Comments on: But Where is the Witch?

By: Review: Beautiful Darkness « A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy

Review: Beautiful Darkness « A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 12:06:24 +0000

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By: rockinlibrarian

rockinlibrarian — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:40:13 +0000

(Oh, and Kim, I think you’re right about the intentional fantasy-feel of Octavian Nothing. That’s a good point, and certainly works that way!)

By: rockinlibrarian

rockinlibrarian — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:37:50 +0000

I think LIAR is something else entirely, because there isn’t just ONE reveal, and you’re left not entirely sure WHAT kind of story it really is. I describe it as a thriller, if you must put just one label on it. I even say that it MIGHT be supernatural, or it MIGHT not. I sell that uncertainty as part of the reason to read it!

By: Liz B

Liz B — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:57:53 +0000

rockinlibrarian & kim, I feel a bit better that my Octavian mis-read was shared by others.

kim, I agree that the reader is supposed to have a moment of shock when they realize, “this is my history, these are our founding fathers,” rather than “others”.

web, well it does have “Owl” in the title…

Beth, great example. rockinlibrarian, did you read that? what did you feel about how liar was plotted? I think Liar is a bit of a hard sell: say too much about the reveal and do you ruin it for others? But say nothing and people feel either shocked or betrayed or upset that it’s out of the blue? What you know colors the reading, so how soon do you reveal?

Kim & web, I haven’t read LOST BOYS but I’ll add it to my TBR pile

By: web

web — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:07:47 +0000

P.S. I don't care for the novel of Lost Boys myself, because I feel it has insidiously violent undertones, but my husband loved it as a work of realistic fiction of a kind he rarely sees, in which there's a happy marriage and main character is a devoted family man.

By: web

web — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:04:39 +0000

Kim, was that the short story or the novel of “Lost Boys”? In the short story collection Maps in a Mirror, there’s a very interesting afterward. Card got some flak for that story because he wrote it as if it were something that had really happened to him, and he has a personal explanation for that. He changed to fictional names for the novel, IIRC.

By: Kim Aippersbach

Kim Aippersbach — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:03:59 +0000

I think that fantasy misconception about Octavian Nothing is intentional, because the reader’s shocking realization that “this is real” is an effective way to demonstrate how unthinkable slavery is.

My most memorable genre-bending experience was reading Orson Scott Card’s Lost Boys. I did not know it was a ghost story until the very end, and it completely freaked me out. Seriously. I had nightmares for weeks. I almost wrote a letter to Card saying he should have warned his poor unsuspecting readers!

By: Beth

Beth — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 17:48:16 +0000

I think one reason I was a bit disappointed in Liar was because it was something that I completely didn’t expect. Although yes, the clues were there – still. I didn’t like the sudden reveal halfway through the book.

By: web

web — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 02:54:50 +0000

I requested the audiobook of Downtown Owl thinking it was a children’s book.

By: rockinlibrarian

rockinlibrarian — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 18:45:46 +0000

I had almost the same thing with Octavian Nothing! Except I was reading it as science fiction instead of fantasy. It’s kind of like historical fiction that reads like old-time science fiction, or something!

I’ve always thought that if something blatantly supernatural is going to happen in the plot, there ought to be a HINT that things are not quite normal early on at least. But since I like fantastic stuff, I’m less likely to be thrown by it appearing suddenly halfway through a book than I am thrown by expecting something to be a fantasy and then it isn’t. Unless the later fantasy is obviously thrown in there to patch up a plot hole or something.