#6: excessive villain-cam
May. 11th, 2011 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thanateSo, I'm reading this book... well, books to be more precise. Which is to say that on ![[personal profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jazzfish's recommendation, I ordered up Stephen Brust's Agyar from the library system next door, and got a little more than half way through on the strength of good writing and momentum, and haven't quite had the heart to pick it back up again. I think at this point there's only one character I like enough to care what happens to her (well, and I like the ghost, but it doesn't seem likely that anything is going to happen to him, being fairly statically dead and all) and possibly I ought to be going back to jazzfish and asking what I ought to start with from Brust given that I prefer not to read about characters I would hate in real life.
I keep having this discussion withgrauwulf, too; he goes on about how fantastic the Iron Man movies are, and I pointed out that we know someone who acts a bit like Tony whatsisface, and he (grauwulf) can't stand him. I find the real person, not being exaggerated to the point of stereotype, much less appalling. The idea that it would be fun to watch someone, even purely fictional, behaving in exactly the same way that drives one up a wall in real life, completely baffles me. (I only got through the first half-hour of Ghostbusters with someone else sitting there making me watch it, too.)
The other book I'm in the middle of is Daniel Abraham's The Dragon Path, which is the beginning of some giant epic fantasy series, and it's reminding me why I don't commit to these sorts of things very often. I'm reading it because someone described it as being about accounting in a way that's actually interesting (which is true), and it also has sub-themes about truth, and how to deal with having a superpower you're not morally comfortable with. The world is full of legacies of a time when dragons ruled, and sculpted humans into various less-human forms. Unfortunately, of the four rotating POV characters, one I actively dislike (though his wife is fantastic), and another has been put into situations he's increasingly unsuited for since the book began and has made some appallingly poor decisions. The sort of thing that haunt one in the night, having just read about them. But I need to keep reading about these two or lose track of what the rest of the world is doing in relation to the characters I'm interested in. Also, the "dragon's path" of the title refers to large-scale war, so the whole thing is leading up to some manner of the world breaking down into chaos, which I also find disappointing.
(Can anyone think of a sweeping epic fantasy that doesn't involve some sort of either "great battle between good and evil" or global warfare? Inquiring minds would like to read...)
When this gets too irritating, I can always go back to the urban gardening books, which are all newfangled and newly published, and I am very sorry they were not around a decade ago when I was nursing a horde of sickly potted plants through apartment living. Now, they represent mosquito-free gardening options. Then, they would likely have improved the lives of many plants, and possibly the health ofheuchera's and my diets. (But! My purple-podded peas arrived on monday, and I took a chance and put three of them in the ground already. It's been a slow spring; maybe they'll get as far as producing something before the heat kills them off.)
Experimentally cross-posty from dreamwidth. Comments encouraged in either location.
jazzfish's recommendation, I ordered up Stephen Brust's Agyar from the library system next door, and got a little more than half way through on the strength of good writing and momentum, and haven't quite had the heart to pick it back up again. I think at this point there's only one character I like enough to care what happens to her (well, and I like the ghost, but it doesn't seem likely that anything is going to happen to him, being fairly statically dead and all) and possibly I ought to be going back to jazzfish and asking what I ought to start with from Brust given that I prefer not to read about characters I would hate in real life. I keep having this discussion with
grauwulf, too; he goes on about how fantastic the Iron Man movies are, and I pointed out that we know someone who acts a bit like Tony whatsisface, and he (grauwulf) can't stand him. I find the real person, not being exaggerated to the point of stereotype, much less appalling. The idea that it would be fun to watch someone, even purely fictional, behaving in exactly the same way that drives one up a wall in real life, completely baffles me. (I only got through the first half-hour of Ghostbusters with someone else sitting there making me watch it, too.)The other book I'm in the middle of is Daniel Abraham's The Dragon Path, which is the beginning of some giant epic fantasy series, and it's reminding me why I don't commit to these sorts of things very often. I'm reading it because someone described it as being about accounting in a way that's actually interesting (which is true), and it also has sub-themes about truth, and how to deal with having a superpower you're not morally comfortable with. The world is full of legacies of a time when dragons ruled, and sculpted humans into various less-human forms. Unfortunately, of the four rotating POV characters, one I actively dislike (though his wife is fantastic), and another has been put into situations he's increasingly unsuited for since the book began and has made some appallingly poor decisions. The sort of thing that haunt one in the night, having just read about them. But I need to keep reading about these two or lose track of what the rest of the world is doing in relation to the characters I'm interested in. Also, the "dragon's path" of the title refers to large-scale war, so the whole thing is leading up to some manner of the world breaking down into chaos, which I also find disappointing.
(Can anyone think of a sweeping epic fantasy that doesn't involve some sort of either "great battle between good and evil" or global warfare? Inquiring minds would like to read...)
When this gets too irritating, I can always go back to the urban gardening books, which are all newfangled and newly published, and I am very sorry they were not around a decade ago when I was nursing a horde of sickly potted plants through apartment living. Now, they represent mosquito-free gardening options. Then, they would likely have improved the lives of many plants, and possibly the health of
heuchera's and my diets. (But! My purple-podded peas arrived on monday, and I took a chance and put three of them in the ground already. It's been a slow spring; maybe they'll get as far as producing something before the heat kills them off.)Experimentally cross-posty from dreamwidth. Comments encouraged in either location.