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Books, books, books
Jan. 25th, 2005 10:25 amAs mentioned here, I had on my reading list The Search for Nefertiti : The True Story of an Amazing Discovery by Dr. Joann Fletcher and Sharon Shinn's Angel-Seeker
I finished the first on Friday night, and the second last night. So... I had previously said, of Nefertiti:
I'm about halfway through, and I've currently got two main impressions of the book and author -- she's incredibly chatty and perhaps needed a bit more editing, and the reason her theory is rejected by many Egyptologists is probably a mix of two things:
- that she herself is neither an archeologist nor an anthropologist. She's essentially a historian.
- that she writes a lot of "popular" non-fiction. Her writing is fairly breezy, and there aren't footnotes.
My assessment has changed somewhat, having now finished the book. The best analogy I can offer is this: If the author was a patient, the reader was a lab tech, and the book was a sample of the patient's stool, the lab tech would conclude that the patient has an excessive amount of roughage in his/her diet.
Too large, too soft, and too bulky.
It's an easy read, and I suspect it was a relatively easy book to write. About 7/8 of the book is background material (divided equally between the author's background, her speculative vision of what life in Amarna was like, with a small overview of 18th Dynasty royalty which I found to be a bit lacking in background material for someone not already familiar with the period) and the final 1/8 is about the actual time in the tomb with the purported body of Nefertiti.
Now, I'm not saying she's wrong. I would not be surprised to find that she's right. But the book could have been half the length it was with no real loss to the reader.
Angel-Seeker was an enjoyable, quick read. I think Shinn's decision to go back to the earlier period in Samarian "history" is a good one. Her diversion, in the 3rd novel, into more hard science type fiction, IMO took away some of the charm of the world and the books. The books are really love stories, set against a speculative, fantastic world, and that's really where her strength lies. Book number 3 was a bit too harsh a background. Angel-Seeker, which brings back some of the characters from Archangel in supporting roles, is as enjoyable as the Archangel.
Next up: back to Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norell for me.
I finished the first on Friday night, and the second last night. So... I had previously said, of Nefertiti:
I'm about halfway through, and I've currently got two main impressions of the book and author -- she's incredibly chatty and perhaps needed a bit more editing, and the reason her theory is rejected by many Egyptologists is probably a mix of two things:
- that she herself is neither an archeologist nor an anthropologist. She's essentially a historian.
- that she writes a lot of "popular" non-fiction. Her writing is fairly breezy, and there aren't footnotes.
My assessment has changed somewhat, having now finished the book. The best analogy I can offer is this: If the author was a patient, the reader was a lab tech, and the book was a sample of the patient's stool, the lab tech would conclude that the patient has an excessive amount of roughage in his/her diet.
Too large, too soft, and too bulky.
It's an easy read, and I suspect it was a relatively easy book to write. About 7/8 of the book is background material (divided equally between the author's background, her speculative vision of what life in Amarna was like, with a small overview of 18th Dynasty royalty which I found to be a bit lacking in background material for someone not already familiar with the period) and the final 1/8 is about the actual time in the tomb with the purported body of Nefertiti.
Now, I'm not saying she's wrong. I would not be surprised to find that she's right. But the book could have been half the length it was with no real loss to the reader.
Angel-Seeker was an enjoyable, quick read. I think Shinn's decision to go back to the earlier period in Samarian "history" is a good one. Her diversion, in the 3rd novel, into more hard science type fiction, IMO took away some of the charm of the world and the books. The books are really love stories, set against a speculative, fantastic world, and that's really where her strength lies. Book number 3 was a bit too harsh a background. Angel-Seeker, which brings back some of the characters from Archangel in supporting roles, is as enjoyable as the Archangel.
Next up: back to Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norell for me.
