Aw. Well, sorry you couldn't get through Black Sun -- it's a shame, because the second one in the trilogy is much better; she cuts out all the uninteresting cast members, and switches settings entirely, and it's just generally a much tighter and more interesting book.
One of the things I liked most about BSR -- and hoped you would like as well -- was the way Friedman sketches out the quest journey, and just generally how much it sucks. No springtime romps; instead it's a story of wet, muddy, cold, miserable, grueling treks over mountain passes in the dead of winter, through deserts, over turbulent oceans. Valuable artifacts get lost, not found; people die in terrible, pointless accidents. And in the end they keep on pushing not because it's fun, but because the stakes are just that important, and after a certain point there's just no turning back. It's what I always felt a quest journey should be. Plus I didn't realize it at the time, but Damien and Tarrant are just so very unbelievably slashtastic. "How are you at parting the waters?" indeed.
I still would reccommend that you read Madness Season, which is in my opinion the top of her game -- the only book about vampires saving the universe from evil aliens that you will ever need! (The mechanics do suffer from something of the same hand-waving attempt to straddle the line between sci-fi and fantasy that I think you saw in BSR -- for instance, at some point they explain the protagonist's shapeshifting powers as the result of "being able to use the excess life force that all living creatures produce." How does that work? It just does.) It's still a very good book. But whatever you do, do not read In Conquest Born or it's sequel, The Wilding (http://kodalai.livejournal.com/252612.html).)
Of course, neither of them compare to Bujold's "Paladin of Souls," but then that's partly a matter of approach. :)
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Date: 22 Apr 2006 02:00 am (UTC)One of the things I liked most about BSR -- and hoped you would like as well -- was the way Friedman sketches out the quest journey, and just generally how much it sucks. No springtime romps; instead it's a story of wet, muddy, cold, miserable, grueling treks over mountain passes in the dead of winter, through deserts, over turbulent oceans. Valuable artifacts get lost, not found; people die in terrible, pointless accidents. And in the end they keep on pushing not because it's fun, but because the stakes are just that important, and after a certain point there's just no turning back. It's what I always felt a quest journey should be.
Plus I didn't realize it at the time, but Damien and Tarrant are just so very unbelievably slashtastic. "How are you at parting the waters?" indeed.I still would reccommend that you read Madness Season, which is in my opinion the top of her game -- the only book about vampires saving the universe from evil aliens that you will ever need! (The mechanics do suffer from something of the same hand-waving attempt to straddle the line between sci-fi and fantasy that I think you saw in BSR -- for instance, at some point they explain the protagonist's shapeshifting powers as the result of "being able to use the excess life force that all living creatures produce." How does that work? It just does.) It's still a very good book. But whatever you do, do not read In Conquest Born or it's sequel, The Wilding (http://kodalai.livejournal.com/252612.html).)
Of course, neither of them compare to Bujold's "Paladin of Souls," but then that's partly a matter of approach. :)