(no subject)

[beccaelizabeth]

another thing bothering me about this book - there's a whole bunch of slaves, in slave pens, underneath a city. In an earthquake. The good guys are escaping past the slave pens, close enough to hear them panic. But the don't do anything. They don't even mention it! The only slave they care about is the woman who is part of the prophecy. The one where all we've learned so far is she's naked with big breasts, and she had children but they were killed.


She gets to be powerful. She can scare a man and make men feel stuff. By getting naked.

much *facepalm*

Comments

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

I vaguely remember reading these as a kid, but now all that's coming back for me is the name itself. Guess it made a real impression on me. Certainly I didn't notice the gender stuff-- at the time I was very much wishing I was a boy because boys seemed to have all the fun in adventure novels while girls were expected to stay home, make the babies, or get rescued, married, and then stay home, etc. So the perspective with which I identified was probably perfectly okay with the exclusion of the fairer sex, just so there'd be less of that nonsense to wade through.

On an unrelated note, you don't ever beta do you? I could supply you with a draft part 1 of my Ethan fic-- possibly a very bad part 2 by the end of the long weekend. I only ask because I suspect you'll be like Ethan himself and lob a couple of interesting ideas into the works, things I haven't thought of. I do well with grammar and expression-- at least, unlike a Certain Famous Rich Woman in England I notice eventually when I've used the same unusual word three paragraphs running....

I won't be crushed if you say you can't take it on, but I thought it might give you something different to read, if the Belgariad is ticking you off so much....

Hob

[beccaelizabeth]

Well these are an improvement on 'stay home make babies' - they get to wander around doing the cooking! And sometimes doing sorcery too, which is neat.


beta reading... I'll have to say no. There's something else I'm supposed to be doing that is likely to result in no brain available to beta. :-/

[anne_d]

When were these written? They sound seriously dated.

I somehow managed to miss them in all my F&SF reading over the years, and Goddess am I grateful. Teenage boy fantasies, bleagh. I'm beginning to see why I don't read much F&SF anymore.

All right, so I read Regencies, and there are arranged marriages. A good novel deals with the issues of contracted marriage and at least presents the points of view of both contractees, and some of them actually show the couple dealing with it like adults. I like well-written people stuff. A Civil Contract, for example, which is also one of my comfort books.

I guess if it's otherwise a good book and you used to like it, you kind of forgive the flaws and go with the story, but I've found that there are some books I just can't do that with anymore. I think it's called "growing up".

I don't know if this makes any sense. I think I need tea.

[beccaelizabeth]

The one I'm on at the moment is from 1984. So they're getting on a bit.
It's odd though, none of the stuff that is winding me up this time was stuff that is in memory as bad from the last time I read them.
Yeah, growing up. Or at least changing.
:-)

*sends tea*
*dries off email*

[anne_d]

Oh, thank you. *Sips tea, gratefully*

I guess that's also why I read mostly mysteries these days.

*Looks at bookcases* Written by women, except for Tony Hillerman and some of the classics.

F&SF ain't what it used to be. Or maybe it never really was.

Anne, or maybe some things are better just fondly remembered

[beccaelizabeth]

Got a bunch of books by women too.
What really depresses me is when they're just as bad.

[anne_d]

Ursula LeGuin is good, even Emily agrees with me, and I remember James Tiptree Jr as also being worth the reading. I like Robin McKinley's fantasy stories, and the ones I read originally even held up fairly well after fifteen years or so.

There are a fair number of good women writers of mysteries. I know that isn't your thing, but maybe that's where the good writers are going.

[sparklebutch.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

[beccaelizabeth]

*nod*