When we all lived in the forest
  • Home
  • Fantasy Reading
  • Science Fiction Reading
  • Publications
  • Amusements
  • Moth Books

#13: Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey

8/11/2012

0 Comments

 
First, an aside.

I very, very rarely read non-fiction, but I have read two back-to-back just now.  One was for my class – Food Inc. by Peter Pringle about genetically modified organisms, and the other was because I heard the author on BookTV while lazing away in a hotel in Yuma, and was so captivated by him and his book that I immediately purchased it – The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined in the World, by Steven Pinker. 

Oddly enough, they both intersect at the same point: information wants to flow free.  In Food Inc, it was clear that gene-flow, the basic unit of information in life, moves as much as it can, whether we want it to or not; In Angels, shared communication and literature and reasoning bring us out of instinctive and cultural violence.  I am in love with Angels.  I want to give it to everyone I know.

The Better Angels of our Nature is a 700-page tome that I read in a week in a half.   The author flits from history to religion to neurobiology to current events to cognitive psychology to pulp culture to sociology and anthropology, weaving a rug you want to fly on.  The view you get flying through this book is breath-taking.  It will probably be the best book I will read this year.  And am I reading more of his stuff?

Oh, yeah.

I was going to read Black Mountain, Red Moon by Joy Chant, and the dedication seemed auspicious – to a professor in Welsh Aberystwth of all places.  But it was a children’s book, and not a good one either.  I think I am going to bypass children’s books now, except for the Classics, from now on.  (And maybe not even then.)

Kushiel’s Dart was long, too.  It was the author’s first book, 800 pages long, and readable with enjoyably articulated sentences and entertaining imagery in the medieval genre, even though the protagonist, Phaedre, seemed to have no flaws and didn’t seem to learn or grow through her amazing journey (-- as long as you don’t consider as being under the “no flaws clause” that she is a masochistic prostitute).  It was a bit surprising that a book touted as erotica had so many scenes ending with “and everyone knows what happened next.”  The last third of the book wasn’t really that interesting, the ending was wrapped up a little too twee for me, and of course, there was the obligatory hint of the expected sequel.  But give the woman a break: it was a first book!

Lessons: this book was the kind of fantasy genre I usually shy away from – boilerplate magical kingdoms with impossibly beautiful people vying for power – but something made this book lovely to read.  I’m not sure what that was, but I think it was the movement of the story, the ups and downs each chapter took.  It gave a ride.

                                                                More on Pinker's Angels and More on Carey's Masochists!

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Page

    In 2011, I began reading a list of 100 Great Fantasy Novels. I am listing them on this page.

    Me
    ​
    Hi!  I am Nye Joell Hardy.  
    I write science fiction and fantasy.  The science fiction makes my head happy.  The fantasy makes my heart happy.  Although I sell all these things, none are making me rich.  But I'm happy, damn it.  

    Picture

    Archives

    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    April 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012

    Categories

    All
    Atlantis
    Buddhist
    Charles John Cutliffe Wright Hyne
    Christopher Priest
    Cthulhu
    Dean Koontz
    Diana Wynn Jones
    Dylan Thomas
    Emma Bull
    Fantasy
    Forgotten Books
    Gene Wolfe
    Hindu
    Howl's Moving Castle
    H.P. Lovecraft
    Jan Lars Jensen
    John Crowley
    Lovecraft
    N.K. Jemisin
    Odd Apocalypse
    Odd Thomas
    Oree
    Pterodactyl
    Roger Zelazny
    Rudyard Kipling
    Shere Khan
    Shiny
    Shiva 3000
    Stephen King
    The Broken Kingsoms
    The Dark Tower
    The Drawing Of The Three
    The Gunslinger
    The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
    The Jungle Book
    The Lost Continent
    The Waste Lands
    T.S. Eliot
    Viriconium
    Wales
    Welsh
    Writing
    Writing Lessons

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly