psocoptera

Max Gladstone's recent writing and I do not seem to be getting along so well. I recall Three Parts Dead as snappy and well-crafted - wait, I can actually find my notes about it, here: yup, "writing craft was really strong", from when Gladstone got my second-place vote for the then-Campbell. And I recall Full Fathom Five as being quite moving, which, hey, I seem to have conveniently read in the tracking era (so much easier to find old reviews now that I record the dates I finish everything...). But Time War was hard going, although I did end up enjoying it, and then this one, Empress of Forever... man, I often don't have a sense of how long books are when I'm reading them electronically, because I can't just see the heft of them the way you can a paper book, but it felt *so slow*. Like I would read and read and I'd only be a couple percent further along. I guess it is in fact 480 pages which is substantial, but I also think my tolerance for grandiose scenery is just... not up to Gladstone's recent levels of enthusiasm for it. It got a little better once I started thinking of it as an RPG book - not necessarily based on an actual campaign, how would I know, but the kind of thing that would have been an amazing campaign to be part of - but I feel like, for me, my sources of pleasure as a reader maybe aren't strongly aligned with my sources of pleasure as a player? I mean, they overlap, obviously, but I'm not at all convinced that any of the most amazing moments of my personal gaming history actually work all that well as pure narrative, without that "you had to be there" factor. Too tired tonight to try to break this down further. Anyways, I know many people liked Time War more than I did, and this one is also F/F and does have some genuinely cool bits (just too many of them, and too loud in a row), so, hey, I hope it finds its way to happy readers!