chabot@miles.DEC (Bits is Bits) (04/23/85)
Evelyn C. Leeper > I realize all this sounds very negative. The book is not that bad, but > it's not that good either. Read his first novel instead, and hope for a > better one for his third. Nah. Probably not. The first two *published* were Laser books; I read one of them--it was sort of fun but predictable (and sexist--two women, both stupid and bad: one old icky, crazy one without teeth, and one fair young thing that everyone laughs at when she tries poetry and who abandons anyone for anyone-else who looks to have a bigger purse) in the one-hero-with-good-reflexes-saves- the-planet (but doesn't get the fair young female! who wants her! women! bah!) ...I read a lot of these, and this one is probably excellent by Laser books standards. However. So unless we start in negative numbers (say, -2), we've already seen Tim Powers' 3rd book. For those who enjoyed _The_Anubis_Gates_, I recommend _Digging_Leviathan_ by Blaylock. You will meet your old friend, that inimitable poet, William Ashbless, exploring the ocean deeps off Palos Verdes and the vast underground sea beneath LA. And searching for the marine entrance to the center of the earth, where all those mermen must have come from. In about the 1950s. Blaylock's elf&dwarf books are very gentle, and probably quite suitable to read to any offspring you might have. If they're big enough to not have nightmares full of evil animated skeletons and zombies with murder in their eye-sockets. They're also humorous, but a good deal of the humor is visual rather than verbal, so I had to take pauses sometimes to conjure up a picture of a funny scene. The descriptions of these scenes are why the books are so thick. However, these are more books with invisible women: although one character does occasionally mention his mother, the only females that take part in the action are wicked witches. By the way, every Powers (4 of the 5 I know of) and Blaylock (3 of 3 I know of) book I've read contains at least a mention of William Ashbless. Yes, this includes Blaylock's two gentle fantasies, _The_Elfin_Ship_ and _The_Disappearing_Dwarf_ (Del Rey), which take place in a completely imaginary land populated by dwarfs and elves and wizards and are quite unlike Powers' books or _Digging_Leviathan_. Can anyone out there dig up the Laser book I didn't read, and see if it too mentions Ashbless? "Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods." L S Chabot ...decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-amber!chabot chabot%amber.DEC@decwrl.ARPA DEC, LMO4/H4, 150 Locke Drive, Marlborough, MA 01752
jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner) (04/25/85)
[...] Just a point of interest in this matter -- in the Anubis Gates, you may recall that the protagonist tried to pretend he was an American who had just arrived in England via boat, but was shown to be a liar when he couldn't remember the name of the boat. The person who was quizzing him on this looked up an appropriate boat so that he could make a better lie the next time. The name of the boat? The Blaylock. Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo