Grail Princess Snail Princess

[stephbg]

Finished Gene of Isis (Traci Harding) today, and I stick with my earlier assessment that it's much better than the Ancient Future trilogy, but suffers from the odd historically inappropriate bit of dialog. Surely that's what editors are for? Isn't it their job to spot that "Woo Hoo!" was not an appropriate 19th century expression?


It also made for an interesting contrast with The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown), being concerned with much the same grail princess "history" *cough*. I've gotta say, TH handled the exposition better (by quoting chapter-length chunks of "journals") than DB, who scattered mini-lectures throughout the laughable dialog.

On the subject of mass media, some time ago I read Matthew Flinders' Cat (Bryce Courtney) after receiving it as a Christmas present (I once saw an interview in which BC said he didn't write books, he "made Christmas presents"). Husband and I have a fondness for Trim, Captain Flinders' ship's cat, about which he wrote a long essay, so I was curious enough to read the novel. And hey, it was free.

Ooooh, it was bad. It really reflected the fact the BC writes for 8-10 hours per day come rain or shine, and has a research team chasing down historical detail and background colour. It certainly read like committee-cut-and-paste churn-it-out text.

Which brings me to the startling contrast with genre writers such as Lois McMaster Bujold, Peter F. Hamilton, David Brin, Ian M. Banks, Elizabeth Moon, Nancy Kress, Stephen Dedman etc etc etc. The quality of the writing, the narrative and character building are all so much better than these mass market paperback writers.

I'm sure it's been said before, but it doesn't seem fair.

Comments

[cyps.livejournal.com]

I'm going to start this post by stating that I like Traci Harding.

I finished The Dragon Queens a couple of weeks ago. It's the next one after Gene of Isis. I bought it in April after it came out (and started reading it straight away). Usually I finish her books within a couple of days, but I really struggled through it.

Admittedly, I did get into it in the last quarter or so though.

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

I was actually hoping to hear from you. I was planning to buy The Dragon Queens today but I might give it a miss unless I spot it second hand. Is it very different to Gene of Isis?

[cyps.livejournal.com]

I'm not very good at writing reviews, so I think the best way for me to explain this is to relate it to the tAF series (all six of them) so then you can decide if you'll like it. :)

I really enjoyed The Ancient Future. I read it sometime after it had first been published and I enjoyed it so much I read all the other books that had released (which was all of them except The Cosmic Logos).

And, I enjoyed all the books up to The Cosmic Logos. Which I didn't really enjoy. I just felt like I was being beaten over the head by religion.

I enjoyed The Gene of Isis because it reminded my of The Ancient Future, so I was looking forward to reading The Dragon Queens. Only I found it a bit of a slog to get through because it spent a lot of time explaining the 'theory' behind the Dragon Queens, the bloodlines and religion.

But, when I got towards the end, I found myself finding it harder and harder to put it down because it was more action and a lot less explaining...

Confused now? :)

[cyps.livejournal.com]

Oops, stuffed the HTML! Sorry!

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Happens to everyone :-)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Actually that helps a lot, thanks.

[cyps.livejournal.com]

No probs.

I hesitate to ask... for better or worse? :)

[stephbg.livejournal.com]

Better actually. I'm encouraged by slog and theory :-)