(no subject)

[truepenny]

"Thirdhop Scarp"
Words written today: 641
Words written total: 5,826
Deadline still: October 1st

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I also did a very small amount of work on the Mirador revisions, on the principle that everything I accomplish today, no matter how infinitesimal, is one less thing I have to accomplish tomorrow. I still want to go hide under the bed, but you know. Them's the breaks.

Comments

[jamjar.livejournal.com]

This is going to be pretty rambling, because I'm not entirely coherent about your books yet, but... well, I started reading Melusine on Friday, finished it Friday night, phoned up Forbidden Planet bookshop to see if they had The Virtu Saturday morning, got them to put the last copy they had to one side and went into town to get it at lunchtime, and finished the book last night. Then immeditately suffered from Series Lag Anxiety, or that particular feeling you get when you realise you've read everything published in a series by an author, and you will have to wait months -possibly, and I'm speaking with the bitter experience of someone who read J V Jones and A Song of Fire and Ice, years for the next one.

So, you know, I enjoyed them.

Virtu was an easier read, mostly because the characters were more established -Melusine, I almost had the feeling it should have started two months earlier, because stuff was happening, and I didn't know who, or why that stuff was so important, but I did want to know. I love Mildmay and Felix, how they're written, so you can see their giant, screaming flaws, but still like them, still see why other characters want to be around them. I think in some ways, that's more noticeable with Felix, because he is beautiful, charming, and, strange as it sounds, for a reader? Characters like that, it's annoying when the looks and charm gives them a freepass with other characters. Mildmay is a lot easier to be fond of than Felix, as a reader, so the fact that I'm equally fond of both says something.

I think that's another point-- the secondary and incidental characters are really well drawn. Even the ones that you don't like, you can see as more than just... well, unlikeable, and you can see why other characters would (for more reasons than their own bad taste). I like seeing the interaction between the different characters, how it changes in ways that make sense.

And I do like the relationship between Felix and Mildmay. I like the way they work together, and the way that they don't -those moments when the patterns of behaviour between too people are just incompatible, just react wrongly. I like that Felix's (understandable) attraction to Mildmay doesn't take away from the rest of the relationship, and it doesn't prevent either of them from getting involved with others, the way it's a thing, but not a *thing*... I like that it's there, I like what it does, and I'm... well, I've been reading too long and too much to be anything other than relieved at how it's handled. It's just... I'm happy if it goes places, and happy when it doesn't, because reading it is good either way.

Yeah, I really wasn't kidding about the general lack of coherency. It's just so good! The way the gods and calender and everything are so messy, the way the city herself is, it just works and its good and I'm really looking forward to the next one.