Fatal Revenant - Now We Are Sick - Ebay Fail

[essentialsaltes]

I finished Donaldson's second installment in the Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. (Here's my take on book 1)

I was a little disappointed. The pace is glacial; the mysteries remain mysterious. The book is just not very satisfying. On the bright side, Donaldson has, as usual, taught me a few more obscure words (e.g. surquedry).


Also finished Now We Are Sick, an anthology of gruesomely childish or childishly gruesome poems from genre authors. Many of these authors should stick to prose. Plenty of stinkers and ho-hums, and a smattering of good ones. The sole outstanding poem in the mix is Alan Moore's "The Children's Hour". I won my copy on ebay from aaronjv; I can see why he could part with it, though it does contain scribbled notes about a pitch meeting.


On the Ebay fail side, I didn't win the HPL astrology material. I was even part of a tiny syndicate that formed to pool resources to get it, but that failed too. It went for $5,355, a price that strikes me as both 'a bargain in absolute terms' and 'way more than I could justify spending'. And now that ebay anonymizes winners, I don't know whom to mug.

Comments

[ladyeuthanasia.livejournal.com]

Which goes to prove that not just anyone can write poetry, but apparently no one in the genre world seems to get it.

Here's a great example of the puke:

Call the Dark Poetry Hotline
Listen to three different readings of poetry by Rain Graves by calling 877-DRK-POEM and selecting Dark Poetry, Tango Poetry, or Mythos Poetry. Readings are free and updated every Monday, except for Holidays.

I dare you to call for "Mythos Poetry". Double dare you, in fact.

[aaronjv.livejournal.com]

FUCK WE SHOULDA PUT MORE DOWN FOR THAT MUTHERFUCKER! You, A.L. SomeCo, and even Hagdirt said she'd put in (as opposed to putting out) for it! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!

Drunk but not un-intelligble.

[ajax.livejournal.com]

For my part, I felt Fatal Revenant improved quite a bit on the previous installment, and there were a couple of decent-sized reveals. The end left me wanting more, and after such a long hiatus, it was nice to have Giants back in the story. :)

[ETA: This was actually the book that helped me realize why Donaldson novels are so slow-paced -- it's because all of his protagonists walk everywhere, and then are too tired or emotionally overwrought to deal with the Important Thing they have to do when they get there. So they keep everybody waiting an extra 10-20 pages while they pull themselves together.]

--- Ajax.

[gina.livejournal.com]

I borrowed Fatal Revenant from Alex when I had a panic attack because I had nothing to read on a flight from Zurich to JFK. I hated it. And Alex says Linden is one of the more sympathetic characters in the series. Eesh.

[alex-victory.livejournal.com]

The first six Donaldson novels were better, right? Or was it just that I was more tolerant of his writing because I was younger?

I really feel like this is a three-book series that he decided to stretch out into four books by having Linden think the same thoughts 200 times over the course of each book.

[essentialsaltes.livejournal.com]

I liked book 1 of series 3; it's solidly among the rest quality-wise. But if I were forced to rank all of them, Fatal Revenant would wind up at the bottom. My opinion of Lord Foul's Bane has dropped a lot, but it was still better.