Just a quick note

[msagara]

I'm still alive, I have turned in the third CAST novel, and I am -- some 3 days later -- looking at a revision letter. Since I'm accustomed to months between the first event and the second, I'm slightly dazed.

Quickly: I discovered John Terpstra; he's been publishing poetry for a while, but clearly, I haven't been paying attention. A quick thank you to kristenb615 for Carol Ann Duffy as well.

The last two hundred pages of Ilario by Mary Gentle were perfect. Just ... perfect. If you like Guy Kay, it's that kind of perfect ending.

I'm at work. I'm caught up with everything but -- as it turns out -- revisions, and in theory have time to be more or less normal for a bit.

Comments

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Since I don't like Guy Kay's books much, why should I read the new Mary Gentle novel, then?

I found it slow in places leading up to the end, and I think the actual writing qua writing is different -- but there's an emotional texture to the end of the book that has some of that mix of love, duty, and unforeseen consequences. I'm not sure if you'd love it, but I think you'd agree about the ending.

And as you know, the ending of a book/movie/anything can pull the whole work up for me, and if the ending is perfect, all flaws that might otherwise be there -- and to which I'd admit -- are happily forgiven.

[merlinpole.livejournal.com]

I think that there are enough differences between Guy Gavriel Kay's writing and Mary Gentle's writing that not enjoying the former's writing wouldn't stop oone from liking (or liking some of) the latter's writing. The Fionvarr Tapestry I got slightly over 2/3rds of the way through and had I been a book thrower volume 3 would have gone into wallboard; I'd been irritated at some things in the first two volumes, but the third snapped the rubber band of elasticity in reading.

Some of Mary Gentle's novels have defeated me (the series, I think it was hers, with the female warrior in a somewhat alternate world, was something that I bogged down in, for example), others of them I haven't had difficulties getting through. She's a writer with a range of topical matter and content and settings and characters. The Golden Witchbreed was a very different animal than the Chausabon and White Crow stories, for example. (And someday I intend to get my hands on a copy of Scholars and Gentlemen, is that the title? I wasn't looking during the under- and un-employment years... the mortgage and living expenses came first, although I have Jefferson's habit of whenever having money, spending it on books... moderated somewhat over the years with e.g. lack of space and other considerations.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

go see Children of Men (the film), I'd be interested in your reaction.