Reviews pending
November 4, 2002 (8:37 PM) ( link )

I am so fancrapulously over-burdened with work this week (the first time I've felt this way in two months of law school--I'm counting my blessings when I can) that although I recently finished both Christopher Priest's The Inverted World and Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragon Wing, I haven't had the chance to write reviews for them yet. For my capsule impressions: The Inverted World has a fascinating premise and a deeply unsatisfying ending, and Dragon Wing has an interesting premise but juvenile writing, and is best when it's tongue-in-cheek (during which times, it's hilarious).

I'm slowly beginning my next pair of books: Elven Star, the next volume in the Death Gate Cycle, and Thomas M. Disch's The Genocides, which hardly qualifies as a novel at less than 200 pages. Elven Star is much better than Dragon Wing so far, mostly because it doesn't take itself too seriously. And the chapter with the dragon and the bumbling wizard is hilarious. Unfortunately there are signs that Weis and Hickman are going to make this story serious again, which will be a disappointment.

The Genocides is relentlessly bleak, perhaps the most depressing alien invasion story I've ever read. It isn't helped by its fairly obvious Biblical parallels (though the analogies are bitter, not hopeful) or by its overly hasty pace. But I read it or about an hour yesterday and I'm already halfway through; even if it does end up not much better than it is, I won't have wasted much time with it (unlike, say, with The Mists of Avalon).

In Google news, I now show up third when you search for Elric of Melnibone, and fourth when you search for ficciones borges (though, to be fair, the latter is a link to my old page, which is now defunct).