Kil'n People and Dealing With Dragons reviews

[alobear]

I really need to give myself a swift kick upside the head, because I seem to be having trouble with long books at the moment.  Kil'n People by David Brin started off quite intriguing, with lots of clever moments, and interesting structure, and a future world that worked very well.  Then, I lost interest around page 300 and skimmed most of the rest of it, as it descended into barely comprehensible philosophy and technobabble, and I stopped caring about a lot of the characters.  I think this was my fault, not the book's fault.

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C Wrede, on the other hand, was a delightful 210 pages long and I read it in one day.  It was a parody of the traditional fairy tales about princesses, knights and dragons, and had a great deal of charm.  The characters were well drawn, the plot was entertaining, and the little details that turned tradition on its head were very creative.  Great fun - the rest of the series went straight onto my Amazon wish list.