Wednesday, October 09, 2002

I've been trying to spend less money lately, so I've been finding books around the house that I haven't read yet or haven't read in quite a while. This week I finished reading Once a Hero by Elizabeth Moon. I picked it up several years ago in an airport somewhere and never got past the first few chapters. On a scale of 1 to 5 I'd give it a 2.5 or so. It had an interesting premise and a very cool location of a huge repair spaceship, but Moon goes too far out of her way to create a lot of strong female characters. The male characters are almost completely uninteresting and many times come out looking foolish. I'd also have to credit her with coming up with one of the most boring final chapters ever in a novel. We get to sit in on the main character, Esmay Suiza, talking to her psychologist in therapy. Moon also has a strange way of using expletives in this book. Almost no one curses for long stretches and then someone will drop the F-bomb at a place that seems almost awkward. I don't really mind authors using expletives, but they need to at least make it sound natural. The book made for decent late night reading, but I would never recommend someone actually buying it.

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