Bottom of the 2nd

Not much doing in the bottom of the 2^nd – week of December that is. It’s wet n cold and I’m thinking a move back out West is in my future – maybe Vancouver. O, Canada. Of course there would still be cold wet rain!

I do have a rant though – it is about a recently self-published book by Mark Jeffrey (of The Palace) called The Pocket and the Pendant. In my hunt for what’s new in the world of fantasy fiction these days, I stumbled upon this. Now I must add a caveat – I have only read the excerpt available online but that was sufficiently disturbing in and of itself.

Can’t anyone write anymore? Or should I say more precisely, does everyone think they can write now, in this post-Harry Potter world of ours? Fight terror – and learn how to create believable characters, I say. It’s your typical children’s fantasy only the author appears to believe that he has written a text with the ability to appeal to both young and old audiences. But the young and the old bits flow together about as well as the war bits and the peace bits in War and Peace! (i.e., they don’t.) You might just as well read the hard science bits then hand the book off to your nearest bored 10 year old for a tandem read or something.

But perhaps “it would do more justice” (from the first page of P&P, not long after ‘numinous’…and this is a kid’s book?) for me to defer to /.er Michael Fiegel’s rather thorough review of the book (after all, he did read the whole thing) and simply add “ditto”.

Having said all of this though, I should add that if I get bored enough I may read the thing in toto anyway - if only for the concepts that are thrown in amidst the weak characters and the need for an editor. Good ideas do not a good read necessarily make.

So for the moment, I am still trying to finish Galileo’s Daughter – not exactly fantasy or sci-fi or any of that….but still a good read so far and I’ve got a bit o' a sweet spot for the biographical...

And on a completely different note: I wish I knew more British slang…