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fictionadventurer · 1 month ago

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Maybe I need to write Cardinal's Map so there's a contemporary book about the power of literature and reaching for a world beyond the mundane that isn't wall-to-wall inspirational platitudes with vague worldbuilding about the battle between the forces of good vs. evil.

#i say as though i would be able to avoid trite inspirational platitudes and vague worldbuilding #anyway my driving-filled day had me listening to nearly half of 'nightfall in the garden of deep time'#and i do like it #but it seems to be an awfully long and wordy book for a very simple story #(maybe it's the author's librivox-ish narration and my increased listening speed making it worse but it's still a thing)#anyway the vague inspirational messages about the power of creativity are getting to be a bit much #especially combined with worldbuilding that's mostly cryptic statements about how important it is for art to be good true and beautiful #which is a good thing! it'd just be nice if it was even a little subtle about it sometimes #i feel like this suffers coming after the latest amanda dykes book #with a lot of beauty but also a lot of characters who spoke solely in artsy inspirational platitudes #and coming after that one mg time travel book #that was supposed to be about a bookshop bringing in people from across time #but turned out to mostly be 'books are good which means this bookshop is full of good magic that needs to balance evil magic'#which was very stupid and didn't make use of the bookshop part of the premise at all #and anyway those similarities are dragging this book down for me #actually 'once a queen' did a pretty decent job with these kinds of things #worldbuilding kind of vague and metaphory but overall still an actual world #and characters who learned lessons without everyone in their life speaking only to metaphorically discuss the theme #anyway the actual book in question has me invested #but also rushing through it to get to the story beats because it's taking too long to get there #starting to suspect this would have made a good novella #because we know she's going to have a creative epiphany so dragging out the metaphors only hurts things

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