Well I finished A Sunburned Country and it was good, almost as good as A Walk in the Woods. Sadly Akunin's Winter Queen was decidedly so-so. Nice writing, but the plot direction was glaringly obvious and the characters not quite interesting enough to get excited about. The main character does have the advantage of not being a grizzled vet of the police or military with drinking/relationship problems who has a best pal with a propensity to and skill in mayhem who is always there for the deus-ex-machina. Not being stereotypical is not quite enough.
Still it is the first mystery in a series. These series are a conundrum. The early ones are generally not so good, but the books improve with time. The trouble is, it is very hard to tell where to start. Since these books comprise a very long narrative arc, jumping in too late can spoil earlier books. Authors like James Lee Burke have a bad habit of describing the ends of previous books in follow-on ones. My general take is to start early and slog through the mediocre to get to the good. This doesn't scale very well with people like Ian Rankin who have a million books. So I need a new strategy.
Now that I have really sold the Winter Queen, I'm sure everyone wants it. If anyone does, let me know.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Done well is so much fucking better
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2 comments:
I think I just saw Hobbes with a TV and and armload of Nikes slogging down Bourbon Street:
"Hereby it is manifest that during the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.
. . .
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Leviathan, ch. XIII.
"I need this beer to feed my family!". . .
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10908301723/print
-nbk
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