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UnclePete
Weasel Overlord

Date Joined Dec 2004
Total Posts : 309

Posted 1/27/2008 11:26 PM (GMT -4)

Here you go Daniel -- feel free to post about the review or the book itself.

____________
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com

H.P. Lovesauce
Necronomicondiment

Date Joined Jul 2007
Total Posts : 585

Posted 1/28/2008 1:50 PM (GMT -4)

To crib further from the publisher's website, there is a reading group discussion guide available as a PDF. I don't really care for most of the questions it asks, but can't think of better ones offhand.

Daniel Ausema
Acolyte

Date Joined May 2007
Total Posts : 298

Posted 1/29/2008 7:35 PM (GMT -4)

Thanks :) Ummm, I already mentioned elsewhere that I thought the review was a good overview of the book's strengths. It was a very enjoyable read to me, partly because it just didn't feel anything like other fantasies I've read. Certainly doesn't have any of the tropes that tire me in a lot of traditional fantasy (and admittedly are even present in some that I do like), but it also doesn't feel anything like the other books I've read that try to break with that. I'm very setting-focused, and the main city (it's been a year and a half since I read it...Glass City? City of Glass?) had an intriguing ambiance--not dark and gritty like a lot of other city-focused fantasy that I like, but strange and wonderful. And the magic of contracts that bind and of steam- and other-power...again, it felt different without that sense you sometimes get of an author trying too hard to be different for its own sake.

One thing I wanted more of (and Dana Copithorne has said she's exploring this more in the sequel) is the history and social micro-group interactions of the exiles that includes the third character. There's something about exiles that always draws me in--in my own writing and in reading--so I wanted to discover more about them through the story.

Twigs and Brambles (my writing blog)

H.P. Lovesauce
Necronomicondiment

Date Joined Jul 2007
Total Posts : 585

Posted 1/30/2008 11:55 AM (GMT -4)

If I had more of...that stuff, what do you call it?--right, energy and ambition, I would've asked to interview Copithorne. One of the Canadian-specific questions would have been about the exiles, because in Vancouver she would've seen not just the results of the Hong Kong influx, but more telling the large urban Native population. Jado and his circle seem like indigenous people, and it's interesting how the architecture and features of the Glass City carry meanings for them that are hidden to the "dominant" culture.

For me, Jado's uniqueness in feeling part of his community yet different from most of its members, and yearning to know about his "homeland" but being cut off from it, appeals to me more than the exiles generally. Someone who doesn't fit in among people who don't fit in is in an interesting position.

I think you've expressed perfectly how "naturally" different the novel is. I suspect we'd see more of this if publishers weren't focused on the strictures of speculative fiction. Canada has produced some unique visions, although its weakness is the tendency toward what G.W. Thomas calls "crying in their space tea" fiction.

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