I duly finished Drakenfeld by Mark Charan Newton and I didn't change my mind about the quality of the writing. The plot was thin to say the least, with none of the red herrings required and far too many irrelevant digressions, the stupidity and lack of investigative skill of the main character was breath-taking, and the denouement -- which should be the high spot of a murder mystery -- was a flop. Not actually fantasy at all, save that it's set in a not-real continent, since the only fantastical element is a ghost which plays absolutely no part in the plot. Very disappointing.
As I was finishing that, I raced through Job: A Comedy of Justice by Robert Heinlein. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book during which Alec/Alex is put through all his travails, since the voice and wry humour leavened the digs at a certain kind of mean-spirited and hidebound born-again Christianity. But following the Rapture and Alec's translation into Heaven and then elsewhere I became less satisfied as the comic aspects were left behind and we got Heinlein's preoccupations with sex and religion full-frontal, as it were, not helped by the fact that I loathed Jerry and his women.
From that I moved onto The Darkling Child by Terry Brooks. I read The High Druid's Blade last year, after first trying it a couple of years before that, and once past all the relentless info-dumping of backstory and worldbuilding in he opening chapters, I thought it was OK but nothing special, which pretty much sums up my feelings about the latest offering, which follows the same protagonist and his antagonist, though this time with different side-kicks and other players.
On a different league, following a couple of recent trips to see some Oscar Wilde plays, I thought I'd have a go at some more of his prose, and I picked up The Canterville Ghost and other stories, a baker's dozen of short stories. The fairy tales were universally luscious and wonderful, though at least one of them could usefully have been pruned somewhat for my taste, but ones with a more -- to him -- modern and semi-realistic setting I found witty but ultimately tiresome in their continual effort to be witty, which is, thinking about it, largely my reaction to his plays.
