That was incredible

[kareina]

Really and truly amazingly wonderful. I have loved all of hrj's books, and have eagerly awaited the release of each of them, but Floodtide was an even more perfect match to my reading tastes. The other Alpennia books are marketed as "romance", but have enough other elements in them (SSF, magic, dedicated scholars, sword-fighting, politics, intrigue, and more) that, even though I don't care for "romance" as a genre, I have enjoyed every minute of them, and recommend them every time I hear anyone asking for suggestions of good books to read.

Floodtide, on the other hand, is marketed as a Young-Adult book. That is a genre I have always enjoyed reading, starting with getting a copy of Anne of Green Gables when I was 11, a book that I have gone back and re-read again, and again, and again. It was the first book I sat down to read in Swedish when I started learning Swedish, and the first book I read in Norwegian when I decided I wanted to learn that, too. Anne has long been a favourite character, for her imagination, her ability to get herself into scrapes (and get out of them again), and her penchant for talking too much and using big words, and I have always identified with her.

However, as of today, I have a new favourite character that I can identify with. Roz is clueless and well-meaning and apt to put her foot in it, and is slow to learn from her mistakes (but she does). I have so been there. She also is very lucky, or she wouldn't have had any of the chances she's been given, and somehow managed to land in the middle of one of those adventures where people work together to build something bigger and stronger than themselves by calling on the connections they have built with others.

This story really is perfect, the way it weaves in so many threads, and has such believable interactions between the characters. The story gives just enough information about what has happened in the other books for the plot to make sense with naught more than what is between these pages, yet also giving satisfying glimpses of characters I already know and love.

I read the whole book straight through in one sitting (I can't recall the last time I did that with a book), too focused on reading every word to notice time elapsing (other than being annoyed that I had to get up to pee a number of times), and I look forward to picking it back up in a couple of months and reading it again.

And you know what else is way, way cool? It was dedicated to katerit. I don't recall ever knowing someone who got a book dedicated to them before.

Now it is after midnight, so I should do my yoga and go to bed, but having just finished the book I couldn't go to sleep till I took the time to tell everyone how much I enjoyed it.

Comments

[hrj]

It's wonderful when an author gets feedback that a character and a story comes across the way they intended! (Normally, it's bad manners for an author to comment on what is, in essence, a review, but I hope readers of your blog will understand that we've been friends forever and I wouldn't normally do this.)

[kareina]

I am super glad that you did, because then I know that you have heard my gushing about how much I enjoyed the book. When I first put down the book and waled to the computer to type about it I considered sending you a personal message to say that I loved it. But then decided that it would be better to tell everyone on the off chance that someone I know might not already know about your books but wiuld enjoy them.

A question occured to me yesterday after listening to one of your recent podcasts where you were being interviewed about your books. You said something along the lines of writing the books you wanted to read that no one else was writing. This made me wonder if you ever get to sit down with one of your own books and just read it for the fun of reading and not doing an editing pass on it?

[hrj]

Oh, absolutely. Each book that's come out, I read it just for fun within the first month or so. From a slightly different angle, there's always a point in the process of editing the *next* book when I do a complete re-read from the beginning with the new story in mind to see if there's anything relevant that I'd set up and then forgotten, or where I've created a continuity issue that I need to smooth out. Those aren't quite "pleasure reads" but they aren't putting an editorial eye on the old books. And at some point this past summer I got too overwhelmed by feeling like all my fiction reading is "for work" and I did a complete re-read just to read something that I know I'll enjoy and won't have to review!

[kareina]

That is delightful to hear. (and was when I first saw the email telling me you'd said it, too, but I am a bit behind on actually replying to messages...)

Do you notice much of a difference in how it feels to read a book when you *know* background things that aren't mentioned in the book compared to reading something someone else wrote where there is no way of knowing that sort of detail? (I am not expressing this question well, but hopefully it makes sense anyway.)

[hrj]

That question falls more on the editorial side. I have to be hyper-aware of the difference between the "real world" of Alpennia that I know intimately, and the "on-page" world that the readers know. There are some reader criticisms that are utterly fair from the "on-page" side that would be answered by the "real world" view. (For example, I've gotten critiques about which characters have been given long-term romantic relationships and which haven't. In all cases the "haven't" have been simply "not yet", but the readers don't officially know that. This aspect is also relevant to revealing characters' personality flaws. I know my characters' failure modes, but not all of those failure modes have been expressed on the page yet.

Conversely, knowing those "hidden" details, when I'm reading my own books, I'm always aware of the passing hints where the story reflects or reacts to those details without showing them directly. But a naive reader may think those details are irrelevant or distracting.

I always assume there are background details like that in other people's stories, and I may even incorporate my own assumptions about what they are as I'm reading. (Even to the point where I forget which parts are my assumptions.) This is, of course, how fan-fiction develops!

[kareina]

Ok, going back and re-reading this reply after seeing your post on what bonus stuff would one want if one were a Patron. The thing that now springs to mind would be having you doing a reading, with comments. Take a chapter of one of the books, and read it aloud, pausing now and then to point out those passing hints with comments like "and this will be relevant in book #___" or "You might recall how this plays out in the next book when ___", or even "It never gets on page anywhere, but I know that ____"....

[hrj]

Interesting idea.

[rustmon]

Excellent! I need to do some research and go do some reading!