Every now and then I find myself on the edge of knowing what’s going on. For instance, Gentle Readers will by now have figured out that Your Humble Blogger likes speculative fiction. This is, for the most part, a holdover from my misspent youth; I don’t keep up with the field. Not that I dislike the stuff currently being published. No, I’m just lame.
Anyway, I hadn’t actually been aware that Patricia McKillip is still alive, much less that she’s still productive. I happened to see Alphabet Of Thorn on the New Book shelf of the local library, said ‘hunh, I guess it’s a new Patricia McKillip book’, and picked it up. It’s quite good. It’s a little, um, thin, if you know what I mean, but it’s exciting, spooky, and fun.
Digression: for five years, my local library was a SUPERLIBRARY, an academic library that also had the latest fiction and, well, just about anything published on any topic. On the other hand, there wasn’t a New Book shelf with mysteries, sf, pop science, and mainstream fiction and nonfiction bestsellers. About a third of my book reading (not counting re-reads) comes from the New Book Shelf these days, which means I’m judging books by their covers again. On the other hand, there’s a nifty hold system that I abuse dreadfully, where I log in online, pick a couple of books for the staff to pull off the shelves and hold for me at the desk. It means a trip with my Perfect Non-Reader can end with books for YHB without attempting to browse and shush simultaneously. End digression.
I suspect I read the Hed books and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld as a twelve-year-old, more or less the same time I read the Harper Hall trilogy and the Earthsea trilogy. I remember liking them, but I don’t remember much about them. About the McKillip ones, I mean, or for that matter the Earthsea ones. As I mentioned earlier, I remember the Harper Hall books pretty well. Anyway, I never went on reading other books by those authors. Well, I tried a couple of LeGuins, mostly under duress, and I think I tried one or two McCaffreys, but they aren’t authors who I think of as putting out books I want to read. I wouldn’t think to get the library staff to pull one off the shelf for me. And it turns out that I’d quite like to pick up another McKillip.
,
-Vardibidian.
If you’re looking for McKillip, I’d particularly recommend _Ombria in Shadow_ and _Winter Rose_. They are a bit “thicker” than _Alphabet of Thorn_, which was just a bit too lightly sketched in terms of character for my tastes. LOVED the prose, of course, as I always do with McKillip.
McKillip was one of the two guests of honor at WisCon a couple months ago. I was too awestruck to actually talk to her—last time I had the chance to meet her, I went up to her and said, um, er, uh, hi, I like your work, and then I fled.
Anyway, at WisCon I did pick up all of her last several books, the ones with the lovely covers, in trade paperback. I haven’t read ’em yet, but I’ve read almost everything else she’s written, so I’m expecting to like these too.
As for Le Guin: different tastes, I guess. But I’m curious as to which ones you read under duress and didn’t like. (Was that for the sf class? Dispossessed, yes?) I went through a period in the mid-’90s of not liking what she was writing, but these days she’s my very favorite author—though even so there are occasional works of hers that don’t appeal to me much. Anyway, point being there’s a fair bit of variety in her work, so I’m wondering if there are things she’s written that would appeal to you more than what you’ve encountered. But possibly not.
Sorry for the delay in responding, Jed. Yes, Dispossessed was the one I was thinking of, although I read LHoD as a Important SF Book that I Ought to Read, and fell asleep twice. There was another, the title of which I can’t recall, that I read as a you-simply-must-read-this-book from somebody or other whose taste I respected. Duress is overstating it, but then it’s a blog.
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-V.