For a debut novel this is more than a little impressive. Characters are vividly drawn, multi-layered, and in one or two cases, compelling. Hogan joins with the new wave of fantasy authors in his use of morally ambivalent characters, distinct and tight points of view, believable world building, an intelligible magic system, and some edgy, gritty content. - D.P. Prior, author of The Nameless Dwarf.
That’s the promo for this kindle book that amazon thought I’d be interested in. Me personally I’d think I was being panned if in one or two cases my characters were compelling. I’d probably get drunk and throw things then fall in a puddle of self-loathing. Not saying I draw compelling characters or anything or even like being drunk, just, you know, I don’t want to read the book.
I’m not really a fan of fantasy novels in general. I’m sure there are some good ones, or, maybe not, but some I’d enjoy reading, however, the tag line ‘New Wave of (fill in the genre) writers’ just shrinks the old nads. I always think of genre’s as “A priest a rabbi and a minister walk into a bar …” Only, you substitute with “A Dwarf an Orc and a wizard …” or “Fabio, a heaving bosom and something gothic …” or “She had legs up to here, I was half in the bag, with a round in the chamber, walking into a bar …”
Sort of makes a guy wanna write “A priest a wizard with a heaving bosom and some guy go walking into legs up to here and then nothing much happened. Down at the Stop and Go some kid was pouring coffee into a Styrofoam cup. He was on his way to Nashville for no particular reason except folks kept asking where he was going and he didn’t like to lie. Not much, not unless he had to.”
I don’t know. I’ve read more in the last few weeks then I have most of the rest of the year. Yes, kids, back in the winter of 13 I had to walk down two flights of stairs in a bitter cold, powerless hamlet just to charge my kindle in the mighty adequate jeep, which, unlike the mighty mighty jeep, didn’t have a cigarette lighter so much as a twelve volt charging station whether the rig was on or not. The mighty mighty jeep kept blowing the disc player whenever the cigarette lighter was used. Took me years to finally break down and look at factory panel for it. I had been using the wrong amperage fuse all along. I never claimed the mighty mighty jeep had a smart driver.
My rig before that was repossessed. Everyone I told that too had, damn near verbatim, the same response “Those Bastards! Why’d they do that?” I guess that question was flattering; I mean it always made me smile. My friends still wanted to defend me against the man when I said “I hadn’t paid them for months.” Flattering that I was ever thought of as an upright citizen. Though hardly the first time everyone I knew mistook me for someone else. The most maddening thing about my first divorce was that the seahag mistook me for someone else. A genre, a gender. Like “A penis walks into a bar. That’s not funny.” Not completely unflattering, I had never, up to that time, been objectified, and, speaking for guys, it’s not really an insult. I’d rather that my car or my person were somehow a pop psyche extension of my penis than, say, my spleen. The spleen doesn’t care, the penis is sensitive about such things. I’m not entirely convinced that a penis walking into a bar is not funny. It seems like hilarity should ensue. The seahags super power is to suck the joy out of things, um, and not just phallic things, maybe especially not just phallic things.
I’m not even sure I could convince the folks of this sleepy little hamlet that I had stopped paying on my leased Sebring convertible. Even in outlaw felony flats an adjunct to too-cool-for-school Portland where we-don’-need-no-stinking-umbrellas it was hard for the dressed and fed sticky-side-of-the-envelope friends of mine to wrap their heads around me letting a car loan go into repo. In this town people follow all the silly ordinances and think that holding a little sit in at a school after seven days without power is the height of civil disobedience. Hmmmm. I’m not describing that very well. There is entirely too much rule following going on around here for my tastes.
Six months ago my daughter was on this kick about how “Real” people were here and how pretensious they were in Portland. I didn’t defend that notion, and, honestly, between the two of us she’s the one actually from Oregon. I did point out how many times I left here for good. She’s my daughter. I caught her on the way out of the womb and held her shoulders while the midwife unwrapped the cord from around her neck. What she was doing was holding at bay the longing for home, perhaps even trying to project that need onto me. Around thanksgiving she was saying “What if I just don’t come back here, just stay in Portland?”
One of the many compelling characters in The Things We Set on Fire had to leave Portland to go to Florida. I don’t want to give away anything; I want you to read the book. It’s well written. No group goes walking into a bar. If I had to put it in a pigeon hole I’d call it literary fiction or possibly even chick fiction with an edge, a meaty edge, a sharp edge. In my mind literary fiction follows all the rules (a series of conflicts and resolutions building towards some real or imagined event that changes a character) and, like real life, it starts in the middle and ends in the middle.
The things we set On Fire is related to the review above. Amazon is fixing to give me a pre-release e-book every month. I took something this month with a cool looking cover. The above was among the suggested readings if I liked the free one. I think they expect me to use social networks to say good things about books or amazon. Amazon is a bit like Cost-co; if you know the cost of things you can get bargains, if you don’t you can get screwed. The upside to amazon is you don’t have to wander around a drafty warehouse with shelves stocked with five gallon tubs of Goldfish (the cracker). The downside is prime membership is more expensive than Costco, which dovetails into an upside; you can leave amazon with one small free book. It’s impossible to leave a Costco without dropping a few large bills and filling up whatever rig you bought; six months later you are cleaning out the back of a cabinet and finding Large Goldfish containers, a thirty pound sack of basmati rice and ten pound lots of angel hair pasta. It took so long to go through the first batch you’d forgotten you had two of each.
Ok, so I’m rambling. I do that a lot. I was awoken at some obscene hour and had a conversation that I sure hope wasn’t lucid on my part as I don’t remember it. I think that’s a remote possibility, lucidity. Though statistically I should be lucid some time or other and I’m not sure that lucid and cogent aren’t a tad short wired in my poor pretty head.
Ok, carry on with your bad selves. I’m spent.
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