Book #9 of 2018 (parts B-D) Green but for a Season, The Summer Palace, The Adventures of Charls

[thistlechaser]

Yesterday I reviewed Pet, a short story set in the Captive Prince trilogy. Since I have no way of tracking short stories anymore, I gave it a whole book credit and intended to read the other stories as part of Book #9.

Turns out that didn't work out so well... While Pet worked as a stand-alone story, the others did not.

Luckily I picked at random the best one to start with, Green but for a Season. It was about a character named Jord and his time in the Prince's Guard. I'm sure, if read after the book that plotline was part of, this story would have been a lot of fun, but I don't remember much at all about the series, so for me this short story was about people I didn't know and a conflict I could barely recall at all. I finished it, and it was mildly interesting, but I can't say I enjoyed it.

The other two short stories, The Summer Palace and The Adventures of Charls, were intended as the trilogy's real ending. For reasons I can't recall (deadlines with her contract?) the author had ended the third book badly -- basically she *didn't* end it, just ran out of time to finish it. So, without remembering the last book at all (beyond that I hadn't enjoyed it), these stories were meaningless to me. I got about halfway through one and didn't bother starting the other.

If I read other short stories this year, I'll toss them into Book #9 to try to bring that up to a full book's worth of reading.

Currently reading: Man-Kzin Wars VI. No, I haven't read books 1-5, but as these are collections of stories set in that universe, they don't need to be read in order. This is the one I just happen to have.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Huh, I didn't know the short stories were meant to be the actual ending to book 3 (although I definitely agree that the book doesn't have much of an ending; I have a lot of problems with book 3 in general...)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

That's about the only thing I recall about book 3: The lack of ending and how many other problems I had with it.

Oh well, the first one (and the second?) was so good. Maybe one day I'll reread it.

[hamsterwoman]

The second book is actually by far my favorite of the trilogy :) (the slavefic aspect of the first book didn't work for me particularly well, either in setup or in Damen's as-yet-unexamined POV of slavery in Akielos, although I did like other things about it)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

That makes sense. For me, I enjoy slavefic (or at least I enjoyed it the way the books handled it), so the first book was the highpoint for me. :)