Robynettely

One of the women in my band had mentioned she read some of this series, and they are full of sex but a good read nevertheless. I had a feeling the sex made her embarrassed. But then, I suppose she probably reads things that are generally a bit less racy, as she teaches Grade 4. My mother also mentioned she was in some trading thing where the books were being passed around, and I thought to myself, "Hey, I have the first two of those!" She offered to let me in on the trading thing, but I figure if I never read the first two, which had been on my shelf for years, then maybe that was a bad idea. however, I threw it into my bag when we went camping as a 'backup book', and found that I could read about a hundred pages per day. I don't read many bodice-rippers, but this one definitely has some of that. It's the romance novel version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, except set in the Scottish Highlands. I find when I sit down with it, I have no tro...

So, for my current writing project, I was looking at Wikipedia for stories about evil stepmothers, and I came across this line: "More subtly, Piers Anthony depicted the Princess Threnody as being cursed by her stepmother..." I had never thought of Piers Anthony as being subtle.

It probably wasn't fair to read this just after that Tamora Pierce book, because poor Tamora can't compare. DWJ's voice is just so strong, and her story structure is so well thought out. She's one of my writing heroes. When I'm trying to put together a story, I often come back to Chrestomanci, and the way there are so many small crises that all build up into one frenzied conclusion. This book was in the Children's section of the library, and "Sandry's Book" was in the teen section, but I would say "Power of Three" had a much more complex writing style. The sentences are more varied, there are more commas. The book mainly is about three children--two who have talents and one who thinks he doesn't. They live in a society reminiscent of celts in fantasy literature (not real celts). They are in a constant war with the Dorig, another species who live underwater, and are in constant fear of the Giants. Well, the giants turn out to be us, an...

Ah, formula fantasy, my old friend. Tamora Pierce is a name I've come across a lot, but I had never actually read one of her books. So, yesterday when I was at the library and needed an easy excuse to talk to one of the staff, kind of an opening so I could mention casually that I had lost a book ("Magic for Beginners" by Kelly Link, and I didn't get to finish it, and I am disdraught), I picked a Book 1 up. Clearly it wasn't that bad, as I finished it in less than a day. It's one of a series of four books, and in formula fantasy way, it has four main characters. Back in my mis-spent teens and 20s, I apparently had a lot more reading time than I do now, and I read a lot of, you know, DragonLance and Forgotten Realms, and that "Master of the Five Magics" and "The Black Company", Shanarra, David Eddings, and things like that. There's nothing wrong with those books, but a steady diet of that type of fantasy, well, it's kind of like eati...