An Unkindness Of Magicians
May. 7th, 2018 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraI have a fondness for sets and themes. I might easily have skipped either Unkindness Of book if it was the only one, but *two* in 2017, clearly if I was going to read one I had to read both. An Unkindness of Magicians is by Kat Howard and it's the one that isn't on the Hugo ballot (in the form of the author of the other one being up for the Campbell). I didn't like that one and as it turns out I didn't like this one either.
I'm not sure exactly how to name its subgenre, all I know is that I started reading it and immediately went "oh, it's just one of these" and then it was. Urban fantasy thrillers? Nighttime soap operas with magic? Worlds with more ritual than coherency, the obligatory serial killer... this stuff is very readable, I mean, I read it, and I kind of want to describe it as Danielle Steel crossed with Dean Koontz and they've sold like 1.2 *billion* books between them, according to wikipedia. (Dang.) Anyways, the very end managed to cross the threshold of interesting, and there were a couple of cool visuals before that, but ultimately it's the kind of book where child torture, child murder, and the serial killing of NPC women are plot points to raise the stakes and add drama. If a man had written it it would have been unreadable; Howard did balance it somewhat with a solid ensemble cast of POV women and some good scenes of them interacting and supporting one another. The "one survivor to another" parts were the strongest scenes. And I suppose I'm glad to have a woman author I can recommend if you like Dean Koontz, in my ongoing quest to have a woman author to bring up in any conversation I might ever need to have about sff books. (It's a work in progress... still weak in many areas...)
I'm not sure exactly how to name its subgenre, all I know is that I started reading it and immediately went "oh, it's just one of these" and then it was. Urban fantasy thrillers? Nighttime soap operas with magic? Worlds with more ritual than coherency, the obligatory serial killer... this stuff is very readable, I mean, I read it, and I kind of want to describe it as Danielle Steel crossed with Dean Koontz and they've sold like 1.2 *billion* books between them, according to wikipedia. (Dang.) Anyways, the very end managed to cross the threshold of interesting, and there were a couple of cool visuals before that, but ultimately it's the kind of book where child torture, child murder, and the serial killing of NPC women are plot points to raise the stakes and add drama. If a man had written it it would have been unreadable; Howard did balance it somewhat with a solid ensemble cast of POV women and some good scenes of them interacting and supporting one another. The "one survivor to another" parts were the strongest scenes. And I suppose I'm glad to have a woman author I can recommend if you like Dean Koontz, in my ongoing quest to have a woman author to bring up in any conversation I might ever need to have about sff books. (It's a work in progress... still weak in many areas...)
