Busy busy • 15 December 2008 • The SnowBlog
Busy busy
I was feeling restless this weekend, and whenever I stopped to have a sit down got all fidgety and fretty. So I built some websites. Here is one - hope you like it although it's not finished yet (lots of broken links and the domain hasn't transferred yet). God bless Wordpress.
(There are sort-of-spoilers about Peter F Hamilton's book The Neutronium Alchemist below the cut.) When I finally stopped tinkering, though, I settled down to finish my latest book. The end angered me. It's another one of the Peter F Hamiltons I've been enjoying - this one's the second in a trilogy called The Neutronium Alchemist. 1200 pages plus, and what happens at the end? A bloooming great cliffhanger, and precious little resolution on any of the many plotlines. I have to read another 1200 pages to see what's happened. That's fine, I suppose, as I already have the final book in the trilogy and could start it as soon as I'd turned the last page of the second. But a glance at the copyright pages shows that there was two years between publication. If I'd have had to have waited* two years, I think I would have blown a gasket. I think I might vow never to publish books with massive cliffhangers at the end from now on as it's just not cricket. Also, Peter F Hamilton has a bad habit of using commas where he needs a semi colon or a new sentence. I can imagine the editor thinking that, and then thinking about the 3800 pages he'd have to edit, and thinking 'sod it'. The number of typos increases dramatically as each book goes on. I do have some degree of sympathy with the poor proofreader.
* Blimey, that's complicated: '...I'd have had to have'. Goodness knows how you'd describe that, grammatically
Emma
I was feeling restless this weekend, and whenever I stopped to have a sit down got all fidgety and fretty. So I built some websites. Here is one - hope you like it although it's not finished yet (lots of broken links and the domain hasn't transferred yet). God bless Wordpress.
(There are sort-of-spoilers about Peter F Hamilton's book The Neutronium Alchemist below the cut.) When I finally stopped tinkering, though, I settled down to finish my latest book. The end angered me. It's another one of the Peter F Hamiltons I've been enjoying - this one's the second in a trilogy called The Neutronium Alchemist. 1200 pages plus, and what happens at the end? A bloooming great cliffhanger, and precious little resolution on any of the many plotlines. I have to read another 1200 pages to see what's happened. That's fine, I suppose, as I already have the final book in the trilogy and could start it as soon as I'd turned the last page of the second. But a glance at the copyright pages shows that there was two years between publication. If I'd have had to have waited* two years, I think I would have blown a gasket. I think I might vow never to publish books with massive cliffhangers at the end from now on as it's just not cricket. Also, Peter F Hamilton has a bad habit of using commas where he needs a semi colon or a new sentence. I can imagine the editor thinking that, and then thinking about the 3800 pages he'd have to edit, and thinking 'sod it'. The number of typos increases dramatically as each book goes on. I do have some degree of sympathy with the poor proofreader.
* Blimey, that's complicated: '...I'd have had to have'. Goodness knows how you'd describe that, grammatically