Abhorsen

Re: Frienditto, it's bad, it's very bad, it is the permanent breaking of friendship and soul-destroying betrayal and all that is wrong with the universe, etc., etc., you are all morons, blah, blah, angelcakes.

I have a public journal, therefore I do not place value on it, therefore I suck. In all seriousness, I agree. Frienditto is bad. Now please let's stop talking about it, for there is such a thing as overkill.

I started writing this at Pritchard's, which was swinging between insanely busy and quiet as the grave. Mother's Day entails lots of people, as does World Book Day as people are still redeeming their tokens. I had one little girl come up with a hardback Jacqueline Wilson, officially £10.99, two quid off because we're trying our best to flog them, and she had me hold out my hands and poured out what must have been all her savings. Ten minutes of sorting through WBD vouchers, general book tokens and a whole lot of silver and coppers, I found out she was eight pence short. Oh, well. I didn't mention it and sold the book anyway.

I can just about manage in the shop now, so I didn't panic in all the rush, but the main problem we were having was somewhat panic-inducing because it was entirely out of our control. For reasons best known to themselves, the wholesalers delivered the two boxes of our orders to the Crosby shop, and there they'll stay till Monday. Cue a lot of people wailing they needed it for tomorrow and much grovelling and being apologetic.

Sigh. I like my job, I love this bookshop, and no corporate entity would have sold that girl that book. Neither would they have trusted their employees to the extent that I'm apparently trusted. "Pay yourself, would you? Just grab the cash from the till." Which I did, at five-thirty when we were closing. I also took a book - The Creature in the Case, a WBD book by Garth Nix. I didn't even know it existed until casirafics prodded me yesterday; today I forgot my WBD voucher so was sticking it in the shelf for later until Niall said, "Just take it. Doesn't matter."

Incidentally, Niall is entirely wonderful - one of the people in during the week, Deb, told me on Wednesday to be prepared for girls coming in and asking hesitantly, is Niall single? And would he be interested? He is and he would, but he's so cute, he probably has no idea they fancy him.

Anyway, moving on, the Garth Nix book is set firmly in the Abhorsen universe and is actually set six months after Abhorsen itself - I haven't read it yet but I'm looking forward to it, particularly as it is apparently an extract from a longer collection of short stories to be published later in the year. The three original books - Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen - are quite good, actually. Clare pressed the first one upon me some time ago because she thought I'd like it. I did, but not immediately.

The thing is, the three books are basically your standard fantasy-novel-for teenagers fare. They are set in a world that consists of two countries (if there are more we haven't seem them) called Ancelstierre and the Old Kingdom. Of what we see of the former, it's basically Britain in the nineteen-twenties and thirties - there are omnibuses and biplanes, telephones and radioes - but the latter, which we see more of, is a world where magic exists. Interestingly, magic stops working the wrong side of the border, and technology breaks down inexplicably on the other wise. It's interesting but nothing entirely original. The other main idea is that of death as a place - a river with nine gates, through which a dying or dead person or animal passes and a living person (a necromancer) can follow them. Again, interesting but not exceptional.

But that said, they're solid, fun examples of the genre, and eminently readable. And there's one other thing. I don't know if I'm the only person who attempted to write her own fantasy novels when younger, but I doubt it, and these books seem to read an awful lot like a first fantasy novel. The characters all have lyrical, unusual names (Sabriel, Lirael, Sanar, Ryelle, Kirrith) as do places and things (Ancelstierre, Belisaere) and they all suffer from an awful lot of initial capitalisation (even the Wall between the countries gets it). Sabriel herself could be read as Mary-Sue-ish - she's bright, brave, resourceful, heir to a quasi-royal bloodline, married to a king, and while her mother is dead, she's watched over by her spirit. And yet, she's likeable and interesting.

Which goes for the books in general, I think. They have their flaws, but they try hard and well, it's been a while since I've read fantasy-for-teenagers.

I'm not sure whether I want to take part in yuletide this year, but to be eligible I have to write a New Year's Resolution fic (ie, fill one of last year's unfilled requests), and it's probably better to do this in March than in November. sathinks requested "Anything!" set in the Abhorsen-verse (the triology as a whole really needs a name), and I'm really tempted to go ahead and write something for it. Don't know about getting a beta, though - maybe it's too obscure.

Digression over. I ought to do some work, especially as I didn't do any last night in favour of making Colleen Show colourbars. Sigh.