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I blame jetlag for my fight with the LJ posting interface just now, anyway. On my United flight out to San Francisco, they tried to serve me Diet Coke Light (labelled in Italian). Betrayed! I even popped the first can and took a sip before I realized; the taste brought me right around. I know most people don’t taste much of a difference between the brands/sugar substitutes, but unless it’s Diet Coke with aspartame I’m not drinking it.
Stephen King, Under the Dome: King says he had the idea for this in 1976, which makes sense to me. If he were a character in a Stephen King book, this would be his last book, so far out ahead of his last ten or fifteen that it’s like the very last sequence at the end of the fireworks show; finishing it, something would burst in King's brain and he would go to his reward. On to the plot: One fall morning, a little town in Maine is almost completely cut off from the rest of the world: light, cellphone signals/wireless, and a tiny bit of air can get through, but nothing else. Things go badly very quickly, with human monsters taking terrible advantage of the inexplicable situation and environmental damage piling up. King has the usual cast of characters to root for and to despise—Big Jim Rennie, the Second Selectman and chief monster, is a remarkable creation, easy to hate but also given a several-pages-long sequence explaining why he loves women’s basketball that is as good as anything King has written. Figuring out what caused the Dome turns out to be less significant—less possible--than surviving what the humans trapped inside make of the situation. King is also an exquisite chronicler of the historical American moment, and his use of an illegal meth operation to help drive the plot is a case in point. I think this might be in my list of top five King books; it’s at least top ten, and second of the doorstoppers after It, unless you count The Tommyknockers as one of the doorstoppers.
Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia: More palace intrigue in this sequel, which begins with the Thief of Eddis caught and maimed by the Queen of Attolia. He survives, but he’s traumatized, and Eddis, Attolia and Sounis descend into conflict, to the happiness of the Medes waiting to sweep in and take as much of all three countries as they can. Attolia, her position precarious with her barons restive and her Medean advisor taking ever greater liberties, becomes a fascinating character—to us and to the Thief she nearly destroyed. I quite enjoyed this volume and look forward to the next.
Camille Bacon-Smith, Eye of the Daemon: I ordered this out of curiosity and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
brown_betty’s review, and all I can say is that she is much more charitable than I am! I did not like the lack of setup for the tormented half-demon private investigator and his sort-of demon relatives, because I could not enjoy the manpain without caring about the man, and I found the chapter introductions about the characteristics of daemons and spheres and higher powers to be laughable (that spelling ought to give you an idea). The characters seemed to run around doing rituals and having sex and dreaming nightmares that were reality on another plane of existence and I was just bewildered about why or why I should care. There’s a difference between starting in media res and starting with the emotional dial UP TO ELEVEN, and that difference was not respected here.
Stephen King, Under the Dome: King says he had the idea for this in 1976, which makes sense to me. If he were a character in a Stephen King book, this would be his last book, so far out ahead of his last ten or fifteen that it’s like the very last sequence at the end of the fireworks show; finishing it, something would burst in King's brain and he would go to his reward. On to the plot: One fall morning, a little town in Maine is almost completely cut off from the rest of the world: light, cellphone signals/wireless, and a tiny bit of air can get through, but nothing else. Things go badly very quickly, with human monsters taking terrible advantage of the inexplicable situation and environmental damage piling up. King has the usual cast of characters to root for and to despise—Big Jim Rennie, the Second Selectman and chief monster, is a remarkable creation, easy to hate but also given a several-pages-long sequence explaining why he loves women’s basketball that is as good as anything King has written. Figuring out what caused the Dome turns out to be less significant—less possible--than surviving what the humans trapped inside make of the situation. King is also an exquisite chronicler of the historical American moment, and his use of an illegal meth operation to help drive the plot is a case in point. I think this might be in my list of top five King books; it’s at least top ten, and second of the doorstoppers after It, unless you count The Tommyknockers as one of the doorstoppers.
Megan Whalen Turner, The Queen of Attolia: More palace intrigue in this sequel, which begins with the Thief of Eddis caught and maimed by the Queen of Attolia. He survives, but he’s traumatized, and Eddis, Attolia and Sounis descend into conflict, to the happiness of the Medes waiting to sweep in and take as much of all three countries as they can. Attolia, her position precarious with her barons restive and her Medean advisor taking ever greater liberties, becomes a fascinating character—to us and to the Thief she nearly destroyed. I quite enjoyed this volume and look forward to the next.
Camille Bacon-Smith, Eye of the Daemon: I ordered this out of curiosity and
brown_betty’s review, and all I can say is that she is much more charitable than I am! I did not like the lack of setup for the tormented half-demon private investigator and his sort-of demon relatives, because I could not enjoy the manpain without caring about the man, and I found the chapter introductions about the characteristics of daemons and spheres and higher powers to be laughable (that spelling ought to give you an idea). The characters seemed to run around doing rituals and having sex and dreaming nightmares that were reality on another plane of existence and I was just bewildered about why or why I should care. There’s a difference between starting in media res and starting with the emotional dial UP TO ELEVEN, and that difference was not respected here.