I don't do it much, mostly because most of what I read is ephemeral stuff, and partly because when I do, it comes out sounding like one of my fifth-grade BookReports:
This was a really neat book and I liked it a lot. I liked it because a lot of neat stuff happened in it. The author wrote about stuff that I really liked, and that made it fun to read. I was sorry when the book was over. This was a good book and I think you should read it.
The book is Califia's Daughters; the author is Leigh Richards, aka Laurie R. King. She's got a web site where she lays out all sorts of interesting things about her writings. Turns out she's written some other stuff that I've read and liked.
But not like this. Califia's Daughters is elegant. It's captivating. It's got believable characters. It's got mastiffs. It's got dappled sunlight in a quiet room and people dying, quite surprised. It's got seriously evil people. It's got Heroines -- lots of them -- and a couple of Heroes, too.
It's really a good book, and if I was the kind of person who liked to say Highly Recommended, I would.
I liked it. I think you should read it.
5 comments:
I'll look out for that.
I see you like Science Fiction.
Who are your favourite SF authors?
I don't reall have any. I like novels where systems usually work but sometimes fail. I gravitate to hard science-based novels (which CF most assuredly is not). I'm at work, so I can't go look for which books I kept, but I do recall David Brin's Startide Rising(I really liked the concept of the 'refrigerator laser'), which had a decent sequel, and much of Jerry Pournelle's stuff, at least until he got more interested in talking about society and less about technology. Have to admit, I never really cared if the Ringworld was unstable but I liked reading about the various control systems. Yet I'll also read, and reread, some of the old Star Trek Classic novels, which are certainly not hard science (I can quote passages from Ishmael and My Enemy, My Ally); don't care for most of the new ones but one, Well of Souls, about Rachel Garrett and the Enterprise C, I *really' liked because the technology was strong but secondary; this was not a book where you could blow away the Klingons and then go have lunch.
That prior comment should have said CD, not CF. I'm sure there's a neurolinguistic inference in there, somewhere.
How about Iain M. Banks?
The name was familiar, but I had to look it up. Yes, I read Use of Weapons, and liked it. Don't recall much of it. I seem to think it had a nice layer of technology, but was predominantly about the people. Seem to recall that there was at least one character with a very cold intelligence -- what a description. I could swear I read something else by him, but nothing on his web page rings any bells. Might have been Consider Phlebas, but reading the description doesn't bring anything to mind.
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