Thumbnail Thoughts on The Etched City and Here, There, and Everywhere

I don't have a real post today (though there are at least three for tomorrow morning, and those three are pretty long), so I'll pull one of the last things I had stuck away in the icebox. This was originally posted to rec.arts.sf.written 3/28/05:

The Etched City is very well written, and has a lot of the writerly virtues of China Mieville without being obsessed with bodily fluids the way Perdido Street Station was. On the other hand, it felt very thin to me, as if I'd read the plot a thousand times before. I suspect Bishop is influenced heavily by Moorcock, for one thing (or maybe I've just read way too much Moorcock). My general feeling is that the plot doesn't live up to the promise of the writing, but that Bishop is going to be an important writer very soon (and that she's already a damn good one). I'm certainly going to be keeping a beady eye out for her next novel.

Here, There and Everywhere is a soufflé topped with meringue, spun out in zero-gee and very artfully set free to float around beautifully. I enjoyed every second of reading it, but there wasn't an instant of tension in the entire book, nor did I ever doubt even briefly the shape
of the story to come. It's sort-of a female version of The Man Who Folded Himself, but Gerrold's book (as old and creaky as it is) still beats it solidly on all the SFnal virtues save pure command of prose.