blog reviews of Melusine, again pro and con

[truepenny]

muneraven likes it.

So does bryi.

linaerys does not.

Honestly

Well, no one told me this book was good, they just told me it was slashy.

may be the best one-sentence diss EVAR.

(Also, for the record, I do in fact know that porphyria is a blood disease. Porphyria Levant is actually named after the unfortunate woman in Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover."* But a blood-wizard sharing a name with a blood disease ... bonus!)

llellewyn doesn't like it either.

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*Scott McCloud rocks.

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I have been silent and withdrawn recently because I am engaged in the life or death struggle with the other pantomime horse for the position in the merchant bank. Which is to say, page-proofs of The Mirador. As of this morning, I've cleared page 300 of 426, so normal service may be resuming shortly.

Or it may not. You never can tell with bees.

Comments

[antonstrout.livejournal.com]

We are fellow Ace authors now! Now I feel obliged to actually go out to a store and buy you versus walking down the hall and asking Ace for a comp copy.. hehe.

Good luck, pantomime horse!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I knew the name Porphyria from the poem many years before I heard of the disease. My parents had some old poetry anthologies and I loved to browse through them when I was a kid.

And also for what it's worth, I loved all the mad Felix bits in Melusine. Very, very vividly written.

[sakusei-sol.livejournal.com]

Agreeing with llygoden here.
I quite enjoyed Felix when he was mad (That could potentially sound cruel. Sorry Felix.) It was well-written and equally interesting.

And...
I thought Melusine was great, especially since I was doing some sort of 'judging a book by its fan-art' deal when I bought it. It was worth it though. :) And the pretty fan-art didn't lie to me.


But now my dear friend ought to return the book to me. I'd sort of like it back on my shelf.
/rambling.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I used to read "Porphyria's Lover" to my long-haired daughter when I explained why I sometimes wound her braid around her neck. She now refers to Browning as "that creepy poet".

Jonquil, creating lifelong phobias since 1990. (Note that she is perfectly good with Hilaire Belloc and Poe.)

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

*reads linked reviews* Hmm. I should come clean and say I didn't really enjoy Melusine that much, but I was impressed by the world-building and the "made-up words" seemed very natural and at the same time exotic and worked really well at setting the scene of a different world with differnt mores and attitudes... not confusing at all, one learns what words mean by their use in context as the book continues. Loved the writing, and the settings both, and the characterisation and I didn't instantly think "blood disease", actually, being familiar with the Browning thing...

[imayb1.livejournal.com]

I liked it, too. (http://imayb1.livejournal.com/261584.html#cutid1) :) I also enjoyed The Virtu and look forward to your forthcoming books. Good luck with them!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[poshlil.livejournal.com]

Good luck! :D And thanks for the link to the Browning poem, it's not one i'd heard/read before.

(and it just makes my day when anyone makes Pooh references.)

[splagxna.livejournal.com]

i liked it(them) very much (http://splagxna.livejournal.com/409901.html#cutid3) as well. but i don't recommend posting the review (such as it is) for all your readers, as my lj is friendslocked.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I appreciate your telling me about it. Thank you! And I'm glad you liked the books.

[clamp-x.livejournal.com]

I must say that I really did like the book, although I did feel as though the made up words in the book were very confusing to me and rarely was able to figure out what it was you were implying.

I thought that I had accidently bought the book out of order in the series because of the statement, Also Author of The Virtu, only to find out that book wasn't even published yet. That helped to confuse the matter even more, making me think that I was missing information that would explain things better. Your publisher shouldn't have included that on the book, if the next book wasn't even published yet!

But, going back to what I was originally saying, perhaps keeping the regular terms for time wouldn't have confused readers. I don't see myself as stupid, but, it was very difficult for me to figure out what was being said at times.

[(Anonymous)]

Ouch, those are particularly damning. But, to be fair, I think if people knew the author was likely to stumble across their comments they would be less intemperate in their opinions... not that this offers much consolation. For the sake of karmic balance, I enjoyed Melusine very much indeed (http://www.ferretbrain.com/articles/article-60.html), and I'm mean and pedantic.

[(Anonymous)]

Although it seems your LJ does not trust me with HMTL - not that I blame it. I don't trust me with it either.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link!

[peippeliini.livejournal.com]

I don't understand the arguments against the made up words. I for one understood the word 'hocus' immeaditely, and it wasn't that hard to decipher what 'annemer' meant.
I mean, the books were all about using your brain and imagination while plunging head first into the story. Atleast that's what it felt for me.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Thirding the Ilygoden/sakusei "the madness perspective was brilliant" bit.

I *loved* both books, but one thing I did have in common w/one of the "eh" reviews was that the opening almost put me off. I didn't think it was poorly written at all (even after a few sentences I thought you were a terrif stylist), 'twas just that between the prologue and the first bit of courtly-Felix, I thought "OMG this is a book for those people who think the characters in Dangerous Liasons/Cruel Intentions are good role models it's gonna be an entire book of snarkier-than-thou AAAAAAHHHHHH!" But I did love the writing style (reminded me a bit of Tanith Lee, who I haven't read in nearly two decades but remember fondly) and the whole reason I picked up the book is I recognized your name from Bear's journal, so I kept at it a few pages longer just in case, fully intending to put this down and never pick it up again . . . and I am sooo glad I stayed long enough to get hooked.

And . . . I like Mildmay a lot too, but am I the only one (other than Mildmay and Gabriel) who thinks Felix is a lot more likable than he thinks himself?

(oh, and I thought Mildmay worked as a name, esp 'cause the character is exactly the opposite of what you would expect from someone w/this name, and I loved the whole thing on where it came from and Butterfly/fly-from-fornication etc)

Then again, instead of friending you after seeing you mentioned in Bear's journal, or after loving your books, I only friended you after a link to your anti-prologue post, so I'm weird.

Melusine

[selkith.livejournal.com]

I liked this book, I enjoy the fact that Felix is actually growing up and past his own issues to some extent. Wanted more at the end of the book on Mildmay's part, but hey, I don't presume to tell you how to write, I just wanna say that I like what you are writing. I have a bit of a thing for a redhead that has lived in my head for almost ten years now, my fiance hates him, says he's an arrogant whiny bitch. It's true too. But you know, that reaction means that someone else will like him, and besides, he grows too. . . I keep drawing him anyway. I think maybe the reason I like your boys is that remind me of this fella, he's the one in the userpic, but he's not a thief or a wizard, just a plain old vampire. . . . heh.

[synsenielle.livejournal.com]

I sorry. The book was difficult at some points; not all happy and joy-filled, but that just made it more enjoyable. I personally loved both Melusine and The Virtu. Hard to read, but better because of it. *nods a bit.*

[darthmokona.livejournal.com]

*randomly falls through ceiling*

I read Melusine and googled you, which is how I ended up here. It's an awesome book. No matter what anyone says, know in your heart that you wrote something amazing, and no mushy crap intended.

Yes, there is slash, and most of it is the rape-kind that scared me somewhat, but it really did add to the story. Malkar is the sort of villain everyone loves to hate. I hope Shannon isn't meant to be liked, because I kept wanting him to die. While Malkar is cool in an evil way, Shannon is just vexatious and annoying.

The relationships between the characters and the character development was perfect. I loved the whole part wherein Felix and Mildmay got separated from everyone else and were traveling together. ("What the fuck are you doing?" "Please don't hurt me." *feels like a bastard*) That, right there, made me want to hug you. And I loved how Felix went from being terrified of his past (though that was mostly Malkar's doing) to coming to terms with it. When Diokletian asked if a murderer deserved such loyalty, and Felix said, "Why not, from a prostitute?" I yelled, "YES!" out loud for two reasons, scaring my poor cat off my bed in the process. One, because of the previously mentioned character development, and two, because of how he started standing up for Mildmay there. I also loved Khrysogonos's (I hope I got that right) develoment. He went from wanting nothing to do with Mildmay from starting to like him, and it was him that went and got Felix to FINALLY come and talk to him, which no one else had the decency to do.

I absolutely loved Mildmay. There are some characters, usually in anime but sometimes in other things, that end up partially owning my soul. He is now one of them. "I wanted to turn around and tell them to go fuck themselves sideways with a barge pole, but my lead wasn't long enough." Example of cursing perfectly. I don't know how you did it, but Mildmay's dirty mouth was done beautifully, which I didn't know could be said for that sort of language, but it somehow worked without being horribly and greviously overdone. That was a thing of genius. "Sacred bleeding fuck" and "Fuck me sideways til I cry" are permanent additions to my vocabulary, and I mean that in the nicest way.

I could go over the LJ character limit three times discussing the relationship between Felix and Mildmay, but you've probably heard it twenty times before, so I'll just say that it was very nicely done, and I loved the part where Mildmay had to sit on Felix to keep him from running into the maze they'd built for dead people, after Felix started cursing him out like a street urchan from Simside. Like many things in the book, it was hilarious with a bittersweet undertone.

Alright, well I just wanted to tell you that I loved the book and I can't wait to get my hands on The Virtu. If anyone writes fanfiction on your stuff, I hope to all that's good in the world that they don't butcher it, because some things deserve to be butchered, but this is not one of them.