Wow, I’m a lousy blogger! More than two months and three books since last we met. I do have a good excuse or two. One: I was on vacation (Ireland was lovely and loads of fun, thanks for asking), and two: I was working on final edits of some of of my own stuff. So it wasn’t like I was just sitting around, watching Orange Is The New Black, eating pizza, and playing with my cats…well, not all of the time anyway. But onto the book review (sort of).
I really loved The Republic of Thieves so I want to review it, but honestly there isn’t too much I can say about why I loved this book, and the whole series, without either repeating what I’ve already written in an earlier Gentlemen Bastards review, or carelessly strewing spoilers all over the place. Instead, I’m going to rant. So if that doesn’t interest you feel free to stop reading now.
In a way I’m lucky; I came late to this series and didn’t discover the Gentlemen Bastards until about last January. So I’ve had the pleasure of reading the first three novels with only short, self-imposed breaks between (and as I understand it, the fourth is expected in early 2015) and wasn’t subject to any agonizingly long waits to read the next book. The same was true of A Song of Ice and Fire. The first four were already published in paperback and e-book by the time I picked up A Game of Thrones and I only had to wait a couple of years before the fifth was available. I consider myself as big a fan of both these series as anyone and will admit to some frustration at waiting for the next book, but the amount of really harsh criticism and outright vitriol some so-called fans constantly spew about being forced to wait is really surprising to me. Yeah, eight years is a long time. But come on, it’s not as if there aren’t other books out there to read. The world is full of books! Really, really, good books! And you know what? These authors don’t owe us a thing. Artists of all kinds create their art because they need to, and they need to do it for themselves. We, as the audience, either appreciate and enjoy it or we don’t. Painters will paint whether or not anyone sees or buys their work, dancers dance even if no one ever watches, and writers still write even if nobody ever buys a single one of their books. Maybe, I’m just more easy going than others. Maybe it’s because in my “other life” I’m an Oncology nurse and work with people who are facing literal life and death struggles every single day, and let me tell you: that has a way of keeping all the extraneous bullshit in perspective.
So to all the people out there calling Lynch, Martin, or whomever else they feel is making them wait too long to read a book, awful names and threatening to leave their fandom, I pose the question: when was the last time you wrote and published a sell-able epic fantasy or a “heartbreaking work of staggering genius”?
What was that?
Did you say Never?
Yeah…that’s what I thought, so maybe you should shut the fuck up.
Let the hate mail begin…
The Quirkus Review 