a fire upon the deep

All hail the awesome power of teh interweb, where things you write may be read by people who care. Elizabeth Bear found my 'half review' of Blood and Iron, linked too it and - well hell, I'm bad at math. I think we're dealing with a power-log function, though. "Quintupled my traffic" doesn't even begin to cover it. So, thanks Ms. Bear!

We at Braun Industries are nothing if not fair and balanced, so you can check out her rebuttal (primarily in the comments) right here. She suggests that the clues are there if I would but look for them, and that's a fair enough argument. But I don't like to take notes while I read, and to persuade me to do so is going to take a very compelling book. I now await the inevitable criticism that I am not a deep reader. But I think there's a difference between challenging writing and writing that is simply a little more opaque than it needs to be.

I think that's all I'm going to say on this note, I am not interested in starting a flame war (or whatever they call it in the blogoshere) with an author whose book I am still reading! I should say something on the matter of kelpies, though - I've read a lot of fantasy as well as some folklore and swear upon the bald heads of my forefathers that I'd never heard of one before. Well, I shall know them better hereafter.

You know what, I have resolved to write a particularly inflammatory review of The Children of Hurin. Maybe we can get the ghost of Tolkien on the line.