Sorry, everyone. I got nothin’ for tonight, except a few odds and ends. I did want to let you know this feature is not on life support but its author is eyeballs-deep in revisions, spring on the farm, and family drama. I have been reading some interesting books, most notably Nalo Hopkinson’s The Salt Roads which I will write about when I can marshal the analytic side of my brain. It will probably be a few weeks before that happens.
In the meanwhile, I missed last night’s Game of Thrones episode but am watching it even now. That means I’ve been avoiding spoilers, but ran across a great Twitter thread by the great Melissa Caruso (I know that everyone says Twitter is a cesspool, but if you keep to it to dogs, authors, Charlotte Clymer, and Lin Manuel Miranda, it’s all good.) Anyway, back to Caruso, who identifies the source of my own complicated feelings about GRRM, as well as Joe Abercrombie, Robin Hobb and others of the “grimdark” stripe of fantasy:
She said it all. It’s not a quality issue; it’s the vision thing. You may or may not agree — is relentlessly dark acceptable? Is there a moral component in fiction that requires a sense of justice, or even balance, to prevail? You can’t get much darker than Erikson’s Malazan series, but it doesn’t have the same heaviness that ASOIAF does, or some of the other aforementioned works. What do you think?
And if you’re looking for a fine trilogy to enjoy, the third and last volume of Caruso’s Swords and Fire series has just been published. I’ll write about this series, too. But right now I have this story I’m trying to shape up, so…deadlines, even self-imposed ones, are deadlines.