Newbie post

[sprite6.livejournal.com]

Hi folks - I bought KoA yesterday, finished last night, and have been dying to discuss with someone! I wish I'd looked for this comm before now. :)

So quick intro: I'm sprite, a woman, 30 years old. I first heard about MWT a few years ago, when I worked at Harper and QoA was going into paperback. The buzz for QoA was great, but luckily I heard it was a sequel and read The Thief first. Brilliant! And QoA, so different, was just as good.

KoA was worth every minute of the wait. I actually cackled when I found out what Gen said to set Costis off. And I was late to work this morning because I was rereading when I should have been getting ready.

What I found most surprising about KoA is that certain plot issues MWT developed in QoA still remain unresolved. I was afraid this would be the last Gen adventure, but it seems pretty clear there's more to come. Any thoughts on where the next book will go?

Another newbie...

[lady-schrapnell.livejournal.com]

Though without the interesting question! Trying to remember some of the questions asked in the intro thread:

I'm female, living in Dublin (the one in Ireland), and happened to pick up a review copy of The Thief in my local secondhand bookshop - possibly just when it had been published in the UK, thinking it looked good. I read it to my older daughter immediately (she was in her teens then) and we were both floored by it - enough to order The Queen of Attolia from the US in hardcover the minute it was out. Reading that aloud was unreal - I got to chapter three (everyone will know what I mean) and somehow my eye went to the far page and found that it did actually happen and I could barely even keep reading. With daughter going 'What? Why aren't you reading it? They don't really cut it off, do they??'. Needless to say, I finished the book that night before my bed! I read both books a bit later to my younger daughter, and she's as big a fan too.

Anyway, other authors - those who recognize my screen name would know I'm a big Connie Willis fan, and Diana Wynne Jones (v. on-topic as she's the one who helped MWT get published!), Martha Wells, Joan Aiken, Jane Austen, Hilary McKay... Lots of others, of course, but those come to mind.

I am really old already, and clearly destined to be a perpetual student - just finished a BA in Lit with the Open University and going to start on an MA in children's lit with Roehampton University in September. I wrote a pretty good essay on Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock and The Odyssey for my Homer course - which is all the bragging you'll get from me. ;) Far more interestingly though - Fire and Hemlock is a brilliant book, and everyone should read it!

Oh - and one of my favourite scenes of all the books is Eugenides and Irene (are we allowed call her that?) climbing the stairs after he's 'kidnapped' her. Oh again - and the way she tries to let him know she's not really going to have him chopped up more when she gets free again. And the scene after he's wounded in KoA and has to be stitched up, and Costis finally copping on... And every time a god or goddess appears - including the 'Go to bed.' appearance... Yeah, I've a little trouble choosing favourites with these books!