wherein Liz briefly contemplates ff.net

[edenfalling]

I think ff.net's alert function is broken. You know how I know this? Because over the past two days, I've seen new chapters from two authors I have on author alert, but I got no email notification. Also, I posted chapter 7 of "Lemonade" over there a few hours ago, but I didn't get the auto-copy of the notification email.

I am peeved.

It's funny. I have various reasons (some petty, some less so) for disliking ff.net, but it serves a very necessary function in bringing so many different fandoms together and letting people explore and post and review and jump around with relative ease. We need that site to exist. The positives outweigh the negatives.

...

Anyway, I'm heading home to fry up some chicken and onions and read some more of Storm Front by Jim Butcher. (A few months back, I read a Spider-Man book he wrote and liked his writing enough -- engaging narrative voice, good grasp of characterization, deft touch with plot -- that I decided to look into his original stories. So far, Harry Dresden does not disappoint. *grin*)

Comments

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

Yes... Mr. Butcher is good for that. I've gotten to number 4 in the series, and have noted not even the slightest bit of slippage in the quality. More than that, there is a distict, noticable continuity between books, and, and, and the best part?

It's planned. The climax, hell, the entire plot of book three was set up, foreshadowed, in the first half of book one.

This man is not just making it up as he goes along. He knows exactly what he's doing.

Leave Sookie Stackhouse be, forget Anita Blake, and set aside Lackey's SERRAted Edge stuff, this is the modern fantasy series to watch.

Ja, -n
(definitely a convert)

[edenfalling]

I only read Mercedes Lackey when I am tired and want something moderately cute that I don't have to actually think about. I use her books to turn off my brain rather than to engage it... which is really kind of sad, when you think about it, but there it is.

(This is one of the sad things about getting older, developing more discriminating taste, and learning to think about things: there are a lot of books I remember liking -- or even loving -- when I was 8-18 years old that I now cannot reread, because frankly, they stink.)

I quit buying Anita Blake after Obsidian Butterfly, and have now quit reading the series altogether. There isn't any there there anymore, just Laurell K. Hamilton doing the literary equivalent of public masturbation.

[valles-uf.livejournal.com]

You got farther than I did, then. I stopped at... damn. Forget the title; been too long. The book with the Tub Scene.

For me, at that point, I think it was mostly culture clash. Anita's tying to pick a boyfriend and, well, I grew up in a poly household, so I kinda lost sympathy.

Personally I suspect that the reason so much of Lackey's material is brain candy isn't that she isn't capable of doing better... it's that the candy sells better. Like why Piers Anthony keeps writing Xanth.

I can't say I really blame either of them.

Ja, -n
(Harry Dresden Plays D&D:
"Okay, then. Someone get me a pizza and a Coke and some dice, but I want it understood that I'm going to need thews."
"What?"
"Thews. I want big, bulging, thews, and I don't want to have to think too much.")