floor impressed right now, is that it was carefully and delicately set up all along, with the left hand while you were watching the right, so when Swanwick flicks that domino it comes down with a BOOM.
I think I burst into tears. Good tears. Boom.
I wanna learn how to do that.
I may write a short essay on this one later, something rife with spoilerdragons. But for now I don't really want to spoil this one. Go and read. Then we talk about it.
