(no subject)

[owlectomy]

I liked Rae Carson's The Bitter Kingdom well enough but increasingly feel like I'm just not on the right wavelength when it comes to traditional/epic YA fantasy. (I am trying not to be hung up on "Why couldn't I get Sparks and Ashes to work????" but I would like to try to sell it eventually to someone...)

Of course, it's also 3rd in a trilogy where I haven't read the other two books -- it's a book I have to present on for a library booktalk -- and I'm sure that doesn't help. I was able to parse the plot that had come before just fine, but felt like there was a lot of character development that would've felt more meaningful with more setup.

Part of the problem may be that I'm not very interested in, and tried to write a fantasy novel entirely without, long journeys through the wilderness and nobles doing politics. (My issue with politics in fantasy is a bit like my issue with science in hard science fiction: you can deal with it at a simplistic level and get everything wrong, or you can deal with it at a sophisticated level and be kind of boring and pedantic, and it takes a really brilliant writer to not fall into either of those.)

Comments

[rachelmanija]

That's an especially bad book to read without having read the previous two because the series is primarily about the character development of the heroine. She's a completely different person by the end of the story.

That being said, I also thought the politics were simplistic and a lot of stuff didn't make sense. (HORSES CAN'T VOMIT.) The former was especially problematic since so much of the character development had to do with learning to rule.

I don't think either nobles politicking or wilderness journeys are essential to epic fantasy.