Australian Speculative Fiction Carnival

It is that time of month again, and the carnival can be found at austspecfic. Lots of good reading of posts you may have missed or ought to think about re-reading.

Next carnival will be on 15 February. Send handy entries to me or to philologa (at) gmail dot com and they will get to the next host, I promise. Bribe me with chocolate and they will get there faster. Philologa, of course, is not open to bribes. I think she might be on diet.

(no subject)

You all know I am a bit fixated on trying to work out what makes a good read? And that I am trying to get away from "This is good" an "This is bad" to looking at how the book meets audience expectations and stuff? Well, sartorias has one of the best analyses of book openings I have seen in a long time. She has just saved me a ton of effort too, and I owe her, because my current sub-obsession is that I am still trying to formulate what makes a Big Fat Fantasy a standard BFF and what makes for a special improved version. The things she doesn't like often make up the bog-standard version and the things she does refer to the new improved variety. I don't know whether this is universal, or if we both like the same things in books, though, so you might want to check it out for yourself.

I would love thoughts on what makes a fantasy duology or trilogy substandard, standard or superior. I am not talking about writing quality, but things like how well the introduction is handled, what tropes appear and how they are handled, what happens in the second book.