2007-09-21 13:45![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldiscipline... I am functionally incapable of appreciating traditional High Fantasy as a genre.
I picked up George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones from the office library to read with lunch, and, thirty pages in, I give up. I can't make myself care about the bulk of the characters being so carefully and tediously presented, I already have ideas and suppositions about how things will ultimately happen and.... I just don't give a shit.
Similarly, I don't even bother trying to pick up Tolkien. If I wanted to read boring historical recountings, I'd do something useful and pick up The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or something.
Contrast this with how many times I've re-read Steve Brust's Taltos series - same general universe, completely different reaction. There are characters who don't fit every boring, cliche'd archetype, who have actual personalities and histories, and don't appear to have been picked up like so many pre-fab Lego People to stiffly pose through An Epic World-Altering Conflict. Snarky humor wins a lot of points with me, true, but there's enough show don't tell going on there that I don't feel like throwing the book across the room to keep from being put to sleep by the fucking thing.
I think I need to hit B&N for the latest installment of Dozois' Opinion.... I mean, The Year's Best Science Fiction.
I picked up George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones from the office library to read with lunch, and, thirty pages in, I give up. I can't make myself care about the bulk of the characters being so carefully and tediously presented, I already have ideas and suppositions about how things will ultimately happen and.... I just don't give a shit.
Similarly, I don't even bother trying to pick up Tolkien. If I wanted to read boring historical recountings, I'd do something useful and pick up The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire or something.
Contrast this with how many times I've re-read Steve Brust's Taltos series - same general universe, completely different reaction. There are characters who don't fit every boring, cliche'd archetype, who have actual personalities and histories, and don't appear to have been picked up like so many pre-fab Lego People to stiffly pose through An Epic World-Altering Conflict. Snarky humor wins a lot of points with me, true, but there's enough show don't tell going on there that I don't feel like throwing the book across the room to keep from being put to sleep by the fucking thing.
I think I need to hit B&N for the latest installment of Dozois' Opinion.... I mean, The Year's Best Science Fiction.
