By I managed to get two more books in before the deadline. Slow days at work and rainy weather make for ample reading time.
&
bringing my total pages to 3314!
Artemis was a disappointment. I had been looking forward to reading this new work by Andy Weir for months. I enjoyed his previous book The Martian. Artemis was still a decent read, but I never felt like the main character was in any real danger or the stakes were ever really as dire as the story tried to push. I knew how it was going to end from an early point and wasn’t that invested in any of the characters.
The Name of the Wind marks my return to the Fantasy genre. I don’t think I have read anything from this realm since I was a teenager. It’s the only book I’ve read in recent memory that when seeing me reading it have exclaimed how much they loved this book. It’s a fun and compelling romp through a believable fantasy world. It’s less Pern and more Middle Earth. However, the lack of women in this book is startling. They are either entirely absent from huge chunks of the book or they are small fleeting characters. No substance and only there in the roles of dotting mother, boyish crush or whores. If this was a film it would fail the Bechdel test. The main character is also carried along by his “unnatural brilliance,” he is remarkably clever and uncannily adept at picking up new skills. It’s a bit tiresome to be told over and over again what a prodigy this kid is…I had a similar complaint with the main character in Artemis. It seems a bit convenient for the story if the character can learn calculus or an ancient dead language in a day. That being said, Rothfuss makes me care about his main character in a way I didn’t with Weir’s child genius. There is one significant female character towards the end of the book, but one out of over seven hundred pages of story is abysmal. I still enjoyed the book and will be reading the sequel. Hopefully more female characters with more than a single line of back story make an appearance!
Open Arts Spring 2023 
Congrats, Kate, for continuing to zip along. I have s.l.o.w.e.d down. Just recently someone said that she prefers to read female authors because she can relate to them. Surely this business of substantial female characters has something to do with this, though many male authors write female characters beautifully. It got me thinking about how my own reading breaks down between female and male. I really don’t know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I really need to get my sh** together!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Also, working at Borders for years people always swore by PR – I have not read myself, but know that he must be a tremendous writer in some fashion since I know who he is yet am very unfamiliar with the genre.
LikeLiked by 1 person