![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Books from Worldcon
Sep. 18th, 2010 10:31 pmYes, I bought books 10 days after getting home from Aussiecon IV. Yes, this means I'm through the ones I brought home with me.
I went to Worldcon with the intent of buying books and water is powerful wet stuff. I didn't have any specific titles in mind and indeed, had never heard of most of the books I ended up buying. Two featured vampires, despite my belief that that subgenre is pretty well saturated. One featured zombies, another was an anthology about life after engineered pandemics end civilisation. I bought the latest issue of Aurealis and also a book not even genre at all, which concerned a character who is FTM. Since I've written several stories featuring Ash, who's FTM, I was curious to see someone else's take on that theme.
I didn't buy as many as I'd expected, perhaps because this was a Worldcon in Australia, so overseas book traders didn't bring their stock and I knew most of the books would be available at home. One of the bonuses at Denvention, the 2008 Worldcon, was the presence of secondhand book dealers selling books that I hadn't been able to find in Australia at all.
I bought Soulless by Gail Carriger primarily because I'd finished the excellent Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare the first night and needed something to read before I went to sleep. As you do. It also needed to be something with a plot I could absorb even with convention fatigue rapidly sinking in. A book with a fair bit of pink and purple on the cover, advertising itself as "A novel of vampires, werewolves and parasols" looked to be just the thing.
While quite readable, Soulless didn't quite gel with me. The humour seemed rather selfconscious and I couldn't decide whether the heroine's 'soulless condition' was supposed to be scientific or magic-based. There are Victorian mad scientists at work, giving the book a rather steam-punk feel, but there are also the traditional werewolves and vampires co-existing with 19th century manners. These did incorporate some original ideas, i.e. vampires live in communities called hives, with a queen, and werewolves handed down their pack structure to the British army. So I'd say worth a read but decidedly lightweight.
The President's Vampire technically featured the same species, but modern day terrorism holds the stage, with the merest dash of magic to explain why Nathaniel Cade is at the beck and call of whoever occupies the White House. Like Soulless it is a first novel, fast-paced and well-written, insisting that it be picked up and once you have, that you finish reading it before you set it down. The author, Christopher Farnsworth, seems not only to have read a lot about American politics and the workings of the presidential administration, but also Lovecraft and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as well as having absorbed a good few episodes of the X Files. I wish there were more books about vampires like this instead of the pretty, angsty and sparkly kind being produced for the teen market. Yes, it does read like a screenplay, which makes sense when you know that that was the author's previous occupation, but I didn't find that a problem.
More books next post!
I went to Worldcon with the intent of buying books and water is powerful wet stuff. I didn't have any specific titles in mind and indeed, had never heard of most of the books I ended up buying. Two featured vampires, despite my belief that that subgenre is pretty well saturated. One featured zombies, another was an anthology about life after engineered pandemics end civilisation. I bought the latest issue of Aurealis and also a book not even genre at all, which concerned a character who is FTM. Since I've written several stories featuring Ash, who's FTM, I was curious to see someone else's take on that theme.
I didn't buy as many as I'd expected, perhaps because this was a Worldcon in Australia, so overseas book traders didn't bring their stock and I knew most of the books would be available at home. One of the bonuses at Denvention, the 2008 Worldcon, was the presence of secondhand book dealers selling books that I hadn't been able to find in Australia at all.
I bought Soulless by Gail Carriger primarily because I'd finished the excellent Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare the first night and needed something to read before I went to sleep. As you do. It also needed to be something with a plot I could absorb even with convention fatigue rapidly sinking in. A book with a fair bit of pink and purple on the cover, advertising itself as "A novel of vampires, werewolves and parasols" looked to be just the thing.
While quite readable, Soulless didn't quite gel with me. The humour seemed rather selfconscious and I couldn't decide whether the heroine's 'soulless condition' was supposed to be scientific or magic-based. There are Victorian mad scientists at work, giving the book a rather steam-punk feel, but there are also the traditional werewolves and vampires co-existing with 19th century manners. These did incorporate some original ideas, i.e. vampires live in communities called hives, with a queen, and werewolves handed down their pack structure to the British army. So I'd say worth a read but decidedly lightweight.
The President's Vampire technically featured the same species, but modern day terrorism holds the stage, with the merest dash of magic to explain why Nathaniel Cade is at the beck and call of whoever occupies the White House. Like Soulless it is a first novel, fast-paced and well-written, insisting that it be picked up and once you have, that you finish reading it before you set it down. The author, Christopher Farnsworth, seems not only to have read a lot about American politics and the workings of the presidential administration, but also Lovecraft and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as well as having absorbed a good few episodes of the X Files. I wish there were more books about vampires like this instead of the pretty, angsty and sparkly kind being produced for the teen market. Yes, it does read like a screenplay, which makes sense when you know that that was the author's previous occupation, but I didn't find that a problem.
More books next post!