I felt that JS&MN was sort of a mashup of Dickens, Austen, and Pamela Dean; or at least that's what it felt like to me. Much of magical plot is actually told by implication rather than explicitly, which is a very Dean-ish thing to do. Or Patricia McKillip.

I read the entire thing in about four days (I was home sick), and enjoyed it immensely. I did think it dragged a bit, about 3/4 of the way through (the whole Vienna sequence went on a bit too long), but overall I just really liked it. It's very much its own kind of thing: despite all the evident influences, I can't think of anything else it really reminds me of.

If a reader doesn't like Dickens and Austen, though, I suspect they wouldn't it. And maybe even if they did.

If that sounds dry and boring, well, I thought so too, which is why I put off reading it for so long despite the raves from my friends and people I trust

If a reader doesn't like Dickens and Austen, though, I suspect they wouldn't it. And maybe even if they did

Heh. Before reading the sec ond quote, i was about to say "Comparing it to Dickens doesn't make me want to go run and pick it up, even if everyone says it's good!"

The book is too damned long. I'm reading it, and I'm liking it, every page, but I do feel impatient nonetheless. I'm never finishing it at my current rate of consumption--it keeps getting longer as I go.

I read it, was very "eh." I'd re-read it if it were the only book in jail, but I didn't see what all the fuss what about.

Lukewarm, if not chilly.

Anyone read this on scifi in the NYTimes? I was...irked.

He seems absolutely clueless about what he's been reading. It's just occurring now to him that science fiction often has wooden characters in support of a plot only a geek could love? It's hard to take him at all seriously when he includes Cats Cradle among his 10 best list, and calls it:

The perfect, Platonic balance of science and fiction, one that still finds room for merciless satire and a moral that resonates to the present day: that self-destruction is mankind's one true calling.

I love that book, but it has barely a passing acquaintance with science.

Yeah, everyone knows that no current science fiction writers give a damn about character or emotion. t rolls eyes forever

No, those books are called "Literary fiction" now.

Yeah, everyone knows that no current science fiction writers give a damn about character or emotion.

No kidding. He seems like the perfect person to talk about scifi, since he loves it SO MUCH. Or not. Yeesh. I mean, it's one thing to be bitchy about a specific book, but to sweepingly say the whole genre sucks, in your first column (at least I"m assuming first--the front page is all "New SciFi column!")? Um. Way to piss off the people who would be reading you.

yep, I'll go with annoying