November 19, 2007 - Dragonchasers

Back in October I wrote on this blog that I’d decided to do NaNoWriMo this year (depressingly that post is only three down the page from this one. (Must…write…more…blog…entries). Keen observers will note that although we are 2/3s of the way through November, no further mention of NaNo has been made. No word count trackers have appeared. No status reports. No nuttin’.

So why’d I decide in the end to reverse my decision and not do NaNo this year? Well first of all, the decision to do it made on Oct. 15th came from without, not within. I’d been talking to a few friends of mine who encouraged me to do it, and their enthusiasm was infectious enough that I caught it. And maybe for some people that’s enough. Heck it might have been enough for me some other year. But not this year.

I’d been approaching November assuming I’d do NaNo since I’d done it the past two years. Assuming I’d do it, and dreading the idea. I kept telling myself that I’d get pumped for it and it would be an exciting challenge once again. But I never got pumped. And without being enthusiastic to do it in the first place, I realized the whole month would just be a misery, so I opted out.
Continue reading “The Year Without A NaNoWriMo”

Yeah, I’ve been one heck of a poor blogger lately. I’ve got a post about NaNo in my head…been there for about 2 weeks. I’ll write it down one of the days. But anyway…

Last night I finished Trudi Canavan’s Voice of the Gods, which completes her “Age of the Five” trilogy. If was good…actually it was really good, until the very end which stumbled a bit. And the foreshadowing was heavy enough that there were no real surprises at the end, which takes a little away from it, but still I have to call it a satisfying finish to a satisfying series. I definitely give the trilogy as a whole a thumbs up, with the caveat that some readers might find the first book a bit impersonal. Books 2 & 3 were much more character-driven.

As expected from the title, book three focuses a lot on the Pentadrians, who were the ‘bad guys’ of Book 1. But one of the wonderful things about these books is that neither side is really ‘the bad guys’. There are good and bad people on each side of the conflict, which gives the world a very realistic vibe. Auraya is still a major focus, but Canavan manages to keep the cast of characters broad enough that things never grow dull.

The book ended leaving me wanting for more. I’d grown to care about these characters, and there were cases where two individuals would be at odds due to misunderstandings, and I wanted Canavan to write more so they could all come to an understanding, but it was not meant to be. Ever been in that situation where you have two good friends, and you introduce them to each other and find they don’t like each other, and you just want to do whatever you can to help each of them realize what a great person the other is? Yeah, that was what I needed Canavan to do at the end of the trilogy.

Perhaps some day she’ll write more in this world and do that for me. Until then, I think I’ll be checking out her Black Magician Trilogy.