I finally read through Shaman's Crossing, the new Robin Hobb novel. It was not as good as I had hoped, though it did get better as it went along. I think half the problem is with me, I've read SO many books lately (promos, ones I've borrowed, the few I've bought), and I still have a ton to get through. I think it's ruining my attention span for books, much like I still have not recovered my attention span for movies after watching so many as a film minor.

The thing about Hobb's previous books is she had great characters. I'm not saying a few were not irritating now and again or that the main character's angstyness didn't occaisonally wear on my nerves, but there were a lot of them and they were well thought out and endearing. Whereas the main character in this one is such a good guy that it just got boring.

Like, in a weird way, he kind of reminded me of Huck Finn. This might be a flawed comparison, as it's been a long time since I read Huck Finn and even then I probably only read a few chapters. But the thing about Huck Finn is that you're supposed to all love him for is he has an internal moral compass. He knows what society thinks is wrong (ie helping a slave escape) and even though he tortures himself over it, he does the right thing (by our society's standards, not his own) by doing the wrong thing (helping the slave escape). So... it's all relativism. If instead, he had somehow done something wrong by his society AND our society's standards, I'm sure everyone would hate Huck Finn and think of him as a dangerous maniac.

Anyway, the thing about Nevare, the main character of Shaman's Crossing is that his society forces him into a strict code of conduct, and like Huck Finn, he's always torturing himself if he isn't following it. Unlike Huck, though, Nevare never does anything big that changes anyone's life when he's breaking rules, he just agonizes over stupid things like if anyone thinks he's a coward because he doesn't speak up this once, or if everyone thinks he's a tattletale because he does end up speaking up about something or other. You just want to shout at him, "Jeez. Just go ahead and do something or not do something for once without wondering how your damn father would view it!" So I guess maybe he's the anti-Huck? Meh.

The book DOES get better about midway through when he goes to this military school and meets all the people who are to be supporting characters throughout the rest of the book, which somewhat relieved me as there weren't any particularly memorable supporting characters up until then. And the book REALLY gets better near the end. So I guess I would reccomend it for anyone with a patient streak, though not over the Six Duchies books she wrote, which, in my opinion, were some of the best fantasy books I've ever read (and that's saying something).

The other books I've been reading lately are Inkspell, Wicked, and High Fidelity.

High Fidelity I'm not done with yet, I've been saving for lunch breaks and the like, which makes it slow to finish even though it's a good book. I kind of miss the days where I really had nothing to do and a short or medium book I could finish all in one day, and a larger book maybe took 2. I can't totally immerse myself into the world of the book anymore when I only have a block of an hour or a few hours to read at a time. Which, again, maybe is why I'm having trouble enjoying fantasy as much, it's one of those genres that, in my opinion, is always better when you can lose yourself in it, though obviously I'm on a tangent here as High Fidelity is not fantasy. Anyway, High Fidelity is part of my little campaign to actually read all of Nick Hornby books, because I really do like him but have never gotten around to reading everything of his. So I am. All I have after this is How to Be GOod and Fever Pitch.

Inkspell: ditto not being finished. It's one of the promo books I picked up, and I read part of it when I didn't have anything better to read, and then never came back to it. It's not a bad book, actually. It's YA, but that doesn't really phase me much. The part that does kind of phase me is that it's the sequel to another book I've never read, that I'm too cheap to buy and read so that I understand this one. So: it's a little slow.

Wicked: UGH. Awful. Absolutely awful. Made worse by the fact that it could've been so good, it's got a great premise. It's basically the tale of the Wizard of Oz from the wicked witch's point of view. And I mean, it's a huge bestseller and has gotten rave reviews, so obviously SOMEONE thinks it's good, but I really had to struggle to finish it because I hated it so much. The thing is, even though it's supposedly from the Witch's view, you don't really get in her head that much, and she still seems like kind of a jerk. And you never really understand why she does anything (some things, like this one affair she has, just has no reason, she doesn't seem to particularly love the guy or even lust after him that much, the author just uses it to further his crappy plot). Like, I think it all boils down to her just wanting those shoes really badly because her dad liked her sister better and gave them to her instead of the wicked witch, but then dorothy ends up with them and all, but the author pads it out with this huge allegorical political situation that's just boring and SO transparent about what in real life it's trying to parallel, and just makes you irritated with the wicked witch even more because she ends up like one of those political activists who never really gets anything done or changes anything but bitches about it all the time. You never even get any idea what she's doing for the cause, she could be a terrorist for all we ever figure out about what she's doing, but since nothing ever happens, I assume that she's just an activist for the most part or else a horribly inneffectual terrorist. So basically, I hated her, I hated all the characters he made up to pad it out, and I hated the plot.

I also have about four more promo books I don't know whether I'm going to read or not, three promo books I know for sure that I'm never going to read, an Amy Tan book I'd like to borrow to read, a sports book I promised I'd read, and some biographies that I think I'm going to borrow at some point (Alan Alda, Warren Beatty, and Cary Grant), so basically the list of what I should and/or want to be reading just gets longer and longer as more and more things come out, and I'm somewhat distressed that the large majority of it ISN'T pulp fantasy or sci fi, the genre I tend to enjoy the most.