stephbg | Grail Princess Snail Princess

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.