You know, I was writing up a big post about all the books I'd read over the summer, but a slipped finger deleted it all.

Oh well. The book I just finished is Seventh Son, by Orson Scott Card. I'd heard of the Alvin Maker series before, and even have two books later in the series, procured from Doctor Pierce. Last summer I got around to buying the first book, and I read it today. It's good, though not exactly what I was wanting just now. It's about a mythical America, where magic is real, and the Puritans weren't defeated by the royalists after Cromwell died, so all the mystics were shipped here instead of all the wowsers (an Austrailan word for crazy puritanicals). The history isn't dwelled upon, like so much modern fantasy, so I salute the man for that. In fact, the whole book is very good. It's just that the thing that bothers me in so much epic fantasy is one of the backbones of this book. I hate it when blind religious organisations take issue with magic in fantasy. I just got sick of it while reading Robert Jordan, and really got angry when I saw the same thing in Terry Goodkind. Of course, that's a bit strange - those worlds function through magic; that's a fact I've been quite vociferous about before. Well, in the Alvin Maker series there're nutter Christians just like here, so naturally they want to stamp out everything that contradicts their belief. There's even a great line near the end where a character puts, in very nice words that I won't get up and cross the room to quote accurately, that since they finally figured out everything in the Bible, they don't want God introducing anything new, so they just refuse to believe. So, the thing that riles me personally is one of the main themes of these books. I won't be reading them all at once, but I do want to continue with the series. Card's fantasy is a bit better than his science-fiction, if only by virtue of being more stylized. The whole book is, very subtly, colored with frontier language, and it grows a bit heavier with the characters that grew up in that lifestyle. Very nice, I thought, and not insultingly overdone.

I'm trying not to do anything exhaustive and public about the new Harry Potter book, which I have read, because I think most people are possibly tired of reading about it, or they haven't read the book yet. Either way, I could probably be coaxed into discussing the whole thing in person. I did end up responding in Russdur's journal, so you could go over there to see a bit of my opinion. I am, however, in the sad little drift I got in after I finished the fifth book, hence the book and a few short stories a day reading habit I've gotten since. I'm also reasonably down and out in concerns of romance, with the fairly well-handled romance of the sixth Harry Potter book as a catalyst. Once again despairing of meeting anyone. But this post is supposed to be about reading.

I tell you, I'd love to get my hands on a Fritz Leiber book I hadn't read yet, especially a Lankhmar book. I may re-read a few Gray Mouser stories anyway, just to try and cheer myself up. Nothing like a truly pragmatic pair of men in a fantasy, copied by so many enamored with thieves, to make me feel better. Especially if I read the ones where they meet Death in his place and escape by leaving their dead loves behind. Or the one that riffs on religion. There's an idea, I guess.

You know, my foot was hurting on our last day in Scotland, so we met at our restaurant, and everyone dispersed for some shopping for about an hour. I stayed behind, because of the hurting, sat on the sidewalk, and read. I don't think I got a single strange look. They really are more into reading there. Blah.

There's a random bit for you. It's late, sort of - what do you expect?