You know, I really do. There's only two of them, and they'll never be mistaken for great literature, but they're so, so much fun. A chap called Alexis Hall writes them.
At this stage I have been recced the Toby Daye books by so many different people that it seems churlish not to give the first one twenty pages or so to impress me - even if all I read is those twenty pages standing up in Waterstones on my lunch break.
(I hate being that person who gets defensive of the stuff they love, so please please please imagine this comes with a large spoonful of YMMV!)
And I hate being that person raining on something my friends love so, yeah, huge walloping dollops of YMMV.
I read Parasite and just really didn't like it - I found it leaden and clunky; thought it failed as horror (not scary); failed as science fiction (by virtue of the future being indistinguishable from the present). But most damagingly I hated the central romance; the protagonist being either a total amnesiac or a brand new lifeform who is six years old - the fact that her being in a sexual relationship didn't raise any red flags raised big giant red flags in my head.
Before that I'd read the Newsflesh trilogy which I'd liked a lot better. Loved the worldbuilding, liked the general tone and the humour. I thought it verged on the twee at times, but thought that counterpointed nicely with the whole zombie apocalypse thing.
I didn't like that George didn't stay dead, and once again I hated the central relationship, which I'd found creepy and codependent even before the retcon, and how much I didn't like it kind of overwhelmed all the good things for me.
So, yeah, having written that out I feel like the Mira Grant books contain relationship dynamics that I bounce really hard off. So, um, is there much of that in Toby Daye?
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branchandroot
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Date: 2014-12-29 11:05 pm (UTC)You know, I really do. There's only two of them, and they'll never be mistaken for great literature, but they're so, so much fun. A chap called Alexis Hall writes them.
At this stage I have been recced the Toby Daye books by so many different people that it seems churlish not to give the first one twenty pages or so to impress me - even if all I read is those twenty pages standing up in Waterstones on my lunch break.
(I hate being that person who gets defensive of the stuff they love, so please please please imagine this comes with a large spoonful of YMMV!)
And I hate being that person raining on something my friends love so, yeah, huge walloping dollops of YMMV.
I read Parasite and just really didn't like it - I found it leaden and clunky; thought it failed as horror (not scary); failed as science fiction (by virtue of the future being indistinguishable from the present). But most damagingly I hated the central romance; the protagonist being either a total amnesiac or a brand new lifeform who is six years old - the fact that her being in a sexual relationship didn't raise any red flags raised big giant red flags in my head.
Before that I'd read the Newsflesh trilogy which I'd liked a lot better. Loved the worldbuilding, liked the general tone and the humour. I thought it verged on the twee at times, but thought that counterpointed nicely with the whole zombie apocalypse thing.
I didn't like that George didn't stay dead, and once again I hated the central relationship, which I'd found creepy and codependent even before the retcon, and how much I didn't like it kind of overwhelmed all the good things for me.
So, yeah, having written that out I feel like the Mira Grant books contain relationship dynamics that I bounce really hard off. So, um, is there much of that in Toby Daye?