Love / Hate Relationships: Questions and answers (hell, let's be honest--more questions than answers)

My experience with books has been mainly cut-and-dried as far as whether I find a book or book series worthy of my time and energy. This is the girl who abandoned Tolkien, not caring at all what people think or whether or not she could discuss LOTR at parties. Tolkien's worldbuilding is magnificient. The guy invented fourteen languages. My nerdy little heart should leap at this kind of thing.

But. . .

Tolkien was not exactly skilled at choosing his sensory details. By the time I'd read three pages of description of a hillside, all the way down to how many gorse bushes and how tall each one of them were, I gave up. I am extremely detail-oriented and figure that anyone who is going to spend three pages of description on one hillside is doing so because the details are important and that said hillside is going to figure into the plot at some future time.

Nope.

Well into the second book, the hillside had been left far behind. When I asked a fan of the series about it, I got a deer-in-the-headlights look from him.

"You remember that?" he asked.

"Well, he spent three pages on the gorse bushes, so I figure they were going to be revisited or important in some way or another later on."

 "No, no, you don't get it. He's trying to give a sense of place."

"No, no, I do get it. This is a linguist who is brilliant but who has no real understanding of how much sensory detail to use in fiction and when. His pacing is a mess. That entire passage could have been a couple of paragraphs and I would have had no trouble getting a sense of setting. Instead, I'm holding the details in my mind because I'm sure that so much copy dedicated to it must have meant it was going to be significant later on."

I might as well have said kicking puppies was great sport. Horrified glances and gasps whenever I bring it up.

If you were to look at my Goodreads page, you will see that I have seldom given only one or two stars to a book. I know my genres, I know my authors, I read reviews and decide if this is something I want to spend time on. Rarely do I get a nasty surprise, unless it's due to devouring curiosity or a desire to be completely surprised. I have also read some one-star books because of their significance to popular culture or how well they fit into their historical context, because my students were reading them, or simply because reading less-than-stellar prose is a good way to appreciate stellar prose.

As a rule, I can put my finger on exactly what I liked and didn't like and decide whether the book or series is worth finishing. I am seldom ambivalent and have very few love / hate relationships with the books I read.

That all changed a year ago, when I was introduced to Kevin Hearne's The Iron Druid Chronicles. I love myth and folklore and have recently been introduced to the wonderful world of urban fantasy, particularly that of Emma Bull and Charles de Lint. I also have one of Jim Butcher's Dresden books and am anxious to give them a try.

I have read all six of the published Iron Druid books, all the short stories, and all the novellas Hearne has published that tie in to the series. I plan to read the next three books as well. I may or may not elaborate on his commercialism and opportunism in another post. Be that as it may, Hearne's scholarship is considerable. He juggles plotlines and pantheons with the dexterity of a brain surgeon. He even writes good fight scenes.When he does decide to let go of the '80's fratboy that lends voice most often to the 2100-year-old Druid protagonist (how coincidental is it that Siodhachan has the same tastes in entertainment as his creator), his writing can be insightful, poetic, lyrical. He's funny and witty, but too often slops over into silliness, a waste of the author's talent and sometimes downright insulting to his readers. He obviously wishes to produce "important" work but just as obviously wants to be sleeping on bags of money, and the results range from uneven to wildly uneven.

And don't get me started on Hearne's sexism. That, too, may be another post. Or perhaps I'll just refer you to my Goodreads reviews.

Never have I persevered with a book series that I hate as much as I love. I usually say, "life's too short for this tug-o-war" and toss the book aside. But I love the worldbuilding. There's so little urban fantasy out there that even comes up to halfway decent. I'm a detail freak, and I'm willing to stick with these books so that, if I have something to lambaste about them, I can do so from a position of knowledge. There are even things to love about the characters, though they definitely take a backseat to the story. Especially the women. And even more especially the goddesses of the Tuatha de Dannan, who are petty, flouncy high-school girls, cheerleaders fighting over the football captain. Brighid, Flidais, and even the Morrigan deserve better.

All I can say is, the next three books damn well better be worth the time and energy and money it will have taken to get through them all. Watch this space.