Abarat Comments and In The Presence of Mine Enemies
Not to reopen an old thread, but I thought this was the best place to comment on the book that people told me to read.
Abarat:
The best parts of it were the title on the cover, which had a nifty font that looked the same upside down and right side up; and the hamster tree song, which was vaguely amusing and yet another subtle tribute to Maryland (well, either that or a German Christmas song): it has that hated state song's tune... which is also the tune of "O Tannenbaum"/"Oh Christmas tree".
I'm sorry I don't share your delight in it, but although I read it quite some time ago and only just got around to commenting, it dragged on and on (and on). Far be it from me to obsess over that watchyamacallim German guy's pyramid structure for stories, but I want some of it. The whole thing was essentially a long exposition. I mean, yeah, there was the wizard guy who had Candy's new friend as a slave; and there was Christopher Carrion throughout the whole thing; and there was the tech guy who wanted to rule the world; but they weren't satisfying.
It just kinda kept going and going and going without ever climaxing (no comments, Tsuyu or anyone else) or slackening. Just continuous exposition for the entire first book of a series is simply no fun.
In the Presence of Mine Enemies (Has nothing to do with anything, but I want to, metaphorically speaking, talk about it.):
I just started reading another Turtledove, and it is very good, but depressing. It's a post-WWII alternate history, where America stayed out of it and the Nazis won. Then, some time later, the Nazis nuked us into oblivion and the Japanese hit us from the West.
The Nazis kept up their genocidal ****, but some Jews (and other targets) survive in hiding.
Depressingly enough, I'm probably not extant. The story takes place in 2009, but with the nuke that hit DC at some unspecified time in the past (but after WWII), my grandparents and parents probably ended up dead or sterilized by the radiation. Hell, with my luck it hit DC at the time, in reality, when my dad's family was living there.
Of course, you Brits and Aussies are screwed as well. England was conquered, and the Nazis used the "kill them, their family, and everyone who ever knew them" method of dealing with rebels, and by the 1970s the English didn't rebel anymore. The Aussies are conquered by the Japanese, but I haven't reached any details on them. I'm not sure what happened to the Swedes... I think they might actually still be independent, insofar as they could be sitting right next door to the scum.
Oh, and Hex (you are the Canadian, right? I have a bad memory)-- your country is screwed too. They got conquered either along with the US, or possibly as part of the conquest of England. I'm not sure.
This is one of the more grim alternate histories. This and the T-101 (not its official name) series are probably among the most depressing he's written. Well, and the alternate in the Crosstime Traffic book Disunited States of America.
I don't know why these are so much fun, when they're so depressing, but they are.
