I finished The Body in the Library last week and have been having a hard time deciding on the next book to read. I picked up Fool Moon, the second in the Dresden Files series. About 30 pages in and I can't get into it. Maybe part of it is that they adapted this story for the television series and I already know "whodunnit." But the biggest part is the way Dresden talks about himself. "I growled" and "I barked" are used as dialogue tags several times. Okay, the book is about werewolves. Cute. Except people don't talk about themselves like that. And one of my nitpicks with the first book resurfaced over and over in this one. He keeps describing himself as tall, lanky, long-legged. I get it. You're tall. You don't have to tell me three times every chapter. So I put it down.
Then I picked up The Cat Who Dropped A Bombshell, the 28th book in the series by Lillian Jackson Braun. That is the book that I literally threw across the room two chapters in. All of the characters spent those two chapters telling each other things they already knew. Maybe it's a case of author malaise after so many books about the same characters. Maybe the editors just didn't have it in them to read another book about KoKo and Yum Yum either. Whatever the case, I just couldn't do it. I may go back and look at an earlier installment to see if it is the "curse of number 28" or just indicative of the genre. Which would make me very sad.
There are some good cozies out there. I have read them. So I'm not quite ready to give up on the genre altogether. But it is frustrating to run into so many bad ones.
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3 comments:
Glad I'm not the only one. What I don't like is you can literally watch an author you've enjoyed make their slow descent into "I have to keep cranking books out because I've got a mortgage, alimony, and a coke habit to pay for," and they have clearly chosen money over artistic credibility. Makes one wonder if they have any other bankable skill sets.
Ummm, I have no other skills. I have no other money. But, I'm also not cranking out the books as fast as the sell-outs...I haven't sold anything in the first place though...but as soon as I do, I have enough faith in myself to know I'll sell out.
Yeah. That's what I meant to say. I think.
Dresden is intended to be tongue in cheek. That's just the tone of the whole series. It's meant to be read for fun. Taking the series apart line by line, word by word . . . well, it is possible to be too analytical. You can do the same thing with absolutely any series out there, it's just a matter of whether or not you happen to like the author.
I have to agree with Jenny here, the first opportunity I get, I'll sell out quicker than grease through a kitten. Let's face it, this isn't high-flying "literary" work. It's genre fiction. Fans expect certain things from the authors they like. If the author doesn't provide them, then the fans go away.
Just my two cents, D.B.
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