A Singing Horse

I read the first book in a series and it was enjoyable enough to bring me to the second. But the author didn't quite stick it. It's a space western, sort of. I thought when I started that she was going to go more in the pastiche direction, without attempting to justify how things ended up so much like a western, but she didn't. In fact, the story, the theme, the plot continued to surprise me with new directions and that is one of the things that kept me reading.

That, and this wasn't your Firefly style gritty Old West elements brought out in a gritty, often depressing universe. I am sure the writer was thinking about Horse Opera because it is very much a 1950's Television Western sort of world -- at least, those elements which are western.

And that's another thing. It is so tempting because it turns out to be so damned easy to have things fall in thematic patterns. It would have taken so little work to get some space equivalent of stampedes or cattle rustlers or whatever in there...she's already got claim jumpers and bandits and a Lost Mine (among other things). She resisted, though.

The sequel falls to another problem. It builds on far too many of the elements that are in the previous book, and perhaps because there is so much that has to be explained, the explanations are not smoothly handled or organic. Instead the text keeps stopping to explain something that will turn out to be important.

Yeah, I was reading that as I was realizing already I had the same problem. This is why I've decided that each adventure of Penny's needs to be largely hermetic, in theme and background and in extraneous elements. When she is in Japan, she learns most of the history and archaeology and language she needs for that adventure during that adventure. 

I can do this better in other books; the Japan book has the problem of being essentially the book where she reflects on the experiences of the last two books and finally commits to being an adventurer. And there is a strong "Chinatown" element; she's basically having PTSD over something that happened in a previous book, so that does have to be teased out and gone into despite it not being organic to the current location or the "case" therein.

***

Anyhow.

I've got the notes in order and I did a re-read of the current draft for Part IV and...oh, this is a lot of work. I have to change almost everything. It would almost be faster to throw out the existing chapters and start again from scratch.

I'm cutting better and better at surgery, but every scene in Part IV has multiple things that are happening in it specifically because they come out of something else that is in that scene. In the "Dogu" scene, her recording the items in the cult's collection of artifacts reminds her of her friend on the Nine Elms dig which makes her realize the decor around her is consciously science-fictional (one of the diggers at Nine Elms was an SF fan) which makes her realize the significance of the Dogu figurine she's looking at.

When I go in for surgery on this sort of thing, it isn't enough to cut bits out and move them around. I have to create new connective tissue so when it is all stitched together again it all looks like one thing flows inevitably into the next.

Way too much work. I didn't feel up for any of it. I closed the window and watched old episodes of Bones.