I’m so pleased you delurked! And pleased that you read the Jemisin book on my recommendation and enjoyed it! Yes, we find out what happens to Itempas in the next book. I’ll be interested to hear what you think of it also! 🙂

Anyways, thanks for all the great suggestions you send out there into the blogosphere.

um, they’re not that appealing. But I fell in love with Paul Atreides when I was 15 and had to see what all happened to him.

I’m glad to know you didn’t perceive excessive convolution; this author is officially on my list. The weird part of the “convoluted and not dense” thing is the way the Publisher’s weekly person thought they were giving the book highest praise. After thinking about it some more, I wondered if they simply failed to remember that the word “convoluted” is usually understood as a criticism. I can imagine someone pounding away at their keyboard on one review after another, scouring their brain for adjectives they haven’t already used a thousand times. What they really meant was “complicated,” but then they happened to hit on “convoluted,” and that sounded better. And maybe by “dense” they meant, “impenetrable.” I’m over-sensitive to sloppy communication lately.

I cannot imagine to what the reviewer was referring when s/he wrote “convoluted without being dense”. Unless possibly they were talking about that thing with high fantasy where the author is just working way too hard to establish the worldbuilding, and it gets in the way of the plot.

I think it is very hard to do indeed. I am always so pleased with authors who can manage it, like Barbara Kingsolver in The Poisonwood Bible.

Yes! What is their system? Sometimes they’re so speedy and sometimes so, so slow, and it’s not even related to who’s reading them. Even if I’m just ordering a book from one branch to another, the time of the hold varies wildly. I miss my home library.

You are always so sweet and make me feel good about myself even when I am being a total dork. But I appreciate your praise for my new word. :p