(no subject)

[seekingferret]

Further misadventures in The Dark Between the Stars. Anderson is narrating a frantic three page evacuation scene on a mining platform on a gas giant, because he doesn't seem to have the attention span for scenes of any longer length. The family evacuating has a two year old son, Rex, who is scooped up by his grandfather, Del, when the evacuation starts. Then, when they clamber aboard their escape ship, Rex's father Patrick passes him to Rex's teenaged sister, Shareen because Patrick needs to pilot the ship. Del is then described as fussing over Shareen, who decides to pass Rex back to Del in order to go and help her father and mother at the helm. Anderson does not describe what this help consists of.

So basically, in the span of three pages, Anderson forgets where the toddler is twice. This book is miserably sloppy.



In Jim Butcher news, I'm nearly finished with book 3 of the Dresden Files, which is the one I quit on a decade ago. It turns out that the secret is to listen to James Marsters read the audiobooks- he is a masterful Harry Dresden, and manages to make what remain pedestrian and awkwardly shaped books into occasionally quite compelling adventures. Still not sure if that's enough to get me through 12 more of them. Possibly if they actually do get better, and possibly if they get better the way SG-1 got better in Season 4- the writing wasn't much improved, but the weight of continuity had somehow accumulated enough that the stories were automatically deeper and richer and more nuanced because of three seasons of context.

Comments

[calledtovienna]

I started reading Dresden Files at book 8 or so, and I think that's actually a necessity. By that point, the weight of the world has accumulated enough to feel interesting, at least to me. There are all sorts of groups, each with complicated internal and external politics, and the characters in each are vivid enough to carry the pulp. (Plus that's the book where Karen Murphy is on vacation with Kincaid, so Dresden spends slightly less time moping over their non-relationship than usual; and I read it to get over a breakup, so I was super biased). I do think that it is totally reasonable to skip ahead.

That said, I really didn't like Skin Game. It takes all the bullshit that was not great in the earlier Dresden books and essentially makes it worse. I can rant about this (and a friend actually did a re-read to compare), but I'll wait until (if) you get that far.

[seekingferret]

I do think that it is totally reasonable to skip ahead.

Ha, if only I were a reasonable person. :P

The books do seem to be getting better... Even though there's a lot of clumsy in Book 3, it's much better than Book 1. And Thomas in particular seems like a refugee from a much better book.