in-reading notes: green rider

The cover is classic fantasy-- a girl on a horse in a misty wood, another horse on the back cover following her... The book, so far, is just enough off the norm to make it interesting, but it's certainly not the best book ever. Karrigan is of indeterminant age, and that annoys me a little; sometimes she seems to be in her teens and near adulthood, and sometimes she seems to be kind of too young in her reactions, and nothing has said that she's considered immature, so there's no reason for her to sometimes be flighty or impulsive and other times not. And so far, things are just sort of happening to her while she stands by and lets them. She's opinionated enough in her head, but in action, she's not terribly bold, and that's hopefully something that will change, or this book will get annoying. It's not there yet.

And I don't know what sor tof a time-period it's set in, either. It has a Medieval feel to it, but there's a Victorian-feeling mannor house and bits of Renaissance-ish-ness that sort of all clash and don't feel unified-- I don't know if maybe she's just using the wrong descriptor words and I'm making the wrong associations, or if there really isn't a sensical timeframe, but the magic of the world seems to make sense, and that's something in it's favor. It feels like a first book. I think it is one. I wonder if she's got anything afterward, and if they're more cohesive? This one feels like a pale imitation of things like Ice & Fire and quest narratives and maybe Shadowmarch. It's probably not such a good idea to be so transparent about what you've read... I don't know. It feels... unfocused sometimes, a good idea but not quite the execution I'd like. Maybe I'm being too harsh; we'll see how it ends before I pass judgement.