Book report
Feb. 18th, 2005 08:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissaSo I read Medicine Road by Charles de Lint. It's the sequel to Seven Wild Sisters, and it is not set in Newford. Much though I love Newford, it's starting to look like a relief to me when de Lint doesn't set things there. The setting got a little name-droppy in this one, but it wasn't a parade of familiar character cameos, which is a big problem for me with Newford. I start to feel like he's got a checklist: have we seen or mentioned the absence of Jilly? Geordie? Sophie?......
The good news: it did not feel like a Standard de Lint Novel to me. The main characters, twins, were musicians, but that was a fairly minor point in the book; Their Art was never the issue. Their art wasn't even the issue. Their clothing was not described in loving detail. No one was pixie-ish.
The bad news: it still didn't knock my socks off. Dreams Underfoot blew me entirely away. Several of his other books from the same era really, really grabbed me; I loved them. But lately I've been disappointed because I feel it's become much of a muchness, and the deviations from that Standard de Lint Novel were only published recently, not written recently. This is not the same stuff, but if Medicine Road was the first book I read by an author, I'd shrug and probably wouldn't seek out more, and I will likely reread half a dozen others of his before I come back to it.
Still, maybe he's getting out of that rut, at least a little bit. I have hopes for The Blue Girl, maybe maybe, and I have Mulengro on my pile, and that's an older one, so maybe maybe on that one, too. (Basically, he did outstandingly when I first encountered him and has continued just well enough that I keep reading. It looks like a fairly workable career path, but I hope none of you take it deliberately!)
Next up: Anthony Price, Here Be Monsters. I am fighting the urge to reread The Dubious Hills because I have such monstrous piles of first-reads, but oh, it's all...like that...and stuff. Some people's friends. Harumph.
The good news: it did not feel like a Standard de Lint Novel to me. The main characters, twins, were musicians, but that was a fairly minor point in the book; Their Art was never the issue. Their art wasn't even the issue. Their clothing was not described in loving detail. No one was pixie-ish.
The bad news: it still didn't knock my socks off. Dreams Underfoot blew me entirely away. Several of his other books from the same era really, really grabbed me; I loved them. But lately I've been disappointed because I feel it's become much of a muchness, and the deviations from that Standard de Lint Novel were only published recently, not written recently. This is not the same stuff, but if Medicine Road was the first book I read by an author, I'd shrug and probably wouldn't seek out more, and I will likely reread half a dozen others of his before I come back to it.
Still, maybe he's getting out of that rut, at least a little bit. I have hopes for The Blue Girl, maybe maybe, and I have Mulengro on my pile, and that's an older one, so maybe maybe on that one, too. (Basically, he did outstandingly when I first encountered him and has continued just well enough that I keep reading. It looks like a fairly workable career path, but I hope none of you take it deliberately!)
Next up: Anthony Price, Here Be Monsters. I am fighting the urge to reread The Dubious Hills because I have such monstrous piles of first-reads, but oh, it's all...like that...and stuff. Some people's friends. Harumph.
