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Laura

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Wednesday, October 13th, 2004 05:50 pm
Finished The White Dragon (Laura Resnick, book one of In Fire Forged; not the McCaffrey book of the same name) today. I love the ideas, but have found the series must be read with lots of power-skimming in places. She's so in love with her flashbacks and ideas, they take over. In Fire Forged was supposed to be a single book sequel to the existing In Legend Born. She apologizes to her readers for splitting it into two volumes, but says it was necessary or she would have had to cut so much it would not make sense. I must, not so respectfully, disagree. I do not care about the flashbacks or many of the other pieces, nor has she yet woven them together. I don't even care if she does, come right down to it. About 1/3 to 1/2 of this book, at least, could have gone away without my sorrowing; and she's much too wordy. But she does have fascinating plots, strong characters, and a willingness not to pull the punches, I must admit.

Went to Powell's today to buy a few books I wanted. Failed to get any. Mind, I found one - new, but it's a recent release. I failed to find the others, asked after the anthology, was told it was in mystery anthologies. Okay, I can kind of see that, it's Powers of Detection: Stories of Mystery and Fantasy. I would have expected fantasy-mystery crossover to either be cross-shelved or wind up in fantasy/sci-fi, but that works. Got the last name to go with it (since Powell's organizes anthologies, at least at the Beaverton store, by name of editor and not anthology name, which drives me BUGNUTS every time I run into it). Went back. Mystery anthologies are apparently all shelved on a single endcap, crammed in, with a reshelving cart full of other mystery books that are "deals" but are not anthologies placed across it. After some attempts to find what I wanted anyway, I gave up on that, tried fantasy/sci-fi anthologies in case he'd been wrong, and then took the single book I'd found up to check out.

Where I was unable to do so. Because everyone was helping people find books and walking away from the counter and refusing to help. Considering I already planned to stop at Borders to look for the thing anyway, I set the new, full-price book down, asked the guy who was ignoring us to shelve it, and left. There was a line of three or four people behind me and two women behind the counter (one of whom I know I have seen there many times before, the other of whom I believe was new) not helping at all. Whatever.

Borders didn't work out either - my desire to buy had dropped and neither the book nor any assistance was anywhere to be found. So I came home, profoundly grumpy. Ah, well.
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Wednesday, October 13th, 2004 06:04 pm (UTC)
*hugs*

I hate it when flashbacks take over a book - unless it's done deliberately, like Stephen Brust does, as the story itself. Otherwise I just kind of sit there trying to pick out how much is flashback and how much is the 'actual story.' Which is rather silly, but there you have it.