Jo Walton continues to rock

[maribou]

Ha'penny, by Jo Walton
So papersky does this thing with this series? Where you're reading along and everything is very suspenseful and dark, but at the same time light-spun like candy floss, and you just sort of barrel through the book, laughing and wincing and sighing at all the right places? And then you get to the end? And all of a sudden everything you've just felt is cast over with this incredibly grim pall and you live in a horrible universe, as do the characters, even if it isn't the same one exactly, and maybe you sob a bit but somehow you feel hopeful anyway. Or maybe that's just me.

Seriously, this is great, and it lived up to Farthing's high standard while standing on its own two feet, and you should read them both.

PS Also, kind-of-almost-something-like-Mitford sisters! YAY!
(8/300)

Comments

[pisica.livejournal.com]

Aaah! No library I can access in the UK even has Farthing (which I've thankfully already read), so it will be AAAAGESS before I can get Ha'penny. *sob*

[raisinbottom.livejournal.com]

I just wish these newfangled authors would drop the penny dreadful format where a novel is serialized and sold in three easy installments.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Have you actually read these particular books? Both are very much stand-alone novels, with only one main character retained.

(Not that it's authors doing the book-chopping in the first place; lots of them are annoyed by the publishers' decisions to publish multiple volumes too.)

[ron_newman]

In this case, she's writing them as she goes along. Definitely didn't write the whole thing at once and have the publisher chop it into threes.

[raisinbottom.livejournal.com]

Yes, I've read Farthing and thought it was okay. Definitely not Fatherland and the teensiest bit shy of Turtledove's Worldwar novels. I still believe it is hilarious that people believe it's physically possible for the sun to be setting and Venus to be rising in the east.

[maribou]

You wouldn't have to have read Farthing to like Ha'penny. I thought that was clear in the review, but praps not.