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So those Jane Austen/Classic Monster mashups are pretty clever, right? Well there's a new one out, Mansfield Park and Mummies, and the author needs your help.

She's not asking for handouts, not even asking that you buy a copy of her book: just asking that you spread the word, so that it can reach the same audiences that made Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters successful.

Myself, I'm adding MP&M to my wishlist and hoping I get it for Christmas; it sounds fun, and vastly better than the other two!

Can't stop the signal, guys!

(via sartorias )

How patient are you with books you read? I am not very patient, myself (life is too short for reading bad books!), and if a book fails to grab me within a decent amount of time, or irritates me with its shenanigans, I will put it down no matter how far along in it I am. Earlier this week Kathleen Bryan's* The Serpent and the Rose irked me with its slow pacing, strangely distant narrative voice, and then some asinine thinly-veiled slams against Christianity, and I stopped reading about two-thirds through. Today I have regretfully put aside The Magicians and Mrs Quent, by Galen Beckett.**

I really wanted to like this book! It is a magical Regency-cum-Gothic-cum-Victorian-epic, and the Regency and magic are two great tastes that combine for extra-super-awesomeness! Just think of The Enchanted Chocolate Pot or Mairelon the Magician! (But then, Patricia Wrede is an excellent writer, and her books have just the right mix of period manners, enchantment, and adventure.) Mrs Quent, however, failed to grab my interest; the narrative voice, a sort of inferior Jane Austen pastiche, did not enthrall ... and the author spelled "magic" with a "k" on the end.

Yes, it's a mere pecadillo next to having boring characters and a plot that hasn't started moving at all within the first twenty pages (I told you I'm not patient), but it's one of those minor little things that just drive me up a wall! "Magick," indeed! It's sort of like in the latter seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when Willow's magic became "The Magicks," capital letters audible. Please! Get over yourselves! Magic doesn't need to be made more special-er with all those high-scoring letters from the Scrabble game! "Magick" is not more magical than "magic" is; nor is "majick" or "majyk" or "majyck" or whatever other goofy misspellings pompous fantasy authors are coming up with these days. Harrumph!

So now I'm on to the next book in the stack from the library haul, The Bone-Doll's Twin, about which I've heard very good things.***


*a pseudonym for Judith Tarr, whose book Queen of the Amazons, about Hippolyta and Alexander the Great, I read with a great deal of enjoyment.

**another pseudonym, this time for Mark Anthony. It's of interest to me that both books have blurbs on the covers implying that these are debut novels, when in fact, both authors have been published multiple times before. Why do that? Are people more likely to buy debut novels than novels by established authors?

***Well, Orson Scott Card recommended it on his site. Turns out he also recommended Mrs Quent, though, which gives me a little pause. Just because he's a great writer doesn't mean he has awesome taste in books...?