I've just finished two stories today. The first is Joe Abercrombie's The First Law: The Blade Itself, which I picked up at Foolscap earlier this year and have finally got about to reading. It's a rollicking good tale, not quite generic fantasy product and certainly filled with some pretty damn good characterization. The publisher's blurb behind that link lies about some details and fails to tell you about the really interesting characters, like The Dogman, The Black Dow, Ardee and Ferro-- a real cast of characters.
Abercrombie's writing is solid, crisp, serious or funny depending upon the need, and his grasp of the use of language and even thought patterns when he's inhabiting a point of view is really remarkable. But while his descriptions of both banter and battle are masterful, his static sets in the city of Agriont feel just like that... sets. His work feels like that of an excellent playwright stretching out into his first novels. Still, I do plan on reading the second book.
The other story I read was Phillip Lopate's "Goes Long," which starts out as a rumination about cocksmanship, a long essay about how men approach the sex act. Lopate's protagonist confesses that he doesn't understand the whole "all night long" thing; he'd rather go long enough, then roll over and snooze or chat. His female friends tell him, however, that sex should either be so hot it's over with fast, or so good it goes on for a long time. "Most sex," they tell him, "is not good sex."
What astonished me about this story, and I will spoil it for you if you plan on reading it, is ( spoiler )
It was one of those eye-opening moments when a story reminds of you how and why to write short stories. Lopate had taken a universal issue-- men's preoccupation with their "performance"-- and introduced it as a topic, a theme, only at the last moment to create an utterly profound illustration about a far more interesting theme, how men and women think about things differently, and does so with the sharp jab of a very dull knife, which he then twists for two or three paragraphs before-- and I won't tell you how-- he delivers the punch line that makes you go, "Oh."
Oh.
Abercrombie's writing is solid, crisp, serious or funny depending upon the need, and his grasp of the use of language and even thought patterns when he's inhabiting a point of view is really remarkable. But while his descriptions of both banter and battle are masterful, his static sets in the city of Agriont feel just like that... sets. His work feels like that of an excellent playwright stretching out into his first novels. Still, I do plan on reading the second book.
The other story I read was Phillip Lopate's "Goes Long," which starts out as a rumination about cocksmanship, a long essay about how men approach the sex act. Lopate's protagonist confesses that he doesn't understand the whole "all night long" thing; he'd rather go long enough, then roll over and snooze or chat. His female friends tell him, however, that sex should either be so hot it's over with fast, or so good it goes on for a long time. "Most sex," they tell him, "is not good sex."
What astonished me about this story, and I will spoil it for you if you plan on reading it, is ( spoiler )
It was one of those eye-opening moments when a story reminds of you how and why to write short stories. Lopate had taken a universal issue-- men's preoccupation with their "performance"-- and introduced it as a topic, a theme, only at the last moment to create an utterly profound illustration about a far more interesting theme, how men and women think about things differently, and does so with the sharp jab of a very dull knife, which he then twists for two or three paragraphs before-- and I won't tell you how-- he delivers the punch line that makes you go, "Oh."
Oh.
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