imperfectletter

Originally posted in September of 2007 in

fiveforsilver:

108. Old Man's War by John Scalzi (313)
109. The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi (317)

I very much like these books. I would like to reread The Last Colony, the third book in the trilogy, which I've only read once, but I lent it to my sister some months ago and she hasn't returned it yet (hint hint).

110. *Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko (455)

I have seen the movies Night Watch (dubbed) and Day Watch (with subtitles) and I really liked both of them - even the dubbing in the first one didn't bother me after I got used to it, though the subtitles are astonishingly well integrated into the movie, in a way I've never seen before. So, my sister lent me this book, which I believe both movies are based on.

I will have to reread it - I kept comparing it to the movies, not in quality because both the movies and the book are very good, but in plot and even somewhat characters, which are different. I understand why the changes were made for the movies, and I think they did a wonderful job, but it makes what is already a dense and somewhat confusing story even more so.

So, I really liked the book, but I don't think I can really judge it properly without reading it again.

111. *The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson (573)

I really enjoyed this book. I couldn't put it down. I stayed up late reading and so on and so forth. It was a good sequel to Mistborn, a complex plot with characters I cared about and a world I believed. Also, I really like Brandon's writing style.

But I really didn't like the end.

*possible spoilers*

I believe this is book two of a trilogy, so the end of this book is clearly a setup for the next book, and I get that, but...there was this big huge build-up throughout the entire book and at the end, we discover it's all a lie. And something else big happened right at the end, too, and there was also this weird character throughout the book, who was involved in the stuff at the end...so there are at least three important things in this book that really weren't explained at all. Presumably they'll be explained in the next book, but I don't like that much just left hanging. I didn't have this feeling of being left hanging after the first book, and there was a big setup in that for this one. So, as much as I liked the rest of the book, the end left me dissatisfied.

112. *Dragonhaven by Robin Mckinley (342)

I was very disappointed with this book.

***This review contains spoilers***

Ok. What I liked. Obviously this book is about dragons, and I thought the dragons, both as characters and as a species, were fairly well done, as was all of the zoological stuff. I liked the telepathy-ish communication – it is an interesting take on telepathy, unlike anything I’ve read. I even liked the plot.

However, and this is something that bothered me throughout the whole book, the writing just seemed - off. I realize the narrator is supposed to be a teenage boy, but McKinley's writing is usually beautiful and almost poetic and this book leaned more towards boring and almost crass. The voice was fairly consistent through the book, I'll give it that, but it was not an interesting voice - and the times that it was interesting were when it veered away from that tone and sounded more like her previous book, Sunshine.

When it didn't feel like it was trying to be Sunshine, it did, like I said, sound more or less like a teenage boy's voice, to the point where you'd think (if it had really been a teenage boy's book) an editor would have, well, edited it. Not for content, since that issue was addressed, but for, you know like bad word usage and like grammar. And the 'like's weren't even particularly believably placed.

There were things that seemed to be lifted directly from McKinley's other books. Here are three things I noticed specifically as being pulled directly from another book (I'm sorry for not having exact quotes, but I don't feel like revisiting the text right now):

- In the style of Sunshine, there were some (more so later in the book) phrases capitalized for emphasis. There was a headline-like phrase that could have been words Sunshine said - it was along the lines of the something-or-other "That Ate Schenectady. Pictures on page six."

- Jake mentioned something about being a part of two worlds and fitting into neither, which is nearly word-for-word what Harry said in The Blue Sword

- the healing/learning dreams-that-weren't-dreams were very like Lissar's in Deerskin

Now, I don't mind this so much in and of itself - her books, now that I think about it, nearly all have basic plots along a similar line, and who doesn't sample from themselves from time to time? But this was just very blatant and - clumsy.

Sunshine is a tough act to follow, I get that. She has such a distinct voice, and there it was, trying to come through in Jake - and those times when it managed to to some degree were the better, more interesting, more intense portions of the book, too. McKinley also went from something that was beautiful and sexy and delicious - even when it wasn't - to something completely different. That was bound to be tough. But even so...

If this book had been written by another author, I would probably have been more forgiving about some of these issues. But I don't think I would have liked it any better. Sadly, this just bumped Rose Daughter out of the 'least favorite McKinley' spot on my list. For all its flaws, Rose Daughter is still beautifully written. Dragonhaven feels more like a first draft.