Reviews

[desperance]

Don D'Ammassa reviews "River of the World", even if he does mistake what is clearly - to my mind - the end of a series for what is apparently, to his, the beginning of something else...

And Mel Jacob reviews the same book for SFRevu, while also not believing that this really is the end. Perhaps other people have other notions of what constitutes an ending?

In other news, it looks like we will have more dates for the play "A Cold Coming" in the autumn, which is nice. We're going to talk to the Arts Council about funding, either for a mini-tour or else for a new piece; I hold out small hope after recent rebuffs, but drama may be doing better than literature these days; who knows? We can but try.

In other news, I saw 'Sunshine' last night. Don't do it. The thing is drivel, truly. But Japanese food afterwards was good (and the restaurant's open till 2am! Yay! This may not last, but it is to be treasured while it does. Those of you who don't live here wouldn't believe how hard it can be to find good food after the pubs shut...).

Comments

[wishwords.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the reviewers are so used to seeing series that go on and on that they are looking for and finding little tiny clues that lead them to believe it will?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Maybe so - and certainly those clues are there, because there's no question but that the stories go on after the books are finished. That's one of my definitions of good writing, of credibility, that the narrator stops but the characters go on: they still have ambitions and challenges to face, whether or not I'm actually writing about them any more.

[julesjones]

That was something I noticed when I got the end of Outremer -- there was clearly more story to be told about those characters if you felt like it, but this was as good a place as any to stop writing that particular piece of the characters' story.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. It's inherent. Even a happy ending is never - or never ought to be - actually an end; where's the happiness in that?

[julesjones]

We were discussing the HEA yesterday at lunch, in the context of why I couldn't write for Harlequin/Mills & Boon even if I could get over my disinterest in writing het. And I think this is a large part of my aversion to the standard HEA of the romance genre -- the "happy for now" ending allows for the characters to have an interesting life after the end of the book, whereas the hardcore classic HEA is basically a statement that nothing interesting is ever going to happen to them again.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I like the way the SFRevu review casually gives away a major aspect of the ending: I don't want it to end like this, therefore this can't be the ending...

Ah, well, perhaps that's what it means to leave them wanting more...

[synedrian.livejournal.com]

Ouch! Thanks for the spoiler warning.

[devonellington.livejournal.com]

Great news on the play -- it's such a good play it deserves a long and varied life!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I think it's better now than it was when you read it. Which is at least partly thanks to you... *g*