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Your Vegas - Christmas and Me are Through |
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I am back from Japan. Okay, came back long time ago and did not bother to update. As expected, Japan was super and is calling me with thousand times the pull of chocolate chip cookies. I want to go back! And live there! With their vending machines and automatic-stand-to-the-left and no-eye-contact-in-public-transport and beautiful skies and multiple packaging! Sobsob
So, to get my head back into RL, what better than to read fantasy novels, right? That is what I've been doing. Re-read the Sharing Knife by Bujold, which is so very excellent and a powerful narrative on what I think of as a caste system. Needed another series, so I went for this one called Tairen Soul recommended by SmartBitchesTrashyBooks. Well, they gave it a B, I think, which is a totally WRONG decision. Very bad book, I personally think, with cookie-cutter characters. The hero who is supposed to be some 2000 years old acts like an adolescent acting on Ecstasy and paint fumes. 2000 year old men need to have some maturity don't they? Daemon certainly did. Even Lucivar overcame his jock urges most of the time. Sigh... And the heroine is the shoujo-harem sort; since everyone can't fall in love with her in this sort of a book, they are pledging their life to her. I think the point of no return for me came when one character touted as the Anti-Hero (hey, but y'all know that anti-heroes are just smoking hot soon to be heroes, yes?) turned out to be as boring as the hero. More sobsob.
So! I found another series recced by Jen called the Time Master trilogy by Louise Cooper. Now, I am starting to think it just might be me because I don't like this one either! I wanted to confirm this paranoia and so I googled Louise+Cooper+time+master+sh***y+book and Louise+Cooper+time+master+horrible but I have turned up with nada. So, yes, it is all me. I just can't stand any of the characters here either! The protagonist is this cold and cynical powerful mage kinda person who realizes he is more than he thought he was, quelle surprise~ The problem with him is that he is so utterly unlikeable! He is completely callous even as a child (he accidentally kills his cousin when they were young boys and this cousin is the only friend he has, who has even rebelled against his own parents' dictates to play with the prota. And then, the only emotions the prota feels about this is fear! Even if he feels misery, it is on account of his own misfortune and not a tear for the poor dead kid.), he is incontestably superficial (he falls in love with this beautiful girl who is using her best attribute - face/body/whatever - to attract him and he knows this but he still feels that she is so Pure and Perfect and oh he loves her bleah). Don't even get me started on the heroine. Overall, I am going to lay the blame on the author's feet because she is create this very erratic character. Too bad that the plot actually has some potential. I wish the characters hadn't been these self-pitying Shakespearean-tragic self haters.
I miss Barclay's books. The Raven series had fully developed characters and the "bad guys" were never fixed much like Time Master strives to create. The latter came much before the former though, so no comparison. Still, I wish for good fantasy books!
./rant
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chipper
