Monday, May 17, 2010

By Darkness Hid - Day 2

It's been a crazy couple of days, and I'm late with the second day's posting in this month's CSFF Blog Tour, featuring the first book in Jill Williamson's Blood of Kings series, By Darkness Hid.

As stated in yesterday's post, if I'd met this book when I was a kid, I'd be all over it and probably clamoring for more. But, as an adult, I wasn't drawn into the story in quite the same way as I might have been 25 years ago.

That could be the result of many factors: receiving a copy of the book so late, exhaustion, workload, preparations to travel out of state. Then there's the fact that I'd just finished reading an awesome piece of science fiction I'd avoided for years. That story is still resonating, and -- sad to say -- coloring all the other fiction I've encountered since.

Yeah, I know, each book should be judged on its own merit. And By Darkness Hid did become more interesting as I read. I especially liked the scenes with Achan and Sir Gavin.

"Bloodvoicing" is a cool term, by the way. And I liked that strays are recognizable by their animal surnames.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Keanan, I read all three posts, and the comments, and had to laugh about the newest one. Misplaced modifiers are my bane! They plague me, but I'm getting better at avoiding them--I think--

:)

Keanan Brand said...

We all get 'em -- the misplaced modifiers, I mean.

And although some sentences are perfectly fine, in that we all know what the writer / the speaker intended, they can still make me laugh:

"I left the house in my slippers."

Really? Your feet are that big? And why does a house need slippers, pray tell?

But saying "In my slippers, I left the house" may seem too formal or awkward. However, it's also more accurate, grammatically.