Something Rising (Light and Swift

Rating:
Summary: Everybody into the pool
Review: When I was in college, I happened to pass by one of the English professors (a well regarded poet in his own right) as he was talking to his companion about "the banality of plot." Now that I too, am a writer, I know what he means. Real life has no discernible ebb and flow. Things just happen, and these things rarely make sense. Fiction has to make sense, and plot is inherently unrealistic. But let us not forget that the real is usually boring, and boring books do not rise to the top of the best seller lists. Cassie Claiborne is an intriguing heroine, but this book is boring. Too real? Maybe, but certainly there are too many words wrapped around too few incidents, and long drawn descriptions of people, places and things, descriptions that have little to do with the story. The story is interesting enough, but it could have been told in no more than half of this already thin volume.

Rating:
Summary: Not much plot
Review: When I was in college, I happened to pass by one of the English professors (a well regarded poet in his own right) as he was talking to his companion about "the banality of plot." Now that I too, am a writer, I know what he means. Real life has no discernible ebb and flow. Things just happen, and these things rarely make sense. Fiction has to make sense, and plot is inherently unrealistic. But let us not forget that the real is usually boring, and boring books do not rise to the top of the best seller lists. Cassie Claiborne is an intriguing heroine, but this book is boring. Too real? Maybe, but certainly there are too many words wrapped around too few incidents, and long drawn descriptions of people, places and things, descriptions that have little to do with the story. The story is interesting enough, but it could have been told in no more than half of this already thin volume.