I don't like reading short stories. They can be so insubstantial, here and gone in the space of a moment without leaving any sort of impression. You have to get sucked in to an entire world, but only for a little while. So that makes things difficult on the writer; fine. I appreciate this.
The Dragon Book is a collection of short stories about saltwater fly-fishing. Just kidding, it's about dragons. Is there even a such thing as saltwater fly-fishing? *Googles* Yeah, I guess there is.
So. Dragons. They're found in myths from all across the world, and that's where the assorted stories are set- everywhere you could imagine, from nameless ice worlds, water worlds, beaches, canyons, cliffs, cities, and even the mystical land of Russia. The stories are also located in various points in time- from modern to undetermined medieval-ish times.
It's an interesting experiment, to get stories from various people and see what they come up with. Their stories contain so many different elements and travel in so many different directions, and with a buzzword like 'Dragon' you're going to get excited writers. I recognized a few names: Tamora Pierce, Tad Williams, Garth Nix, Gregory Maguire, but mostly I was looking to see if any of these authors would be worth following up on, if I'd want to read more of their work. Overall, though, I found myself a bit underwhelmed.
The best story? Tad Williams' "A Stark and Wormy Knight." This is why people should write: to take words and simply have their way with them. To verbify nouns and to marry homonymical antonyms. To create a story using unusual building blocks. I suggest reading the story to see what I mean; it is quite glorious.
After the book about dragons I finally read a novel I've had on my list for a while: Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny. The first page alone kicks some pretty major ass.
How many stories are there, do you think, that begin with someone waking up in a hospital without knowing how they got there or even who they are? It'd be interesting to read a bunch of those beginnings and compare them. It could be so simple to describe: "I opened my eyes in an unfamiliar room. I looked around. I didn't see anything I recognized. I didn't remember getting here. Then I realized I didn't know my own name." Snore.
Not Zelazny. The opening is all personality. No vanilla phrases for such a common scene.
Love, love, love the way Corwin deals with situations while concealing his amnesia, unable to tell friend from foe. The beginning is so frustratingly riveting, dripping with juicy details that have no bigger picture to be placed in.
Everything is written is such great detail that I grew bored every once in a while, though. Sorry, couldn't help it.
I also read the second Amber book, and am looking for the third!
After reading a classic, I decided I could step into the world of modern fantasy once more and try something perhaps a bit less validated. I randomly chose Laura Resnick's Disappearing Nightly, which was pretty much the same exact flavor as the October Daye books except that the heroine is more or less useless, and merely lucky and plucky.
I still like this series, though. Oh, witty urban fantasy, the fried cheesecake of sci-fi.
The last book I read was Truth by Terry Pratchett. Lord love this man and his wild stories. I can never tell when I look at his books on the shelf of the library which belong to the Discworld series, but I don't think it particularly matters. Nor does it seem to matter if you read them 'out of order.' I can't tell if there even is an order.
Anyway, whichever book you pick up will be full of perfect illogic, such as the city never having formed fire brigades, reasoning that the fire brigade would naturally want to start some fires in order to put them out. Naturally.
Sometimes my head simply wanted to burst, and I knew it was time to put the book down and try again later. Perhaps less fried cheesecake would help?...
Anyway, there are too many things I could say about this one book, Truth, but the main one is, why the hell hasn't anyone made this into a movie yet?? Sure the beginning was confusing with way too many tangents to follow without knowing which ones actually mattered, but past that- pure genius. And maybe that part was pure genius too, and I'm just to immature to recognize it.
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