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In the midst of a reading frenzy
Aug. 18th, 2008 09:06 pmI should be working on A&E right now, but instead I just finished up The Skies Discrowned, Tim Powers first novel. It's SF (marginally) and written, interestingly enough, for Harlequin Books short lived SF line. The book is chock full of things that Powers would do again later in his Ashbless books, and it's neat to see the first iteration of some of his themes and tropes. But all told its...not very good.
I find this heartening. There are too many SF/Fantasy authors who use the first successful book to spin off an endless series of sequels and their quality diminishes with each book (Prime Example: Christopher Stashsheff, whose The Warlock In Spite of Himself is a fun, self contained romp of an SF novel that spawned eleventy skillion sequels of exceedingly poor quality). With Powers it's easy to see where and how he gets better. This is a good thing. It means his heart is still in it.
In other notes, my reading of children's books tells me that if I open any business I have to be able to accommodate 55 patrons with an overflow area for 26 more. This is just in case one patron shows up, then two, then three and so on until a group of 10 arrives; Plus having space for the whole alphabet. And how come some animals in kids books are still predators but others aren't?
I find this heartening. There are too many SF/Fantasy authors who use the first successful book to spin off an endless series of sequels and their quality diminishes with each book (Prime Example: Christopher Stashsheff, whose The Warlock In Spite of Himself is a fun, self contained romp of an SF novel that spawned eleventy skillion sequels of exceedingly poor quality). With Powers it's easy to see where and how he gets better. This is a good thing. It means his heart is still in it.
In other notes, my reading of children's books tells me that if I open any business I have to be able to accommodate 55 patrons with an overflow area for 26 more. This is just in case one patron shows up, then two, then three and so on until a group of 10 arrives; Plus having space for the whole alphabet. And how come some animals in kids books are still predators but others aren't?
