[LMB] Floating Worlds Re: Two Reviews

[B. Ross Ashley]

On Tue, 2 Oct 2007 00:26:31 -0400 (EDT), alayne at twobikes.ottawa.on.ca
asked:
 > On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Mark A. Mandel wrote:
 > > Speaking of pathetic... anyone remember a book called, iirc, Floating
 > > Worlds? I bought it many years ago. It was sf, or presented as sf. It
 > > involved human settlement in artificial hollow spheres orbiting 
Neptune.
 > > And it DIDN'T MAKE SENSE to me. The more I read, the more baffled and
 > > irritated I grew... till I suddenly realized, "Oh, this isn't sf at 
all.
 > > It's Ro-o-omance, so none of the 'science', or its social implication,
 > > has to make sense at all!"

 > By Cecelia Holland? She's a writer of historical fiction, not
 > romance. (I find her style so totally turns me off -- within
 > one or two pages -- that I cannot read her books. But YMMV.)

I love Cecelia's style. But not that book, nor _Great Maria_; she cannot 
write romance and make me like it.

Her good reads, like _Until The Sun Falls_ and _The Earl_ (aka _A Hammer 
for Princes_) read, for me, like the best of CJ Cherryh. She is almost 
the polar opposite of Cabell, whose prosody is smooth, elegant, urbane 
and lighthearted; Holland is most elegant when she is terse, rough, and 
even laconic.

-- 
B. Ross Ashley http://brashley46.livejournal.com 
http://brashley46.no-ip.info
"It would be too painful to think that there are worlds somewhere
where I got everything right."  Sulien, in _The King's Name_, by Jo Walton
Registered Linux user # 402119