jeffh@brl-sem.ARPA (the Shadow) (08/15/85)
>> >May St. Patrick forgive you for the mortal insult to Erin. I will >> >struggle to do the same. I concede that McCaffrey may be a 'low >> >taste' writer, but she can at least imbue her characters with some >> >personality--something at which Cherryh fails utterly. > >And gee, on the local bulletin boards we just had a discussion about how >bad her male characters are. They all talk like a '50s western. > >I like her stuff, but to compare Cherryh unfavorably with her? Ick. HA!! McCaffrey is wonderful! Her books always have an accesible plot which the reader can recognize in minutes by relating the current book to any of her other works. Her protagonists lose nothing in the translation from book to book, nor do they suffer a change in personality to match their name changes and her minor caricatures never get in the way of her plots. Many authors could learn something about consistency from her; her readers always know what they are going to get from a McCaffrey book. CJ Cherryh, on the other hand, has actually had the *gall* to vary her writing style between books. She throws in plot twists that surprise her readers when they absolutely *knew* what was going to happen next. She even forces the poor reader to acquaint himself with a character from *scratch*, no prior referents allowed (her characters even mature as time passes), as if anyone really needs a new person at the center of each story. Her alien societies feel totally foreign to human experience; how can she expect any reader to relate to that? Give me McCaffrey any day, that way I won't have to think too much. All this may have something to do with why I only have all 23 (24?) of CJ Cherryh's books sitting on my shelf, but have an entire three of Anne McCaffrey's. "Lord Julius, the Minister for Executive Planning requests an audience." "Not a chance -- the last time I gave him an audience, he just stood there and stuttered till everyone walked out." the Shadow ARPA: <jeffh@brl> UUCP: {seismo,decvax}!brl!jeffh
dca@edison.UUCP (David C. Albrecht) (08/27/85)
> Give me McCaffrey any day, that way I won't have to think too much. > > All this may have something to do with why I only have all 23 (24?) > of CJ Cherryh's books sitting on my shelf, but have an entire three > of Anne McCaffrey's. > Sorry, McCaffrey may be simplistic but for the most part at least I feel her characters and plots are much more interesting. I always read about Cherryh's books and think they sound like they should be good. Unfortunately, I am invariably disapointed. While Cherryh's the worlds are fairly imaginative a societal description doesn't carry the book for me. My general feeling is that the characters are if anything more simplistic than McCaffrey's and much less interesting. The plots are usually dry and not gripping at all. Characters evoke very little empathy. I have tried a number of Cherryh's and found them all disapointing so now I generally give them a pass no matter how interesting the description sounds. This is, of course, all purely personal judgements and preference. David Albrecht