YA fantasy, she writes about feminism and the media on her blog, Feminist Fiction.Thomas's new book is A Wicked Thing, her debut novel.
Recently I asked the author about what she was reading. Her reply:
I'm currently trying to read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.Visit Rhiannon Thomas's website.
"Trying" is the key word there. I started it at the beginning of the year, and I have been abandoning it for other books ever since.
The writing is wonderful. It's engaging and witty while still managing to be poetic, and the protagonist is definitely an interesting character to spend time with. Friends have been pushing me to read this book for years, and one page was enough to show me why. I really enjoy reading it. Yet I can never motivate myself to pick it up again.
Is it just the sight of 600 more pages of tiny font that makes me reach for another novel I can read in two days instead? Is it that weird feeling I get with most fantasy novels, whereit takes a good fifty (or more) pages to get immersed, but once I am, I fall deep into a hole of obsession? Is it the fact that, a good chunk into the book, I've yet to meet a single female character, and that really puts me off a story, no matter how good it might otherwise be?
I don't know. But in the time it's taken me to read 100 pages of The Name of the Wind, I've read five other books.
I had this problem before, almost a year ago exactly, when I started The Lies of Locke Lamora. The writing was fantastic, the characters were compelling, but I just couldn't get into it. Then suddenly, something changed, and I was completely addicted. I devoured the entire series in a couple of weeks, and it's now one of my all-time favorite books.
I'm still waiting for that magic moment with The Name of the Wind, where I stop just knowing that it's good and start feeling it instead.
Hopefully it comes soon.
The Page 69 Test: A Wicked Thing.
--Marshal Zeringue
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