Outside of a Dog: Kate Nepveu's Book Log

Re-read Caroline Stevermer's When the King Comes Home; I'd been fighting off the urge ever since the winter holidays (something about the time of year; maybe it's just that I first read it around then), but since I was kind of on a roll with cranky narrators, I decided I might as well give in.

I really, really like this book, as I said in my review. A few, very random, additional comments:

• I continue to be very impressed by the level of craft in the prose.
• In retrospect, I tend to think the book starts a little slowly, but I never notice it when I'm reading. The ending still makes me sniffle.
• I'd mentioned in my review that this and Jo Walton's Sulien books were both novels in the form of elderly women writing down Arthurian-related long-ago events; they also happen to share competent and interesting Guinevere analogues, a remarkably rare thing (the books are otherwise dissimilar).
• An unoriginal lament about art within novels: I want to see the paintings described in the book (like I want the rest of Ask to Embla, and Crispin's mosaics, and . . . ). I also want her next book, a sequel to A College of Magics, which has been sold but not, apparently, scheduled—but at least there's a reasonable prospect of getting that. (Ooooh. I also just found out that not only is a reprint of Sorcery and Cecelia in the works, but so is a sequel. Hot damn.)