fantasy with a twist
May. 12th, 2007 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snugglekittyThis week, I read The Outstretched Shadow by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory. Based on seeing the covers and reading the descriptions of the Obsidian Trilogy, I had long thought that it would be way too "fuzzy" for me. What do I mean by that? Well, a lot of cute, earnest talking animals and not much of real challenges to anyone's thinking. Then ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
7j told me that she found that trilogy to be actually more serious than Lackey's other work. So I decided I had to give it a try.
She was right - I was pleasantly surprised. The first 200 pages were about what I had expected. Pretty bland, and nothing to really make you like the protagonist. But the truths he encounters after those first 200 pages were quite surprising. The talking animals and magical creatures in this book are not cute and earnest. Most of them are downright cranky, which made a lot of sense to me. The system of magic that the main character is exploring, Wild Magic, I found downright fascinating. It reminded me a lot of ideas about spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual knowledge makes it easier to do some things, but as a consequence, you cannot act against the spirit, and you must sometimes do things for it, even if it's not convenient or fun or going to get you a lot of love. That fits well with my understanding of how the universe works. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the other two books in the trilogy. I'd give it four stars, not because I'd read it over and over, but because it made me think in ways I hadn't expected.
Alien Taste by Wen Spencer was a bit different than I had imagined. I had read three of Wen Spencer's other books (A Brother's Price, Tinker, and Wolf Who Rules) and liked them, already. Somehow, despite the title, I had not picked up on the fact that these books involved actual aliens. I thought it was just a metaphor for strangeness in a dark fantasy kind of setting. The explanations of the alien stuff was a little hard to follow. But I liked the characters and the way the plot demonstrated their value systems. The conflict didn't seem at all forced, since Spencer showed how the two worldviews couldn't co-exist peacefully, although how everyone developed those worldviews seemed a bit simple. I liked it and plan to read at least the next book in the series. Three stars.
7j told me that she found that trilogy to be actually more serious than Lackey's other work. So I decided I had to give it a try.She was right - I was pleasantly surprised. The first 200 pages were about what I had expected. Pretty bland, and nothing to really make you like the protagonist. But the truths he encounters after those first 200 pages were quite surprising. The talking animals and magical creatures in this book are not cute and earnest. Most of them are downright cranky, which made a lot of sense to me. The system of magic that the main character is exploring, Wild Magic, I found downright fascinating. It reminded me a lot of ideas about spiritual enlightenment. Spiritual knowledge makes it easier to do some things, but as a consequence, you cannot act against the spirit, and you must sometimes do things for it, even if it's not convenient or fun or going to get you a lot of love. That fits well with my understanding of how the universe works. I'm definitely looking forward to reading the other two books in the trilogy. I'd give it four stars, not because I'd read it over and over, but because it made me think in ways I hadn't expected.
Alien Taste by Wen Spencer was a bit different than I had imagined. I had read three of Wen Spencer's other books (A Brother's Price, Tinker, and Wolf Who Rules) and liked them, already. Somehow, despite the title, I had not picked up on the fact that these books involved actual aliens. I thought it was just a metaphor for strangeness in a dark fantasy kind of setting. The explanations of the alien stuff was a little hard to follow. But I liked the characters and the way the plot demonstrated their value systems. The conflict didn't seem at all forced, since Spencer showed how the two worldviews couldn't co-exist peacefully, although how everyone developed those worldviews seemed a bit simple. I liked it and plan to read at least the next book in the series. Three stars.
