I first bought 'Broken Crown' at Jacks 99c store in Manhattan while on a 2 night layover there a few years ago. I am completely addicted to reading (anything from the classics to the cereal box at breakfast if there's no current book) and had forgotten the current book at home. I went back 4 days later on my next layover and bought another copy as a present for my brother in law for his birthday. Then I went looking for the rest of the series.
I shudder to think how long it may have taken me to discover those books if I had not seen that book at Jacks that day.
I want to ask you, please, to continue to allow your readers to exercise their minds. It is perhaps the trait that I most appreciate in your style of writing. "Clarify, clarify, clarify" is for textbooks! Case in point: the new Dune book, Hunters of Dune, clarified where Frank Herbert would have left the reader to work it out (IMHO) and succeeded in being just boring and disappointing.
When I gave that first West book to my brother in law, I told him that the only author I could compare you to was Frank Herbert, in how intricate the storyline was, and how the story stuck in my mind for days after I finished the book. In that sense I can say the same for the Luna books. The pace and language style is more contemporary, but how you weave the story, what keeps me reading when I should be eating or sleeping, remains the same. I used to reread Dune series whenever I ran out of something new to read, now I've added the Sun Sword series. Every reread of Dune I would see some new (to me) sub plot or deduce some new cause for a later event, making it a permanent resident of my bedside bookshelf.
I think most people who've read one series would enjoy the other and those who don't, well, you can't please everyone.
BTW, right after I finished the first West book, my 15 yr old (then) daughter started reading it. Luckily it was a weekend because she literally did not stop until the end. When I had to take it away to MAKE her go to sleep, her argument was that I should understand since I've already read the book! She has subsequently lent the series to some of her friends, all of whom then went out and bought their own copies ( in some cases, initially, because there was a waiting list and after the first book most couldn't wait for the next book to get to them). I find it hard to imagine any fantasy fan finding those books boring. Unless he/she didn't get beyond the first 2 chapters?
I am involved in a program to encourage adolescents and teens to read, I have consistently recommended the Hunter and Sun Sword series to the older teens and recently the Cast series as well and most like those books (both series/worlds) well enough to request a similar "standard" of fantasy writing (not quite in those words, but definitely that meaning).
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2007-04-06 11:55 pm (UTC)I shudder to think how long it may have taken me to discover those books if I had not seen that book at Jacks that day.
I want to ask you, please, to continue to allow your readers to exercise their minds. It is perhaps the trait that I most appreciate in your style of writing. "Clarify, clarify, clarify" is for textbooks! Case in point: the new Dune book, Hunters of Dune, clarified where Frank Herbert would have left the reader to work it out (IMHO) and succeeded in being just boring and disappointing.
When I gave that first West book to my brother in law, I told him that the only author I could compare you to was Frank Herbert, in how intricate the storyline was, and how the story stuck in my mind for days after I finished the book. In that sense I can say the same for the Luna books. The pace and language style is more contemporary, but how you weave the story, what keeps me reading when I should be eating or sleeping, remains the same. I used to reread Dune series whenever I ran out of something new to read, now I've added the Sun Sword series. Every reread of Dune I would see some new (to me) sub plot or deduce some new cause for a later event, making it a permanent resident of my bedside bookshelf.
I think most people who've read one series would enjoy the other and those who don't, well, you can't please everyone.
BTW, right after I finished the first West book, my 15 yr old (then) daughter started reading it. Luckily it was a weekend because she literally did not stop until the end. When I had to take it away to MAKE her go to sleep, her argument was that I should understand since I've already read the book! She has subsequently lent the series to some of her friends, all of whom then went out and bought their own copies ( in some cases, initially, because there was a waiting list and after the first book most couldn't wait for the next book to get to them). I find it hard to imagine any fantasy fan finding those books boring. Unless he/she didn't get beyond the first 2 chapters?
I am involved in a program to encourage adolescents and teens to read, I have consistently recommended the Hunter and Sun Sword series to the older teens and recently the Cast series as well and most like those books (both series/worlds) well enough to request a similar "standard" of fantasy writing (not quite in those words, but definitely that meaning).
I hope some of the above was helpful.