Eagle's Path: Baycon haul (2005-05-30)

This ended up being, unusually for me, mostly an art-buying con, and I'm going home with more fine art than I think I've ever purchased before in my life. I even picked up one thing at auction! But still, there was book buying, as there always was.

As is typical for me at Baycon, I did some shopping from my list but also went freely off of it, picking up things that I just noticed or looked interesting or had interesting covers.

Elenor Arnason -- Daughter of the Bear King (sff)
Steven Brust -- Yendi (sff)
Jacqueline Carey -- Banewreaker (sff)
Joy Chant -- Red Moon and Black Mountain (sff)
Hal Clement -- Cycle of Fire (sff)
Hal Clement -- Iceworld (sff)
Charles de Lint -- Svaha (sff)
Stephen R. Donaldson -- The Mirror of Her Dreams (sff)
Jon Courtenay Grimwood -- Pashazade (sff)
Eileen Gunn -- Stable Strategies and Others (sff)
Kim Harrison -- Dead Witch Walking (sff)
M. John Harrison -- Viriconium Nights (sff)
Gwyneth Jones -- Life (sff)
Madeleine L'Engle -- Many Waters (sff)
Alastair Reynolds -- Chasm City (sff)
Geoff Ryman -- Air (sff)
Clifford D. Simak -- All Flesh is Grass (sff)
Dan Simmons -- Summer of Night (horror)
John Sladek -- Tik-Tok (sff)
Nancy Springer -- Larque on the Wing (sff)
Mary Stewart -- The Last Enchantment (sff)
Mary Stewart -- The Wicked Day (sff)
Jo Walton -- Tooth and Claw (sff)
Leslie What -- Olympic Games (sff)
Liz Williams -- Banner of Souls (sff)
Gene Wolfe -- The Fifth Head of Cerebus (sff)

I'm probably going to regret buying the Carey, since it's part one of two and the second one isn't out yet, but now that I own it, I won't be able to refrain from reading it. It was half-off, though.

Lots of fill-in of award winners I didn't yet own, but amazingly enough, only one per award for several different awards. One World Fantasy, one BSFA, one Philip K. Dick, one Tiptree, and one Mythopoetic.

I'm still missing the second half of The Mirror of Her Dreams, and am not sure I want to start that without having both parts. The Mary Stewart were only $1 a piece, so I figured I'd fill in the rest of the series before I start reading it. I'm still missing one of the Viriconium books as well. I bought the Kim Harrison book purely because of the cover; we'll see how bad of an idea that was.

I've got the second half of Mirror of her Dreams, and you're more than welcome to borrow it if you'd like.

I will have to say that the main reason I'm keeping it in our collection (now that we've moved, we're going through a really large "do we really want to keep this" sort, and have four boxes of sff to go away) is that, for me, it's a spectacular failure. The dramatic climax is one where one should not have any expectation that the protagonists will succeed, but by that point in the book I had completely lost any ability to believe that the protagonists could get seriously hurt, so it fell rather flat. And so I keep it, because that feeling of "these protagonists are perfectly safe" in the face of overwhelming odds is something that vaguely baffles me, and I wonder why exactly it's happening.

Posted by Brooks Moses at 2005-05-31 00:14

I ended up with a few offers of copies of Mirror of Dreams, including one from a co-worker (which makes it very convenient), but thank you for the offer! It's a shame you didn't like it -- I was hoping I would, but I'm not sure. I mostly picked it up because I'd like to try something by Donaldson that's better than the dreadful Thomas Convenant stuff (the plot and anti-hero I don't mind; the writing is nuts) and the basic plot seems similar to stuff I've done with my own characters, which always interests me.

Posted by eagle at 2005-06-04 22:26