Category Archives: the art of blurbing

The Wise Man’s Blurbs….

This showed up in the mail about a week ago….

WMF crop

(Guest Starring: My Thumb)

It’s officially hitting the shelves today (Tuesday, April 2th.) The paperback version of The Wise Man’s Fear.

Or rather, it’s what *I* call a paperback, but what everyone else calls a “mass market paperback.”

I’ve probably seen 80-90 different versions of my books come out in various languages and editions at this point. So by now I probably should be kinda blase about the whole thing….

But the truth is, I still get excited.

This edition I’m particularly glad to see, because when I was a kid, paperbacks were the only books I bought and the only books I read. This is the edition that will be easier for people to afford, and easier for people to carry around with them.

But in addition to that, when I picked it up and flipped it open, I got to see something cool:

DSCN1092

You’ll have to click to embiggen if you want to read the text, but the opening pages of this edition are full of the nice things people said about the book in their reviews and blurbs.

Truth is, I don’t remember getting the vast majority of these blurbs or reviews.

That might seem a little odd, but you see, the month before The Wise Man’s Fear came out, I was doing promotion round the clock: interviews, podcasts,  getting ready for my book tour….

Then when the book came out, I spent three weeks touring. I think I had something like 22 events in 21 days. I didn’t have the time or the energy to obsess about my reviews.

And after that, I just wanted to sleep and spend time with Oot.

So a lot of these reviews were new to me and gave me all sorts of happy feelings.

They also reminded me of something else I did back in 2011 when I finished touring. I went through the 500-600 e-mails that readers had sent me while I was away.

Those were the real reviews I read about my book, and so many of them amused and delighted me that I started cutting and pasting them into a word file, thinking I would eventually post them up here in the blog…

It seems that time has come. So here are the ones I could dig up on my computer, in celebration of the paperback release….

*      *      *

  • I had a passionate love affair with Wise Man’s Fear. Seriously, I was calling my husband Kvothe for 2 weeks. Still do on occasion. He loves it.
  • My husband and I were sorting out a lot of issues, learning to understand each other… to love each other again. I was ready to give up and call it quits and it was about this time I finally got my hands on your second book. It was as if I learnt how to live again, how to feel, how to imagine, how to create. The few minutes spent with Kvothe each day taught me to love myself again.

That’s once of the nicest things anyone has ever said about my writing.

  • Ok, you know when you find The Shoes? The ones exactly that colour of red. The ones with the slightly rounded toe – not too pointy, not too round. The heel is the right height and shape. When you wear them they make you feel gorgeous and sexy and confident and you can take on the world. They are just wide enough to fit your hideously wide foot and just long enough so that they don’t rub your heel until it’s bloody every time you wear them. You know when you put that shoe on, it feels like…it’s perfect. It fits like the proverbial glove. That’s your writing style for me, Patrick. I’m so glad I found you :-)

I’m not much of a shoe person, but I know where you’re coming from. Extra points for including the u in “colour”

  • For the week leading up to the release of The Wise Man’s Fear, I slept with The Name of the Wind under my pillow. For the three days that it took me to finish The Wise Man’s Fear (and for an additional two days after I finished), I slept with that book directly under my face, as I stayed up so late reading that I was too tired to relocate it beneath my pillow. Now, the front and back covers of both books have face-shaped curvatures in them. Thank you again for a wonderful read. Yours Truly, Lexa P.S. The Wise Man’s Fear smells delicious. It definitely meets my all-good-books-must-smell-like-heaven standards.

Nice to meet a fellow book-smeller Lexa. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.

  • I missed my train stop when Kvothe was fighting Carceret at the First Stone. You know how long it’s been since I missed a train stop? I’m a veteran city dweller. That’s just not done man.

Don’t worry. We’re not judging.

  • The Wise Man’s Fear has the absolute best texture to its pages. Kudos!

I agree. Thank my editor for that. (This is mostly a hardcover issue.)

  • Your characters are 3-D and lifelike. I can just imagine Denna gliding through the doors of a Hilton daring the world to comment while Kvothe watches her meet a senator from the corner of a building, a bag of McDonalds forgotten in his hands. Or Elodin flouncing into a lecture hall in an ivy league college, bewildering his students with impossible questions….
  • I have gotten about seven hours of sleep over the last three days because I have refused to put down Wise Man’s Fear. I’ve failed a test, gotten no work done, missed a class, and shunned my friends. You may have heard of me.

Hell. I’ve *been* you.

  • My name is D– and I am currently deployed to an undisclosed location in Afganistan with the U.S. Armed Forces. I just wanted to simply say thank you. Your two books have given me an opportunity to escape from here while reading for just a minute.

Glad I could help, even if it’s just for a minute.

  • Thanks for putting homosexuals in WMF that are not queens or craven pedophiles, an odious habit of many fantasy writers.

My pleasure. Thanks for noticing.

  • I finished reading the new book tonight (er… this morning), and I just wanted to let you know: I’ve been sad lately, and it’s kept me away from playing music. Your book made me want to play again.

Huzzah!

  • I have just received my copy of The Wise Man’s Fear in the mail. I have not opened the book, yet already I feel the need to apologize to you. I am sorry. I know this is your baby, I know that you have been working on her for years and that you love her dearly. I wish I could feel the same, and that I could show her all of the respect that she deserves. I want to my time with her, but I cannot. I am using all of my patience to send you this message. My first time with this book is going to be fast, it is going to be dirty, and it is going to be all about me. Again, I am sorry. I promise that the next time, and the next time I read this book that I will be gentle and caring. But not this time.

Congrats. It’s rare someone pulls of the hat-trick of “creepy” “funny” and “true” all in the same e-mail.

  • Hi, I really enjoyed your work. Your prologues and epilogues could win awards, if there were awards for prologues and epilogues.
  • I would like to wish you a BIG congratulations on the book! CONGRATULATIONS! I was one of those whiney fans ‘Whens the book coming out. How soon. When? Wahhh Wahh Wahh.’ I regret every word. The time you have spent on such a masterpiece of work was well worth it and I, as a whiney fan, have been quieted.
  • Greetings from the sunny (AND 120 degree) Middle East. I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your second book, The Wise Man’s Fear. I dragged it all the way back from Washington, DC with me on a 17 hour flight back to Bahrain. I also brought it to Beirut, Lebanon. It was well worth it, but now I see the advantage for using a Kindle. In short, I loved it. I also wanted to let you know that in a very, VERY serious meeting with NAVCENT Brass, I snickered (for the 40th time) about, “I liked Shehyn’s little hat.” It was just loud enough to get noticed by a full bird colonel. Well, I thought you’d want to know what you were contributing to the global war on terror.

There were many more. Too many to print here.

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who has sent me a message over the years with a kind word about the books. I can’t reply to all of them, but I do read them, and they make me smile….

Later Space Cowboys,

pat

P.S. That cool thing I mentioned before is over soon. If you like things that are cool, don’t miss it.

Also posted in fan coolness | By Pat59 Responses

The Dirty Streets of Heaven

One of the coolest things about being a published author is that I occasionally get sneak peaks of books before they’re officially released.

These books are called ARC’s. (Advanced Reading Copies) And publishers send them out to booksellers, reviewers, and authors with the hope of getting promotional blurbs.

This leads to one of the oddest things about being a reasonably popular author: getting asked to blurb books.

As I’ve talked about before on the blog, giving blurbs is something that doesn’t come easily to me. Talking about books is easy. But giving a short, snazzy statement that’s marketable while also being honest…. Well, I often make a mess of it. It’s only recently that I feel as if I have it even halfway figured out.

But in this last year or so, I’ve had to deal with another mind-bending permutation of it all. Getting asked to blurb books by authors I’ve admired my whole life.

For example:

Do you know how weird it is to have a promotional blurb on the front of your favorite book?

You know what my original blurb was for this book? The blurb that I had to get out of my system before I could write the civilized one up there?

It went something like this:

Are you fucking kidding me? You want *me* to tell you why this book is good? I’ve been published for, like, five years. This book has been shining like a pure white diamond of divine fire since 1968. It’s one of the cornerstones of modern fantasy. What is wrong with you? Do you need a blurb on a candy bar telling you it’s sugary and delicious? Jesus, Krishna, and Siddhartha, how can you even consider yourself a fantasy reader if you haven’t read The Last Unicorn? Seriously. Read it. Read it or I will kill you….

Yeah. Like I said. I’m not that good at writing promotional stuff.

And things have only gotten weirder. Earlier this year I burbled a reprint of a Terry Brooks novel. Terry Brooks. His books were some of the first serious fantasy I read back in high school.

Then now we come to this….

For those of you that don’t know, Tad Williams’ newest book just hit the shelves about a week ago. Two words: Angel Noir.

And on the back?

(Click to Embiggen.)

I’m up at the top there. Glibly blurbing away. As if I could somehow sum up how I feel about Tad Williams turning his hand to urban fantasy in 30-40 words.

Part of me wonders where this madness will end. Because honestly, this sort of escalation can only go on for so long….

Okay. Back to the point here. Tad’s book.

Here’s the short version: I really enjoyed it. It might be my favorite book of his to date, and that’s saying something.

Here’s the moderate-length version:

Back around Juneish, I went on a bit of a family vacation. I needed it, and I owed it to my family to get away from work for a while.

So went up north with Sarah and Oot to hang out with my dad. I left my work at home, but I did bring the ARC of Tad’s book. Because for it to really be a vacation for me, I have to have something to read.

I start to read it on the drive up into the north woods, and I got pulled into the story. So pulled in that I would rather read the book than sleep. So pulled in that I end up reading the book late, late into the night. So pulled in that I ended up sitting in a stairwell for hours and hours, until 4 AM, effectively hiding from my family, because I didn’t want to wake anyone up by having a light on. And also because I didn’t want my dad to wake up, see that I was still reading, and give me that look that says, “You know, we’ve got stuff to do tomorrow. You should really get to sleep.”

Yeah. So it was pretty much like high school all over again.

If you still need more encouragement than that, you can read the review I wrote over on Goodreads.

Later folks,

pat

Also posted in recommendations, the business of writing, Things I didn't know about publishing | By Pat50 Responses

Just a Geek

I’ve owned this book for a long while, but it was just two days ago that I finally picked it up and started reading it. You know how it is. Life gets in the way, the book gets buried, you wonder where it is, you get distracted by whatever. Candy. Sex. Aperture science.

I finished reading it less than five minutes ago, and even though it’s 4:30 AM, I came upstairs, woke up the computer, and now I sit here, trying to figure out what I can say about it.

But I don’t know what to say. I’m flummoxed. I’m positively wallowing in flum over here.

I suppose I should mention that I don’t read Wheaton’s blog. I’ve wandered by there now and again, following links friends have sent me. But I’ve never made a habit of it.

Don’t read too much into that. It’s not like I avoid his blog. It’s just that I don’t read blogs. Not at all, really. Not even engaging blogs written by clever people I’m interested in, like Gaiman, Scalzi, or Wheaton.

I know that might sound odd to people. As I’ve been writing this blog for… good lord… over four years now. But the truth is, I don’t think of this as a blog. I think of it as a continuation of the humor column I wrote for almost ten years back in college. I make jokes, talk about my life, and occasionally give some bad advice.

But I don’t think of this as a blog.

For me, it’s a relief valve. This is where I give vent to the parts of my personality that don’t have any place in the novels I’m working on.

This is the place where I can snark and bitch if I want. I can talk politics or get sappy about my baby. I can say “Monkeyfucker” and get it out of my system. Which is a good thing, because that would be really hard to work into book three.

What was my point here?

Oh, right. My point is that I’m not a Wheaton fanboy. I picked up the book because I was curious, then never got around to it because I wasn’t curious enough.

That said, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a bit of a Star Trek geek. I used to watch it in high school. I watched it with my mom who was a Star Trek geek since before I was born.

God. I haven’t though of that in years. I remember watching that first episode of The Next Generation with her. During the first commercial, we agreed that the new version of the ship looked all wrong. It offended our sensibilities.

But we grew to love the show. We watched it as a family. It was an event.

Later on I watched it with one of my best friends in high school, Steve. He was a true geek for the show, and it was one of the things that gave us some common ground.

Eventually I left for college and watched it with my new friends. It let me know I’d found the right sort of people to hang out with.

Much later, after the show was long over, I bought a bunch of collector’s edition VHS tapes at a garage sale. They became part of my nightly pre-writing ritual. I would eat dinner and watch an episode of Next Generation while drinking an insanely strong cup of coffee. Then I would go work on what I called, “The Book.”

It was 1999, and I was still writing the first draft of what would eventually become The Kingkiller Chronicle.

It’s strange to think of how big a part of my life Star Trek used to be. I bet I haven’t watched any in ten years.

So. In summary. I read this book as a Trek geek, but not as a Wheaton fanboy. I’ve known *of* him for some time now. Hell, I’d even written a story with him *in* it. But I really didn’t know much about him. I knew he was a powerful part of the geek culture, but he was one of the cool, famous, Hollywood geeks, and I was just a writer geek. Our paths have never crossed.

Okay. Enough context. On to the book.

Simply said, I found it absolutely fascinating. I wasn’t a Wheaton Fanboy before I read it, but now I kinda am…. Now I can understand why folks like him so much.

The writing is perfectly, painfully candid. It’s like a little backstage pass into Wheaton’s life back when things weren’t going so well for him. Back when he was dealing with some hard stuff in his life.

The story really got its hooks into me. It made me anxious. Gave me troubling dreams. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before.

There are a lot of things I liked about the book, but I’m still having a hard time putting my finger on the crux of it. I can’t say what it was that made me come up to my computer tonight instead of sleeping. I can’t say what made me write a 1000 word blog tonight, rather than the gushy little goodreads review I’d been planning on.

I liked the fact that I got a behind-the-scenes peek at Star Trek and some of the actors that I grew up watching. That was cool.

I liked that Wheaton talked about what it’s like being an actor. I found that really interesting too.

He’s funny, and articulate, and self-deprecating, and honest….

But I still can’t point to what it is that really grabbed me by the nuts, here.

I really don’t know. Still flummoxed.

It could be I liked it because, ultimately, it was a story about stories. I have a weakness for those.

Part of me wishes I’d read this book back in 2008. Back when I’d missed my first deadline and was feeling like absolute shit. Back when I was sure I was ruining my entire career by delaying book 2. Back when I was still trying to get a grip on some of this celebrity stuff while at the same time being wretchedly messed up about my mom being gone. I think this book would have helped me sort though my shit a little more quickly.

Gech. I’m making a rambly mess of this. It seems like the more I like a book, the more trouble I have explaining why.

Okay. I’ll take one more run at this. I’m going to keep it simple this time:

It was a good book. You should give it a try. Unless you really don’t want to. Then you should do something else.

Merciful Buddha. That’s just awful.

Let that be a lesson to any of you that come looking for blurbs. Don’t. I suck at this.

pat

Also posted in blogging, mom, my dumbness, recommendations, Wil Wheaton | By Pat38 Responses

The Way of Kings

I have trouble taking things seriously. If you’ve been reading the blog for a while, this probably doesn’t come as a huge surprise to you.

In medieval times, people probably would have referred to me as “Phlegmatic” and attributed this tendency to an imbalance of my humors. These days people just think of me as an an irreverent asshat.

It’s especially bad when I’m asked to write anything remotely promotional. A good example of this is my endless struggle with biography.

It’s also a real problem when I want to write a blurb for someone’s book.

I very rarely give blurbs, and part of the reason for this is when I sit down to write one, I feel like I have to be all professional and formal. I feel like I should use words like, “Luminous” and “Scintillating” and “Perspicacious” “Resplendent.”

But that’s not how I talk. If I really liked a book, I would say to my friend, “This is a really fucking good book. Seriously. Have you read it? No? Go buy it, shitweasel.”

However, that’s not really the sort of thing publishers are looking to print on the cover of a book.

My most recent experience blurbing a book was when Brandon Sanderson sent me an ARC of the Way of Kings a while back.

I read the book and liked it, which irritated me. Brandon writes way faster than I do, and his books are consistently good. This means that I feel like I should really despise him. Either that or hunt him down like an animal so I can devour his liver and thereby gain some of his power.

But even though I’ve tried really hard, I can’t help but like him. Brandon’s a really nice guy.

So I sit down and try to write a professional style blurb for him. Here’s what I come up with:

“Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite new authors, and The Way of Kings continues his tradition of creating vivid, fantastic worlds for us to visit.”

How’s that for awful? That isn’t just some first quick attempt, either. I worked for like twenty minutes to come up with that. It’s one part bland, one part stiff, and two parts fake-sounding. “Continues his tradition”? Who the hell says something like that? Not me.

So I try again:

“Sanderson knows how to tell a good story, and he’s created another vivid and fantastic world in The Way of Kings.”

If anything, this one’s even worse. It’s more boring. And I’m clinging to the word “vivid” like it’s somehow going to keep me from looking like an idiot.

At this point I’m frustrated. So I quit taking the whole process seriously and write,

“Brandon Sanderson’s books are so good that he’s starting to piss me off.”

And you know what? It feels pretty good. That’s something I’d actually say out loud. And in its own way, that blurb is more honest and complementary than the other two.

So I decide to run with it, and write.

“This book is cool, and Brandon Sanderson smells like fresh-baked cookies.”

“Sanderson’s newest Brobdingnagian epic is sure to please. Look it up, bitches.”

“Brandon Sanderson’s new book is printed on delightfully soft-yet durable paper. With more than a thousand pages, The Way of Kings is sure to bring you several weeks of good, solid use, though that may vary according to your diet and personal hygiene.”

“When’s book two coming out? What’s taking so long?”

“Brandon Sanderson is one of the great new writers on the scene today. And he’s not hard on the eyes either. Rawr.”

“The Way of Kings is a tour-de-force. Luminously meretricious, yet with a round oaky underbite, this book offers notes of toffee and broam with just a hint of having someone’s nephew hit you in the groin with a tennis ball. Best served with fish.”

Writing these sorts of blurbs come really naturally to me.

After about an hour of this, I sent a handful of potential blurbs along to Brandon and his agent. I told them the truth, that I suck at giving the classic blurb.

And that was the last I thought of it until I wandered into the bookstore two days ago and saw that The Way of Kings has just hit the shelves.

I picked it up just to check how many long it was. It’s over a thousand pages, so that made me feel better about The Wise Man’s Fear. Especially because I just added a new chapter yesterday.

Then I flipped it over and saw this:

What’s that down there on the bottom?

Just me and Orson Scott Card, hanging out on the back of Brandon Sanderson’s book.

And you know what? I kinda like my blurb. It’s not fancy, but then again, I’m not a fancy person. But sincere? I’ve got sincere in spades.

If you’re looking for something to read, you might want to check it out…

Best,

pat

Also posted in my dumbness, My Iconoclastic Tendencies, recommendations, Things I didn't know about publishing | By Pat131 Responses

Who Fears Death?

Since I’ve become a published author, a lot has changed in my life.

Most of these changes have been good things. Money, for example. These days when I go to the grocery store, I don’t have to buy the 33 cent burritos. Now I can buy the 59 cent burritos, which contain, if not food, then at least a texture designed to emulate food.

When I buy ramen, I don’t have to buy the Chicken Maruchen ramen, which you can get for a dime a packet if you buy it in bulk. These days I can buy really fancy ramen. Ramen with three or four little packets of stuff you add to the noodles. These packets contain flecks of material that I suspect are not merely vegetable colored… they might actually *be* vegetables.

True, I usually buy the Chicken Maruchen ramen anyway. But it’s nice to know that if I wanted to, I could splurge a little.

People recognize me in public now. Not just here in Stevens Point (where I live) or in Madison (where I used to live.) Someone recognized me in a train station in Manchester England last year. It was a surreal experience back then, but it’s happened all over the US now, people come up to me on the street or in a coffee shop and say, “Are you…?”

And, usually, I am.

It’s amazing what you can get used to. I never thought I’d get used to seeing my book in bookstores, but I’ve grown accustomed to it. I’m used to fanmail. I’m used to sometimes getting a hundred comments when I post a blog.

But when I was at Wiscon a couple weeks ago, I got another surprise. My friend Nnedi Okorafor was GOH there and I picked up a copy of her newly published book: Who Fears Death.

Some of you might remember Nnedi’s name because of the fun little interview I did with her a couple months ago.

Anyway, when I was standing in line to buy her book, I flipped it over and was surprised at what I saw there.

(Click to Embiggen.)

It was a blurb extolling the virtues the book… from Patrick Rothfuss.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, of course. I had given her the blurb, after all. But still, it’s not something I’m used to yet.

Everything said, my blurb seems kinda weak compared to some of the others. I kinda suck at giving blurbs for a variety of reasons. But that’s a topic for a different post I suppose…

Despite my lack of blurb prowess, if you’re looking for something to read, you should check it out. This is doubly true if you happen to be tired of the same-old done-to-death fantasy crap. You know what I’m talking about: plucky orphans, schools of magic, faeries, dragons, vaguely medieval settings, stew…

Nnedi’s made a different type of world here, and she’s telling a different kind of story. I can honestly say there were scenes in this book that filled me with genuine horror and dread. I mean that as the highest sort of praise. It’s easy to make me laugh, and you don’t have to work too hard to make me cry. But to make me actually terrified on a character’s behalf? That’s rare stuff.

More news soon, stay tuned.

pat

Also posted in recommendations, Things I didn't know about publishing | By Pat66 Responses

Things I like: The Magicians and Faeries of Dreamdark.

It’s been a long time since I’ve recommended any books on the blog. For that I apologise.

The problem isn’t that I haven’t been reading. I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die.

The problem is this, when I read a book and I like it, I think, “I should mention this on the blog.” Then I wonder what exactly I can say about the book that will be not only enthusiastic, witty, and persuasive, but also informative and true.

It’s the last two that are tricky, you see. Truth is a troublesome motherfucker unless it’s handled properly.

The other problem is the difference between what I say and what people are inclined to hear. If I say “I like this book” people are inclined to believe that what I mean is “You will like this book.” Which isn’t necessarily the case.

So I feel obliged to explain *why* I liked it. That way people can make inteligent choices about whether or not they’d like to buy it. Because that is how we all remain independant, rational human beings as opposed to mindless, soulless, consumerist cogs, right?

Right?

However, writing this sort of blog is, to say it simply, a pain in the ass. Consequently I put off mentioning books on the blog, sometimes for embarrassingly long periods of time.

Like this one:

I’ve been meaning to mention this book for over six months. I’m filled with shame…

The more observant of you might actually recognize the book from a previous appearance on the blog. That’s because the author, Laini Taylor, was nice enough to donate a signed copy to the Heifer Fundraiser we did last year.

When she sent it in, I was curious about the book. Because… well… the truth is I have a bit of a thing for faeries.

I know this might come as something of a shock to some of you. You think that, manly as I am, I could never be into stories about little wingy people flitting about. At the very least, you probably think that if I *did* like such things, I’d have the decency to stay quiet about it, lest people start thinking that I was sissy.

But that’s not actually how it works, you see. Only guys insecure about their manliness worry about looking sissy. They’re afraid that if someone looks too closely people will realize that their machismo is just a thin tissue of lies.

Truth is, you see a guy reading a faerie book in the coffee shop, you know that he has nothing to hide. Dude is confident in his manness. He knows exactly who he is.

Me, I’m so manly that I can read this book in a bus station while wearing a dress and singing “Faith” by George Michael.

I’m not saying I did, mind you. I’m saying I could.

Anyway, about the book. I really enjoyed it. Good characters. Good use of language. Refreshingly new take on Faerie society. Cool world. Cool magic. Good, quick storytelling. Technically it’s a Young Adult book, but if that’s the case then color me young adult, because I enjoyed the hell out of it.

Huh. And I just checked on Amazon. The sequel is coming out in just two weeks. Bonus. That way you don’t even have to wait for your next hit. Unlike some other tardy, lame-ass authors….

*Ahem.*

Secondly, we have something of an entirely different flavor:

I mentioned Lev Grossman a couple weeks back because we were on a panel at ComicCon together. But the truth is, I read his book when I was traveling in Europe earlier this year.

Here’s where things get tricky. You see, I honestly don’t know what I can say about this book.

I really enjoyed this book. But I can’t for the life of me tell you why.

Ordinarily when I like a book, I know why. I can point to things. Language. Character. Pacing. Worldbuilding. When I don’t like it, I can do the same. It’s easy for me. All I do is think about stories.

But I can’t point to any specific reason why I like The Magicians it except that it was clever, and it wasn’t like any sort of book I’ve ever read before.

See the problem with the Truth? As recommendations go, that’s pretty weak tea.

Hopping over to Amazon, I see that reactions to the book have been mixed. And I can’t say as I’m terribly surprised. As I said, this book was different. A lot of people don’t like different. What’s more, it was clever. And a lot of people aren’t terribly smart.

Okay, Okay. That’s not really fair. I take that back. Kinda.

My real guess is that most people will like this book. But there’s a certain type of reader who will enjoy it down to the bottoms of their feet.

That reader will:

1. Be well-read in terms of classic fantasy. They’ll have read Tolkien, Lewis, Rowling, and at least five or six dozen other fantasy novels.

2. Be aware of the standard fantasy cliches, and a little tired of them.

3. Be eager to read something different. Not just in terms of world, but in terms of character, pacing, and the fundamental structure of the story as well.

4. Appreciate cleverness.

Now that sums me up pretty well. And I enjoyed the book on a way that I can’t put into words. Which is why I suck at giving blurbs for books….

But then again, Lev doesn’t need me for that. He’s got George Martin on his cover:

“These days any novel about young sorcerers at wizard school inevitably invites comparison to Harry Potter. Lev Grossman meets the challenge head on … and very successfully. The Magicians is to Harry Potter as a shot of Irish whiskey is to a glass of weak tea.”

See? That’s how the pros throw down. Why can’t I do that?

That’s all for now, more news soon about the name lottery. Stay tuned.

pat

Also posted in recommendations | By Pat98 Responses
  • RSS info

  • Visit Worldbuilders!

  • Our Store

  • Previous Posts

  • Archives



  • Bookmark this Blog!

    (IE and Firefox users only - Safari users, click Command-D)