Sunday wtf

[erastes]

1. How gay is Marlon Brando portraying Christian Fletcher in Mutiny on the Bounty?  *peers worriedly at the screen*  Writing historical fiction and slash has completely spoiled me for these old films.

2. I read a book review today.  About a 15 year old girl who suddenly finds out that everything she thought was true is really a lie and that underneath the  clean streets was a world of demons and vampires has the power to fight the darkness....

The reviewer said and I quote: Clare has riffed off the slayers in the Buffyverse rather nicely.

Hmm. are those f's supposed to be p's do you think? And flying motorbikes?  O RLY?  The reviewer calls it "original."  I'm afraid I can't agree.  However I'll reserve judgement until I've actually read the thing.  Perhaps I can nick one from somewhere.

3. James Lear is planning another "Mitch" book.  I'm very happy about this.

4.  I've set up an account at myspace.com.  www.myspace.com/erastesdotcom I don't like it. There are lots of writers over there but why aren't they over here?  It's SO confusing and hard work and I just don't know what I'm doing. I can't work out how to read my flist, I can't work out what the difference between "add friend" and "subscribe" means, I don't know how to set up my profile properly - it's all so bloody complicated!!!!

Comments

[mroctober.livejournal.com]

:) No harm in asking. People like Kelly Link and Libba Bray.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's good. I'm actually impressed that it's made a good impression on other fantasy writers. However, although I've never heard of any of the three people you name, (unsurprising as I don't frequent the fantasy genre at all) I don't take opinions of critics/so-called-experts when deciding what to read. I'll take the advice of my peers (and even that goes wrong when someone I respect mightily recced me Wraethlu and my eyes nearly melted reading it) and friends, which I know that a lot of people do. I will read this book, if I can get hold of a copy (I'm not paying £22 - the UK price - for it) and when I do, I hope I'll give as fair a review of it as I can do.

I think that one shouldn't really spork books such as Dan Brown/Jeffrey Archer/Half Blood Price unless you've read them. All I was commenting on was the originality that the reviewer mentioned, which is obviously not really true, as so many of the themes have been taken from many other sources with little attempt to disguise them - even names, although Kenyon did object to Darkhunter I understand. She's even taken large portions of her own fanfic verbatim, and although that might be legal, watered down like that, it still has been published on the internet.

The book will be successful, I have no doubt of it, and good on her. She's targetted a demographic very well and it's a skill I cam appreciate.

[rwday.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I figured it referred to some group of authors, though my idea of literate or literary fantasy is more John Crowley's Little, Big, Elizabeth Hand, Tim Powers, Hal Duncan's spectacular debut novel, Vellum - that sort of thing. Don't know Bray's work, but I've read some of Kelly Link's short stories and while I can appreciate them as craft, they're not my cuppa.

I suspect that will be the case for City of Bones, as the first chapter reminded me most of Mercedes Lackey's Bedlam's Bard books, which I don't care for. But then, I also don't care much for Holly Black's work - thought Tithe as a retelling of Tam Lin fell well short of both Pamela Dean's version and Pope's Perilous Gard, so I guess it's just a matter of different tastes. I like the genre - Neverwhere and Lisa Goldstein's contemporaries and Finder are among some of my favorite books, just not that particular style and manner of expressing it.