Saturday 12 December 2009

Falling Out of the Story

Whenever I read a story I like to lose myself in it. One of the things that I really don't like is when something says in big quote marks:-

"You're reading a story!"

This is usually caused by info-dumping. I think the last time it happened was when I read Karen Chance's first Cassie Palmer story. And it happened again this week when I started reading Mark of the Demon by Diana Rowland.

Right at the beginning of the story the heroine Kara has summmoned a demon...
He towered over me, his head topping mine by several feet...
Erm...hold on a moment did you say several feet? Exactly how high are the ceilings in your house anyway? But luckily the heroine can take a few moments away from worrying about the demon in her house to inform the reader
Fortunately for him, my Acadian style house had the traditional fifteen foot ceilings designed for the subtropical climate of south Louisiana where high ceilings helped keep houses cool.
Great. Good to know. But between those two sentences you've knocked me completely out of the story. If the heroine can take time aaway from the demon in her living room to inform me about the intricacies of Acadian architecture why should I be bothered about the freakishly tall other planar being?

I'm hoping this is a one-off as I've heard really good things about this book and at some point this year I would like to find a new UF author to follow. I've been kind of underwhelmed with the UF I've read this year.

4 comments:

Nicole said...

Underwhelmed by this year's UF? Oh dear. I've enjoyed my UF reads - but then, they include things that were released in previous years, so you may have already read them.

Lynn Viehl's "Shadowlight" was released this year, though, and I really enjoyed it. I hope 2010 brings you UF books you like better!

LesleyW said...

Shadowlight is on my TBR pile so I'm glad to know that's good. But I'm a huge Lynn Viehl fan and wouldn't expect anything less. :)

I've liked the Patricia Briggs books but nothing has really leapt out this year.

This is also probably down to the fact that I've read a lot fewer books in 2009 than previous years.

Nicole said...

Shadowlight's good. :) But it was a bit of an adjustment to segue from vampire romance (Darkyn) to urban fantasy (Kyndred). It's a good change, I just had to keep reminding myself that it might be the same world but not everyone was going to get fangs. ;)

LesleyW said...

Nicole - I like UF, so am definitely going to move Shadowlight up the TBR pile. :)