Blurb:
Can you see the story breathing?
Imagine
A mountain so great it takes a year to
travel from base to summit
A sun so powerful it drives you into
madness if you look at it
An ascent so vital it determines the fate
of the world
A summit so precious it holds the key to
the divine
The world of the great Mountain is unstable.
Giant pillars erupt from the surface and yawning chasms form unpredictably
underfoot. Since the Maelir first stood on its slopes in the distant past, they
have sought to still its anger and control its power. Each year, twin brothers
are chosen to make a perilous journey to the summit. If they survive they will
be witness to Zenith, and the secrets will be revealed to them.
When Atreu and Teyth embark on their Ascent,
their Talismans lead them onto conflicting paths that will ultimately set
brother against brother. And this time the Ascent itself is in peril as unknown
forces that have long craved the power of Zenith will stop at nothing to make
it their own even if it means destroying the very thing that sustains all life
the Mountain itself.
GUEST POST
I know what I like - but is it any good?
Dirk Strasser
We all like to think we’re good judges of
fiction. It’s easy to make assertions about how good (or bad) a particular
novel is, but when we say “this is really good”, are we really saying anything
more than “I like this”?
What makes a work of fiction good? It’s a simple question that doesn’t have a
simple answer.
A while ago Hugh Howey, best-selling author
of Wool, said this as part of an article analysing author earnings:
Consider the three rough possibilities for
an unpublished work of genre fiction:
The first possibility is that the work isn’t
good. The author cannot know this with any certainty, and neither can an
editor, agent, or spouse. Only the readers as a great collective truly know…
The second possibility for a manuscript is
that it’s merely average. An average manuscript might get lucky and find an
agent. It might get lucky a second time and fall into the lap of the right
editor at the right publishing house. But probably not. Most average
manuscripts don’t get published at all. Those that do sit spine-out on
dwindling bookstore shelves for a few months and are then returned to the
publisher and go out of print…
The third and final possibility is that the
manuscript in question is great. A home run. The kind of story that goes viral…
When recognized by publishing experts (which is far from a guarantee), these
manuscripts are snapped up by agents and go to auction with publishers. They
command six- and seven-figure advances. The works are heavily promoted, and if
the author is one in a million, they make a career out of their craft and go on
to publish a dozen or more bestselling novels in their lifetime.
Hugh Howey’s main argument in this article
was about self-publishing, but what struck me was how easily he categorised
works of fiction into “not good”, “average” and “great” as if these were easily
verifiable categories. His assumption
was that no individual on their own (regardless of how well-read they were, or
whether they were publishing industry professionals or not) can be certain that
something is good. He is saying that
this knowledge can only come from the great mass of readers as a collective
group. The people as a whole decide
what’s good.
Is this true? Is the best book the one valued highly by the
most people? How do you measure what the
mass of readers view is a great book?
I’m not quite sure what Hugh intended here, but is he equating “best”
with “best-seller”? Does this mean, for example, that the best (not just
best-selling) novel in 2012 was Fifty Shades of Grey? That can’t be right, can it? Or is the best book the one with most
positive reviews? Or the best positive vs negative review ratio? Or the most downloaded or bought, regardless
of price? How do we know there isn’t
some masterpiece that everyone will instantly love which isn’t languishing
somewhere through lack of marketing or by being over-priced or because it’s
written in an obscure language that has relatively few speakers?
The issue is complicated even further by the
fact that people’s tastes change. Works
considered the best in a period in the past would often not find much of an
audience if they were published for the first time today. I know many people who say The Lord of the
Rings starts off much too slowly for them.
They want more action. Even in
more recent times, publishing trends wax and wane. Steampunk novels used to be “great” not so
long ago, and now they seem to be considered just “good”. I’ve read articles that say paranormal
romance and urban fantasy is not as popular as it used to be and epic fantasy
is having a resurgence. “Goodness” is supposed to be an eternal quality, isn’t
it? If “goodness” is somehow determined
by the vagaries of taste and fashion, does the concept have any meaning?
Is there ever a true consensus about whether
a work of fiction is good? Often a sort
of group-think comes into play when a work becomes a mega-seller. People read
something because other people have read it, and so on, and the book’s status
becomes self-generating. But even in the
case of these fabulously selling books, there is often a backlash against the
work after it has reached a certain level of popularity, where a substantial
group argue it’s grossly over-rated.
Whose opinion is more valid?
So, is my novel, Zenith – The First Book of
Ascension any good? Who knows? Just send me a message and tell me whether or
not you liked it.
Visit the Whole TOUR
Sep 22nd: Insane About Books ( Guest Post )
Sep 23rd: Holly Quills + Ivy ( Review )
Sep 24th: Lauras Little Book Blog ( Excerpt )
Sep 25th: Reviewed The Book ( Review )
Sep 26th: Sarah Pritchard ( Review )
Sep 27th: Literary Loves ( Review )
Sep 28th: Random Redheaded Ramblings ( Excerpt )
Sep 29th: Lynsey James ( Review )
Sep 30th: MissBookworm Reviews ( Review )
Oct 1st: Skys Book Corner ( Q&A )
Oct 2nd: Nats Reading Cloud ( Review )
Oct 3rd: Best Chick Lit ( Review )
Links:
About the
author:
Dirk Strasser has won multiple Australian
Publisher Association Awards and a Ditmar for Best Professional Achievement.
His mythic fantasy series, The Books of Ascension, has been republished by
Macmillan Momentum, this time including Eclipse – The Lost Book of Ascension
for the first time in English. His novels and short stories have been
translated into a number of languages. He also founded the Aurealis Awards and
has co-edited and co-published Aurealis magazine for over twenty years.
Links:
http://www.dirkstrasser.com/
@dirkstrasser
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.