Glum

[erastes]

I've just finished reading "A Wild and Wicked Youth" by Ellen Kushner, which is a short story prequel to Swordspoint and I was so disappointed.

Can’t really explain why – perhaps I was expecting too much?  I thought it would be beautiful like Swordspoint, have that aching repression that drew me into that book but it really really didn’t.  As to the title, I didn’t find the young Richard St. Vier wither Wild or Wicked.  I would have been hugely surprised to find him wild and wicked, as the man in Swordspoint was definitely not, and the boy is the father to the man, as they say. Or some idiot said, anyway.

He’s positively DULL, which doesn’t surprise me at all, because he’s dull in Swordspoint. No, wait, don’t splutter at me. He is.  If he’d been alive in this universe and this time he’d have been a physics professor, or a builder of planes – or something – anything where he threw his entire mind and body into his profession to the exclusion of all else.  I can’t imagine how Alec landed him.  Got him drunk and jumped on him, I suppose. This doesn’t make him a less attractive personality, but it’s truthful.  All he does is practice and work.  If it wasn’t for Alec, he wouldn’t even go out and have fun.

So, yeah. A disappointment.  What did you think if you read it?

(Talking of Swordspoint, I’m reviewing it this week at Jessewave’s Blog, I’ll let you have the link when it’s up)

Tributary is moving along – hurrah. There has been snogging today. At the moment it is English restrained mouth closed (but with tongue teasing) snogging but I live in hope. I think I need to write about fiery Spaniards or Italians or something, men with lava in their veins and not ice-water.  It takes the English such a long time to DO anything. *Kicks them*