I know I haven’t been particularly good with doing regular updates lately, but one thing I have been doing a lot is visiting Goodreads - a sort of additive site where you can catalog your books in various shelves. For example, if anyone’s interested, mine are read, currently-reading, to-read, i-own-this, made-me-cry, read-more-than-once, and to-reread. My main profile is here.

Basically, in The Cry of the Icemark the thirteen-year-old princess Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield has to fight back the forces of the Polypontian Empire to defend her home. And there are a lot of different battles to be fought and potential allies to be courted, such as werewolves, the vampire king, some giant leopards, the Holly King and the Oak King.

The publisher of this book writes in the introduction, “When I got the manuscript I knew it was the best ‘movie’ I had ever read!” And that’s kind of an interesting way to look of it, because when I read it back in 2005, it seemed, in a way, like some other form of media in disguise. Although my initial feeling was to compare it to a game (like, Blizzard’s Warcraft universe or something).

I think that having a fierce young princess for a main character has been done too much, and unless you can do it better than others have, it’s usually a bad idea. And there’s so much action and so many action scenes that it starts to seem a bit repetitive after a while. But - I don’t know, there are a hundred things I could say are wrong with it, but I did have fun reading it and it’s at least written a lot better than Eragon. I particularly liked the world that the book was set in; it wasn’t really different from your traditional fantasy setting in any perceivable way, but it was done well.

And, okay, I really like description of settings and there was plenty of that here. It’s actually sort of overwritten and pretentious in places (like, “The air was freezing cold, and tiny particles of ice drifted and shimmered in the brilliant sunlight so that they seemed to be journeying through a world of polished crystal.”) but… I still like it.

Breaking Dawn is due out on August 2nd, so it’s time to finish up my reviews of the series so far.

Let’s see. What I said about the writing style in my Twilight review is certainly true here as well. It did seem like there is a slightly increased usage of ‘Said,’ so perhaps the author is learning? Slowly. I may be imagining things.

Eclipse is more or less in keeping with the rest of the series, but I think I’m starting to get tired of the forumla of the books - even more than I already was, that is - and I hated it slightly more than the other two. One of the major themes is the conflict between vampire-Edward and werewolf-Jacob, but I didn’t like either of them and I couldn’t bring myself to care about the final resolution, which was kind of meant to be sad.

It’s been a while since I read the book, though, so I’m just going by memory.

Related Novelish entries:

• Twilight
• New Moon

I like this book quite a lot. I’ve read it twice, and seeing it sitting on my bookshelf, I’m tempted to read it again, even though there are dozens of unread books next to it.

The plot seemed one-dimensional for a lot of the book - it’s like the author is throwing new challenges at the main character just for the sake of needing something for her to do; stuff that isn’t entirely connected to the rest of the plot. But I think the one-demensional plot is actually a good thing, in this case, in a weird way.

And there are some bits that I can’t help but call bad writing. For example:

It took shape as it moved, becoming a large, disgustingly elongated sort of rat. Quicker than any natural rat, it scuttled toward a hole in the wall and escape!

I mean, what the hell? “Disgustingly elongated”? Saying “rat” twice so close together? Using an exclimation point at the end to… add excitement, or something? It’s hard to imagine writing that, and it’s hard to imagine not changing it in the second draft after writing it. And it’s hard to imagine an editor letting it stay.

In another section, there’s an exchange where the dialogue is mewed (by Mogget, a cat), replied, mused, asked, replied, and finally said automatically, in that order.

I don’t know why this book can get away with things that I’d hate in other novels, but it might have something to do with a main character that I actually like, which doesn’t happen all that often. That may also explain why the somewhat simplistic plot works, actually - I’m interested enough in the character that I’m happy to read about her adventures, however unimportant to the overall story they may be.

But Lloyd Alexander and Philip Pullman both liked it, too, and wrote positive blurbs for the back. So I must not be completely crazy.

Well, Brisingr’s coming out in September so I thought I might as well do a quick review of Eragon.

Anyone who’s read some of my previous posts will know that I’m not particularly fond of this book, but I did have fun reading it when I bought a copy several years ago. I even went back to read a couple chapters a second time. I can think of two possible reasons:

a) I enjoy it when a book takes the time to describe the setting of a scene, which Eragon does a lot. And even if the description is not perfectly written, I still enjoy it.

b) I enjoy reading a book that’s so hugely popular and being able to find something I don’t like in almost every paragraph - and knowing I could do better myself without a lot of effort.

And while I do think the writing is mostly awful, I won’t criticize it as much as I might have once. I recently read the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring, and I realized a lot of the things I found weird in Eragon were really an attempt to imitate Tolkien’s style - which isn’t a bad goal, it seems to me, even if it didn’t really work.

The dwarves and elves seem to be heavily inspired by Tolkien also, and I’ve heard people say that the plot is a copy of Star Wars. (And Brom sounded a lot like Yoda in places, funnily enough, in the original self-published edition of the book.)

But maybe the largest problem is that I didn’t like any of the characters. Some characters really captivate you from the beginning, you know? And make you want to learn more about them. And no one in Eragon did. It isn’t wholly about whether or not a character is an arrogant ass, or is someone you can relate to. It’s more… whether they’re interesting. Whether you want to read about them.

This is a fun mystery book set in Paris - it’s well written, it has good characters (including a modern-day town crier), and it’s really quite funny.

The problem? I liked Seeking Whom He May Devour (by the same author) a whole lot more in every one of those areas, which made this feel like a little bit of a letdown.

Still, if you’re into mysteries I would recommend both of them.

Many of Vargas’ novels involve a myth or legend that comes up in modern times, which seems to be a really effective way of adding to the atmosphere regardless of whether the myth or legend turns out to be real. I’ve seen it done by a number of other authors, and even New Moon (a book that could not be more unlike this one) had a little of that going for it.

In the case of Seeking Whom He May Devour, there are a series of sheep attacks in the French mountains, and one very large wolf - or, quite possibly, a werewolf - is the suspected culprit.

I thought the plot was very done well, even though I knew what was going to happen (owing to a friend’s less-than-subtle comment). The characters are developed and unique. The writing is perfect, but it goes beyond being perfect: it’s also quirky.

The thing separating it most from similar books, though, and making it so much more enjoyable to read, is that in addition to everything else I’ve mentioned it makes you laugh. And I’m not talking about one or two scenes - I mean every page.

I’ll wrap up by noting that this is a thriller/mystery - a genre that I don’t usually read but that I’m finding an increasing number of books I like in. It was translated from the original French by David Bellos.

• Click here to read an excerpt

So much of the young adult fiction I’ve seen these days - i.e. Twilight or Eragon, to name two popular examples - is entertaining but so badly written that finding a YA book with good writing is in itself cause for excitement. And that’s a significant part of why I like Murkmere so much.

The story opens with the heroine, Agnes Cotter, traveling to a new job in the gloriously gothic Murkmere Hall. There are no shortages of evil schemes and devious villians to be thwarted at Murkmere, as Agnes soon learns, and she’s far from certain of who to trust.

The organized religion in the book’s alternate-history setting is enormiously prevalent, and, while not done on quite a Pullman-esque scale, Murkmere gets extra points for portrying it in a negative light.

Pacing seemed fast even for a YA novel, and at 344 pages, I wished there was more; if we forgive it that, I can’t think of much else that could have been improved on.

Of note:

• The sequel, Ambergate, was published last year.
• The author’s official website can be found here.

“The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Book 1″
Author: Juliet Marillier
Words: 206,732

I enjoyed Daughter of the Forest, with some reservations.

From the back of the paperback edition:

Lovely Sorcha is the seventh child and only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters. Bereft of a mother, she is comforted by her six brothers who love and protect her. Sorcha is the light in their lives, they are determined that she know only contentment.

The trouble starts when Lord Colum marries the terrible sorceress Oonagh, who proceeds to place him under her spell. Sorcha and her brothers do their best to drive her out, but Oonagh outwits them by turning all six brothers into swans. Sorcha flees to the forest.

The Lady of the Forest tells Sorcha that to undo the spell, she must sew a shirt of Starwort (think a grown-up version of stinging nettle, with thorns) for each of her brothers. She can’t tell anyone about her mission. She also can’t talk. At all. The task is made harder still by numerous complications that eventually take her across the seas, where (in the words of the hardcover jacket text) “Sorcha will have to choose between the life she has always known and a love that comes only once.”

The writing style reminds me a little of Diana Gabaldon’s - or rather, a slightly less experienced Diana Gabaldon who prefers longer paragraphs and decided to make her main character mute for the majority of the book. Note to aspiring novelists: having a character incapable of communication can make for some frustrating situations, and eliminates more or less all dialogue except that which the MC overhears second-hand.

I hesitate to say this, but the writing style also resembles my own when I’m in a National Novel Writing Month “word war” - the kind where you type as fast as physically possible and end up with 600 words in ten minutes. I got the impression that Juliet didn’t spent too much time on painstakingly finding the right words (as tends to be my habit, for better or worse). The book felt like a very, very good second draft, but a second draft all the same – not a tenth.

Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, Wise Man’s Fear) talked in a recent blog post about how thoroughly his book was revised, with examples. Of course, there’s nothing inherently wrong with getting it right the first time - one of my favorite authors, Donna Tartt (The Secret History, The Little Friend) does this. The difference is that it takes her ten years to finish a novel.

But I’m getting really off track here and my review is turning into a discussion of writing techniques.

Out of curiousity, I did a little research on Juliet Marillier’s writing habits. It turns out I was at least partially right:

I generally write one novel a year. Mine are quite long books and involve substantial research, so I will often be researching one novel while writing another and editing a third.

Source: Writer Unboxed interview part 1, Oct. 2006

I don’t do masses of revision - I am not a ‘ten drafts’ kind of writer.

Source: Writer Unboxed interview part 1, Oct. 2006

I worked on Daughter of the Forest for three years, but that was very much part time.

Source: Writer Unboxed interview part 3, Nov. 2006

Still, not every book can be perfect, and Daughter of the Forest came to a more or less satisfying (if slightly predictable) conclusion.