[Nimea]

German translation - good to hear. :)


I don't like the term 'Tolkien-clone-like' either. I like a lot of things about Tolkien, and I don't think that a fantastical book gets to be important just because it isn't reminiscent of Tolkien. I would like books to be judged on their own merits - whatever the judgement may end up being!

Yes, exaclty.
Just to be clear on this: with 'distinctly different from anything Tolkien-clone-like' I didn't want to say that your book is important 'just' because it isn't reminiscent. I think over the last two or three years the complaints about the 'Tolkien-clones' might have been over the top but also gave an opportunity for different books. Or it might just have been a natural developement of the market anyway and the complaints and the 'other' books just happened to happen at about the same moment . . . Don't really know.
(Am not even sure if I just really wrote what I wanted to say, either.)


Plotting is not one of my best points, I have to admit. I guess I'm not that interested in plot - although I am interested in narrative, which I see as being distinct from plot. Still, plotting is something that I hope to eventually get better at.

Yes, this is the interesting thing about The Etched City and why I definitely want to read more of your work to come. To see where this goes. :)

[Kirsten Bishop]

Nimea -

It's cool, I knew you didn't mean it that way :) . Fashions change - at present, the genre fantasy market has an appetite for this different stuff; it remains to be seen where it will lead to...

Re whatever I might write next - all I know is that it will be different from the first book. It might be quite mainstream. If I have one major interest, it's an interest in the workings of the imagination - the stories we tell about ourselves, beliefs, individual and collective desires and delusions - which can be explored from both fantastical and non-fantastical angles.

[Phedre]

I have just started on the translation for my Dutch publishers, you see, and in the course of the work every translation becomes "mine".

This is great! :-) I was searching for this thread to mention the Dutch translation (Stad in Scherven), it's going to be released in january. I work in a bookstore, so I got the news from the dutch publisher yesterday. I was goign to ask if I could copy/paste some reviews about the book in this thread to my dutch bookclub-forum. The K.J. Bishop thread: http://www.ff-leesclub.nl/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1206
It's in dutch of course, but I took a picture of the cover out of the brochure by the dutch publisher. You can find it in that thread. I didn't scan it, my scanner won't work today, my digicam did the job, but the picture is a bit blurry.

Ave, if you'd like to promote the book on my dutch bookclub-forum, go ahead. Same for K.J. Bishop, english is allowed.

[Gildor]

And a year or so later I finally read this, not that I was even aware of this book when it came out, but hey I got to it somehow.

This was a very invigorating and refreshing read, i've really got nothing to add beyond what everyone else has mentioned, but only to say that I think it really combined well a literary style and Mieville-esque weirdness that was so very easy to delve into, every time I dipped into the book I couldn't stop reading, so addictivly gripping. Lot's of vivid and and haunting concoctions, the locations like the desert, the exotic jungle warped city, the various dreamspcapes jumping in and out of the writing. Gwynn, Raule and Beth were great creations ... I loved dipping into their lives, the relationship was so mysterious betwen Beth and Gywnn, lot's of unknowns and whispers of far away musings, not only just between those two but throughout the story.

Great book, i'm glad I read it .. and will most assurdely keep a closer eye out for anything else forthcoming from the author.

[Mithfânion]

Just wanted to mention that I've just bought this book based on what I've read here and on Amazon. A blend between Perdido Street Station and the Dark Tower sounds interesting, plus I read the first chapter and found that good enough to want the whole book.