I'm such a loser/determined person, I actually slogged through the second book, Godslayer, as well, looking for some resolution. Well, I got some. On an analytical level, I appreciate some of the things she was shooting for, but, it sure wasn't enjoyable in any way. The Kushiel stuff had parts that were rough, but she paid off in style, and you had to shake your head sometimes at how skillful she is. Banewreaker/Godslayer seemed like a big step backwards for her as a writer, like an earlier work that got pulled out of a footlocker. Cruder and more manipulative somehow.

JohnSweden! How the hell are ya?

More Melusine books coming!!

I thought Banewreaker couldn't decide what it wanted to be. Parts of the world were original and interesting, and the rest was the gimmick of LOTR from the bad guy's view.

Hi Megan! I'm doing fine, thanks. How are things down your way?

The board just ate this long spleen-venting post I wrote on Banewreaker, but I am unbowed. Yeah, Raq, she does this allusion-y to LoTR thing through both books, holding parts up to the light, shining it through a different lens, blah blah. I appreciated the craft of it, but reading the books just made me feel impatient and cranky. Perhaps someone out in the internets liked it and has a perspective on it that would help me like it more. The thing about linking your sympathy (or at least, your attention) to these monumentally horrible people, then hitching you to their inevitable doom spiral totally bugged, eventually. I wanted to see some way serious elvish ass-rendage, but she bailed on me. The smuggest people win. Bah.

Dang it, I was hoping that Banewreaker was gonna be a good anti-Tolkien, so's I could mine it for ideas on how to wrangle my anti-Tolkien outta my head. Guess I'll just hafta use it as a bad example instead.

So, speaking of anti-Tolkien, anybody read Mary Gentle's Grunts? That was a fun one.

anybody read Mary Gentle's Grunts

Yup.

"Pass me another elf, this one's split."

"Pass me another elf, this one's split."

That's Freddie Mercury, isn't it? "Bring me another boy, this one's broke."

Banewreaker was actually not just anti-LOTR, but also anti-Silmarillion. The Silmarils and Luthien and such were also in there. But it wasn't just that; she also had semi-created her own world, with gods with cool names who each created a particular race, and such. Most of my complaints with it were more writing-based: Characters and cultures and places were introduced just to be destroyed, motivations seemed implausible, and frankly it just didn't grip me.

For fantasy writing, Bujold's latest three are my favorites of the moment. Her world is really cool, and each book has a distinct flavour.

I just finished Woken Furies, the third Takeshi Kovacs novel. Better than the last one, and extremely grim. A small quibble, in that he refers to Romanian as Slavic. And an amusing thing: there's a character who goes by the nom de guerre "Vlad Tepes" and it turns out his real name is "Mallory." When I read that part I had just picked up our Vlad Tepes doll from where Mallory had been chewing on it.

That's Freddie Mercury, isn't it? "Bring me another boy, this one's broke."

Considering the way the elf got split, I hope not.

Mary Gentle

She was a fan of Angel, if I remember correctly. She wrote some nice things about Tim on, I wanna say, Usenet.