Should I finish these?

[cahn]

Inspired partially by sophia_sol (but I might have done this anyway), I'm incorporating a very liberal attitude towards not finishing my Hugo reading.

The Kaiju Preservation Society (Scalzi) - DNF. I'm not actually asking about this one as I've decided I'm not going to finish this. It's not bad, it's light and frothy and fun, but I think I am willing to deal with light and frothy and fun when it's tropes I'm interested in (galactic empires in The Last Emperox) and not when it's not (kaiju).

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (Moreno-Garcia) - Is there a payoff here for someone who hasn't read Island of Doctor Moreau? I didn't dislike it and am willing to read more if there is a payoff, but I'm worried that it will only be a payoff if you know something about the original. Also, independently of this book, should I read Island? (That is to say, I wouldn't read it just to read Daughter, but if I read it I might read Daughter afterwards.)

A Mirror Mended (Harrow) - is this worth finishing? I read and liked the first of these but I guess I'm not super convinced there's enough more to say in this multiverse... is there? I got far enough in this one to be aware of what the gimmick is likely to be, but I also think I am near saturation on reversed fairy tales. Tanith Lee probably did it better anyway

Comments

Re: (K)

[cahn]

I liked Last Emperox! Just, I liked it like I like popcorn (in small-to-medium doses, great! in large doses, I start to feel a bit queasy), so by the time I had mainlined the third book it was a bit too much. I think though that kaiju are just not really my thing.

Gideon the Ninth is a book that stands out to me where I had a really really hard time getting through the first few chapters, and then I really enjoyed the rest of it, three books in and counting -- I had to get used to some stylistic choices, and the competition and ensemble and over-the-top loyalty tropes had to be introduced, and then it was fine. (I would not recommend it to you or to B, though, necessarily, because the stylistic choices are rather hard to get through, and I don't think you and B have the kind of overriding love for loyalty tropes that I do.) Oh, and A Wrinkle in Time! That one I actually skipped to the middle because I found the beginning so boring (I remember I was sick and my mom brought it home from the library, and I had run out of other books to read.) But yeah, it's the exception rather than the rule.

Stevenson: heh, yeah.

Re: (K)

[(Anonymous)]

B read Gideon/Harrow/Nona, loved them, and confidently told me I wouldn't like them. So far I've taken him at his word; I really don't do horror/violence. At the same time, sometimes he's wrong about these things; sometimes I'm willing to put up with a lot for a really spectacular book or movie. Mulholland Drive comes to mind as subject matter that I can't stand, but a movie that's just so good I got over it. So I have been contemplating trying out Gideon.

Your point about having to get over the stylistic choices reminds me of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. I recall having a tough time adjusting to the spoken language patterns, but ultimately adoring the book. I suspect that putting in the work to absorb Heinlein's vernacular actually led to me being more attached to the book in the end.

Re: (K)

[cahn]

There is rather... a lot... of horror and violence. I don't know if you would find it spectacular enough to make up for it? (I mean, I clearly did! I just don't actually know for you. I'd be very interested to see, if you do end up trying it out!) It's definitely got a LOT of narrative drive and also a LOT of over-the-top loyalty :D But if you're going to try it out, you should try out at least a couple of chapters past where they get out of the Ninth House; I found the Ninth House bits almost unbearable, but the story becomes rather different after that.

The stylistic part that I really had trouble with at the start was actually sort of the opposite of Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (which, btw, I still remember you handing to me and telling me I had to read it, after I'd struck out hard with Stranger in a Strange Land). I was brought up to read SF in a way where word choice is worldbuilding (which is exactly the case in Moon), whereas Muir's got a writing aesthetic where she does not care a whole lot about this (see also here) -- although it does turn out that one can make implicit inferences from the third book that there is more internal logic to the way Muir has set up everything than it seemed in the first book.