I'm procrastinating again, news at 11

If book reviews could just be my off-the-cuff analysis and flailing about books and characters and such, it'd take me less than half an hour to do them, instead of (some of them) months because I procrastinate. Writing plot summaries is the bane of my reviewing life, because it's boring and also the author did it much better than me: that'd be the novel. And you have to try to limit spoilers or else it's not useful to people who haven't read the books.

The best part about reviewing is where you can just dissect the novels. If I want to take issue with your dinosaurs on spaceships (side note: if anyone has read a novel with this premise, tell me now please) then I totally can, or I can run about yelling it's the very best part of the book, everyone on my flist, you should go find this book! Or--and this is my favourite part of the speculative fiction umbrella--it's the speculation on what parts are taken from Earth and what's not. (Even secondary world fantasy invariably borrows from earthly institutions, beliefs, political structure, biology, climate.) For some reason this is so satisfying. And also I can talk about characterization or plot twists or just the writing flat out (like C.S. Lewis', because it was simply, remarkably beautiful), anything I think is relevant.

This has been brought to you by the fact I finished Megan Whalen Turner's The Thief. Review forthcoming.