Flametoad

While blogging about the convention a couple weeks ago I neglected to mention that I was also busy reading during my off-time. In fact, I finished two books. The first, Vortex by Larry Bond, takes the prize for being the longest-read book I’ve ever tackled. I started Vortex in the mid 1990′s, got bored, and set it on my shelf to try again later. I know this for a fact because I found a cable bill from that period that I’d used a bookmark. Vortex really isn’t a bad book, it’s just that Larry Bond is like Tom Clancy in that he spends a looooong time on setup. Out of this 600 page book, things didn’t really start happening until pretty close to page 100. In fairness, from that point on it was a fair page-turner. One might say that using the first 1/6th of a book for setup really isn’t so bad. But one would be wrong. Those first 100 pages were grueling, and I easily saw why I’d put it down the first time. Yet Vortex isn’t the first book by Bond that I’d read, so I knew I enjoyed his thrillers and that it would undoubtedly get better. I suspect that if a beginning writer turned in a manuscript like that today, it would never see the light of day. Beginning writers don’t have the luxury of boredom for the first 1/6th of a manuscript.

Aside from that, it was interesting reading Vortex in today’s context. The book is set in a South Africa that has not yet cast off Apartheid. The premise is that a cunning minister of government gains control and stages a war with South Africa’s neighbors. Cuban troops already in Africa intervene, with airlift support from the Soviet Union. The United States is forced to join the fray  because too many of our critical mineral resources come from South Africa. Of course the US deploys in a matter of weeks, which having just seen the pace at which the US deployed for Iraq made me call "BS".

So I finished that book in the Atlanta airport on the way to the convention. Once up in my hotel room I cracked open Valentine’s Resolve by E.E. Knight. Yes, I packed two books for my trip. I have to say I enjoyed this one a bit more than the previous book Valentine’s Exile, which for some reason didn’t give me the "epic" feeling quite as much as all the other books–including this one–in the series. Or maybe it’s just that Exile started off so strong that it just never matched itself in emotional intensity for me after that first act. Regardless, Resolve is a worthy addition to the series. I’d love to play a Vampire Earth roleplaying game campaign, but unless I could get all my friends to read the books it probably wouldn’t be as fun in reality as it is in my imagination.

I finished Valentine’s Resolve on the plane from Atlanta back to Austin, and now I’m reading Michael A. Stackpole’s Cartomancy. This is the second book in a new(ish) fantasy trilogy, and I already own the third book. I read the first one shortly after it came out, but I’ve been holding off on the rest of the series until I could read them back to back. Stackpole almost never disappoints, so I’ve been looking forward to this series. I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve finished the trilogy.