William's Book Blog
Mostly book reviews. Very rarely I'll allow William Campbell Powell (author) to write a blog entry on publishing activity, but he's under orders to keep that stuff over on his Facebook page and on http://williamcampbellpowell.com
Currently reading
The niggle in the reader's ear...
I'm still surviving the narrator, but finding fresh irritation in the characterisations of the humans. Mostly it's Sally - in the intervening years since I last read "Mote" I guess I've come to expect more complexity from the female lead.
Remembering forward to the tension between Rod and Sally at the end of the book, I can see why the authors have given Sally such a one-dimensional perception of the Moties, but it's really quite painful to hear an anthropologist with so little detachment from the subject of study.
Niven and Pournelle know exactly where they're heading, and their actors have been crafted perfectly to get them there. I can't imagine Sally or Rod, or Renner or any of the others every doing something that surprised their creators. Unfortunately that makes them less human.
Still, it's the Moties' story really, and the homo sapiens cast has to take the roles they've been assigned.
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