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Writing Voice
Nov. 8th, 2009 03:14 pmBeing voiceless meant a bit of time for reading that I had otherwise been neglected. Time to make a quick note before I try to pry some space on the shelves for them.
The one I have just finished is The City & The City by China Mieville. Damn it was good. Easily his best work yet. A detective story in a pair of superimposed cities. Convincing and believable and yet alien and mysterious. This deserves to win awards.
Thinking of awards as a result of reading a bunch of short story collections. It would be hard to count how many awards all the stories in these four collections have won but it would be a very large number. In one case the collection as a whole won a World Fantasy award too. The collections were The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians by Bradley Denton, Things will Never be the Same by Howard Waldrop, A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti and The Fantasy Writer's Assistant by Jeffrey Ford. You might think one of those collections doesn't quite fit with the others. Don't think that, they belong together. But here is the thing. All these collections come from small scale publishers. All those awards and all the quality and all that enjoyable reading and the big guys aren't interested. I don't blame the big publishers - they are driven by what sells and short story collections don't sell in great numbers. I blame all those people who proudly say "oh I don't read short stories". People are entitled to taste preference, but I don't get the attitude that seems to go with it so often that short stories are somehow lesser things. Where did that come from.
Kaaron Warren has moved from disturbing short stories to disturbing novels. How disturbing. Well I had to take a break in the middle of reading Slights to read something else just to re-establish my equilibrium. It is subtle and powerful stuff for giving your mental cages a good shake.
On a completely different level is The Unscratchables by Anthony O'Neill which is a relentless series of dog and cat puns. A world of cats and dogs who mostly keep to their own worlds but a dog detective and a cat detective have to team up to solve a mystery. Yes it does have a plot and even a message, but what it mostly has is puns. You have to admire the way the author keeps up a steady stream beginning to end, but really...
Greg Bear has also done the two connected worlds thing with City at the End of Time. This novel of two groups connected across trillions(!!) of years is a great concept. It has certainly garnered a lot of critical acclaim which I suspect is because of that concept. Personally it didn't work for me. The idea is fine but the execution seemed scattergun and a bit sloppy. Too much vague hand waving to justify the setup.
And finally a mention of Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M Lerner. I'm betting that Larry didn't write any of it at all. But apropos of my suspicions about major authors farming out work without credit a couple of months back, it is at least good to see Lerner getting credit. It is about the only thing good about the book.
The one I have just finished is The City & The City by China Mieville. Damn it was good. Easily his best work yet. A detective story in a pair of superimposed cities. Convincing and believable and yet alien and mysterious. This deserves to win awards.
Thinking of awards as a result of reading a bunch of short story collections. It would be hard to count how many awards all the stories in these four collections have won but it would be a very large number. In one case the collection as a whole won a World Fantasy award too. The collections were The Calvin Coolidge Home for Dead Comedians by Bradley Denton, Things will Never be the Same by Howard Waldrop, A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti and The Fantasy Writer's Assistant by Jeffrey Ford. You might think one of those collections doesn't quite fit with the others. Don't think that, they belong together. But here is the thing. All these collections come from small scale publishers. All those awards and all the quality and all that enjoyable reading and the big guys aren't interested. I don't blame the big publishers - they are driven by what sells and short story collections don't sell in great numbers. I blame all those people who proudly say "oh I don't read short stories". People are entitled to taste preference, but I don't get the attitude that seems to go with it so often that short stories are somehow lesser things. Where did that come from.
Kaaron Warren has moved from disturbing short stories to disturbing novels. How disturbing. Well I had to take a break in the middle of reading Slights to read something else just to re-establish my equilibrium. It is subtle and powerful stuff for giving your mental cages a good shake.
On a completely different level is The Unscratchables by Anthony O'Neill which is a relentless series of dog and cat puns. A world of cats and dogs who mostly keep to their own worlds but a dog detective and a cat detective have to team up to solve a mystery. Yes it does have a plot and even a message, but what it mostly has is puns. You have to admire the way the author keeps up a steady stream beginning to end, but really...
Greg Bear has also done the two connected worlds thing with City at the End of Time. This novel of two groups connected across trillions(!!) of years is a great concept. It has certainly garnered a lot of critical acclaim which I suspect is because of that concept. Personally it didn't work for me. The idea is fine but the execution seemed scattergun and a bit sloppy. Too much vague hand waving to justify the setup.
And finally a mention of Fleet of Worlds by Larry Niven and Edward M Lerner. I'm betting that Larry didn't write any of it at all. But apropos of my suspicions about major authors farming out work without credit a couple of months back, it is at least good to see Lerner getting credit. It is about the only thing good about the book.