Thursday 4 September 2014

Sure you want to let Mr Fabulous drive?*


 Continuing from where we left off, only without the details of how I came about these books, or why I decided to read them as they're all sequels or part of an ongoing series.
 
20. Lost in a Good Book, by Jasper Fforde
 This is the second of the Thursday Next novels. In this one, Literary Detective Thursday Next has to deal with her arch nemesis' sister, Aornis Hades; the elimination of her husband from time; Great Expectations' Miss Haversham's driving; surviving a book sale; and indeed getting lost in not one, but several books, good or otherwise.
 Much like the first and seventh books in the series, this one is clever, bittersweet, touching, well paced and, perhaps most importantly: easy to get lost in! I can barely wait to start on the third one: The Well of Lost Plots.

21. Second Nature (Star Trek: Seekers 1), by David Mack
 This is the first of a new series of Star Trek novels: Seekers. It follows on from the events in the Vanguard novel series and the final episode of The Original Series.
 Rather unusually, Seekers was inspired by the faux cover art of Rob Caswell, who was in turn inspired by the cover art of James Blish's Star Trek novelisations from the '60s and '70s. 
* Post title from page 31

22. Dragonquest, by Anne McCaffrey
 This book almost had me in floods: The despair and loss of the queen dragons Wirenth and Prideth as they went Between forever, and the resultant heartache and numbness of poor Weyrwoman Brekke, Wirenth's rider. Then there was the joy of young Lord Jaxom helping the runt white dragon Ruth hatch from his shell only to Impress him.
 When this book was good, it was very, very good, but when it was bad, it was horrid bland. While re-reading this book, I realised that character development seems to be something reserved only for some of the main stars, such as F'nor & Canth, Brekke and, to a lesser extent, F'lar & Mnementh, Lessa, Lytol and Robinton. Poor Kylara emerges from her single dimension only when alone with her dragon Prideth, and she's promptly ignored once Prideth dies. I think there has been a missed opportunity to deal with why Kylara was such a self-absorbed, manipulative cow! At least she got a second dimension, however briefly. The majority of Lord Holders (Meron et el) seem to be steeple-fingered, cackling, evil charactures. Mr Burns certainly wouldn't be out of place as a Lord Holder of Pern!
 I'm still going to re-read the rest of this series of books, though. 

23. Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found) (Star Trek: Deep Space 9), by Paula M. Block and Terry J. Erdmann
 Meh. This tale revolving around Quark was OK. It didn't bring anything new to his character, though. Instead, it delved into the whys and wherefores of the Vulcan Love Slave holoprogram, something that I feel would have best been left to our imaginations - a bit like the Noodle Incident was never explained in the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip.

Next: The Well of Lost Plots, by Jasper Fforde and The White Dragon, by Anne McCaffrey
  

2 comments:

  1. Lost in a Good Book!
    I'm just about getting back into reading - I am making progress.

    I love watching Star Trek, but I find Sci-Fi difficult to read... maybe I should give it another try.
    Sx

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  2. Oops! I forgot that you may not have read it yet. I promise no more spoilers from now on.

    I have a feeling that you may like Una McCormack's Star Trek novels. They're very character driven in a way that seems very different from most other authors of Star Trek. Plus, she has provided some astonishing and wonderful insight into Cardassians and Tzenkethi.
    I'd particularly recommend Brinkmanship.

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