My eyes!!!

[erastes]

No. Not bad porn - but hay fever.  I would be getting hay fever anyway, this time of the year, but 1. There's been no rain for WEEKS (and this is England, so WTF is with that?) and 2. the temperatures are high high high for this time of year - supposed to be 23 degrees today which is Summer temps.  So the spring is weeks early (there are bluebells already) the tree pollen is out and ergo I'm suffering.

I don't take pills until I absolutely have to - and that's the stage when the throat starts to swell and itch.  Honey is a great remedy, but it needs to be local honey so must get some today, there'a a place that produces honey about quarter of a mile from here.

Am off to the library this morning.  I've given up on Iain M Banks' The Algebraist so that's going back unread.  I know that new worlds and universes have to be introduced and the reader needs to know how they work, preferably at the beginning of the book but this sort of thing really pisses me off:

The Archimandrite Luseferous, warrior priest of the Starveling Cult of Leseum9 iv and effective ruler of one hundred and seventeen stellar systems, forty - plus inhabited planets, numerous significant artifical immobile habitats and many hundreds of thousands of civilian capital ships, who was Executive High Admiral of the Shroud Wing Squadron of the Four-Hundred and Sixty Eighth Ambient Fleet (Det.) and who had once been Triumvirate Rotational human/non human Representative for Cluster Eipiphany Five at the Supreme Galactic Assembly in the days before the latest ongong Chaos and the last fading rumbles of the Disconnect Cascade, had some years ago caused the head of his once greatest enemby, the rebel chief Stinausin to be struck from his shoulders, attached without delay to a long term life support mechanism and then hung upside down from the ceiling of his hugely impressive sutdy in the outer wall of Sheer Citadel - with its view over Junch City and Faraby bay towards the hazy vertical slot that was Force Gap - so that the Archimadrite could, when the mood took him, which was fairly frequently, use his old adversary's head as a punchball.

I got further on the book that that, about 100 pages in, but there was so much of this over-dumping I just chucked it down for lack of bloody plot.  It's a shame, because I was quite interested in Luseferous (and it wasn't just because of the fact he appears to be beautifully evil and have a cool name. I hate Sci Fi that puts things like (Det.) in. It's like they are being terribly clever - and if you guess what Det. is before it's explained, if it ever is, you can join the cool club too. And yes, I have no idea what it means.  I guess this means I'm not 'ard.

Ruth Sims (author of the wonderful "The Phoenix") has just made herself an LJ!!!  Go friend her, now!! ruth_sims

Comments

[angrboda]

*reads excerpt*

*blinks, squints*

*tries to read again*

Yes but... what does it mean??? O.o I'd have given up on that too. Mainly because I understood the words, or most of them, but.... O.o How about some visual aids?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I should have done a translation:

"Luseferous was powerful and rather evil."

Much better!

[katjak.livejournal.com]

The funniness of that quote did suffer a bit from the fact that it had to be re-read... Everybody with a tendency to write run-on sentences should read The Autumn of the Patriarch by Garcia Marquez. Or maybe they must never read it?..

It's warm in Finland, too, although I don't think spring is that far ahead of the normal. First flowers this week. Me and my cabinet of medicin are waiting for the birch pollen season to start.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Luseferous really interested me, but not enough to wade through that style of writing, I'm afraid.

Birch pollen! argh!! *itches*

[katjak.livejournal.com]

It doth spring less enjoyable make :(

[sabethea.livejournal.com]

*boggles at Iain M Banks*

Is that seriously all one sentence? *creeps away in fear*

I have to admit only to have read his non-M stuff, and I'm not tempted into his sci-fi by that...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It seriously is, and it's ALL like that...

Throws it back in the library in a tantrum..

[julesjones]

He can write really good sf -- but I had heard Bad Things about The Algebraist... It's in my TBR pile, and on that evidence it's staying there a while longer.

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

Who published that crap? And will they publish my crap, even if it's not quite as badly written?

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I know. I know.

*sporks eyeballs out*

About Banks

[iulia_linnea.livejournal.com]

Is it a kink to wank to one's own verbiage?

Re: About Banks

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I think it just might be....

*G*

[welshbard.livejournal.com]

Someone should submit that to the Bulwer-Lytton contest for worst first sentence of a novel. Though B-L is supposed to be not from actual novels.

My gods! What drivel!