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Rantypants on Books...
Aug. 13th, 2010 10:47 pmI swear, the best way to get me to talk about a book is to make my inner worldbuilder cry foul. Which isn't the best advice for authors, but...
I have a fondness for urban fantasy, which makes it nice to live nowadays, when it is absurdly popular. My favorite subgenre is the one where 'magic pops out of the woodwork some point in the recent past, so now it's modern society dealing with magic', but I've yet to find a really good example, unless we venture into the quasi-scifi Feed (by Mira Grant) (Summary: zombie virus gets out. Twenty-some years later, the book opens with the main characters poking zombies with sticks to amuse the internet public...) Some, like Lilith Saintcrow's Danny Valentine books were more 'it's not you, it's me' -- I'd rather read about a necromancer solving crimes in far-future mage-punk America than dealt with the machinations of Hell. Others, like Red by Jordan Summers got deported to 'do not skip the worldbuilding to get to the sex' remedial class.
I am suspecting that Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane is going to get this treatment too. At least, I'm some chapters in and have some issues with the worldbuilding.
( This will get long )
It's sort of a general trend for me that fictional Evil Controlling Religions in SF and present/future fantasy in general raise my hackles because, well, religions don't usually rise out of the vacuum. Look at the big five religions, and you can see how Judaism, Christianity and Islam shared influence (and so did Hinduism and Buddhism). Even newer religions/sects like the Church of Latter-Day Saints are related to older ones. So, having some new being spring out of its founders head like Athena and take over everything feels a bit like walking along in the jungle and finding a polar bear -- it makes you wonder who was messing around to create such an unnatural occurrence. Lazy worldbuilding...
But it also feels a bit like the author wants an Evil Controlling Religion, but also doesn't want the risk of offending someone by radicalizing one of the existing religions, or even spawning off a sect. Which always feels like it should piss both sides off, rather than pissing one side off.
I have a fondness for urban fantasy, which makes it nice to live nowadays, when it is absurdly popular. My favorite subgenre is the one where 'magic pops out of the woodwork some point in the recent past, so now it's modern society dealing with magic', but I've yet to find a really good example, unless we venture into the quasi-scifi Feed (by Mira Grant) (Summary: zombie virus gets out. Twenty-some years later, the book opens with the main characters poking zombies with sticks to amuse the internet public...) Some, like Lilith Saintcrow's Danny Valentine books were more 'it's not you, it's me' -- I'd rather read about a necromancer solving crimes in far-future mage-punk America than dealt with the machinations of Hell. Others, like Red by Jordan Summers got deported to 'do not skip the worldbuilding to get to the sex' remedial class.
I am suspecting that Unholy Ghosts by Stacia Kane is going to get this treatment too. At least, I'm some chapters in and have some issues with the worldbuilding.
( This will get long )
It's sort of a general trend for me that fictional Evil Controlling Religions in SF and present/future fantasy in general raise my hackles because, well, religions don't usually rise out of the vacuum. Look at the big five religions, and you can see how Judaism, Christianity and Islam shared influence (and so did Hinduism and Buddhism). Even newer religions/sects like the Church of Latter-Day Saints are related to older ones. So, having some new being spring out of its founders head like Athena and take over everything feels a bit like walking along in the jungle and finding a polar bear -- it makes you wonder who was messing around to create such an unnatural occurrence. Lazy worldbuilding...
But it also feels a bit like the author wants an Evil Controlling Religion, but also doesn't want the risk of offending someone by radicalizing one of the existing religions, or even spawning off a sect. Which always feels like it should piss both sides off, rather than pissing one side off.
