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lkh_lashoutsHi! I'm really happy to have found this community. A couple of years ago I posted at the official LKH boards, but the design (or lack thereof) made them a nightmare to navigate. It's like whoever built that site had never visited anything but Yahoo! Geocities pages created in 1997.
Anyway, enough snark about the site; my snark about the books mirrors much of what I've read here so far: LKH has gone from tightly-written books with well-balanced plots and snappy humour, to Mills & Boone with fangs and everyone doing everyone else. The reasons this has happened seem similar to those plaguing Anne Rice's fandom - believing her own hype, losing sight of distinction between herself and her central character, and so on.
When I read Incubus Dreams last year I was so disappointed - the last couple of books had had their faults, but this one was almost entirely composed of sex, and scenes engineering Anita into sexual situations. And... 'diety'? 'Is diety?' What about, 'is a deity'? I glean from comments here that she has gone down another Ricean path and refused to have editors. It's one thing (though not a good thing) for a writer to eschew content-editing, but when they won't even let people check for typos then you know you've got trouble.
And now I see that another book is on the way - aptly enough, as someone said in an earlier thread - in sixty-nine days. Ulp. I'm reading the sample chapters now, with trepidation. I don't know how long they've been online, but if they haven't already been ripped to death here I may post my thoughts tomorrow...
To add a little positivity, I do adore Jean-Claude and Edward. And hell, even Anita is a character who I always loved and could relate to until she apparantly became allergic to her panties. ID wasn't without its enjoyable moments, but it was very clear that the balance had finally tipped toward preternatural fiction-as-sexual-therapy for the author. And even that would've been fine, if only she'd had the grace and wit to absorb it all into the character as fully as she did previous personal themes. If NiC and CS were symptomatic of a series in transition, then ID was the beginning of the end. To my irritation, I can't just decide not to be curious about what happens to the characters next, but I'll be waiting for the small-format paperback this time round. Durned oversized paperback ID doesn't even fit with the rest of my AB books anyway... it's like a Richard on a shelf full of Micahs. :p
Anyway, enough snark about the site; my snark about the books mirrors much of what I've read here so far: LKH has gone from tightly-written books with well-balanced plots and snappy humour, to Mills & Boone with fangs and everyone doing everyone else. The reasons this has happened seem similar to those plaguing Anne Rice's fandom - believing her own hype, losing sight of distinction between herself and her central character, and so on.
When I read Incubus Dreams last year I was so disappointed - the last couple of books had had their faults, but this one was almost entirely composed of sex, and scenes engineering Anita into sexual situations. And... 'diety'? 'Is diety?' What about, 'is a deity'? I glean from comments here that she has gone down another Ricean path and refused to have editors. It's one thing (though not a good thing) for a writer to eschew content-editing, but when they won't even let people check for typos then you know you've got trouble.
And now I see that another book is on the way - aptly enough, as someone said in an earlier thread - in sixty-nine days. Ulp. I'm reading the sample chapters now, with trepidation. I don't know how long they've been online, but if they haven't already been ripped to death here I may post my thoughts tomorrow...
To add a little positivity, I do adore Jean-Claude and Edward. And hell, even Anita is a character who I always loved and could relate to until she apparantly became allergic to her panties. ID wasn't without its enjoyable moments, but it was very clear that the balance had finally tipped toward preternatural fiction-as-sexual-therapy for the author. And even that would've been fine, if only she'd had the grace and wit to absorb it all into the character as fully as she did previous personal themes. If NiC and CS were symptomatic of a series in transition, then ID was the beginning of the end. To my irritation, I can't just decide not to be curious about what happens to the characters next, but I'll be waiting for the small-format paperback this time round. Durned oversized paperback ID doesn't even fit with the rest of my AB books anyway... it's like a Richard on a shelf full of Micahs. :p
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Date: 2006-04-20 11:08 am (UTC)