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dustydigger
Posted 2014-09-07 1:43 PM (#8464 - in reply to #6198)
Subject: Re: The Pick and Mix Challenge.		Quote Reply



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Location: UK		29. Douglas Adams - Life,the Universe and Everything. I was rather disappointed in this third episode of the Hitchhike's Guider series, and am not at all sure it deserved to be published in the Masterwork series, which is very prestigious indeed as a rule. Loved Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but its a case of diminishing returns with the rest of the series. I found the elaborate humour, so fresh and funny in HHG rather lame here. The long elaborate lectures fell a bit flat for me, only mildly amusing, such as linking probability to restaurants. Oh well, at least Arthur Dent learned how to fly, and we saw more of the wondrously named Slartibartfast, award winning creator of Earth's fjords! Not a very poor read, but nothing to set the world on fire either.
30.Laurell K Hamilton. Anothr fun romp in Laurell K Hamilton's fast paced exotic and erotic series about a fae princess who has cruel enemies in high places in the fairy courts. She is still attempting to have a child by one of her guards,while working as a detective,trying to keep out of the sight of enemies,develop her magical talents,help an exiled royal fae to become pregnant and fight against an horrific creature ,The Nameless.Its all go in Merry's world!.
This was a good read,but not as good as the first book,a Kiss of Shadows,possibly because we didnt get to visit the Dark Court,also because there were too many long episodes of bickering and sulks among Merry's lovers,which became a little tedious at times.The riproaring set piece at the end against the Nameless,and the re-emergence of lost magical powers made up for this to some extent,and the plot thickens when Merry and her guards learn a desperate secret about the fairy king,who will do anything to prevent his secret emerging.A fun if trashy read,which intrigues enough to make you want to learn more and be immersed in the glamorous if highly dangerous world of these supernatural characters.Read for the Faerie Mythology challenge.
31.Gene Wolfe - The Shadow of the Torturer. Severian is a lowly apprentice torturer, blessed and burdened with an eidetic memory, who is exlied from the guild of torturers after allowing one of his victims, with whom he has fallen in love, to kill herself to avoid a death by excruciating torture. Armed with his ancient executioner's sword, Terminus Est, he travels through the strange far future Earth, where the sun is slowly dying, to travel to a distant city to be an executioner. But there are all sorts of machinations, Severian for all his purported exact memory and straightforward tale telling, will prove to be an unreliable narrator.
Master storyteller Wolfe in a series of four books, known collectively as The Book of the New Sun weaves together all the classic tropes of the fantasy genre, coming of age, adventure, sex, betrayal, murder, exile, battle, monsters, and mysteries to be solved in a way that is haunting and original. No Tolkien imitator here. And the language is distinctive. Notable throughout the series is Wolfe's use of words which appear perhaps to be invented to describe this world but are mostly old words long fallen into disuse. His use of language helps set the atmosphere, alien but strangely familiar. Descriptions of the world are precise and clear, yet somehow almost hallucinatory. Severian himself is an enigmatic and fascinating characterthough his matter of fact acceptance of his gruesome carreer is disturbing yet logical, since he was brought up to it from a very young age.
30 years ago a friend had read this book, then newly published, and raved over it. I was put off by the title and the fact that the hero - antihero?- had such an unsavoury profession, and declined to read it. Again, it has been sitting on my shelf unread for six months. Now I am wishing I read it all those years ago. Somehow the torture scenes are written in an almost. . . . tactful?. . . way, clinical, remote, not at all sensationalist, and mercifully only a very minor part of the story. Now that I have read it, and know a little of the whole series, I have to wonder how Gene Wolfe had to wait till 2012 to become one of Damon Knight's Grand Masters. And why is he not such a household name as many less gifted authors? Probably because the books may be esoteric, complex,and with difficult language, with an unreliable narrator. However this book is excellent, and I look forward to reading the next three, so that I can then go back and reread with knowledge, and will understand what the shake of the kaleidoscope of the revealed plot ultimately reveals. Looking forward to it! A book well deserving its classic status.
AND it filled no less than six slots in my RYO challenges.Cool!

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