Horn spotting with Peter M. Ball
Oct. 8th, 2009 11:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stephbgI'm not keen on urban fantasy. I'm positively sick to death of lesbian characters*. I number film noir amongst my least favourite film genres. It irritates me when characters I'm supposed to like drink too much. I usually pass on the unicorn snuff porn. So I really shouldn't have liked--or even gone near--the novella Horn by Peter M. Ball.
Well, perhaps liked is a bit strong, but this was certainly a tight and well-written piece of fiction. The hardassery of the unicorns made a nice change from the usual fluffy treatment. Well, not *nice* per se, but interesting. Good no-nonsense integration of fey and urban realities.
Given that this was only novella length, I forgive the characterisations for being a smidge thin, and am confident that with a bit more room to move the author is quite capable of filling in the necessary background and motivations. I wanted more, and that's a good result.
At no point did the dialogue make me want to spit. In fact, I hardly noticed it at all as I was reading. This is a Very Good Thing.
And since the editor![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
girliejones might be reading this (even though it's not a proper review), I am happy to report that the book production values were high, I found no typos to speak of, and the leading and kerning were eminently readable. Good font size too.
So, not my thing in terms of content, but quality work all around and a credit to local small and/or indi press Twelfth Planet.
(*) Although I'll grant that in this case there was some justification, but I didn't know that until after my "gratuitous homosexuality" buttons had been pressed, and once pressed they're hard to unpress.
Well, perhaps liked is a bit strong, but this was certainly a tight and well-written piece of fiction. The hardassery of the unicorns made a nice change from the usual fluffy treatment. Well, not *nice* per se, but interesting. Good no-nonsense integration of fey and urban realities.
Given that this was only novella length, I forgive the characterisations for being a smidge thin, and am confident that with a bit more room to move the author is quite capable of filling in the necessary background and motivations. I wanted more, and that's a good result.
At no point did the dialogue make me want to spit. In fact, I hardly noticed it at all as I was reading. This is a Very Good Thing.
And since the editor
girliejones might be reading this (even though it's not a proper review), I am happy to report that the book production values were high, I found no typos to speak of, and the leading and kerning were eminently readable. Good font size too.So, not my thing in terms of content, but quality work all around and a credit to local small and/or indi press Twelfth Planet.
(*) Although I'll grant that in this case there was some justification, but I didn't know that until after my "gratuitous homosexuality" buttons had been pressed, and once pressed they're hard to unpress.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-08 03:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 08:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 09:51 am (UTC)And I'm scared of you :P
no subject
Date: 2009-10-09 09:53 am (UTC)But yeah, one of the aims with this series is to be the right price point for people to take a risk with new writers or genres or whatever. So I'm glad that was the case here!