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Reading Writing
May. 2nd, 2005 08:45 pmI've been trying for some time now to figure out what elements of a given author's writing style appeals to me - not any one particular author, but authors in general - and I can't put my finger on any specific details. I wish I could; it would make it much easier to pick out authors and books to read, and to understand what factors appeal to me.
I've been binging on urban fantasy recently, mostly because it appears to be the New Hot Genre and so new authors and scads of books have been springing up like shapeshifting vampiric crocuses in all the local bookstores. This has left me with a stack of books by different authors, all somehow revolving around strong powerful female supernatural main characters, their relationships with the vampires and sorcerers in their lives, and mysterious dilemmas only they can solve, that usually involve angst, betrayal, witty one-liners, and impressively athletic romantic liaisons with at least one of the vampires or sorcerers.
I don't know exactly why I'm even drawn to this genre to begin with - my ideal vision of urban fantasy leans much more towards subtle sparkles, blurry lines between magic and reality, excessive references to Celtic music, and more drama and pining than snark and sex. More than that, though, I don't know why certain of these books appeal to me far more than others. In fact, the ones I expect most to be let down by almost invariably wind up being much more fun than the ones that seem the most impressive on the shelf. Charlaine Harris's southern vampire novels sound ridiculous. The main character is an uneducated telepathic barmaid in Louisiana, and they get even less serious from there, and they're more fun than they have any right to be. Kim Harrison, on the other hand, looks like she's going to set up a fabulous Fantasy/SF genre blend and winds up leaving me vaguely uninterested by page 100, wondering when I'll be able to finish it and move back to something more intriguing and real. Not that any of these are real, but..... hers just doesn't echo as deep and true, for some reason. And it bugs the bejeezus out of me that I don't know what that reason is.
Of course, it also bugs me that I find a trashy vampire murder mystery much more intriguing than a 400-page dramatically-titled doorstop about dark future witches, but that's just my deep-seated genre snobbery showing. And I really don't have any right to genre-snobbing when my next planned binge is Talking Animal Books.....
I've been binging on urban fantasy recently, mostly because it appears to be the New Hot Genre and so new authors and scads of books have been springing up like shapeshifting vampiric crocuses in all the local bookstores. This has left me with a stack of books by different authors, all somehow revolving around strong powerful female supernatural main characters, their relationships with the vampires and sorcerers in their lives, and mysterious dilemmas only they can solve, that usually involve angst, betrayal, witty one-liners, and impressively athletic romantic liaisons with at least one of the vampires or sorcerers.
I don't know exactly why I'm even drawn to this genre to begin with - my ideal vision of urban fantasy leans much more towards subtle sparkles, blurry lines between magic and reality, excessive references to Celtic music, and more drama and pining than snark and sex. More than that, though, I don't know why certain of these books appeal to me far more than others. In fact, the ones I expect most to be let down by almost invariably wind up being much more fun than the ones that seem the most impressive on the shelf. Charlaine Harris's southern vampire novels sound ridiculous. The main character is an uneducated telepathic barmaid in Louisiana, and they get even less serious from there, and they're more fun than they have any right to be. Kim Harrison, on the other hand, looks like she's going to set up a fabulous Fantasy/SF genre blend and winds up leaving me vaguely uninterested by page 100, wondering when I'll be able to finish it and move back to something more intriguing and real. Not that any of these are real, but..... hers just doesn't echo as deep and true, for some reason. And it bugs the bejeezus out of me that I don't know what that reason is.
Of course, it also bugs me that I find a trashy vampire murder mystery much more intriguing than a 400-page dramatically-titled doorstop about dark future witches, but that's just my deep-seated genre snobbery showing. And I really don't have any right to genre-snobbing when my next planned binge is Talking Animal Books.....
