It's the last day of the year, which means absolutely nothing other than a bunch of people agreed the calendar should start around this time of winter. Whole swaths of people have agreed on other times and seasons, so clearly this has no mystical significance.
All that is to say that instead of, I don't know, reflecting on the year or some such nonsense, I spent the day not talking to anyone and listening to audiobooks.
Firestorms
I finished The Hunter by Tana French, and other than a somewhat unrealistic forest fire climax, it was good. (As someone who has gone through a number of fire seasons in California, I'll just say this: if you're close enough to the fire that you have burning embers falling on you and you somehow survive, you're going to spend the next week coughing. Having a wet towel over your mouth isn't going to help much. We've had days where it hurts to breathe and we were 100+ miles from the fire.)
But no really, it was fine. You should read it. The author does amazing work with her characters.
If I Ruled the (Genre Fiction) World
After that, I started The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. I'm nearly halfway through, and I'm enjoying it, but if I'd been the developmental editor, I would have suggested three changes.
(Absolutely conceited of me, I know. This is the point where I put on my "International award winning local author" t-shirt. And then I laugh, because even I can't take myself seriously.)
The book is a cozy fantasy, and there are some points where it really leans on the cozy part. The main character and her library assistant (a sentient spider plant) flee the library that is being sacked by the revolutionaries who have overthrown the emperor. They leave with a bunch of books on magic and end up at her old island home that the former emperor has starved of magic. Things progress.
My complaints:
- In the beginning, the main character loves books and only books. She has no friends (other than the plant assistant), to the point that all the other librarians fled a week before and nobody thought to warn her. I get that loving books makes a character relatable, but if an adult has no friends — and doesn't notice the lack — despite apparently having been brought up in a loving home and possessing social skills, it just feels like the author was too lazy to flesh out the character.
- She eventually starts using the forbidden magic in the books for good things. That's great. But there's absolutely no cost to using the magic. And it almost always works on the first or second try. This character is a librarian, not a trained mage. It just feels too easy to me, but maybe that's what cozy mystery readers want?
- Again with the cozy part — we get extended scenes of the main character learning to do simple chores for the first time. And again, everything works on the first or second try. Also, why does every book showing characters moving into a long-abandoned house have them sweep the floor and call it done? In reality, houses are spiteful piles of rock and wood that are just waiting to disintegrate when you aren't paying attention.
What I'm trying to say is that I would have cut the scenes where the main character sweeps the house and immediately notices how cozy and welcoming it is. Spare me with that nonsense, and show me a scene where the main character sweeps the house and discovers the unfixable water damage and a fire ant nest.
Obligatory Kitten Picture
I'm trying to remember if I finished The Spell Shop. There were parts of it I liked (plants) and pretty much everything else you talked about is spot on. If I did finish it I don't remember the ending...I even overlooked how easy spells were for her. But her lack of knowing how to do anything at her age didn't fly. If she was so isolated from other adults, she'd have to have a better skill set and to be honest I am drawn to hardy, very smart, inventive main characters. I think I wandered off from reading when I was already halfway through. I'm too lazy to go find it on my Kobo and look! Re: Fires. This past June, we had a fire burning less than 10 miles from our house. We were evacuated when it reached less than 2 miles. We were VERY fortunate that the winds mostly blew back towards already burned areas, but one of the days (the day before evac, I think) I went to the near ranch where we did not thankfully have cows at the time. I filled the water tanks (These are huge 300 gallon tanks) because I knew other ranchers might need to evac animals. Or turn them loose and hope. We had already called several ranchers and told them to bring on anything and everything if needed. While I was standing there with the pump running, white ash started falling. The actual air at the time was fine. I could smell smoke, but I don't think I was wearing my mask that day. The day of the evac, the smoke was so bad at our house, we should have had respirators. Even with n95 masks, the air was unbreatheable. I suppose it is marginally possible that hot ash can fly that far without the smoke. I do know it's not a spot I'd want to be standing in!!!
ReplyDeleteThe Spell Shop is an interesting read for me because my first drafts tend to be lacking in tension that pulls the story forward. And parts of this book have exactly that problem. I find it easier to analyze and learn from other books that have the same problems that I often have.
DeleteI sometimes write a scene and have to go back and add tension because I envision the characters first. I can grow an entire character before I know exactly what part that character will play. I think a lot of us write in layers and it doesn't matter which layer goes in first. Obviously you manage to insert quite a bit of tension in your stories before you publish them. I was on the end of my fingernails with Independent Flight. You threw ALL the action and twists into that story! (I loved it.)
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