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There are genres, sub genres, settings, things, character types, and plot lines that are not to my taste. Sometimes strongly so, sometimes weakly so. I try very very hard never to criticize such things in an essentialist way: All epic fantasy is crap because it is all about bad and stupid things and is written for idiots except for the one book I like because it is superior due to my decision that it must be superior because I succumbed to liking it. Just as a for example.
So what do Susanna Kearsley's A WINTER SEA and Diana Rowland's MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE have in common?
They both are novels written with multiple elements that I generally avoid, not because I think these elements are bad things but because they're not my thing. And yet, both books really worked for me.
I am not the prime reader for urban fantasy. Most urban fantasy doesn't work that well for me. I wish it did, because there's so much out there to read. But in the main I've learned that it's a very hard sell for me.
I don't like zombie films. And the current zombie rage (as much as I joke about having zombies in Cold Fire, I don't really, well, not mostly really) in books does not float my boat, plus I'm getting a bit tired of all the attempts to do "something new" with it. Oh, and HBO's The Walking Dead? Sucked.
Yet Rowland's MY LIFE . . . is an urban fantasy with zombies, and it's appealing, and funny, and it all works in a way that I could never have predicted. What a delightful surprise! Also, this could totally be a movie or tv series.
As for the other, I do not do Scotland books. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $100.
[ETA: Scotland/romance books, not Scotland real/sf/mystery]
And I don't like books with time slippage or weird links into the past. Particularly not when they involve Scotland.
Oh, and by the way, books in which the main character is a writer who is writing? Not my ticket.
A WINTER SEA is all that. A writer travels to Scotland to write a novel set in the past oh god.
Literally the only reason I read it was because of the DABWAHA tournament from earlier this year, when COLD MAGIC faced off (and defeated) A WINTER SEA in the first round. I was curious why it (and the other books in our "crossover" division) had been picked for the tournament.
And I have to tell you, I fell in love with this novel. Utterly, besottedly in love with this novel. It's sweet, it's romantic without being sickly, it's serious about its politics and sensible about its relationships, and beyond all that beautifully and evocatively written.
So: two strong recommends.
Have you any examples of books you've enjoyed which actually included elements or genres or plots you normally don't care for?
So what do Susanna Kearsley's A WINTER SEA and Diana Rowland's MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE have in common?
They both are novels written with multiple elements that I generally avoid, not because I think these elements are bad things but because they're not my thing. And yet, both books really worked for me.
I am not the prime reader for urban fantasy. Most urban fantasy doesn't work that well for me. I wish it did, because there's so much out there to read. But in the main I've learned that it's a very hard sell for me.
I don't like zombie films. And the current zombie rage (as much as I joke about having zombies in Cold Fire, I don't really, well, not mostly really) in books does not float my boat, plus I'm getting a bit tired of all the attempts to do "something new" with it. Oh, and HBO's The Walking Dead? Sucked.
Yet Rowland's MY LIFE . . . is an urban fantasy with zombies, and it's appealing, and funny, and it all works in a way that I could never have predicted. What a delightful surprise! Also, this could totally be a movie or tv series.
As for the other, I do not do Scotland books. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $100.
[ETA: Scotland/romance books, not Scotland real/sf/mystery]
And I don't like books with time slippage or weird links into the past. Particularly not when they involve Scotland.
Oh, and by the way, books in which the main character is a writer who is writing? Not my ticket.
A WINTER SEA is all that. A writer travels to Scotland to write a novel set in the past oh god.
Literally the only reason I read it was because of the DABWAHA tournament from earlier this year, when COLD MAGIC faced off (and defeated) A WINTER SEA in the first round. I was curious why it (and the other books in our "crossover" division) had been picked for the tournament.
And I have to tell you, I fell in love with this novel. Utterly, besottedly in love with this novel. It's sweet, it's romantic without being sickly, it's serious about its politics and sensible about its relationships, and beyond all that beautifully and evocatively written.
So: two strong recommends.
Have you any examples of books you've enjoyed which actually included elements or genres or plots you normally don't care for?
