Media Review: Tremontaine

[rymenhild]

Second review of the day, now with significantly less queer erasure!

Serial Box's Tremontaine (a serial novel by Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Racheline Maltese, and Patty Bryant) has a delightful premise and terrific setup. In the nameless city of Swordspoint and Privilege of the Sword, perhaps fifteen or twenty

Comments

[ex_hrj]

I'm still trying to figure out how to approach my review of Tremontaine. I opted for listening to the audio version, and to some extent the narration/performance overrode (and evened out) details of the writing. I didn't feel really aware of authorial differences in prose style, but it did feel like there were differences in how they treated the characters. I was also thrown off balance a bit by the episodic nature of the writing. Even listening at one-week intervals, I sometimes felt like there was too much catch-up exposition.

I guess when it comes down to it, I like that the Riverside stories exist, but I never get the "OMG this is so fabulous!" experience that a lot of other people seem to have.

[minusspe]

Interesting. I'm one of the other authors, and I'd be interested in your thoughts on how I might improve my episodes next season. Lord knows I see about a gajillion things wrong with my fiction, but there are probably another gajillion (at least) that I don't see, and getting another perspective might be helpful. If the idea makes you uncomfortable, then of course don't give it another thought, but if you emailed me at joel@joelderfner.com you'd be doing me a favor. And I promise that I am ALWAYS polite and nice in response to critique of my work.