One down, four to go
Posted at 22:38:00
on Wed, August 09th 2006 by graham
in:
reading
Knife of Dreams is done, finished, read and back on the shelf. And I'm very, very tired.
I'm pleased to say that I really enjoyed it. I didn't think that I would, mainly because I've found the later books in the Wheel of Time series to be somewhat stodgy. Perhaps my decision to only buy it when it had come out in paperback helped at bit; that and the packing up of nine out of the other ten books and burying them in Dad's loft. I'm looking forward to book twelve, but I really, sincerely hope that the main thread of the series ends there. Some things really can go on for too long, and since all good things must come to an end it follows that something that does not come to an end is cannot, therefore, be a good thing.
The novel did suffer, however, from what I'm going to call 'famous author adverb syndrome', also known as 'editor lets them get away with it itis'. Witness the following exchange as I would write it:
"What's the point?" she said, head in her hands, "It's only going to go wrong."And as someone suffering from the above syndrome:
"What's the point?" she said dully, head in her hands, "It's only going to go wrong."Now, there are those that would say that there isn't really any difference between the above two examples, but I'd argue that at least as far as sentence structure and impact goes, the first example is by far the stronger.
It's something that seems to happen a lot these days, mostly in the books of people who by now should know better. JK Rowling is another culprit, with everyone in the Harry Potter novels speaking dully, bouncing excitedly and weeping fruitlessly (on top of that, I still haven't forgiven her for '"Snape!" Slughorn ejaculated,' but that's a rant that I believe I've already had elsewhen on this blog).
It's as though a kind of laziness creeps in about the author's work, or at the very least their editor's. Two cardinal rules of writing are that a) adverbs are bad and b) one should omit needless words (the first also coming very much under the auspices of the second). Now, I know that there are those who argue that since Jordan, Rowling et al. are not only published but bestsellers and, as has been mentioned, famous and rich as a result, they have the right to write in this way, and I suppose that those people are right. But that doesn't stop this style of writing from damaging the impact of the text.
There are also those who would say that since I'm neither published nor famous I don't really get to have a say. I suppose that's true too, so I'll leave you to decide.
I'll let you know how I get on with Neuromancer.
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