Dying Earth
My review of Nights Of Villjamur by Mark Charan Newton has sneaked up a day early at Strange Horizons.
I wrote this review some time ago now and I have watched with surprise as lots of very positive reviews have rolled in. I wanted to like Nights Of Villjamur a lot but ended up unable to. Amazingly I find myself in agreement with Pat St-Denis on this.
I appreciate this is more grist for the motherfucker mill. And, indeed, the SH hates core genre argument.
Martin
4 June, 2009 at 10:57 am
How dare you lower my glorious averages! :) This one had me chuckling, I’ll admit. As those comments suggest, I’m surprised you of all people missed some of the references there, but so it goes.
Mark
4 June, 2009 at 12:51 pm
I’ll say this here rather than at SH, but I wonder if the very positive reactions (mine is a qualified positive, I’ll admit) are due to the readers’ lack of exposure to the dying earth subgenre. The points of comparison in those reviews are very telling.
Larry
4 June, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Well, I’m not that familar with Dying Earth either. I’ve never read Vance because he has never interested me. To be honest, I see Dying Earth as more of a mood than a subgenre and although it obviously flavours Nights Of Villjamur I don’t think it is the most important part of it. This is why I placed the novel in the context of Newton’s immediate contemporaries instead.
As for the wider point about getting references to other works, I’m sure I’ve missed some (I always do). However, there are plenty of references that I did get but didn’t mention because that wasn’t the point of the review.
Martin
5 June, 2009 at 9:07 am
I did not rate Nights Of Villjamur very highly either I’m afraid. The positive reviews baffle me to be honest.
Chris S
20 December, 2009 at 7:15 pm